Women We Admire is pleased to announce The Top 50 Women Leaders of San Francisco for 2023. This year’s awardees span across areas including environmental education, information technology, retail, healthcare, banking and more. As an important hub in the global economy, the city of San Francisco has a disproportionately high volume of accomplished women as compared to other parts of the United States. With that in mind and in an effort to recognize more deserving women, this particular awards feature surpasses our typical 50 count. As you will find, each woman included is an exceptional leader and true ambassador to the organizations and teams they serve.
Among this year’s awardees is Siobhán Mc Feeney, Chief Technology Officer of Kohl's, who since joining the company has championed and accelerated the company’s product-centric software development journey to better serve their customers and fuel business growth. Awardee Sneha Narahalli, Vice President and Head of Product at SEPHORA, is known for being a hands-on leader and driving product roadmaps impacting in-store, online, omni channel, personalization journey and integrated member experience. Also awarded is Simin Zhou, Chief Strategy & Development Officer for UL Solutions, who along with her team enables customers to manage complex regulatory requirements, deliver supply chain transparency, and advance sustainability.
Please join us in celebrating the accomplishments of The Top 50 Women Leaders of San Francisco for 2023.
1. Siobhán Mc Feeney
Chief Technology Officer, Kohl's
Siobhán Mc Feeney, Chief Technology Officer, is responsible for all technology, information, and digital platforms supporting Kohl’s omnichannel business.
Mc Feeney joined Kohl’s in 2020 as senior vice president, technology and was promoted to executive vice president, technology in 2022 leading Kohl’s application product teams, data science, product design, enterprise analytics, and product enablement. Since joining Kohl’s, Mc Feeney has championed and accelerated the company’s product-centric software development journey to better serve Kohl’s customers and fuel business growth.
With over 25 years of information technology and finance experience, Mc Feeney has held a number of leadership positions. Prior to Kohl's, she led innovation and strategy at Pivotal Software, Inc. where she focused on enabling large clients to develop new ways of working. Mc Feeney also spent a decade at AAA Northern California in various leadership roles, including chief financial officer, chief information officer, and interim chief executive officer. She began her career as an accountant working at Deloitte and KPMG Ireland.
2. Sheila Rohra
SVP of Customer Success & Lifetime Value, Hewlett Packard Enterprise
Sheila Rohra is a seasoned technology executive who excels at leading companies to success via transformation. She leads multi-billion-dollar companies to operational and financial success by pairing strategic vision with focused practicality to achieve results. As Senior Vice President of the HPE Customer Success and Lifetime Value team, Sheila is responsible for a $5B global enterprise business, leading an organization focused on transforming customer experiences by helping them achieve their business outcomes through the optimization of the mix of services offerings and outstanding post-sales engagement.
With more than 20 years of experience transforming multi-billion-dollar companies, Sheila has held several leadership positions spanning from strategy to execution. No matter the role, she is a passionate advocate for her customers and her colleagues, as key players in any business success.
3. Jennifer Lieb Hillyer
VP, Global Marketing, IQVIA
Like many other marketers, Jen Hillyer started out as a psychology major. Her deep interest in people and behavior led her to marketing as a discipline and healthcare as an industry. Over the years, Jen has developed extensive expertise in healthcare and a passion for building talented and highly functioning organizations that make ambitious ideas a reality. She brings experience in a broad range of areas across healthcare including life sciences, population health, analytics and technology solutions and is constantly inspired by the speed of science and the endless potential of the industry. Currently, Jen leads global enterprise marketing at IQVIA, and was instrumental in rebranding the company post-merger of two large industry leaders, IMS Health and Quintiles. She has led marketing for all the company’s primary verticals: R&D, real world evidence, commercial and technology. Prior to IQVIA, Jen spent 14 years at Pfizer; a formidable training ground for both marketing and healthcare.
While Jen has taken on many different roles in her career – marketing, communications, commercial transformation, and grassroots community engagement to name a few – a consistent theme has been creating and advancing new ideas at large organizations experiencing change. But Jen’s ultimate source of motivation has always been empowering people and teams so they can achieve their full potential. When new business needs arise, Jen can quickly identify the right talent and team composition to deliver strong results, even in new territory. Diversity of skills, perspective and the right team chemistry is key. Jen is a certified Myers-Briggs practitioner with a BA in Social Psychology from Wesleyan University in Middletown, CT.
4. LaSandra Hunt
Executive Director, Emerging Middle Market Northern California
LaSandra Hunt is an Executive Director, Commercial Banker and Global Supplier Diversity Ambassador for J.P. Morgan Chase based in San Francisco, serving privately held companies headquartered in Northern California with annual revenues of $20M+. As a 15-year veteran with the firm, LaSandra unites the most relevant experts in the firm together to help her clients realize their goals. Her drive to deeply understand her clients key priorities and initiatives enables her to provide high-value market & industry intel, connections and resources to the customers she serves. Through her expertise, events and vast network, LaSandra aims to be the most valuable financial resource to the companies she serves.
LaSandra is an advocate for fraud prevention. She leverages the firm's annual $12B investment in technology to help companies improve their workflow processes and system integration in order to drive operational efficiency. She works closely with credit and financing teams, including Asset Based Lending, to deliver the best solutions to help clients’ growth. A proven expert in leveraging expertise from across the firm, LaSandra delivers the full power of the bank socializing brands and facilitating introductions with the firm’s Investment Bank, Venture Group, Financial Sponsors, and industry experts.
LaSandra has a passion for companies with environmental, social and governance processes and decision-making. She serves as J.P. Morgan Chase First Global Supplier Diversity Ambassador. Previously, she was Women on The Move Site Lead, Communication Chair for Black Organizational Leadership Development, and past co-Chair for our Volunteer Leadership Group, driving volunteerism in the communities where she lives and works. Today, she sits on the board of Main Street Launch, a Bay Area CDFI working to create economic opportunities by empowering entrepreneurs, WBEC-Pacific a Women Business Enterprise Council and Western Region Minority Supplier Diversity Council supporting women and diverse business owners with in-depth expertise guiding finances and demystifying how to do business with J.P. Morgan Chase.
LaSandra is Northern California lead for our Women, Minority, Veteran Owned Business effort championing the firm’s commitment to service diverse enterprises. A native of the San Francisco-Bay Area, she earned her undergraduate degree from Golden Gate University. She lives in Oakland with her partner Chef Josip and French Bulldog Avalanche. She has a Junior at UNLV studying business. She enjoys traveling, learning new languages, and conversational in Tagalog and Hervatki (Croatian).
5. La Treece Butler-Morton
Chief of Staff & VP of Global Systems Integrators, VMware
La Treece Butler-Morton joined VMware over 15 years ago and has held various positions in strategy planning, and operations. With experience in sales, partner alliances, IT, business transformation, M&A, and new product introductions, she is currently the Chief of Staff of VMware’s Global Systems Integrators Team.
La Treece is a passionate advocate of recruitment, retention, and development of underrepresented minorities and women in the workplace. She is passionate about being a voice to the voiceless by supporting impactful initiatives to ensure equitable and inclusive practices within diverse communities. She was one of the founders of VMware’s Black Infinity Group (Power of Difference) and currently serves as one of the Executive Strategy Leaders, for the advancement of Black Executives in the workplace. She’s a global mentor and coach for diverse professionals looking to progress in their careers. La Treece serves as the reverse mentor to VMWare’s CEO and a VMware Political Action Committee Board Member.
6. Toni Vanwinkle
VP of Digital Workplace Experience, Adobe
Toni Vanwinkle is a seasoned digital transformation leader with extensive strategy development, program execution, and organizational change management experience. The Digital Workplace Group named Toni the 2019 Digital Workplace Leader of the Year, recognizing the impact of her inspirational leadership. Toni currently leads Adobe's Digital Employee Experience organization focused on keeping Adobe employees innovative, collaborative, and productive from anywhere. Her team won the 2021 CIO100 and Digital Workplace of the Year awards in recognition of business impact and thought leadership.
In addition to her functional role, Toni always makes time for mentoring and community service. She founded Adobe's Black Employee Network and currently serves as the Site Council Leader at Adobe's Headquarters in San Jose. In her Site Leader role, she is an employee ambassador leading a Site Council whose mission is to amplify Adobe's culture and connect employees to the communities where they live and work.
Toni is a lifelong learner. She holds an undergraduate degree in business administration, is an American Leadership Forum Senior Fellow and board member, serves on the executive board of SVCreates, and literally fought to earn her Black Belt in Tai Kwon Do.
7. Sneha Narahalli
VP and Head of Product, SEPHORA
Sneha Narahalli is an esteemed technology leader, known for her expertise in driving industry transformation through innovative and simplified product development. Growing up in a family of writers in India, with both parents being renowned literary figures, Sneha has always used her creativity to achieve focused results. She recently authored a book titled Not the Loudest Person in the Room, which recounts her personal journey and the challenges she faced as an introverted woman in the industry.
Ten years ago, Sneha moved to the United States to pursue her master's degree at Carnegie Mellon University. Since then, she has been at the forefront of next-generation strategies for major companies such as Sears, Walmart, and Sephora. Currently, she leads the entire product portfolio, including digital, stores, data, and marketing technology at Sephora. Sneha is a great product leader with the unique ability to bring clarity to ambiguous situations.
Sneha strongly believes that raising awareness is the first step towards creating change. She hopes to increase consciousness about the fundamental biases women face in any environment and collaboratively overcome and eradicate them. In line with the famous saying, "the pen is mightier than the sword," Sneha intends to continue leveraging her creativity to make a positive impact.
8. Edua Dickerson
VP of ESG & Finance Strategy, ServiceNow
Edua Dickerson is the Vice President of Environmental, Social, and Governance (ESG) & Finance Strategy at ServiceNow. In her role, she is responsible for developing, activating, and overseeing the integrated ESG strategy and initiatives. She also creates and manages key activities to enable the Finance organization to operate effectively at scale.
Entrusted with operationalizing ESG across ServiceNow, Edua leads the team as they incorporate ESG strategy across the internal enterprise, including governing policies, processes, and controls. Her team also serves as customer zero for all relevant ESG-related solutions while delivering thought leadership expertise and developing strategic partnerships with product development, go-to-market stakeholders, and partners. Edua is also an advisor for strategic learning, digital reskilling, and talent development initiatives at ServiceNow, leading the finance career development strategy, including the post-university and post-MBA rotational programs. She joined ServiceNow as chief of staff to the CFO in 2020.
