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Cherie Booth
Blair, QC
Cherie Booth Blair is a passionate advocate
for human rights and particularly for women’s equality in
nations around the world. She also actively campaigns for work-life
balance policies, having herself experienced the pressures of combining
a high-powered professional life, a high-visibility public life
as the wife of England’s former prime minister, and a demanding
private life as a mother of four. Booth is a founding member of
Matrix Chambers in London and a Queen’s Counsel specializing
in employment, discrimination, and public law. In addition, she
serves as a part-time judge, as governor of the London School of
Economics and the Open University, and as supporter of numerous
children’s and women’s charities. Booth is co-author
of The Goldfish Bowl, a fascinating account of life in
10 Downing Street from the perspectives of the spouses and families
of past prime ministers. |
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Raghida
Dergham
From coverage of historic summits to exclusive
interviews with heads of state, Raghida Dergham has been reporting
on the world’s top political news stories since 1989. The
Lebanese-American journalist is senior diplomatic correspondent
and international political affairs columnist for Al Hayat,
the leading independent Arabic newspaper. She is also a political
analyst for NBC, MSNBC, and the Arab satellite LBC, bringing audiences
a critical point of view from the Middle East. Among her many professional
affiliations, Dergham serves on the board of the International Women's
Media Foundation, working to help women in the media develop practical
solutions to the obstacles they face in their careers and lives.
She is also a member of the International Media Council of the World
Economic Forum, composed of the 100 most respected and influential
media figures worldwide. |
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Margaret
Heffernan
Margaret Heffernan is currently Visiting
Professor of Entrepreneurship at the Simmons School of Management.
A trailblazer in the transition to the “new” media,
Heffernan bought, sold, and ran several leading Internet companies,
including ZineZone and iCAST, during the high-flying 1990s. On her
path to becoming CEO, Heffernan produced documentaries for BBC Radio
and Television, headed up a trade association of independent film
and television producers, worked as a public affairs consultant,
and developed interactive products for such business luminaries
as Tom Peters. Now a columnist for Fast Company and Real
Business, Heffernan brings the lessons learned from her own
and other women’s experience at the top to her two latest
books—The Naked Truth: A Working Woman’s Manifesto
about Business and What Really Matters and How She Does
It: How Female Entrepreneurs Are Changing the Rules of Business
Success. |
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Sylvia
Ann Hewlett, PhD
A thought leader on issues of gender and
workforce development, renowned economist Sylvia Ann Hewlett is
founder and president of the Center for Work-Life Policy (CWLP)
where she directs a task force of 35 global companies committed
to fully realizing female and minority talent. She also heads up
the Gender and Policy Program at Columbia’s School of International
and Public Affairs. Hewlett is the author of several critically
acclaimed books, including When the Bough Breaks, The War Against
Parents, Creating a Life, and most recently, the bestselling
Off-Ramps and On-Ramps: Keeping Talented Women on the Road to
Success. Articles drawn from her ongoing research, such as
“Extreme Jobs: The Dangerous Allure of the 70-Hour Workweek,”
often appear in the Harvard Business Review and on the
front pages of The Financial Times and The Wall Street
Journal. |
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Peggy Klaus
A top communication and leadership coach
to Fortune 500 companies, Peggy Klaus has taught thousands of professionals
the art of presenting themselves with style and grace. She has also
lectured on communication at the University of California Berkeley,
as well as at Wharton's Executive MBA Program, Pepperdine University
School of Law, and Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government.
Her bestseller Brag! The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without
Blowing It synthesizes her consulting and training experiences
into how-to’s on making an impact in today's competitive job
market. Klaus's colorful and frank advice has appeared in a wide
range of media, including 20/20, Today, BusinessWeek,
The Wall Street Journal, and Fortune and in her
forthcoming book The Hard Truth About Soft Skills: Workplace
Lessons Smart People Wish They'd Learned Sooner. |
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Deborah Kolb,
PhD
Deborah Kolb is the first Deloitte Ellen
Gabriel Professor for Women and Leadership at the Simmons School
of Management. Co-founder of the school’s Center for Gender
in Organizations, she is a noted authority on gender issues in negotiation
and leadership—particularly on how women can negotiate the
conditions for their own success while also contributing to the
effectiveness of their organizations. She is also a senior fellow
at Harvard Law School’s Program on Negotiation, where she
co-directs The Negotiations in the Workplace Project, and a principal
at Negotiating Women, LLC, a company that provides negotiation training
and consultation especially designed for women. On her long list
of publications, Kolb is co-author of Everyday Negotiation:
Navigating the Hidden Agendas of Bargaining and Her Place
at the Table: A Women’s Guide to Negotiating the Five Challenges
of Leadership Success. |
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Irshad Manji
Recipient of Oprah’s first annual
Chutzpah Award for “audacity, nerve, boldness and conviction,”
Irshad Manji is the author of the internationally acclaimed The
Trouble with Islam Today: A Muslim’s Call for Reform in Her
Faith. In a recent PBS documentary, Faith without Fear,
she continues her quest to reconcile her faith in Allah with her
love of freedom, revealing the personal risks that come with this
mission. Currently a senior fellow with the European Foundation
for Democracy, Manji heads up Project Ijtihad, a global initiative
to build the world’s most inclusive network of reform-minded
Muslims. Before taking up her public fight against radical Islamists,
Manji published Risking Utopia: On the Edge of a New Democracy,
and produced and hosted the groundbreaking QT: QueerTelevision,
the first network program to explore the lives of gays and lesbians. |
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Lisa Price
Starting out in her kitchen in 1993 with $100 in capital, Lisa Price has grown her Carol’s Daughter brand of organic bath and beauty products into a multimillion-dollar business. As founder and managing partner, she has personally developed over 300 products that are now sold through her own stores as well as major retail outlets. But her journey to success has not been without setbacks. In her inspiring memoir, Success Never Smelled So Sweet, Price recounts how she had to dig herself out of bankruptcy while gradually transforming her one-time hobby into a thriving enterprise. In recognition of her accomplishments, she has received numerous business awards including the National Black MBA Association's Entrepreneur of the Year Award, the Working Woman Magazine’s Entrepreneurial Excellence Award, and the National Book Club Conference Terrie Williams Inspiration Award. Price often tells her story to high school students as a way to cultivate the entrepreneurial spirit among young women. |
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Deborah
Rodriguez
It all began when Deborah Rodriguez signed
up to take disaster-relief training in the wake of 9/11. The Michigan
hairdresser and mother of two then joined a diverse humanitarian
aid group traveling to Afghanistan soon after the fall of the Taliban.
