Virtual Table Topics
Join your fellow Grove sisters for the first installment of our newly created “Grove Virtual Table Topics”, in which we harness the knowledge of our network to keep us informed during the current COVID-19 crisis.
Our plan is to offer several such focused conversations on the issues you’d most like to hear about – ranging from home cyber safety in an era of increased usage, best ways to take care of your health, etc.
Thank you to the incredible committee who took this concept and created an outlet for members to connect. A special thank you to our Grove Virtual Table Topic Committee, Betty Hudson, Cathy Allen, Neha Joshi, Mary Abraham and others who are taking the lead in keeping us learning and connected virtually!
Upcoming Topics
More virtual sessions coming soon!
Past Topics
Click the topic to view supplementary materials, a video recording of the discussion, and the bio(s) of the topic leader(s).
Thank you to everyone who participated in Part 1 and Part 2 of our multi-part series of Virtual Panels on race and racism.
More information on Lynn Hubbard (Tara)
Lynn Hubbard has a professional background in law, executive recruiting and as a part-time entrepreneur. Lynn is currently focused on reimagining cities without conventional automobiles, slowing climate change and protecting wild spaces. Lynn was recently appointed to the Seattle Transit Advisory Board, which advises the Mayor and City Council on matters related to transit. She is also active with the ACES Network Northwest, a group focused on supporting autonomous, shared, electric and connected vehicles.
Lynn serves on the boards of SIFF (which run the Seattle International Film Festival and three year-round cinemas) and the Seattle Academy of Arts and Sciences. Recent education has included the Northwest Conservation Fellowship and a Certificate in Sustainable Transportation: Planning and Livable Communities.
Lynn practiced maritime law and commercial litigation for over a decade. While practicing law, she co-founded a business that created and executive produced demonstration pilots for a proposed television channel. Before moving to Washington State, Lynn interned for a marine insurance firm in Gothenburg, Sweden. Lynn graduated cum laude from Tulane Law School, with a focus on admiralty law. Before attending law school, Lynn worked on a live-aboard scuba diving boat in the Bahamas, where she earned her 100-ton United States Coast Guard Masters’ License.
More information on Neha Jain Joshi (Nyomi)
Neha leads the innovation organization at Accenture Security, a position she is the first to hold. In this role, she sets Accenture Security’s annual innovation agenda and leads professionals around the globe who build innovative cybersecurity solutions and ways of working. Her team produces solutions, many of which are patented, that leverage robotics, artificial intelligence, DevOps, data analytics and machine-learning technologies to help make Accenture’s clients more secure.
Neha has more than 15 years of experience in the security industry. She founded Accenture’s global Digital Identity Governance Board, has authored numerous industry articles, co-authored a book on innovation in identity and access management and is a frequent speaker on topics ranging from securing identities to innovation to leadership.
Prior to accepting her current position, Neha served as Managing Director of Accenture’s Global Digital Identity business. Her responsibilities included the production and market growth of an artificial intelligence solution Accenture created to improve identity and access management—this subsequently became one of its most successful initiatives. As a member of Accenture’s Security Technology Consulting practice, Neha delivered technical projects for large, complex clients across industries in the United States and Europe. She has consulted with clients in the insurance, banking, retail, communications and media industries as well as the government and nonprofit sectors.
Neha is passionate about advancing women’s initiatives, especially in technology. Neha actively mentors many women within Accenture and volunteers her time with the Executive Women’s Forum, Girls Who Code and iMentor. She is also a member of Chief, a private network focused on connecting and supporting exceptional female leaders, and a recipient of the 2019 Executive Women’s Forum for Information Security, Risk Management and Privacy Women of Influence Award.
Thank you to everyone who participated in the first of our multi-part series of Virtual Panels on race and racism. After taking time to reflect, discuss, and meet, the Virtual Events Committee and Executive Committee, along with our session-one panelists have developed two more sessions to take a deeper dive into this conversation.
Similar to our last session, the next two will go beyond our traditional virtual table topic experience and invite members to split up into smaller facilitated breakout groups to allow for more personal conversations and reflections. These conversations will provide a platform to share experiences and insights in order to harness our collective passion, power and creativity to reflect on Belizean Grove values.
We encourage you to review the material that was shared during the session.You may want to share these exercise and resources with your friends and family in order to continue this important conversation:
- Complete the “10 Finger” Activity, provided by Neha Joshi (Nyomi)
- Watch this video
- After completing the exercise and watching the video, please review the questions here
More information on Elaine Eisenman, PhD (Grover)
Elaine Eisenman, PhD, is Managing Director of Saeje Advisors, which provides strategic advisory services to companies seeking to build high performing teams who capitalize on new growth opportunities and drive transformation.
An organizational psychologist, Elaine served as Dean of Executive and Enterprise Education at Babson College, and Professor of Entrepreneurial Leadership for 12 years. In her role, she developed and taught in a wide range of programs for entrepreneurs and corporate executives. She was also responsible for the management of award winning Babson Executive Conference Center, a 250 bed hotel and conference facility, consistently rated by IACC as a top global facility.