Prior to ServiceNow, Edua worked as chief of staff to the corporate controller & chief accounting officer at Google, eventually moving on to head of YouTube trust and safety. She served as the Black Employee Resource Group global chair and partnered with Google leadership to develop racial equity commitments in 2020. She also held leadership roles within Google’s finance operations, PricewaterhouseCoopers, and Deloitte Consulting. Edua received her undergraduate degree in mathematics from the University of California at Los Angeles, her MBA from Duke University, and she held a California CPA.
9. Simin Zhou
Chief Strategy & Development Officer, Enterprise Software & Advisory, UL Solutions
Simin Zhou has over 20 years of experience in new ventures, business management, VC/PE, and product and technology management. Currently, she leads strategy, partnerships, and acquisitions for UL Solutions Enterprise Software and Advisory business. Since its inception in 2021, the Enterprise Software and Advisory unit is now the leading global provider of software, data and advisory solutions enabling customers to manage complex regulatory requirements, deliver supply chain transparency, and advance sustainability.
Previously at UL Solutions, Simin created UL Ventures, and invested in 17 startups across safety, security, and sustainability. She played an active role in each of those startups and sat on several of their boards such as Resilinc and SkySpecs. She was also VP of enterprise strategy and VP and GM of appliances and components business. Prior to UL Solutions, Simin was co-founder of a venture capital firm focused on China and a FinTech startup. She led early-stage investments in WuXi AppTech, served on WuXi’s board of directors, and saw its successful IPO on the NYSE. Simin holds an MBA from Harvard Business School, and graduated summa cum laude in computer engineering from the University of Minnesota. Simin splits her time between San Francisco, London and Singapore.
9. Wende Amerie
President & Chief Operating Officer, Corporate Edge
Wende Amerie is the President and Chief Operating Officer of Corporate Edge, a premier leadership consulting firm. Their mission is to transform organizations like Kaiser Permanente, Genentech, Productiv, and Yahoo!, and their senior most leaders. Wende works closely alongside her team of executive leadership consultants and values people first. It is her mission to build trusted relationships with senior-level clients and key stakeholders, and she works collaboratively to find creative and custom solutions to their greatest business challenges.
As a face of the firm, Wende is both in front and behind the scenes, establishing touch points and strategizing for the future of the company’s brand, direction and growth. With high-level industry expertise, and a relationship-focused approach in all of her engagements, Wende’s impact is felt throughout the organizations that she serves. As an executive coach, her areas of expertise are developing high-potential women executives, difficult conversations, overcoming imposter syndrome, communication skills, influencing skills, executive presence, emotional intelligence, and systems coaching.
Wende’s wholehearted belief in the value of leadership development extends to herself. Wende has a certificate in executive coaching from Brown University, an MBA from Golden Gate University, an undergraduate degree in business management, and a paralegal certificate from Saint Mary's College. She is an Associate Certified Coach through the International Coaching Federation.
From humble beginnings and amidst a childhood of instability and adversity, she truly values and is passionate about education. Armed with a vision and full of ambition, Wende plans to create a nonprofit that helps young women navigate and access quality education. As a mentor at WOMEN Unlimited, Inc., she helps women amplify their impact and rise to their highest potential. Wende balances her career and personal development with her career on the side as a veteran plus size model (hoping to be an inspiration to women and girls to be comfortable in their own skin), as a mother, and as an involved member of her community. She serves as a board member for Impact 100 East Bay, the Sandra J. Wing Healing Therapies Foundation and the Golden Gate University Alumni Board of Directors.
10. Hannah Elsakr
VP of Corporate Development, Direct Investing and M&A, Adobe
Hannah Elsakr is the Vice President of Corporate Development, Direct Investing and M&A at Adobe. She is passionate about looking around the corner and partnering with founders, innovators and ecosystem partners to bring innovations to market. Her team has helped to advance new growth areas for Adobe through acquisitions and post-merger integration of companies such as Workfront, Frame.io, and ContentCal.
Hannah serves as a board observer for VidMob, LucidLink, Skillshare, and PrescriberPoint as part of Adobe's direct investment portfolio. She also serves as the board president of Adobe's Foundation. Hannah was chief of staff to Adobe’s CEO, Shantanu Narayen, and led the office of the CEO.
Hannah has experience leading businesses in consumer internet, ecommerce & marketplaces, CPG/Retail, SaaS and advisory services in the Americas, EMEA and Asia. Prior to joining Adobe, she was the VP of operations for the Americas at eBay and had direct P&L responsibility for eBay’s Canada, Latin America and US exports businesses. She also held global strategy and partnership roles at eBay, Del Monte Foods and Avon Products, and served as an advisor to clients during her tenure at McKinsey & Co. and J.P. Morgan. Hannah holds an undergraduate degree in applied mathematics with computer science from MIT and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
10. Shana Simmons
Chief Legal Officer, Everlaw
Shana Simmons is the Chief Legal Officer at Everlaw, a cloud-based ediscovery platform that unlocks the collaborative power of litigation and investigative teams. As the company’s legal strategist, Shana advises Everlaw’s executive leaders and Board of Directors, to drive business growth while mitigating risk. She leads the legal department and is responsible for all legal, regulatory, privacy and governance, risk and compliance issues across the company. A recognized thought leader, Shana appears frequently in industry and national news publications and podcasts, and is a sought-after, inspirational guest speaker at a wide range of conferences and events.
Previously, Shana was head of go-to-market legal at Google Cloud, where she guided its explosive growth in markets around the world, including the US, Canada and Europe, and entry into many other countries. She started her legal career as an associate at Cleary Gottlieb Stein & Hamilton LLP in New York and London.
Shana received a JD degree from the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, where she served on the managing boards of the California Law Review and Berkeley Journal of African American Law & Policy. She was additionally co-president of Law Students of African Descent. Shana earned her undergraduate degree with honors from Wesleyan University, where she recently served as a trustee. Shana currently serves on the boards of Lawyers for One America and the Oakland Zoo, and lives in Oakland, California, with her family.
11. Vaishali Ghiya
Vice President of Technical Sales, Equinix
Vaishali Ghiya has over 25 years of experience in networking, cloud and security sales, solution architecture, systems engineering, product management, strategic alliances and engineering capacities, transforming 200+ people teams. She currently serves as Vice President of Technical Sales at Equinix and is responsible for a 150+ people team of solution architects, sales engineering and edge specialists to accelerate new business across global accounts, field sales, mid-market sales, channel sales and network sales motions.
Prior to Equinix, Vaishali led AWS Marketplace and Partners business development, a multi-billion-dollar business at Amazon Web Services (AWS), enabling customers and partners to accelerate their digital transformation journey to AWS. Prior to AWS Vaishali was a senior director at Cisco responsible for security technical sales managing a 200+ people team and a multi-billion-dollar business across global enterprise, commercial, public sector, SP/cloud, Canada, LATAM & partners groups.
Prior to Cisco, Vaishali spent over 14 years at Juniper in a variety of different roles. In her last role, she was a senior director for WW security sales along with driving innovative Security & SD-WAN solutions & partner ecosystem globally. Prior to the security sales role, Vaishali was a field CTO for commercial & partner sales where she was responsible for driving cloud, security & networking sales & GTM strategy.
Before joining Juniper in 2004, Vaishali spent 7 years at Nortel in product management and engineering capacities, leading the SSL VPN, 10 Gigabit Ethernet and WLAN strategy and solutions. She holds a master’s degree in computer engineering from University of Arizona. Vaishali is a recipient of IT Wondrous Women award and is passionate about mentoring, sponsoring and promoting women in sales.
12. Uma Meyyappan
SVP & Head of Digital Innovation, LPL Financial
Uma Meyyappan is Senior Vice President and Head of Product Innovation at LPL Financial, the nation’s largest independent broker-dealer providing advisor technology solutions where her focus is to create a culture of innovation, and accelerate business value with the use of emerging technology.
Prior to her role with LPL, Uma served with Wells Fargo where she spent 15 years leading product management, technology delivery, and innovation R&D. She also headed the evaluation of startup companies for Wells Fargo Startup accelerator, which invests in startups for return on Innovation.
Uma’s extensive research in financial technologies such as digital payments, biometrics, augmented reality, and Internet of Things has resulted in over 30 issued US patents to her name. She is deeply passionate about entrepreneurship and serves in nonprofit boards focused on promoting entrepreneurship. As a strong advocate of women, she is involved in various forums in mentoring and coaching women at various points in life.
13. Radhika Giri
Senior Vice President of Emerging Business, SiriusXM
Radhika Giri is Senior Vice President of Emerging Business at SiriusXM. In this role, Radhika is responsible for delivering growth through new business initiatives and leading the company’s retail, commercial music, marine and aviation business lines. During her tenure at SiriusXM, Radhika has held roles of increasing responsibility across the company, building relevant products, marketing and distribution channels, partnerships and operating practices to scale the business. Most recently, Radhika served as VP, chief of staff to the CEO. Her leadership spanned strategy development and oversight of cross-functional, enterprise growth initiatives.
Before joining SiriusXM in 2007, Radhika began her career at CIGNA Healthcare as part of a Leadership Development Program. She held roles in underwriting, service operations and provider contracting. She is also an angel investor with a focus on women-led businesses. She is passionate about not only giving women a seat at the table but more importantly, a voice in the room. Radhika holds an MBA from Columbia University and an undergraduate degree in business administration from Boston University.
14. Wendy Anderson
Senior Vice President of Federal and National Security, Palantir Technologies
Wendy R. Anderson is Senior Vice President of Federal and National Security at Palantir Technologies where she provides executive leadership on Palantir’s US Government business. Specifically, she leads the strategy for Palantir’s USG relations and advises the CEO and the presidents of Palantir’s USG and commercial businesses.
Anderson is a widely recognized national security expert and accomplished executive with extensive knowledge on innovation, technology, and government operations in the defense and homeland security sectors. She is a known innovator, strategist, and trusted advisor, bringing more than two decades of expertise to senior leaders in government, the private sector, the entertainment industry, think tanks, and academia on pressing national security issues.
Prior to Palantir, Anderson served as general manager of defense and national security, at SparkCognition, a global artificial intelligence (AI) company from 2017 to 2019. From 2010 to 2015, Anderson served in the Obama administration in key leadership roles in the Departments of Defense and Commerce, including as deputy chief of staff to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, chief of staff to Deputy Secretary of Defense Ash Carter, and chief of staff to Commerce Secretary Penny Pritzker.
While at the Defense Department, Anderson was twice awarded the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service, the Department’s highest civilian service award. During her tenure at DoD, National Journal described Anderson as one of the “25 Women Who Shape National Policy.” From 2004 to 2010, Anderson held senior positions in the US Senate, as professional staff on both the US Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee and the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, and worked for three US Senators on intelligence, foreign, and defense affairs. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a member of the board of directors of The Leadership Council for Women in National Security, a member of the Truman Center for National Policy’s Advisory Board, and a founding member of CHIEF in Washington, DC. Anderson is also an Industry Commissioner on the Atlantic Council’s Commission on Improving DoD Engagement with New Companies and
Innovators.