Once there, inspiration struck when she discovered that Afghan women
have a long tradition of running beauty salons. Marshalling the
help of corporate and international sponsors, Rodriguez helped to
found the Kabul Beauty School—Afghanistan’s first modern
training salon—as a way to empower women to become their families’
breadwinners. She retells this remarkable story, along with the
intimate struggles of her students, in Kabul Beauty School:
An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil. |
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Taryn Rose,
MD
Trained as an orthopedic surgeon, Taryn
Rose saw close up the damage that fashion footwear did to women’s
feet. A lover of high heels herself, she decided to combine her
clinical experience with her passion for style to create shoes that
would be functional as well as beautiful. Rose is now CEO and designer
at Taryn Rose International, a $28 million company whose luxury
shoes have attracted an almost cultish following and are available
in more than 220 select stores worldwide. To honor these achievements,
the Women Presidents’ Organization and Fast Company
magazine put Rose at the top of their list of "25 Women Entrepreneurs
Who Are Changing the Game.” The Women's Leadership Exchange
group also presented Rose with the 2006 Compass Award, dedicated
to those who have shifted the paradigm of how women are perceived
as business leaders. |
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Leslie
Sanchez
Named by Hispanic Business magazine
as one of the nation’s 100 most influential Hispanics, Leslie
Sanchez is a marketing strategist, political commentator, and education
advocate. Founder and CEO of Impacto Group LLC, the entrepreneurial
Sanchez is an expert on social and economic trends affecting women
and the emerging US Hispanic market. As former executive director
of the White House Initiative on Educational Excellence for Hispanic
Americans, she served as President Bush’s point person on
education issues pertaining to the Hispanic community. She also
developed and executed the Republicans’ first major Hispanic
outreach effort during the 2000 presidential campaign. Sanchez is
a frequent guest on PBS’s To the Contrary and The
News Hour with Jim Lehrer, and author of Los Republicanos:
Why Hispanics and Republicans Need Each Other. |
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Bonnie
St. John
Hailed by NBC Nightly News as
one of the five most inspiring women in America, Bonnie St. John
has always challenged limits. As a young African-American amputee
living in California, St. John dreamed of becoming a competitive
downhill skier. Despite repeated setbacks, she managed to fulfill
this ambition and went on to win a silver medal in the 1984 Paralympics.
With her intense determination and will to succeed, St. John has
continued to thrive in a demanding career that has taken her from
IBM and Wall Street to the White House National Economic Council.
She now heads her own coaching business, helping others become all
they aspire to be. St. John is the author of Succeeding Sane:
Making Room for Joy in a Crazy World and the new bestseller,
How Strong Women Pray. |
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Barbara
Stanny
After relying on her father (the “R”
in H&R Block) and then her husband to manage her money, Barbara
Stanny faced a devastating financial crisis that was a life-changing
wakeup call. Now among the nation’s top authorities on women
and money, she is on a mission to help others become financially
empowered by changing their relationship with money on every level—practical,
psychological, personal, and philanthropic. Stanny is the author
of several best-selling guides to personal finance, including Prince
Charming Isn't Coming: How Women Get Smart About Money, Secrets
of Six-Figure Women: Surprising Strategies to Up Your Earnings and
Change Your Life, and Overcoming Underearning: A Five-Step
Plan to a Richer Life. Her new anthology, Breaking Through:
Getting Past the Stuck Points In Your Life, presents tips from
over 60 coaches, financial advisors, therapists, and other professionals
for getting back on the path to success. |
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Jeannette
Walls
In her award-winning memoir, The Glass
Castle, Jeannette Walls tells the harrowing but often hilarious
story of her unorthodox upbringing at the hands of eccentric, nomadic
parents who considered being homeless “an adventure.”
After escaping a life of extreme deprivation, Walls was able to
attend college and become a journalist, ultimately reporting for
E! Channel, writing the Scoop for MSNBC.com, and publishing
articles in Esquire, USAToday, and New York
magazine. Out of this experience, Walls wrote Dish: The Inside
Story of the World of Gossip, a fascinating study of Americans’
escalating hunger for insider information and the role that celebrity
gossip plays in US politics and the media. With the huge success
of The Glass Castle, Walls recently retired from her gossip
column and now plans to write fiction full time. |
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View 2008 Keynote Speakers
View the 2008 Program |