She has held senior executive positions at both public companies such as American Express, Enhance Financial Services Co., and The Children’s Place, and private companies such as PDI International and Management & Capital Partners, where she was chairman.
Elaine currently serves as an independent Board Director for DBI, Inc. (NYSE), as well as for AtmosXR and Miravan, both privately held companies. In addition, she works with the ScaleUp team at Entrepreneurship Policy Advisors to create and implement entrepreneurial ecosystems, focused on growing and scaling companies. Through her global work she is a frequent presenter and keynote speaker.
Elaine earned a PhD in Industrial/Organizational Psychology from New York University, an MS from Columbia University, and a BS from Boston University.
More information on Michelle Jordan (Grover)
Michelle’s company, Jordan LLC, assists CEOs, senior executives and their organizations with strategic communication needs. Michelle specializes in issue and crisis communication, reputation management (“enhancing,” “protecting,” “restoring,”) and brand strategy — an implicit component of reputation responsibility. Clients range from CEOs and corporate board directors to entrepreneurs and high net worth individuals and families, and from public companies and privately-owned businesses to non-profit organizations and academic institutions.
Assignments cover developing communication and messaging strategies designed to address the situation with those impacted, both externally and internally, as well as research into the root causes of the troublesome issue. Her communication outreach work also includes managing media relations for clients whose situations have placed them and/or their organizations in the spotlight.
Over the past thirty years in strategic communication, Michelle has lived and worked in London, New York, Toronto, San Francisco and Los Angeles. Prior to opening her own firm, she served as president of the Los Angeles office of GCI Group (a division of Grey Advertising) and headed-up corporate communications for Silicon Valley-based Digital Pictures, a pioneer of interactive video games. In New York, she held senior management positions with The Dilenschneider Group and Hill & Knowlton.
Michelle has appeared several times on Fox News Channel, MSNBC and other outlets commenting on “newsmakers du jour.” Her articles and interviews have appeared in The Huffington Post, The Wall Street Journal, Trust and Estates, Board member.com, Financial Advisor and other publications. Speaking engagements include, Corporate State (US and Canada), Outstanding Directors Exchange (ODX,) Lido Family Office Wealth Conference, Direct Selling Association, Urban Land Institute Leaders’ Council, Forbes Executive Women’s Conference.
More information on Neha Jain Joshi (Nyomi)
Neha leads the innovation organization at Accenture Security, a position she is the first to hold. In this role, she sets Accenture Security’s annual innovation agenda and leads professionals around the globe who build innovative cybersecurity solutions and ways of working. Her team produces solutions, many of which are patented, that leverage robotics, artificial intelligence, DevOps, data analytics and machine-learning technologies to help make Accenture’s clients more secure.
Neha has more than 15 years of experience in the security industry. She founded Accenture’s global Digital Identity Governance Board, has authored numerous industry articles, co-authored a book on innovation in identity and access management and is a frequent speaker on topics ranging from securing identities to innovation to leadership.
Prior to accepting her current position, Neha served as Managing Director of Accenture’s Global Digital Identity business. Her responsibilities included the production and market growth of an artificial intelligence solution Accenture created to improve identity and access management—this subsequently became one of its most successful initiatives. As a member of Accenture’s Security Technology Consulting practice, Neha delivered technical projects for large, complex clients across industries in the United States and Europe. She has consulted with clients in the insurance, banking, retail, communications and media industries as well as the government and nonprofit sectors.
Neha is passionate about advancing women’s initiatives, especially in technology. Neha actively mentors many women within Accenture and volunteers her time with the Executive Women’s Forum, Girls Who Code and iMentor. She is also a member of Chief, a private network focused on connecting and supporting exceptional female leaders, and a recipient of the 2019 Executive Women’s Forum for Information Security, Risk Management and Privacy Women of Influence Award.
This is the first of a two-part conversation on race and racism. Thank you to Elisa Speranza for sparking this conversation and asking for the Grove to create a space for this discussion. A very special thank you to Lisa Ahmad, one of our newer members who many of you met in Puerto Rico, who agreed to facilitate this panel and helped to make it happen along with other leaders within the Belizean Grove who agreed to join her (Shaunna Jones, Wonya Lucas, Meryl Marshall Daniels, Dr. Helena Ribe) This panel went beyond our normal virtual table topic and covered a factual summary of recent (and historical events) to frame the context for the discussion.
It was a very personal and vulnerable experience for both our speakers and members as participants in the session. Panelists shared their own experiences and what are they doing personally within their networks to make a difference.
List of Suggested Reading, Listening, Watching, & more
Click here to read a complete list of recommendations from your fellow Grovers.
More information on Lisa Ahmad (Grover)
Lisa Ahmad is an executive experienced in discovering the business “unlock” and structuring new creative opportunities domestically and internationally. Having worked in Africa, Latin America and Europe, she is comfortable navigating diverse countries and cultures and is a builder of strong relationships and effective project management teams. With a proven track record of creating new strategies at top executive levels in Fortune 500 companies, Lisa also brings expertise in operations and management.