Anderson received her undergraduate degree from Hendrix College, a master’s degree from Harvard University, and completed all coursework for her master’s from Columbia University’s
School of International and Public Affairs.
14. Rochelle Nadhiri
VP and Head of Communications, Robinhood
Rochelle Nadhiri is currently Vice President and Head of Communications at Robinhoodwhere she leads corporate/executive, internal, litigation/policy, strategic and product communications functional areas. Since joining Robinhood, Rochelle has overseen communications about changes to the company's business structure and the launch ofRobinhood Retirement, the first ever IRA with a match. In January 2023, Rochelle had the opportunity to launch Sherwood Media, LLC a Robinhood subsidiary that will be a home for news and information about the markets, economics, business, technology, and the culture of money. Sherwood Media, LLC will build on the success of Snacks — a daily markets and business newsletter, which has one of the largest audiences in the country.
Rochelle was previously a director on the policy team at Meta (Facebook) where she focused on privacy, innovation, and the Metaverse. Prior to her policy role, Rochelle led litigation communications for the company along with privacy policy communications for face recognition, location, friending, and data transparency.
A sought-after advisor, Rochelle helps people plan for and respond to legacy and emerging issues across a variety of industries. From strategy development to rapid response, her hallmark is bringing the right people together to share engaging stories, answer hard questions, and resolve issues. She began her career in the office of former US Representative Steve Israel.
15. Kristy Junio
VP of Digital, Content, and Product Marketing, Model N
Kristy Junio is the Vice President of Digital, Content, and Product Marketing at Model N. Model N enables life sciences and high-tech companies to drive growth and market share, minimizing revenue loss throughout the revenue lifecycle. With deep industry expertise and solutions purpose-built for these industries, Model N delivers comprehensive visibility, insight and control over the complexities of commercial operations and compliance. Model N is trusted across more than 120 countries by the world’s leading pharmaceutical, medical technology, semiconductor, and high-tech companies.
Kristy has more than 25 years of experience in the field of marketing with some of the world's most notorious brands and Fortune 500 companies, including Blue Shield of California, Health Net, Inc., Kaiser Permanente, Oracle, Office Depot, to name a few. As a charismatic leader, she has built innovative teams to drive forward business strategies for the companies she has served.
16. Natalie Wolfsen
Chief Executive Officer, AssetMark
Natalie Wolfsen is the Chief Executive Officer at AssetMark, a wealthtech platform that helps independent financial advisors serve their clients and build their businesses. Prior to being named CEO, she led the strategy and execution for AssetMark teams spanning digital channel development, corporate strategy, thought leadership, marketing, and product development.
Natalie has more than 20 years of leadership experience across six financial services organizations, where she directed teams who collectively brought to life more than 50 financial services products, platforms, and programs, including the design of one of the industry’s first-ever mobile trading platforms.
Before joining AssetMark, Natalie led marketing for New York-based asset manager First Eagle Investment Management and served as head of product management for Pershing. Prior, she spent 10 years at Charles Schwab and began her career at American Express. Natalie serves on the board of directors for CFP Board and Wealthsimple. She graduated from the University of California, Berkeley, and earned her MBA from UCLA Anderson School of Management.
16. Christine Park
Chief People Officer, Pantheon
Christine Park is the Chief People Officer at Pantheon. Pantheon is the WebOps platform for websites that deliver extraordinary results. They believe in putting the magic of the internet in everyone’s hands. They are proud to provide the speed and agility web teams need to win in the dynamic world of digital marketing.
Christine has years of hands-on experience steering industry-leading organizations through transformational growth to win in the market. Her goal is to transform the work lives of employees by bringing out the leader within, one interaction at a time.
Christine has the proven ability to identify the ‘people implications’ of business strategies and to enable the alignment of talent toward the greater business objectives. She excels in translating business strategy into people strategy, and in driving a high performing, growth-minded organization with optimized capabilities.
Christine knows that HR isn’t just ‘one size fits all’ and that true growth and transformation on an organizational level requires adaptability, empathy, and strategy. She consistently works with her team and fellow leaders to create and foster an engaging culture that connects the hearts and minds of all colleagues.
17. Jena Daniels
VP of Patient Success, Medable
Jena Daniels, Vice President of Patient Success at Medable, is an experienced research manager with 10 years of experience in enabling digital solutions within academic and industry-sponsored clinical trials. As a PharmaVoice100 recipient and awarded Best Decentralized Clinical Trial Businesswoman of 2022, Jena is most known for establishing Medable's Patient Advisory Council and Patient Success teams. These teams engage and empower expert patient and caregiver advocates to assist product development, refine study workflows, and tailor the overall trial experience. This results in meaningful, actionable, and patient-focused solutions.
She is incredibly passionate about enabling effective therapies to get to patients faster by disrupting legacy standards with scalable and personalized digital solutions. Prior to Medable, she worked as a clinical research manager at Harvard Medical School and Stanford University School of Medicine. She has co-authored over 30 peer-reviewed publications focusing on how to leverage machine learning, artificial intelligence, and remote patient monitoring to triage, diagnose, and provide early intervention for children with autism spectrum disorder. She is a true adventurer and continuously seeks opportunities to challenge herself and those around her. Most recently in January of 2023, she participated in a decentralized clinical trial to better understand how the body’s metabolic and inflammatory pathways respond in polar cold and hyper-endurance conditions; whereby she was the only woman on her team of 10 to ski the last degree of the world to the South Pole.
17. Michelle Rife
VP of Global Talent Acquisition, Branch
Michelle Rife currently serves as the Vice President of Global Talent Acquisition at Branch. Branch is a mobile growth and attribution platform for enterprises and brands. She has over 25 years in talent, diversity and recruiting, extensive operational experience and success building teams and companies within startups and global companies. Rife is passionate about talent acquisition and DEI, leading with inspiration, empathy, and care while maintaining a high standard of operational rigor and expectations for herself, her team, and how and what they deliver to meet business demand.
Originally from Seattle, Washington, Rife graduated from the University of Washington with an undergraduate degree in speech communication. She is a strategic thought leader on best practices across, all talent initiatives, developing and operationalization of recruiting and hiring programs, D&I, ERG and allyship, metrics analysis, employer branding, and working with multiple stakeholders to ensure consistency and compliance. She has previously been a conference speaker at various recruiting and employer brand events such as the Bay Area Council, ERE, SRSC, and Infopresse, Montreal.
18. Tricia Arneson
Chief Diversity & Productivity Officer, Yondr Group
As Chief Diversity Officer, Tricia Arneson is committed to leveraging her leadership role to truly elevate Yondr into an industry leader and foster a workplace environment where every individual, no matter their background and circumstance, has the opportunity to thrive and bring their authentic selves to the Yondr team. She has a dedicated passion for and previous personal experience in diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.
Tricia’s experience spans a diverse background of industries including oil and gas, themed entertainment and data centers. Prior to joining Yondr, Tricia, a key member of the Google Global Data Center team, developed and implemented the Project Controls Program for colocation builds, and led the Commercial Operations Cost and Capital Planning teams.
19. Leila Makarechi
Chief Business Officer, Merit America
Leila Makarechi has two decades of social entrepreneurship experience tackling inequity with scalable technologies and real humans. She is currently the Chief Business Officer at Merit America, a social enterprise driving $1B in wage gains helping adults stuck in low-wage jobs transition to careers with upward mobility.
Prior to Merit America, Leila was the VP of enterprise at Philanthropy U, which merged with OneValley. At Coursera, she was global head of government partnerships where she managed go-to-market strategy and millions in revenue from governments and organizations who sought to upskill their countries' workforce for a more competitive economy. She learned the complexities of growing an organization as the COO at a health startup that she scaled from 3 to 1,000+ people working across four continents. She began her career as the youngest member of the United Nations Development Programme, where she helped manage a $46M impact fund with investments across Latin America.
Leila speaks 4 languages fluently and has an undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley, an MPA from Columbia University and a MPA from Sciences Po in Paris, France. She loves spending time with her two young sons who teach her how the world really works.
19. Kristin Scott
Chief Revenue Officer, SeekOut
Kristin Scott is the Chief Revenue Officer at SeekOut. As an experienced revenue leader, Kristin is focused on building high performance teams and driving the best customer outcomes with a focus on people. At SeekOut, she is supporting clients to stay agile and resilient by finding and retaining their most important asset, their people.
Prior to SeekOut, Kristin served at Appian, a low-code automation platform, where she spent nearly a decade. At Appian, she quickly climbed the ranks and was ultimately promoted to head of North American enterprise sales, where she led the team's new customer acquisition, expansion and renewal business across financial services, insurance & broad markets. During her tenure, Appian underwent exponential growth and was the number one tech IPO of 2017. She helped found and served as the president of AppianWomen, an employee affinity group for women and their allies in the workplace. Prior to her time at Appian, Kristin held a variety of roles at CEB (now CEB Gartner), where she advised Fortune 500 executives on best practices and thought leadership. She resides in San Francisco with her husband and two sons. An avid fitness buff, Kristin enjoys triathlons and traveling.
20. Rachael McBrearty
Chief Customer Officer, Evisort
Rachael McBrearty is an award-winning technology innovator and thought leader with over twenty years of experience leading digital and customer-centric transformations across multiple industries and functions. In her current position as Chief Customer Officer at Evisort, her organization is responsible for helping clients to apply and scale digital, data, and artificial intelligence for contract analytics and contract lifecycle management. Prior to Evisort, McBrearty was the first chief customer officer at LeanData, a revenue operations platform. She created and hosted the OpsStars Podcast, a series of 27 episodes interviewing revenue operations professionals and thought leaders. She’s held global executive-level roles leading customer experience, strategy, and data science, including over a decade running Cisco’s consulting services practice focused on helping top customers enhance and improve customer experience.
McBrearty’s ability to successfully apply technology to produce measurable business success comes from her background in design and software development, where she learned how to rapidly iterate and innovate. Her ground-breaking projects pioneered new applications of technology including an RFID-enabled “store of the future” for Prada, a “Big Data Café” for Walmart executives, personalized digital signage for Harrah’s Casinos, and “Remote Expert” for Bank of New York’s mortgage business. An innovative shopping approach called “Social Retailing,” developed with fashion designer Nanette Lepore, was recognized as one of Time Magazine’s Best Inventions of 2007. She serves on the board of the Mel and Leta Ramos Family Foundation, a not-for-profit dedicated to supporting visual arts education. McBrearty graduated with an undergraduate degree in graphic design and painting from SUNY New Paltz.