Through her current board service and consultancy to not-for-profits, Lisa regularly delivers results: an expanded footprint; industry excellence; and, financial sustainability. Brand building, digital platforms and messaging, and programming and operations are just some of the business challenges she regularly tackles with her clients. She especially enjoys working on behalf of women and minority-led enterprises.
Lisa served as President and Chief Operating Officer of Leslie Fay Intimates where she was the first female and first African American to head a division of the $900 million women’s apparel conglomerate. In just 2 years, she established the division’s strategic direction, built a 14-person operation, managed contractor and offshore production and grew the business to over $3M in revenues. Prior to Leslie Fay, Lisa worked in consumer products and media and entertainment at McKinsey & Company and in the Credit Audit Division at The Chase Manhattan Bank, both in New York.
Active in several charitable and professional organizations, Lisa has held numerous committee and board officer positions. Currently, Lisa serves as a board director of REACH Prep and The Picture House. In her free time, she enjoys writing and publishing personal essays and short stories. She graduated with a B.A. in Economics and Political Science from Wellesley College and an M.B.A. from The Harvard Business School.
More information on Shaunna Jones (Nyomi)
Shaunna D. Jones is currently the Director of Diversity & Inclusion for Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, an elite international law firm. In that role, she leads the firm’s diversity, equity and inclusion strategy and oversees the organization’s inclusion initiatives for women and people of color.
Prior to joining Cleary, Shaunna was a Senior Vice President at Laurel Strategies, a D.C.-based boutique consulting firm specializing in strategy, strategic legacy-building for leaders of corporate and nonprofit organizations and reputational risk management. Shaunna is also a former equity partner at Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP, where she focused on corporate restructuring law. She was named “Next Gen” by both the National Conference of Bankruptcy Judges and the International Insolvency Institute, been awarded the Trailblazer Award by the Young Professional Division of the National Bar Association and was a regular blogger for the Wall Street Journal on emerging restructuring issues.
She is also passionate about the advancement and preservation of African American culture. She plays an active role in managing her family’s art gallery — Stella Jones Gallery, a preeminent gallery founded twenty-five years ago by her parents in New Orleans, Louisiana that exhibits exclusively work of artists of the African diaspora. She is also a member of The Links, Incorporated, a service and social organization for women of color that focuses particularly on improving the lives and prospects of Black women, families and children.
More information on Wonya Lucas (Grover)
Wonya Lucas is President and CEO of Public Broadcasting Atlanta, where she oversees Atlanta’s NPR (WABE) and PBS (PBA) stations. Lucas led WABE’s significant increase in award-winning local coverage and a dramatic increase in meaningful community engagement. To further broaden reach, WABE has launched award-winning national podcasts.
Previously, Lucas was President and CEO for TV One, a network focused on the African American experience. Serving in this role, she was the second African American woman to be President and CEO of a national cable television company. Before joining TV One, Lucas held several positions at Discovery Communications, including Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for Discovery Channel and Science Channel and Global Chief Marketing Officer with responsibility for marketing in 210 countries and over 130 networks. While CMO as Discovery, Lucas was on the Discovery launch team for three networks, including OWN (Oprah Winfrey Network) and Investigation Discovery (ID).
Before joining Discovery Communications, Lucas served as General Manager and Executive Vice President of The Weather Channel Networks. She was responsible for corporate strategy and development, strategic marketing for The Weather Channel, Weather Channel radio, and weather.com. Before joining The Weather Channel as Executive Vice President of Marketing, Lucas held several positions at Turner Broadcasting System, including Senior Vice President of Strategic Marketing for CNN Worldwide, Vice President of Business Operations, and Network Development for Turner Entertainment and Vice President of Entertainment Marketing for TNT. Her other experience includes brand management roles for The Coca-Cola Company and The Clorox Company. Lucas began her career as a Product Engineer.
Lucas serves on the corporate boards of J.C. Penney and E.W. Scripps. Lucas currently serves as Vice-Chair of the NPR national board. She is a member of the Rotary Club of Atlanta, International Women’s Forum, and the Metro Atlanta Chamber. She currently serves as a member of the Peabody Awards Board of Jurors. Lucas also serves on the boards of the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta, Children’s Hospital of Atlanta, Woodruff Arts Center, Task Force for Global Health, and the Georgia Tech Foundation. She is also a member of The Links, Inc.
Lucas is a graduate of the Georgia Institute of Technology with a BS in Industrial and Systems Engineering and The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania with an MBA in Finance and Marketing. She is the proud mother of two adult daughters Alexis and Sydney Kirton.
More information on Meryl Marshall Daniels (Grover)
Meryl Marshall Daniels is a facilitator, mediator and executive coach. She guides collaborative decision-making, helps manage change and transitions for individuals and organizations, and mediates business conflicts. She continues as Board Chair of Great Leap, a multi-cultural performing arts organization led by Artistic Director Nobuko Miyamoto that encourages communities of color to share their stories, music and dance traditions promoting issues of environmental and social justice. She also serves on the Boards of Project Grad Los Angeles, Women’s’ International Study Center and the for profit company Pitfire Artisan Pizza.
Meryl works with academic institutions, media companies, and individuals in transition in confronting challenges in developing new business models, responding to market, finance and technicological changes, mediating conflicts and coaching business partnerships and non-profit organizations as they reposition, expand and restructure. She facilitates strategy sessions for business, governmental and non-governmental agencies, media professionals, scientists, academics and policy makers in their corporations, institutions and their associations as they transform from hierarchical to collaborative management systems. She assists non-profit arts organizations restructure to meet funding and technology challenges. Individual clients seek her expertise in career transitions and to reduce or eliminate stress and tension by effectively addressing interpersonal and intra organizational conflicts. Recently she began working with families struggling with decision making around healthcare and the transfer of family assets.
Meryl’s career began as a criminal trial attorney. She subsequently entered the entertainment industry when she joined NBC as Associate General Counsel and was promoted to Vice President of Compliance and Practices. She helped to formulate and served on the NBC Senior Executive Management Committee.
She transitioned to the creative side in 1987 when she was recruited by Group W Productions, a subsidiary of Westinghouse Broadcasting Inc. as Vice President of Program Affairs and helped to launch Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. In 1992 she formed Two Oceans Entertainment Group with initial financing from D&D, a Belgian media company. She produced over 40 hours of award winning television for NBC-Universal, Discovery Networks as well as the HBO animated series Happily Ever After Fairy Tales for Every Child narrated by Robert Guillaume that still runs almost daily on HBO Family. Meryl was elected to two terms as Chairman/ CEO of the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.
More information on Dr. Helena Ribe (Grover)
Helena devoted her professional career to promote economic development and equity all over the world. She worked with governments, academics and civil society to design programs and policies in-tended to improve social outcomes and reduce poverty. She started as an economist in her native Colombia where she worked in the Central Bank. After completing her graduate studies, she joined the World Bank where she worked during more than thirty years and became a senior manager. She man-aged health, education and social protection programs in South Asia, Southern and West Africa, and Latin America and the Caribbean. She holds a BA from the Universidad de los Andes in Colombia, a Masters and a Ph.D. in Economics from Yale University.
Since her retirement from the World Bank, Helena has been involved with non-profit organizations, in the arts and in community activities in New Mexico. She also mentors folk artists, students and young professionals and collects folk art. Helena is a Founder and Board member of the Women International Study Center, a Board member of GoPhilantropic and of the Washington Office for Latin American Woman Rights WOLA, is in the Advisory Council of the Museum of Women in the Arts in Washington DC and in the Grants Committee of the Santa Fe Community Foundation.
Helena loves to travel free of job responsibilities and has visited almost one hundred countries.
A conversation with Dr. Helen Fisher, interviewed by Susan Stautberg, in which Helen shares her thoughts and new data about the effects of this lockdown on Singles and Partners as well as where she thinks we are headed in the future.
More information on Dr. Helen Fisher (Grover)
Biological anthropologist Dr. Helen Fisher is a leading expert and the most referenced scholar on the science of love and attraction. She is a senior research fellow at the Kinsey Institute and a member of the Center for Human Evolutionary Studies in the department of anthropology at Rutgers University. Prior to that, she was a research associate at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
In her position as Chief Scientific Adviser at Match.com, her research has been applied to create both hormone-based and personality-based matching systems.
She has written six books on the evolution, biology, and psychology of human sexuality, monogamy, adultery and divorce, gender differences in the brain, the neural chemistry of romantic love and attachment, human biologically-based personality styles, why we fall in love with one person rather than an-other, hooking up, friends with benefits, living together and other current trends, and the future of relationships– what she calls: slow love.
In Puerto Rico just 12 weeks (!!!) ago, as we made the turn into 2020, Edie offered us a wide ranging overview of the enormous challenges and shifts society would confront in the coming decade and beyond, which included the impacts of socio-economic imbalances around the world, the political implications of such disparity, the kind of spiritual transformations that such challenges might catalyze – and yes, she even mentioned pandemics! We hope you’ll join us on Sunday, May 3rd for a very special edition of Virtual Table Topics, as Edie shares the latest insights she and her team have gleaned as to how the global (and local) events of the past few months will further shape both our present and our future.
More information on Edie Weiner(Grover)
Edie Weiner is president and CEO of The Future Hunters, a leading futurist consulting group. Formed in 1977 as Weiner, Edrich, Brown, The Future Hunters has served over 400 clients in identifying opportunities in strategic thinking, product development, marketing, investment, human resources, and change management. The Future Hunters clients have ranged from national governments to Fortune 500 companies. She is acknowledged as one of the most influential practitioners of social, technological, political and economic intelligence-gathering.