21. Stephanie Grethen
Chief Customer Officer, Aerospike
Stephanie Grethen is an accomplished, results-driven industry executive and digital transformation leader in high tech. She is currently a member of the executive leadership team at Aerospike and serves as the Chief Customer Officer. In her role, Stephanie is responsible for customer success and customer support to deliver a seamless and impactful end-to-end journey for Aerospike’s customers, ensuring they experience the maximum business value of their investment. She champions and advances the operational aspects of customer success. This includes the responsibility for the vision, strategy, solution innovation and delivery, product support, and customer relationships. Stephanie is well known for her entrepreneurial and strategic leadership, a unique blend of business and customer understanding, business process and industry knowledge with a proven technical foundation, and her ability to lead through growth and change.
With over two decades of experience in the tech industry, Stephanie has a proven track record of successfully innovating, launching, positioning, and taking to market new solutions and products. Additionally, she drove and executed corporate, product, and GTM strategies. She has held executive positions in customer success, product management, new product introduction, and strategic customer engagement for enterprise-grade on premise and SaaS software products. Before Aerospike, Stephanie served as chief customer officer at SAP. She is passionate about customer success through digital transformation and is an avid advocate for customer-centricity as an essential differentiator in today’s digital world. Stephanie holds an undergraduate degree in public administration.
21. Gina Dalma
EVP of Community Action, Policy, & Strategy, Silicon Valley Community Foundation
As Executive Vice President of Community Action, Policy and Strategy at Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF), Gina Dalma leads the impact team to ensure Silicon Valley is a place where all people can lead economically secure and fulfilling lives. She also helps ensure that the principles of equity are applied to all SVCF initiatives. Previously, Gina served as SVP for public policy and special advisor to the CEO, driving SVCF’s public policy agenda. She has also served as SVCF’s director of grantmaking and has led SVCF’s education grantmaking strategy.
Prior to joining SVCF, Gina was director of innovation at the Silicon Valley Education Foundation. She has also held several public-sector positions in Mexico. She holds an undergraduate degree in economics from ITAM in Mexico City, and master’s degrees in economics from the University of London and in international policy studies from Stanford. She resides in Palo Alto with her husband and has two wonderful children.
22. Emel Meteoglu
Vice President of Product, B-Stock
Emel Meteoglu has 15 years of extensive experience building scalable, disruptive, and easy-to-use SaaS Enterprise and consumer products. Emel is currently Vice President of Product at B-Stock, a leader in digital excess and liquidation inventory management platform. In her role, Emel provides leadership on re-imagining re-commerce to help the planet by giving second, third and fourth life to over 100 million goods each year and increasing re-use. Emel leads a team responsible for product development, revenue growth, user experience, analytics, corporate and product strategy.
Emel is an accomplished executive and product leader with a passion for building easy-to-use, useful and innovative products from the ground up at an international scale, from defining the technical architecture to preparing to go to market strategy. She has led product development initiatives from corporate companies to startups. She deeply cares about any company she works at and provides guidance and leadership from sales to engineering to customer support. She is a hands-on leader who can take customer support calls while focusing on defining the company's 5-year strategy on the same day. Her proudest accomplishment has been finding hidden gem product management, analytics and user experience design talents, and coaching team members to be top-notch employees.
Prior to joining B-Stock, Emel worked at UpLift, an online travel lending (buy now, pay later) company, and took the US based company and expanded it internationally. Emel also worked at Sprint, where she led the first 5G proof of concept testing nine years ago much before 5G was known by the public. Emel is an innovative leader who holds multiple US patents and published papers in machine learning applications to modular system architecting. She earned an MS degree in systems engineering from University of Missouri - Rolla and an undergraduate degree in product management engineering from Istanbul Technical University. Emel enjoys traveling around the world and tasting international cuisine while also recently enjoying becoming a new mom.
23. Lydia Flocchini
Chief Marketing Officer, SurePoint
Lydia Flocchini is a business transformation and go-to-market leader with 30 years of experience of working in legal technology. She is passionate about helping legal professionals leverage technology to deliver greater value to their clients and innovating the way they work. Flocchini is the Chief Marketing Officer for SurePoint Technologies, a leading provider of financial and practice management software solutions to law firms nationwide. In her role, she leads the marketing strategy, product launches, and community marketing programs. She has extensive experience scaling legal tech startups, company acquisitions and integrations, rebranding, and launching new product categories including the next generation of legal research, legal analytics, and next generation financial and practice management solutions including mobile, analytics dashboards, time management, and payments.
Flocchini has held leadership roles in customer success, marketing, and sales and worked at Thomson Reuters, Lex Machina and Logikcull. In 2021, she was named a winner of Demand Gen Report’s 2021 B2B Innovator Awards and is passionate about advancement of women in the law and technology. She is a member of Chief, Women in Revenue, She Breaks the Law, and Latinas in Tech and actively participates in mentorship programs to amplify, support and empower women. Flocchini is a frequent speaker on the power of mentorship, marketing innovation, and legal technology.
Flocchini double majored in history and classical civilization from the University of California, Los Angeles and has a JD from the University of San Francisco, School of Law. She is a proud San Francisco native.
24. Debe Rapson
SVP of Sales, Leadspace
Debe Rapson is the Senior Vice President of Sales at Leadspace. As an experienced revenue leader, Debe is focused on building high-performance teams and delivering the best customer outcomes that yield measurable results. With a track record of delivering strategic growth, Debe provides the expertise and grit to drive transformation and accelerate revenue. Her growth mindset in GTM strategy, coaching and mentoring, sales playbooks, negotiations, and cross-organizational collaboration allow her to create and execute effective strategies that deliver consistent business success.
Through the implementation of sales strategy and innovative marketing programs, Debe has contributed to the success of enterprise organizations by fostering enhanced customer experiences and sustainable revenue growth. Thriving in the face of adversity, she is invigorated by collaborating with outstanding, optimistic individuals and engaging in meaningful interactions. Her motivation stems from harnessing her unparalleled energy and passion to cultivate a thriving, high-performance culture.
As a co-founder of Women in Revenue, a 501(c)(3) organization, Debe is proud to help empower current and future women leaders in technology sales, customer success and marketing roles through invaluable education, mentorship, and expansive networking opportunities. We enable their ascent to prominence. Debe is a frequent speaker at digital, growth marketing and sales industry events like OpsStars, Top 1% Sales Summit, Demandbase's ABM Summit. Debe is a proud mom of two boys who have followed in her footsteps in sales. Their development and well-being have been among her most treasured accomplishments.
24. Chetna Sehgal
Senior Managing Director, Accenture Cloud First
Chetna Sehgal is Accenture’s Global Head of Delivery for the Accenture Google Business Group within Cloud First. In her prior role, she was accountable for all technology delivery in Accenture’s North America West Market Unit. She was also the technology lead for Accenture‘s North America high tech industry network. In her 26 years with Accenture, Chetna has grown its footprint and built strong technology practices that focus on pioneering and innovative solutions that drive value for some of the world’s marquee logos. She has expertise in sales and delivery of large, complex initiatives ranging from global system implementations and business transformation to M&A for Fortune 500 clients. She is a trusted advisor to her clients and is known for tackling complex problems and driving to resolution.
Chetna is a fervent believer in giving back. She has been on the board of the American Red Cross, Silicon Valley, for nine years. She is an active women’s champion in the San Francisco Bay Area and has a reputation of high impact mentoring of women in the workplace. She is currently creating a bespoke global program to support and advance Accenture’s women working on complex client projects. She is a certified diversity coach for Accenture. She is also yoga certified. Chetna is a published thought leader and has her own Web Series “CIO Chat with Chetna”.
Chetna earned her MBA at George Mason University where she also received the Graduate Business Institute Leadership Award. In addition, Chetna has studied negotiation at Harvard and MIT, and value-led selling at Stanford University.
25. Jody Barkin
Chief of Staff to the CEO & Strategy Lead, Infinitus
Jody Barkin is the Chief of Staff to the CEO and Strategy Lead of Infinitus. She first joined the company in 2021. Infinitus Systems, Inc. is an AI communication platform that automates routine calls for leading healthcare brands. With their digital assistant Eva, administrators can offload thousands of benefit verification, prior authorization, claim status calls per day. Automating calls between entities such as pharmacies, PBMs, hospital systems, providers and payers, their technology allows admins to spend less time on hold and more time focusing on ways to improve the patient experience.
In addition to cross-functional responsibilities, Jody is also responsible for finance and revenue operations. Prior to Infinitus, she had more than 15 years of software and SaaS experience with leadership roles at Adobe and AppDynamics/Cisco where she drove business transformations and led strategic initiatives. Jody received both her MBA and undergraduate degree in economics and applied mathematics from UC Berkeley.
26. Sarah Benson-Konforty
VP Business Development & Strategy and Head of Sustainability & Innovation, Watergen
Dr. Sarah Benson-Konforty is a globally experienced transformational leader with over 15 years of cross-industry knowledge and expertise in operations, product, business development, finance, and investments. She is also a founder and CEO of AssemblyDrop, a construction-technology startup based in Palo Alto, CA. Sarah serves as the Managing Director at BIE (Family Office) in the US and VP of Business Development & Strategy of Watergen, the world’s leading Water-From-Air Technology.
Sarah serves on the advisory board of Pepticom, an Israel-based breakthrough technology that designs novel peptide drug candidates, utilizing unique biocomputational AI software, to optimize the drug discovery process, accelerate time to market and reduce development risks and costs. She also serves on the advisory board of Healthee (formerly Insurights) a medical benefits platform (raised $23.5M)
Sarah was formerly the founding managing partner at the early seed stage fund Gimmel Entrepreneurs Group, where she led the investments in digital health, pharma and Biotech. She also served as head of business development at Seaurchin.io (acquired by Algolia). She was the Co-founder of Macpire, a leader in building web and CRM platforms.
As part of her volunteering work, Sarah is currently a member of the board of directors at Public Invention, a 501c3 nonprofit organization, democratizing inventions for the benefit of humankind. She also leads the Business Development Club as part of INTRO (501c3), the largest Israeli tech-community in Silicon Valley.
26. Karen Mendoza
Head of Global Sales, D-BOX Technologies
Karen Mendoza is the head of global sales at D-BOX Technologies. D-BOX creates hyper-realistic experiences by harnessing the power of movement and sparking the imagination. They partner with the world's leaders in cinema, video games, virtual reality applications, themed entertainment, and professional simulation, creating a feeling of presence that makes life resonate like never before. She is a respected leader who drives global partnerships and strategic initiatives for the company.
Prior to D-BOX, Karen spent 3 years as the chief business development officer at Legendary Shift LLC, a human connection company with a portfolio of brands like GameTruck Licensing LLC, Bravous Esports, and Connected Affinity. She also advises women-led social impact enterprises and early-stage start-up companies.