Edie directed the first industry-wide futures research program in the early 1970s. At 29, she was the youngest outside woman ever elected to a corporate board. She has guest lectured at many prestigious institutions, including Wharton, Harvard, The U.S. Army War College, the Naval War College and the World Economic Forum in Davos. Her many articles have appeared in publications like The Harvard Business Review, The Futurist, and The Wall Street Journal. She co-authored four books with her business partner Arnold Brown. Her latest book, FutureThink, was a global bestseller, translated into many languages. She has keynoted over 300 conferences.
Throughout her career, she founded and ran a series of programs aimed at mentoring inner city girls, bringing technology to inner city classrooms, preserving modern dance and networking women at various stages in their lives and careers.
She now serves on numerous Boards and Advisory Boards, including the US Comptroller General’s Advisory Board, GOSO (Getting Out and Staying Out – reducing recidivism), The Belizean Grove and the Adventures for the Mind Foundation. In the past, she has served on over 20 additional Boards or Advisory Boards, including the José Limón Dance Foundation (Chair), UNUM Corporation, First Unum Corp., CompUSA, the Fashion Group International, ThinkQuest New York City (Chair), Boardroom Inc., the SyFy Channel, Independent Agents & Brokers of New York, the Women’s Leadership Exchange, and the Women’s Forum. Ms. Weiner is a member of the Women’s Forum, a co-founder of the Belizean Grove and Women Corporate Directors, and has received over 30 awards and citations, including the Fashion Group International’s Entrepreneur of the Year (1998), NOW New York’s 2011 Woman of Power and Influence, and The World Future Society’s Lifetime Achievement Award.
Are you homeschooling your kids or helping to homeschool your grandkids? This discussion focused on talking about different subjects and talking about what is working for each person. We also talked about dividing time with spouses or other caregivers so that you can try to keep up with work. Charlotte has put together a helpful guide of resources and suggestions for any parents or grandparents participating in homeschooling children.
Click here to read Charlotte’s homeschool guide.
More information on Charlotte Whitmore (Nyomi)
Corporate Director, Entrepreneur, Registered Nurse & 3rd-world Development Philanthropist. Executive with diverse background in digital analytics and healthcare with a track record of maintaining high growth in fast changing environments. CEO with strong background in day to day operations including financials, HR, and designing company culture with millennials in mind. A proven leader in data strategy, digital analytics, testing and optimization, data storytelling and customer-centric digital transformation.
Charlotte is CEO of Wisdomist, a technology platform connecting executives who have C-suite experience with the next generation of entrepreneurial and business leaders. She is Co-Founder of Vicious Bunny, a hybrid retail and technology platform with a mission to further S.T.E.A.M. education programs in grade schools through enabling kids to compete in code-based design competitions for the chance to have their design and code put on t-shirts. Both companies are early stage.
Analytics Pros is a high power consultancy with over 100 employees on staff when acquired in 2018 by PE-backed firm AdSwerve for $24 million. The digital analytics firm provides large enterprise clients globally with services including web and mobile app analytics, tag management, dashboards and reporting, website optimization, predictive and prescriptive analytics. Key clients include Starbucks, Visa, SAP, Coach, The New York Times & Tesla. Following her tenure as CEO, Charlotte successfully recruited a seasoned CEO and re-composed the fiduciary Board of Directors to include experienced outside directors. She led the board to support successful execution by the CEO in maturing the organization to a new operating model and sustained annual growth over 60%, transforming from founder-led to sustainable management-led operations. As Chair of the Board, Charlotte led the company through the acquisition process in 2018.
Charlotte is the Chair of Board for La Pointe Foundation, an international non-profit working with local doctors and teachers in healthcare, education and entrepreneurship. Work significantly in the La Pointe community near Port-de-Paix, Haiti, the organization supports the local hospital and funds the entire operations and ongoing expansion of a school providing classes to more than 380 children of a shanty-town area with no other access to education. Charlotte also volunteers as an educator to nurses, doctors, and midwives on maternal/child best practices for labor, delivery and postpartum care.
Martha Brooks shared strategies for creatively rethinking how you and your organization can help those in need during the pandemic, from first responders to families who are food insecure. She included best practices for how to rethink your mission; how to plan nationally but act locally; how to redeploy resources; and how to enlist the right partners.
More information on Martha Brooks (Grover):
After thirty years in heavy manufacturing, Martha is currently dedicated to breaking the cycle of poverty and poor education by enabling collaborations among business, non-profit and government organizations. Globally, she focuses on alleviating poverty and suffering through building businesses and skills that enable people, especially women, to help themselves. She is deeply involved with building the organizational capacity and reworking the strategy of CARE, one of the largest NGO’s in the world, as well as her work as a board director of three large and global manufacturing companies.
Karen Lithgow, Interim Chief Marketing Officer and Business/Organization Turnaround Specialist, from the Chameleon Collective shared the best practices on remote leadership and how to thrive during these challenging times. Karen discussed best practices for business owners, leaders, and managers how to run a remote company.