In the formative years of her career, Karen spent 15 years at Nintendo of America Inc., the global gaming leader with recognizable character franchises like Mario, Luigi, and the Pokémon universe. She held multiple roles across the sales and marketing division at Nintendo. She helped launch numerous console and portable hardware systems, and thousands of software titles and gaming accessories during her tenure at the company.
Her career started in the entertainment industry working at FOX Interactive and FOX Sports Interactive, a division of FOX Home Entertainment, delivering games, such as Die Hard Trilogy, The Simpsons Wrestling Game, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, FOX Sports Interactive: NHL Hockey, and The X-Files Game. As the public relations manager, she was responsible for media events like The Billboard Music Awards, national press tours and general publicity for FOX video games. Karen holds an undergraduate degree in economics from UCLA and an MBA from Pepperdine University. When not playing Mario Kart with her family, Karen can be found enjoying a tennis match somewhere in the world.
27. Van Ton-Quinlivan
CEO, Futuro Health
Van Ton-Quinlivan is a nationally recognized thought leader in workforce development and a catalyst for inclusive economic mobility through higher education. Her distinguished career spans the public, private and nonprofit sectors. Formerly Executive Vice Chancellor of the California Community Colleges, Ton-Quinlivan has been quoted for her expertise in the New York Times, Chronicle of Higher Education, Insider Higher Education, Stanford Social Innovation Review, U.S. News & World Report and other publications. She is a frequent speaker including events hosted by the National Governor’s Association, Council on Competitiveness, Brookings Institute, Aspen Institute, Stanford’s Hoover Institution, RAND Corporation, and numerous other forums.
Currently, Ton-Quinlivan is the CEO of Futuro Health, whose nonprofit mission is to improve the health and wealth of communities by growing the largest network of allied healthcare workers in the nation. She is an appointee of Governor Newsom to the Health Workforce Education and Training Council responsible for coordinating California’s health workforce education and training to meet the state’s needs.
In 2013, Ton-Quinlivan was named a White House Champion of Change under the Obama administration in recognition of her notable career in industry, education, and service as a community leader. She received the California Steward Leader Award in 2017 for her dedication to collaboration and work with public, private, and civic leaders to support economic and social mobility for state residents. From 2019-2022, she served as a mediaX Distinguished Visiting Scholar at Stanford University.
Ton-Quinlivan serves on the boards of the National Student Clearinghouse and Silicon Valley Community Foundation and is a member of the International Women’s Forum. In addition, she is an advisor to the Achieve Partners Putting America Back to Work venture fund and the Apprenticeships for America Advisory Council. Ton-Quinlivan is a podcast host and author of best-seller book, WorkforceRx: Inclusive and Agile Strategies for Employers, Educators and Workers During Unsettled Times. She resides with her husband and two children in California.
28. Jessica Weare
Vice President of Corporate Responsibility, Silicon Valley Community Foundation
Jessica Weare brings a wealth of experience to her role at Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF). Before joining the community foundation, she spent seven years directing Microsoft’s philanthropic work in Silicon Valley, supporting nonprofits working in education, workforce development and civic technology. She managed Microsoft’s local employee engagement program with an 87% participation rate.
Jessica serves on the boards of the Silicon Valley Council of Nonprofits and California Humanities. She is a senior fellow of the American Leadership Forum. In her role on United Way Bay Area’s public policy committee, Jessica has successfully advocated in Sacramento and Washington, DC, for legislation strengthening public education, healthcare, economic mobility and charitable giving. Jessica received an undergraduate degree from Yale University and holds a doctorate from Stanford University. She has completed additional training in cross-sector collaboration at Harvard Business School, in corporate social responsibility at Boston College Center for Corporate Citizenship and in design thinking at Stanford.
28. Lee Ann Coburn
Senior Vice President, The Coburn Team with Merrill Lynch
Lee Ann Coburn and her team help families achieve and maintain a worry-free retirement lifestyle. She has been named to Forbes Best-in-State Wealth Advisors list, Forbes America's Top Women Wealth Advisors, as well as Working Mother/SHOOK Research Top Wealth Advisor Moms list 2019-2021. As a Boston marathon finisher, Lee Ann believes that disciplined preparation and smart planning can set you up for long term success. Lee Ann and her team are passionate about helping families plan for and attain their biggest life goals, especially in a values-based way. She recently obtained her Chartered Sustainable Responsible Investment Counselor to help clients invest according to their beliefs and values.
Lee Ann is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania. She studied international relations and co-captained the school's Division I Women's Lacrosse team. She is founder of Merrill's East Bay Women's Exchange, and founder of BAWLers (Bay Area Women Leaders), a thought leadership forum dedicated to providing professional women opportunities to connect, collaborate and hopefully inspire each other. Lee Ann lives in the East Bay, with her husband, and two daughters. She was a Scorpion Lacrosse coach, a mediocre tennis player and is an even worse golfer.
28. Norma Garcia-Muro
VP of Marketing, Kaleidescape
Norma Garcia-Muro’s career is dedicated to entertainment experiences and the technology that fuels them, and with her expertise she brings a contagious passion for film, broadcast, theatrical exhibition, and cinema technology to the United States and abroad. As Vice President of Marketing at Kaleidescape located in Silicon Valley, Norma draws upon her extensive foundation in film marketing to propel Kaleidescape’s growth and impact the home cinema experience.
Prior to Kaleidescape, Norma drove early success in the strategy and marketing of top titles at Paramount Pictures. She later transitioned to Lucasfilm in San Francisco to become their head of international marketing, where her multifaceted position included the strategic oversight of the Star Wars and Indiana Jones franchises across global markets, along with the marketing and distribution of the Emmy® Award-Winning series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, and the launch of George Lucas’ NAACP Image Award-Winning biopic Red Tails. At Dolby Laboratories, she led marketing efforts and a global team of over 40 to support next-level-technology PLF game-changer Dolby Cinema through their opening over 100 sites worldwide. She later transitioned to THX Ltd., where she oversaw premium cinema experiences, including the launch of THX Ultimate Cinema and its first site launch at the historic Regency Westwood Village Theatre in Los Angeles.
Beyond her career as a leader in entertainment and technology, Norma is a consummate motivator and mentor with a passion for empowering young women with diverse backgrounds within the industry. She served as a mentor of UNIC Women’s Cinema Leadership Program and is a member of both Women in Tech and Women in Exhibition. She was the founder of the Latino Employee Network MUNDO under Dolby’s Diversity and Inclusion program and the Founder of #WomenCOLLAB, a resource-sharing association connecting female entertainment and tech professionals in the Bay Area. Norma received the 2023 Inspiration Award from Women in Consumer Technology at CES. In 2021 and 2020, she was named one of the Top 50 Women in Global Cinema. She currently serves on the advisory board for WiCT and sits on the board of directors of The Poppy Jasper International Film Festival.
29. Sara Guillermo
CEO, IGNITE
Sara Guillermo is the Chief Executive Officer of IGNITE, bringing to the role over 15 years of experience helping young women break into America’s political landscape to become leaders within their communities and beyond. Sara was one of the first employees at IGNITE over a decade ago and quickly ascended within the organization, eventually taking over as CEO in June 2021. As someone who has dedicated her life to empowering women, she is proud to lead by example as an immigrant, first-generation college graduate, youth organizer, educator, foster parent, and breast cancer survivor.
Under Sara’s leadership, IGNITE was recognized with a $4M award by the Equality Can’t Wait Challenge for its bold ideas to expand women’s power and influence in the United States by 2030. Sara was personally recognized as a Roddenberry Fellow for her extraordinary leadership in making our world a more equitable and just society. Her analysis and expertise has been featured widely in national media outlets such as NPR, New York Times, Forbes, ABC and NBC.
Prior to IGNITE, Sara held leadership roles at Seeking Common Ground, Aspire Public Schools, and buildOn. In addition to working in our nation’s public schools, Sara is also a trained social worker and serves on the Concord/Pleasant Hill Healthcare Community Board in California as the board’s youngest member to date. She has spent her entire life actively serving her community, starting with her first successful election run for classroom organizer in her first-grade class in Concord, California.
30. Priyanka Mitra
Partner, M12
Priyanka Mitra is a technology venture capitalist with a deep STEM background. She is currently a Partner at M12, Microsoft's Venture Capital fund, in North America. Prior to beginning her venture capital and growth equity career investing in software, SaaS, & tech companies, she was a research analyst at Bridgewater Associates, a global macroeconomic hedge fund widely regarded as the top performing, highest returning hedge fund of all time.
Priyanka is a graduate of Harvard University, where she majored in history and science, and pursued extensive coursework in pre-medical mathematics and sciences. She has completed scientific research fellowships and was a scientific research analyst at Harvard Medical School including in computational neurobiology. She is the recipient of numerous awards and prizes including Harvard’s David Rockefeller International Experience grant, the John F. Kennedy IOP fellowship, the Harvard College Research Program fellowship, and the Harvard-University of Madrid prize to conduct research on global healthcare economies of scale. She was named a Harvard College Scholar.
Priyanka is passionate about helping the next generation of extraordinary, world-changing tech entrepreneurs grow and achieve scale and feels privileged to work with exceptional founders and teams every single day. She has invested over $150M in capital to date, in companies that are valued at nearly $6B in market cap. She is also the co-founder and co-lead of the M12 GitHub fund, which invests in early-stage open-source companies.
30. Jennifer A. Ingram
Executive, Author, and Entrepreneur
An award-winning business leader and catalyst for community change, Jennifer Ingram has impactfully served in leadership roles with several industry-leading organizations, including MidPen Housing in affordable housing. She has a strong track record of success in bringing together leadership and key stakeholders to advance DEI strategies within top global brands in philanthropy (United Way) and two nationally ranked academic medical centers: Mayo Clinic and Henry Ford Health System.
Jennifer has also traveled the path of entrepreneurship, founding and serving as the CEO of two companies: Calibrated Lens, LLC, a boutique global consulting firm with the mission of inspiring clients to facilitate sustainable change by centering equity and inclusion; and 3011Whitney, LLC, a real estate development company built on a legacy of strengthening communities through pride in residence that renovates and rents properties. She has also served as an adjunct assistant professor in University of Cincinnati’s Political Science Department.
In 2021, TiER1 Performance named Jennifer the winner of the eXcellence in Learning & Performance Award in the Owners/Founder’s category for her leadership in innovation, building momentum, and overcoming barriers that resulted in healthier, higher performing organizations. She also earned the title of Most Valuable Participant in United Way Worldwide’s Advanced Leaders Program, a highly selective global executive leadership program. In recognition of her community advocacy, Jennifer has received an LGBT Community Leadership Award from the Ohio Diversity Council as well as a Vivazi Torch Award from Black Cincy Pride.