Key themes explored:
– Communicating the shift to remote working- the essentials
– Best Practices for Communication, Connecting and Culture
– Best Practices for Leaders
– Remote Do’s and Don’ts
– A Review of Tools for remote work
More information on Karen Lithgow (Tara):
Karen is a global marketing executive with a distinguished track record of innovating and transforming world class brands and businesses across various sectors.
Karen has held the role of Chief Brand and Marketing Officer and has worked with B2C and B2B firms ranging from Fortune 500 to early stage and mid-market fast growth private equity owned. She has led budgets and teams large and small, domestically and internationally, through acquisitions and spin-offs. She is an enterprising leader with proven success in concept-to-execution and business turnaround.
As a Partner and Consultant at the Chameleon Collective, Karen strategizes and executes cutting edge solutions to problems across the business, brand, and team to drive change and accelerate growth. She serves as interim Chief Marketing Officer and Brand Strategist and focuses on organizational development, transformation and turnaround.
As a corporate executive, Karen most recently was CMO/SVP Marketing for Kaplan and SVP Corporate Marketing for the ADT Corporation, where she led all integrated digital and non-digital marketing and the repositioning of the brand. She led teams responsible for driving demand and lead conversion, engagement and retention of millions of subscribers, and optimizing performance across digital ecosystems and integrated campaigns. At Western Union she held many leadership roles with global responsibility. In her position as VP & General Manager, International Remittance (US Outbound), she directed the company’s largest business, managing P&Ls $800M+ in revenue, and introduced the brand and new products to global markets. She successfully led a team of senior professionals with international responsibility, and developed Western Union’s multicultural marketing organization, acquiring and retaining more than 10 million consumers across all channels.
Earlier in her career, Karen held management roles at Fortune 100 companies such as The Walt Disney Company and Procter & Gamble (P&G). After joining Disney, Karen provided strategic marketing direction and execution for regional offices and Disney licensees and was part of a select global taskforce that developed the worldwide branding strategy for Disney Consumer Products. At P&G, she managed brands in diverse categories for various global markets.
Karen earned a Master of Science degree in international business from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service, where she was a Ford Foundation scholar, and graduated with honors, cum Laude from the University of Pennsylvania with a Bachelor of Arts. She serves on the Board of Directors for several non-profit organizations, advocating for diversity and working on behalf of women and girls, including the University of Pennsylvania’s promotion for diversity, Pace Center for Girls work to provide better futures through education, and Pro Mujer which serves Latin American women in extreme poverty. Karen is bilingual in Spanish and resides in Miami, Florida with her family.
Drs. Roberta Lee, Victoria Maizes, and Ann Marie Chiasson will help you learn more about how we can all harness the power of integrative medicine during this crisis.
Click here to view the slideshow of their presentation.
More information on Dr. Ann Marie Chiasson (Tara)
Ann Marie Chiasson, MD, MPH, is the Director of the Fellowship at the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine. She is an Associate Professor of Clinical Medicine in the Department of Medicine at the University of Arizona. Dr. Chiasson graduated with honors from Dalhousie School of Medicine in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and completed a residency in Family Medicine at the University of British Columbia. She is board certified in Integrative Medicine, Family Medicine, and Hospice and Palliative Medicine. Dr. Chiasson currently serves as the Chair for the American Board of Integrative Medicine.. She is the author of Energy Healing- the Essentials of Self Care (Sounds True 2013,) co-author of Self-Healing with Energy Medicine with Dr. Andrew Weil (Sounds True 2009,) as well as multiple other academic and instructional publications on Energy Healing and Integrative Medicine. She teaches Integrative Medicine and Energy Medicine around the country and has also worked extensively as a Medical Director in hospice in Tucson and as an Integrative Family Medicine physician in Tucson and Canada.
More information on Dr. Roberta Lee (Grover)
Roberta Lee is the Medical Director for Whole Health at the Southern Arizona Veteran ’ s Healthcare system in Tucson . She is participating in a nation – wide effort to introduce integrative medicine to the N ation ’ s 10 million veterans . In 2017, the Tucson VA became a regional Whole Health Flagship site designed to demonstrate a model of care for implementing integrative medicine in federal institution.
In 2014 she relocated from New York City to Tucson, Arizona. During her 15 years in New York, s he served a term as Vice Chair of the Department of Integrative Medicine at Mt Sinai Beth Israel Hospital and was Medical Director, of the Center for Health and Healing, one of New York’s first multidisciplinary integrative medicine primary care facili ties.
For over a decade, Dr. Lee has investigated the traditional use of medicinal plants in Micronesia, a collection of islands located in the Pacific basin. She continues to be an advisory member of the on the American Botanical Council a non-profit organization that serves as an international information resource for scientific information on botanical supplements and ethnobotanical research. She is now focusing her professional interests in traditional medicine to East Asian practices and is interested in educating her patients on more of these teachings especially the self-care components.