In her spare time, Jennifer serves on the board of directors for Global Women 4 Wellbeing, Xavier University's Center for Women in Business and Leadership Advisory Board, and is consistently inspired by her experiences mentoring young people. Jennifer also enjoys writing and will be a featured author in the 10th edition of Mission Matters discussing the topic of authentic leadership.
31. Michelle Chao
Head of Investor Relations, Bertram Capital
Michelle Chao is currently serving as Head of Investor Relations for Bertram Capital, a Bay Area based lower-middle market private equity firm. She began her career with Bertram over 14 years ago when she was hired as an administrative assistant to support the firm’s business development efforts. Michelle’s curiosity and passion for deal sourcing led to numerous promotions which enabled her to grow outside of her administration position. She was eventually promoted to SVP of origination and capital markets where she was responsible for sourcing and assessing new investment opportunities across business services, consumer, and industrial sectors.
Michelle currently leads investor relations at Bertram where she focuses on fundraising, marketing, and communicating with investors. Michelle is also a member of Bertram’s DEI Committee focused on initiating and implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts throughout the firm. In addition, Michelle leads the firm’s ESG Committee which aims to consider environmental, social and governance factors when partnering with businesses. Michelle holds an undergraduate degree from the University of California, Davis and a master’s degree in education from Arizona State University.
32. Gail Dunnett
Founder and CEO, studio D Staging + Design
Gail Dunnett, studio D’s Founder has over fifteen years of experience in the home furnishings and design industry. With a business degree from the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School of Business and a Bain & Company management consulting background under her belt, she has been sourcing, developing, and merchandising products for industry leaders for longer than she likes to admit! Gail moved to Australia in the 90’s for five years, returning to the US to meld her love of business with her passion for interiors. She became the VP of Merchandising for Exposures Homes startup catalog in Connecticut, and later recruited by Pottery Barn Kids in San Francisco, before following her entrepreneurial dreams founding studio D in 2003.
Gail has built studio D to be a company where service, execution and visual appeal are paramount, providing unparalleled home staging, design, and retail home furnishings to the Bay Area for over fifteen years. In addition to California, studio D has been staging high-end properties in New York, having acquired the New York Staging Company in 2010. studio D has appeared on HGTV’s “Selling NY”; BRAVO’s “Curb Appeal,” and has been featured in Vogue, The New York Times, and Wall Street Journal’s “House of the Week.” Gail and her buyers travel locally and abroad for inspirational ideas to infuse within the company. This is one of the many ways studio D continues to develop fresh, daring looks while adding value for developers, retailers, homeowners, and commercial design clients alike. Originally from the East Coast herself, Gail has lived in New York, Boston, Connecticut, and Australia, and she is now settled in the San Francisco Bay Area.
33. Nooshin Behroyan
Chief Executive Officer, Paxon Energy & Infrastructure
Nooshin Behroyan is a serial entrepreneur who is known as a trailblazer for building successful triple-bottom-line companies, measuring financial success with social and environmental impact. Her company, Paxon, which she founded in 2016, was named the ninth-fastest-growing company in America on the Inc. 5000 list and No.1 female-led company two years in a row in 2020 and 2021. Since its inception, Paxon has become a trendsetter and a game-changer in the oil and gas industry with a focus on energy-innovative approaches that emphasize zero-carbon and methane-emission technologies.
As a first-generation American immigrant, Behroyan brings extensive cross-cultural experience that promotes gender diversity and workforce equality by addressing barriers and driving change to positively affect women engineers. Behroyan serves as the board president for the National Association of Women Business Owners and the chairwoman of the IKAR Energy Group. She holds an undergraduate degree in architecture from UC Berkeley, an MS in civil and environmental engineering from UC Davis, and an EMBA from UCLA. She is also a professionally trained pianist and has played for the UC Berkeley Jazz Ensemble.
34. Bianca Gates
CEO & Co-Founder, Birdies
Bianca Gates is the Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Birdies, the company that created a new category of footwear with the stylish flats that are secretly slippers. Prior to Birdies, Bianca was a sales executive at Meta, where she worked with retail and gaming executives to leverage their data and the social graph to scale their businesses. Bianca grew up in Southern California as the oldest child of Latin American immigrants and is a graduate of the University of California, Irvine.
Bianca is passionate about bringing women together to help them achieve their dreams and started the first Lean In Circle with Sheryl Sandberg in 2013, which has now scaled to more than 40,000 Circles globally. Bianca also advises early-stage founders and serves on the board of trustees at The Hamlin School, an all-girls independent school in San Francisco where she lives with her husband and two children.
34. Paige Cattano
Chief Operating Officer, jaris
Paige Cattano is COO for jaris, a FinTech company that provides enterprise-grade, embedded financial solutions for software businesses and payments providers. Cattano has extensive experience in operations, business development, finance, product strategy, and marketing. She currently oversees and manages all marketing and the day-to-day front- and back-end company loan operations including origination and servicing for jaris’ partners and their small business customers. Passionate about working at the intersection of finance and technology, Cattano has over 25 years in digital and FinTech business operations experience building, sustaining, and growing companies.
Prior to jaris, Cattano was founder and COO of Payout Networks (formerly known at Wonder Technologies), a digital voucher and rewards platform, and a founding team member of Yoohoot, a marketing technology company that was later sold to Appconomy, Inc. Her resume includes tenures at Oracle, Wells Fargo, Peoplesoft, and Critical Path.
Cattano has launched products across multiple industries and successfully integrated acquisitions in terms of various product roadmaps, engineering talent, operations, and teams. She has a proven track record of leading large-scale organizations, startups, turnarounds and established businesses, having assembled and led teams around the world during periods of extreme company growth. Cattano received her undergraduate degree in finance from the Eller School of Management at the University of Arizona.
35. Bridgett Thurston
CFO, Cents
As a leader in SaaS technology, Bridgett Thurston promotes creative problem solving to advance strategic planning based on data and associated projections. Her foundational success in FP&A has given her opportunities to not only manage finance but also to successfully manage accounting, internal tools software development, and HR. Bridgett currently serves as the CFO of Cents, a vertical SaaS company that specializes in FinTech for the laundry industry.
Throughout her career, Bridgett has enjoyed bringing people together with data and key metrics to solve obstacles using the latest technology as the foundation that enables scale and growth. Prior to joining Cents, she served as the VP of finance for Greenbits, and before that, the head of finance for JFrog. Bridgett graduated from the University of Oklahoma with an undergraduate degree in economics.
36. Carolyn Joshua
President & CEO, Trilyon, Inc.
Carolyn Joshua is an entrepreneur, global advisor, venture capitalist, and a passionate advocate for a diverse and inclusive workplace. Carolyn is the President and CEO of Trilyon, Inc., which she founded in 2009. Trilyon started as a technical writing services company and now provides a full suite of innovative technology services to Fortune 500 companies. A results-driven and accomplished business leader, she is passionate about building great companies, developing strong teams, and creating a win-win model for her customers and partners.
Carolyn is a general partner in the Early Equity Capital fund and fosters and guides small businesses. She is an LP in the How Women Invest fund, a leading program that promotes women leaders in venture capital. Carolyn is an advocate for the How Women Lead initiative #GetOnBoard. She also serves as an advisor for the Women Leaders For The World Fellowship Program, a transformative leadership training program that brings together women leaders who are social change innovators and industry disruptors.
36. Johanna Bialkin
Founder & CEO, Aldea Home & Baby
Johanna Bialkin is a New York native that has found her home here in the Bay Area. After a successful career in advertising and time spent within the nonprofit sector, she decided to combine her love for people and creating beautiful spaces by launching Aldea Home & Baby in 2005. Aldea, which means “small village” in Spanish, has been a place for Johanna to lean into her passion for travel, appreciation for culture and eye for design by bringing eclectic and trend-setting items that add an element of uniqueness and charm into the home.
By offering expectant parents personalized baby registry & nursery design services, Johanna has been able to establish relationships with customers that are built on a foundation of trust and support. These families have naturally evolved into a trusted community that were born into, and grow, within the Aldea family. With store locations and clients in both San Francisco and Los Angeles, Johanna found that her customers began coming to her for help in curating personalized gifts for colleagues and clients, and it was with this that the idea for Aldea For Business was born.
Aldea For Business offers a personalized touch and thoughtfully assembled gifts for corporate events, holidays or a life moment that is too special to be missed. Whether it’s self-care, cooking, mixology, gardening or staying organized Johanna’s knowledge and expertise will ensure that the gifts will stand out and resonate with the recipient. Understanding her customer base and what people need has remained a central focus and key to her success. Both Aldea locations remained open throughout the pandemic to serve and be a source of comfort to her client base.
37. Yasmin Kaderali
CEO, Mommy's Bliss
As a visionary, values-based executive, Yasmin Kaderali is driven to disrupt traditional categories and bring better-for-you brands to the mainstream market. As CEO of Mommy’s Bliss, a brand that offers all-natural, over-the-counter health and wellness solutions for babies, kids, moms, she has a strong track record of success in driving scale, profitability, and innovation within the VMS, OTC, and Personal Care verticals.
Holding progressive leadership roles at Mommy’s Bliss since 2011, she set the stage for expansion, with the brand achieving significant growth while taking market share from rivals Johnson & Johnson, Zarbees, Gerber, and Enfamil; successes achieved by Yasmin’s insistence on setting a new bar for product innovation and differentiation while intensifying efforts to cement customer loyalty.
Under her leadership, the privately held company magnified its brand reach and consumer lifetime value by instilling a new level of rigor in product development, resulting in the successful launch of over 30 new products in five years and notable category share capture in Baby, Kids, Prenatal, and Postnatal Wellness. Alongside these innovation efforts, Mommy’s Bliss steadily gained market share and increased total category size with its flagship product, Mommy’s Bliss Gripe Water, sustaining its #1 ranking as a Gas & Colic Relief product.
As a progressive leader, Yasmin understands the importance of building cohesive, dynamic cultures as the foundation for future growth, and as CEO, continually invested in developing emotionally intelligent and fully engaged, happy teams. Ensuring that the right culture was sustained as the company grew, she introduced policies on maternity/paternity leave, family time, and employee activism.
Key to her success over the years has been her ability to recruit strong A+ players, and to bring consumer emotion and loyalty to the forefront of marketing. As a result, she has succeeded in building a loyal national following for Mommy’s Bliss by reinforcing trust and loyalty at every touchpoint for parents.
Yasmin holds a MBA from the Johns Hopkins Graduate School of Business, a MPH from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health, and an undergraduate degree in human development from UC Davis. When she is not busy innovating and bringing disruptive products to the market for Mommies, you can find her playing with her two boys or hiking the hills in Marin County.