Dr. Lee is a recognized expert on the use of alternative, integrative therapies. In 2010 she released The SuperStress Solution (Random House) and has authored and edited many texts on integrative medicine. She continues to write and speak about stress, wellness, the use of botanical supplements and alternative health issues. Dr. Lee. has been interviewed in print and on the Internet and has appeared on the Today show, The View, Fox news, CBS and CNN.
More information on Dr. Victoria Maizes (Grover)
Dr. Victoria Maizes is Executive Director of the Andrew Weil Center for Integrative Medicine and a Professor of Medicine, Family Medicine and Public Health at The University of Arizona. Internationally recognized as a leader in integrative medicine, Dr Maizes is committed to helping individuals live healthier lives and pioneering change efforts that solve US health care system challenges. Together with her team at the Center for Integrative Medicine she created and implemented national programs that have reached thousands of health professionals; developed an innovative, integrative primary care clinical model; and is carrying out research to assess the effectiveness of integrative care.
Dr Maizes graduated from Barnard College of Columbia University, received her MD from the University of California, San Francisco, completed her residency in Family Medicine at the University of Missouri, Columbia, and her Fellowship in Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona.
A highly sought-after speaker, Dr. Maizes lectures worldwide to academic and community audiences on integrative medical education, women’s health, integrative pain management, healthy aging, nutrition, environmental issues, and cancer. She is the co-editor of the Oxford University textbook Integrative Women’s Health (2010 and 2015) and the author of Be Fruitful: The Essential Guide to Maximizing Fertility and Giving Birth to a Healthy Child (Scribner 2013). In 2009, Dr. Maizes was named one of the world’s 25 intelligent optimists by ODE magazine.
We all know the importance of having our “affairs in order”, but some of us may have left things on our “to-do” lists that now feel challenging given current events. Grover Laurie Ruckel talked with us about what we should all absolutely have in place, given today’s crisis, and what we can do right now to ensure that we and our families have what we need to have, and know what we need to know.
More about Laurie Ruckel (Grover)
Laurie Ruckel concentrates her practice on estate planning, succession planning, estate and trust administration and estate taxation. Her experience encompasses wills and trust agreements, estate and gift tax audits, succession planning for closely held businesses and prenuptial agreements. Laurie’s principal clients are high net worth individuals, closely held businesses, real estate clients and executives of publicly held companies.
Laurie also lectures on the subject of estate planning and the administration of trusts and estates. Laurie has numerous awards and recognition; including, named “Best Lawyer” in Trusts and Estates, The Best Lawyers in America, published by Woodward White, Inc. (2019-2020), Highest “AV Preeminent (5 out of 5)” Professional Rating in Martindale-Hubbell Law Directory, and named among the “Leading Women Lawyers in New York City” by Crain’s New York Business (2018).
Theo covered why the market was so susceptible to this tsunami, where we stand in this cycle, how to survive it, and what it will look like on the other side.
More information on Theo Schwabacher (Grover) Theo has 30+ years of experience in the investment and wealth advisory business, is a Certified Wealth Strategist, and is an ESG Director. She also serves as an independent director for Sportsmole and Nomiku, both are privately held companies. She started her career trading foreign currencies, gold and silver, and also acted as the municipal bond coordinator for Dean Witter, one of the largest San Francisco offices during the 1980’s. In the 1990’s, she ran an equity portfolio and coordinated the Branch Investment Consulting Services. Her current position, she concentrates on consulting for affluent families. Her comprehensive planning includes helping with asset allocation, assisting with investment policy formulation, manager search, performance monitoring and due diligence. Each client’s investment plan is customized, providing access to tax advice, estate planning strategies, philanthropic objectives with family and institutional goals. Theo is a fourth generation San Franciscan. Her grandfather and father were both involved in the brokerage and investment banking business and sold their company, Schwabacher and Co. to Dean Witter in 1968. Her own philanthropic participation has led her to participate on many boards in San Francisco. These include the San Francisco Cancer Society, Red Cross, San Francisco Mental Health Association, Merola and the San Francisco Opera Board. Her professional associations include Technical Analysts Association of San Francisco, Certified Investment Management, and the Morgan Stanley Presidents Club from 2006-present. Her current affiliations include: Morgan Stanley Women’s Business Exchange, The Women’s Global Warming Initiative, and National Women Board of Entrepreneurs. She co-chairs Women Corporate Directors Foundation of Northern California, which helps create diversity on public boards. Theo focuses on integrating your personal mission statements by investing with Impact for individual and institutional clients.
News and (mis)information about Covid-19 have gone viral! To separate speculation from fiction and give reasoned answers to your questions, Drs. Amy Baxter and Lisa Danzig will give their perspectives on the short and longterm timeline and future of Covid-19, vaccines and treatments, underlying risk factors (should you stop your ACE inhibitor?), and of course the science behind whether to turn your bra into two masks.
Click here to view the slideshow for the discussion.