38. Barbara Treat
President, Pacific Ag
Barbara Treat joined the Pacific Ag team in 2021 to lead the RNG process-industry business. She brings over three decades of experience working in both the energy sector and in the major infrastructure project development, engineering & construction arenas.
Prior to joining Pacific Ag, she spent over a decade as principal VP of Bechtel Corporation and led the development of major infrastructure and energy projects in the US, Asia, Europe, and the Middle East. She then served for another decade as president of InfrastructureWorld, where she led teams helping clients structure and launch privatized EPC projects in India and the US. Prior to those tenures she worked in the energy sector as an oil trader, as a research director in the Energy & Environmental Policy Center at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government, in government policy and lobbying in Washington DC for the renewable fuels industry, and as senior editor of Petroleum Intelligence Weekly in NYC. Barbara has an undergraduate degree from the University of California, Berkeley, and an MBA from the University of Hawaii, where she taught accounting and finance.
39. Heena Sood
Co-Founder & Chief Product Officer, ZenOptics
Over the past 20 plus years, Heena Sood has been fortunate to work in many roles and view data and analytics challenges through different lenses. She has worn multiple hats, leveraging entrepreneurial, technical, and strategic leadership skills to deliver customer value every day. She's grateful for the various perspectives her career path has yielded, which enable her to view product delivery and adoption through a customer viewpoint and build products that solve real-world challenges. Heena is passionate about solving business problems by enabling people, process, and technology innovation, and enjoys applying this across the data ecosystem - from data strategy and management to data engineering and analytics. In her current role, she is excited to drive capable teams, product vision, and technology innovation, leveraging deep understanding of multiple business domains, technical expertise in information management, strategy and governance to achieve objectives.
As a strategic and execution-focused leader with a solid technical foundation, Heena is always willing to jump in and get her hands dirty to solve problems, capitalizing on such opportunities to mentor geographically distributed teams to work effectively and encourage out-of-the-box thinking and problem solving by connecting the dots. She enjoys cultivating committed teams that work smart, not just hard. During her career, Heena has been responsible for the data and analytics portfolios and digital transformation at large enterprises such as Adobe, eBay, PayPal and has built a successful data & analytics services business delivering strategic digital transformation projects across various domains and industry verticals. This experience enables her to holistically address the various challenges customers face in today’s data-democratized, best-of-breed analytics world.
Heena believes in continuous learning, facilitated by interacting with customers, practitioners, technology experts, and product visionaries across geographies, industries, and business processes. She holds a master’s degree in engineering management from Andrews University and an advanced certification from Stanford University, Graduate School of Business in project/program management.
39. Carine Schneider
President, AST Private Company Solutions, Inc.
Carine Schneider, FGE is an experienced and well-connected leader and author in the private market and global compensation industry with deep experience working in consulting, technology & financial services. She is the President of AST Private Company Solutions, an Equiniti company, based in Menlo Park, California. She was named one of the 100 Influential Women in Silicon Valley by the Silicon Valley Business Journal (2017), one of 17 Women to Watch in 2017 by Brown Brothers Harriman Center on Women and Wealth and received the 2019 ProShare Award for Services to Employee Share Ownership. In March 2022 she was named one of the 20 Most Inspiring Women Leaders by Women Leaders Magazine. In 2021, she published her first book, The Democratization of the Private Market.
Carine was formerly the president, Nasdaq Private Market (NPM), CEO of Certent, founder and CEO of Global Shares, partner at PwC, director of strategic planning with Morgan Stanley and was the leader of the Global Stock Plan Services at Towers Watson. Carine served on the board of directors of Certent, Global Shares and The Professional Business Women of California.
In 1992, Carine was the founding executive director of the National Association of Stock Plan Professionals. In 1999, she founded the Global Equity Organization. After 18 years as chair, Carine was recognized as chair emeritus. She was also a founding board member of the Santa Clara University CEP Program and served as chair twice. Carine started her career as manager of shareholder relations at Oracle Corporation where she assisted in the IPO and managed all aspects of the company's various stock plans.
Schneider was born in The Netherlands and speaks Dutch and English. She received her degree in psychology & sociology from the University of California. She is a frequent speaker at conferences around the world, including President Obama’s 2016 Global Entrepreneurial Summit. She was invited to join the inaugural class of Fellow Global Equity in 2019.
40. Shing Pan
Managing Director, XTVue
Shing Pan is a Managing Director at XTVue, a strategic growth, financing, and M&A advisory firm for technology companies. She has 25 years of experience from c-suite executive to investment banker, leading tech innovation and commercialization, strategic growth, competitive product positioning, corporate development, venture financing, and M&A. Her company and client portfolio include cutting-edge startups to global billion-dollar corporations in AI and machine learning, computer vision and simulation, and digital and customer experience transformation.
With her extensive industry and domain knowledge and deep understanding of competitive landscapes, Shing helps companies strategically position for growth and execute successful financing, mergers, and acquisitions. Outside of XTVue, she is an independent director for private and public companies, serving on audit and technology committees. She is a strong promoter of ESG and actively mentors women in technology and business.
In 2020, Shing was nominated by VentureBeat Transform for Women in AI’s AI Entrepreneur Award. She was recently named 2023 Women Leaders in Conversational AI by Project Voice, a leading voice in Conversational AI and Voice Technology.
Shing earned her MBA from Cornell University, a master’s degree in engineering from Northern Illinois University, a board certification from Harvard Business School, and corporate finance, blockchain, and cryptocurrency certificates from Wharton Business School.
41. Kelly Close
President, Close Concerns
Kelly Close is a recognized global advocate on diabetes and obesity markets and a frequent writer and speaker on the subject. She has over 15 years of experience working voraciously to make the world smarter about diabetes and obesity. She is the President of Close Concerns, a healthcare information company focused exclusively on diabetes and obesity. At Close Concerns, Kelly and her team write approximately five million words each year on diabetes, obesity, digital health, and wellness. Close Concerns won the ADA’s Excellence in Health Communications Award in 2012.
Kelly is also the founder and chair of the board at The diaTribe Foundation, a nonprofit established in 2013 that works to advocate for action and to improve the lives of people with diabetes and pre-diabetes. In addition to her work at Close Concerns and the diaTribe Foundation, Kelly also co-founded dQ&A. dQ&A is a patient-centric diabetes market research company that provides answers to diabetes business questions. Kelly's passion for the field comes from her extensive professional work as well as from her personal experience, having had diabetes for nearly 30 years.
Aside from her work at the The DiaTribe Foundation, Kelly sits on the board of the Vanguard Chapter of the Aspen Institute. She is a previous board member of the Diabetes Hands Foundation and the Behavioral Diabetes Institute as well as a previous executive board member of the San Francisco Bay Area JDRF. She was a founding board member of the Institute for Responsible Nutrition. Kelly earned an undergraduate degree in economics and English from Amherst College and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
42. Paris Buchanan
Co-CEO and Chief Creative Director, Antonio & Paris
Paris Buchanan transitioned from client-side to agency life at Foote, Cone & Belding (FCB), where she worked with clients such as USPS, Seagate, Levi Strauss, Lucent Technologies, and 3Com on experiential environments. Her career took an international turn when she became one of the global directors at McCann overseeing the Microsoft account.
In 1998, she and her partner Antonio Patric Buchanan started a marketing consulting firm called bang!zoom where she served as the managing director. The firm oversaw marketing and innovation initiatives for 3Com, Lucent, BBC, Avaya, American Express, and others before selling the company to MDC Partners, a Toronto-based communication holding company.
Finally, in 2003, Antonio & Paris was born. The global brand innovation & design firm has offices in San Francisco, Paris, London, and Mexico City, along with virtual staff around the globe. They have received tremendous praise for creating innovation tools, insight breakthroughs, creative work, and comprehensive brand initiatives. Paris and her team have won several design awards, and she has been named one of the top female creative leaders in design and advertising.
42. Benafsha Irani
Managing Partner, West Coast Consulting Group
Benafsha Irani has been a Managing Partner at West Coast Consulting Group, an independent cloud consulting firm, since 2004. As a pioneer of cloud technology, West Coast Consulting Group has established partnerships with leading cloud solution providers such as salesforce.com, Google and NetSuite to implement proven and cost-effective cloud solutions.
Benafsha joined West Coast Consulting from Verizon Communications, where she was executive director for the Retail IT group, responsible for strategy, planning and strategic program management. She was part of the leadership team for servicing Verizon’s 26 million consumer and small business customers. She was instrumental in delivering the CRM one-touch concept for all customer interactions across retail, contact center and online customer interactions. Prior to Verizon, Benafsha held senior positions at KPMG, Deloitte and AMS. She successfully led eBusiness engagements for the communications and content industry, directing eBusiness program management, eStrategy and strategic alliance engagements. She holds an MBA from Thunderbird, the American Graduate School of International Management, and an undergraduate degree in computer engineering from Bombay University.
43. Ellyn Weisel
Executive Director, WildCare
Ellyn Weisel is currently the Executive Director at WildCare. WildCare is the premier wildlife medicine and environmental education organization in Northern California. WildCare supports people everywhere to live well with wildlife through a full cycle of programs, including wildlife advocacy and information resources, nature education programs, and medical aid for ill, injured, and orphaned wild animals. In her role, Ellyn is responsible for the management of strategic planning, development, board relations, budget creation, and financial oversight for WildCare. In addition, WildCare is currently embarking on a capital campaign to build a new facility, and Ellyn directs the planning, management and fundraising for that important project.
Ellyn began her career as VP of corporate consulting with International Management Group (IMG) in the San Francisco Bay Area. She then served as a development consultant for the Boys and Girls Clubs of San Francisco, first as director of outreach and philanthropy, then as VP of development at Common Sense Media in San Francisco.
Ellyn was previously the director of development at WildCare and stepped in as interim executive director for six months before taking the position of executive director in 2019. Before she arrived at WildCare, she served as chief development officer of 10,000 Degrees in San Rafael, California, a nonprofit helping disadvantaged students further their education. This led her to a post as foundation director of the DripDrop Foundation. This organization works to prevent dehydration worldwide.
Ellyn has been actively involved in nonprofit work board work. From 1995-1999 she served on the board of Sportsbridge, a mentoring program for underserved middle-school girls in San Francisco. From 1998-2009, Ellyn served on the board of directors of the Boys and Girls Club of San Francisco (BGCSF). BGCSF is one of the largest providers of services to at-risk youth in the Bay Area and was chair of the board from 2004-2006. Ellyn served on the board of trustees of Marin Country Day School from 2006-2012 and on the board of trustees of Holderness School in Plymouth, NH, from 2010-2013. She was a board member of Common Sense Media from 2012-2015 and served on the board of the Branson School in Ross, CA. Ellyn currently sits on the One Tam Advisory Council.
44. Monique LeSarre
Executive Director, Rafiki Coalition for Health and Wellness
Dr. Monique LeSarre is the Executive Director at Rafiki Coalition on Health and Wellness. A San Francisco-based nonprofit, Rafiki’s mission is to reduce health inequities and increase wellness in San Francisco’s Black and marginalized communities. Dr. LeSarre has been in this role for the last five years. During that time, she significantly expanded Rafiki’s programming and scope beyond community wellness programs and health navigation services, to include the much-needed mental healthcare services for individuals, families, and groups.
Dr. LeSarre holds a doctorate in clinical psychology, a master’s degree in clinical psychology and an undergraduate degree in interdisciplinary studies. She attributes her fierce critical thinking and social justice stance as being formed by her life experiences, honed by her education, and fueled by Cornell West's quote, "Never forget that justice is what love looks like in public." Dr. LeSarre believes that in order to create individual and community healing, it is most effective to work on multiple levels of the system, beginning with individuals, families, and groups, and on academic, training, research, advocacy and policy levels. She brings all of this together through her clinical, research, and advocacy work.
As part of her belief in paying it forward, Dr. LeSarre has taught in the Bachelors’ Completion Program (BAC) at California Institute of Integral Studies. She continues to provide training and lectures at other schools, colleges, and Universities, including Stanford, University of California, San Francisco, University of California, Berkeley, University of California, Santa Barbara, San Francisco State, The Wright and many others. Her volunteer work encompasses co-founding the KidCat Curriculum with men and Trans-women incarcerated as teens for life sentences, and the Insight Prison Project's Restorative Justice projects in San Quentin and SF Probation Adult Re-entry programs.
45. Lisa Schuder
Global Chief Growth Officer, Deloitte Microsoft Technology Services Practice
Lisa Schuder is a Managing Director at Deloitte Consulting LLP and is the Global Chief Growth Officer for the Deloitte Microsoft Technology Services Practice. In her role, she is responsible for driving organic and inorganic growth strategies including expansion of global and regional delivery capability, extending Deloitte offerings across the Microsoft technology stack, bringing industry solutions to market, and executing bold plays to differentiate Deloitte and deliver value to clients. As Microsoft’s independent auditor, Deloitte does not have an alliance or partnership with Microsoft so Lisa is also responsible to actively promote and support independence awareness and compliance.
Throughout her 30+ year career, Lisa has been a leader in the areas of alliances, sales, and growth with experience in sales and marketing, managing executive relationships, ecosystem solution development, and practice building.
Lisa spent 6 years as the Deloitte global alliance leader for Workday and helped the team exceed annual growth goals and gain external recognition as a leading Workday Services firm. During her 20-year tenure at Deloitte she has also been responsible for initiating and building Deloitte’s relationship with some of the largest and most influential technology companies in the world – including Google, Facebook, Twitter, and Adobe Systems. Prior to joining Deloitte, she held a successful career in sales, alliances, and corporate development in the enterprise software industry and started her career as a CPA.
46. Gigi Wong
Partner & Managing Director, L.E.K. Consulting
Gigi Wong is a Partner and Managing Director at L.E.K. Consulting, where she helps lead the firm's financial services and FinTech practice. Gigi has over 15 years of experience assisting a wide variety of private equity and corporate clients with questions around growth strategy, M&A, pricing and packaging, organizational structure, and market and competitive assessment. Additionally, Gigi is passionate about driving initiatives to promote DE&I, develop future leaders, and support the local community.
Prior to joining L.E.K., Gigi worked in transaction advisory and forensics accounting at Grant Thornton and Huron Consulting Group. She holds both an undergraduate degree in business administration and in economics from the University of California, Berkeley, as well as an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.
47. Shulagna Dasgupta
Senior Managing Director Talent & Human Potential
Shulagna is a Senior Managing Director within Accenture’s talent and human potential practice and leads the practice in the West region of Accenture. She partners with business leaders in defining and activating big, fast, complex and yet truly ‘human’ business transformations. She is passionate about helping businesses deliver on their purpose, supporting c-suite executives drive cultural change, using AI-based solutions to maximize workforce potential and making sure at the heart of every key transformation is authentic compassion. Shulagna is the mom of two beautiful boys and lives in Walnut Creek, CA.
48. Natasha Sunderji
Global Health Lead, Accenture
Natasha Sunderji is the Global Health Lead for Accenture’s social impact practice, Accenture Development Partnerships. She also co-leads Accenture’s Health Equity Center of Excellence. By engaging Accenture’s global workforce of over 700,000 employees, she works to address the world’s social, economic and environmental issues.
Natasha is a visionary healthcare leader with over 18 years of experience advising multinational companies, nonprofits, foundations, and multilateral agencies on growth strategy, innovative business models, digital health, and cross sector partnerships. She is a vocal advocate for vulnerable and underserved communities.
Natasha strives to drive care delivery transformation for health care organizations through financially sustainable, consumer centric, and data driven business models. She has worked with leading digital health platforms to design patient centric solutions, supported over 30 inclusive business models across low and middle-income countries, and advised policy makers on the regulations and investments needed to create robust digital health ecosystems. She has written multiple articles and reports on the future of healthcare, and was named one of the Top 50 Innovators in 2020 by the World Summit AI community.
Natasha holds an undergraduate degree in biomedical engineering from University of Toronto, and a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard Kennedy School.
49. Cheryl Young
Financial Advisor & Founder, Young & Associates
Cheryl Young has been a Financial Advisor since 1998 and is the Founder of Young & Associates. As a Certified Financial Advisor® and Portfolio Manager®, Cheryl brings a comprehensive approach to wealth management, focusing on portfolio management and stock option planning, and enjoys working with entrepreneurs, executives, engineers and professional athletes in Silicon Valley.
She has been recognized and quoted as a top wealth advisor in numerous publications including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes Magazine, Barron’s, On Wall Street, Financial Times, and Working Mother Magazine. She was ranked #1 in Forbes 2021 Best-In-State Wealth Advisors, #2 in Forbes 2021 Top 1,000 Women Wealth Advisors, and #1 in Working Mother Magazine’s 2020 list of Top Wealth Advisor Moms. She was also included in Barron's Top 100 Women Advisors since 2014, and made Forbes Top Wealth Advisors list since its inauguration in 2016.
Cheryl has taught numerous classes to Fortune 500 companies on what she likes to call “Financial Fitness”, and spoken about options at NASDAQ, Montreal and the New York Stock Exchanges. She is on the leadership board for the Options Industry Council, the educational arm of the Chicago Board Options Exchange. Cheryl is also a leader in educating women in finance both at a firm level and in her community.
Cheryl attended New Mexico State University on a Presidential Scholarship, starting at age 16 and graduated at age 20 with an undergraduate degree in psychology and a minor in business. She continued her post-graduate work in biochemistry at the University of New Mexico. Cheryl earned her Certified Portfolio Manager® certification through Columbia University's Master of Engineering School in 2013.
Cheryl is also active in local philanthropy, including serving on the board of Archbishop Mitty High School and Fresh Lifelines for Youth. She is an avid runner and has run over 27 marathons including qualifying for New York and Boston multiple times. Cheryl spends much of her free time with her three active boys, and loves skiing, rock climbing, kickboxing, hiking, good wines and travel. Social impact is an area of focus for her both professionally and personally.
50. Freda Zietlow
Managing Director and Senior Portfolio Manager, Fiduciary Trust International
Freda Lam Zietlow is a Managing Director of Fiduciary Trust International (FTI), a subsidiary of Franklin Templeton with $30 billion under management. Freda is a sought-after advisor for private families, endowments, and foundations as she brings an uncommon breadth of expertise across capital market, portfolio management, public and private securities, real estate, and cross-border wealth planning strategies. She is a passionate advocate of environmental, social & governance priorities, and women corporate leadership. She serves on FTI’s Sustainable Investment Committee and leads its Women & Wealth initiative. Freda previously held leadership roles at JPMorgan, Fremont Realty Capital, and Bingham Osborn & Scarborough.
Having lived and worked in three continents, Freda brings a global perspective and ability to connect and inspire across teams and cultures. She cares deeply about her community and has served as a board director for many nonprofits and corporations, such as Give2Asia, King Baudouin Foundation US, Piedmont Scouting Council, the 1990 Institute, and Bank of the Orient. Freda has guided strategic transformation for these organizations as they go through rapid technological, regulatory and market changes. She is an active member of the National Association of Corporate Director, Women Corporate Directors foundation and serves on the Leadership Committee of How Women Lead.
Freda holds an MBA from the Wharton School, MS in real estate from Columbia University and an undergraduate degree with high honors in architecture from UC Berkeley. She is a Charter Financial Analyst charter holder and has earned the coveted NACD.DC designation.
50. Sashalla Lemond
Managing Director, Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco
Sashalla Lemond has an unwavering passion for promoting and improving diversity, equity, and inclusion within the financial industry. With a background in investment banking and business management, she has more than 20 years of demonstrated drive in addressing social issues within the workplace. Sashalla currently serves as Managing Director at Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco.
In 2017, Sashalla was awarded the Rising Start Barclays Business Diversity Award for transforming the Embrace Black Professionals Forum. In her prior role at Deutsche Bank, she was elected chairperson of Jacksonville’s Chapter of Women on Wall Street, where she built the Employee Resource Groups from the ground up, earning her Deutsche Bank’s 2011 Leader in Diversity award. Sashalla also served as co-founder and advisor of the informal group called The Collective – Cross Firms BERG, a network of Employee Resource Group leaders across 30+ firms including top 10 major Wall Street firms.
In her current role as Managing Director, Sashalla has worked diligently with the Bank’s team members and leaders to transform DEI at the bank to operationalize a scalable and measurable DEI program that has yielded results. She has introduced new relationships and sponsorship opportunities that support women, people from systematically disadvantaged populations, LGBTQIA+, veterans and disabled owned businesses. In collaboration with HR, she led the design and implementation of the first 1:1 mentor match program and formalized the organization’s Employee Resource Groups representing gender, ethnicity, LGBTQ+, and working parents. She is also part of Disability:IN’s Supplier Diversity Certification – International Certification Committee Member.
Sashalla Lemond continues to welcome new opportunities to improve resources, experiences, and relations for all team members. She serves as executive producer and host for the podcast series Decoding Corporate America, which focuses on helping rising leaders navigate the corporate environment. She also shares her professional DEI experience and knowledge through speaking events, most notably the PGA Tour, Ernst &Young, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Affordable Housing Clearinghouse and many others.