Click here to learn how to make your own face mask.
Click the links below for 2 supplementary article for this discussion:
Estimating the number of infections and the impact of nonpharmaceutical interventions on COVID-19 in 11 European countries.
The Novel Coronavirus Outbreak: What We Know and What We Don’t
More information about Dr. Amy Baxter (Tara)
Amy Baxter MD FAAP FACEP founded Pain Care Labs in 2006 to eliminate unnecessary pain. She invented VibraCool® Vibrational Cryotherapy for tendinitis and to decrease opioid use, and her Buzzy® device has blocked needle pain for over 35 million procedures.
After Yale and Emory Medical School, she trained in pediatrics, child abuse, and emergency pediatrics, then founded PEMA Emergency Research, Scottish Rite, CHOA. Federally funded for needle pain & fear, opioid use, and neuromodulation research, she reviews for the NIH and publishes and lectures on needle fear, neuromodulation and pain. Scientific contributions include a hepatic enzyme algorithm to time child abuse, creating and validating the BARF nausea scale for kids with cancer, identifying the cause of the needle phobia increase and its impact on vaccination, and Buzzy and VibraCool. Speaking venues include Exponential Medicine, Bloomberg, Converge, TEDx Peachtree and TEDMED. Awards include 2017 Healthcare Transformer, Wall Street Journal “Idea Person”, Innovative GA Bio CEO of the Year, and a Top 10 Disruptor in Medical Tech. Also known for growing exotic plants for cocktails and turning down Mr. Wonderful on Shark Tank.
More information about Dr. Lisa Danzig (Tara)
Lisa Danzig, M.D. is an Infectious Diseases physician whose education and medical journey began at Reed College, OHSU, CPMC, and UCSF. As an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer with the US Centers for Disease Control, she worked in the Hospital Infections Program and had a special focus with the group maintaining the National Nosocomial Infection Surveillance System. Her Infectious Diseases fellowship at UCSF-Mt. Zion was the site of the reference virology lab for San Francisco. Because of her interest in infection control, she set up and managed an informal sentinel surveillance system for respiratory viral infections circulating in the community. This helped to understand and inform practitioners about clinical patterns associated with each virus and help them better manage community illnesses by knowing “what’s going around”.
She joined Chiron in 1997 (acquired by Novartis in 2006) and spent the following decade leading clinical development teams on meningococcal vaccine development (Menjugate, Menveo, Bexsero). In 2006 she moved to Siena, Italy and was responsible for establishing the Early Clinical Development function. She was also responsible for clinical licensing evaluation, and led the R&D integration team for the acquisition of Tianyuan Biopharm, Hangzhou, CN. Returning to California in 2010 she led the Medical and Scientific Affairs groups at Novartis Diagnostics, a global market leader that provided blood screening solutions for nucleic acid detection of HIV, HBV, HCV, WNV and emerging threats (Dengue, Chikungunya, Zika, Babesia). After the acquisition of Novartis Diagnostics by Grifols, she was the Chief Medical Officer at PaxVax, with a social mission to provide vaccines for diseases that were overlooked by the industry and yet of importance to travelers (Cholera, Typhoid), with development programs for Chikungunya and Adenovirus. (Acquired by Emergent Biosolutions Oct 2018). She co-founded Amicitiam Partners and provides advisory services to investors and biotechnology companies. She is an independent director at OrSense (non-invasive hemoglobin monitoring system) and an advisor to PocketPatientMD (PPMD), and Kernel. In the non-profit world, she serves on the advisory board of the Lemelson Foundation (improving lives through invention), and as a director of the Karuna Foundation (adaptation/climate change) and Sustainable Sciences Institute (building global public health research capacity).
Many employees are being asked to work from home for the very first time. Mary has 5 tips the new remote workforce can do to protect themselves at home from cyber threats.
Click here to view a video of the entire discussion with Mary Chaney.
More information about Mary N. Chaney, Esq., CISSP, CIPP/US (Tara)
Mary N. Chaney, Esq., CISSP, CIPP/US has over 25 years of progressive experience within the fields of Information Security, Privacy and Risk Management. Ms. Chaney began her career journey by serving as a Special Agent for the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in Los Angeles. Mary’s global experience includes executive level information security roles with GE Capital, Johnson & Johnson, and Comcast Corporation. Mary’s entrepreneur endeavors include starting and running MBS Information Security Consulting, LLC and most recently Mary opened the Law Offices of Mary N. Chaney, P.L.L.C, The Cyber Security Law Firm Of Texas, with the specific mission of helping translate and advise, Boards of Directors, CIO’s, CISO’s and General Counsel’s on how to legally protect their company from cyber related risk. Mary has served on several advisory boards including: Post University; ChickTech; CompTIA© Cybersecurity Advisory Board; and The Cyber Law Consortium. Mary is an adjunct professor with the University of Cincinnati, where she teaches online courses in cybersecurity to assist with the development of the next generation of cybersecurity professionals. Lastly, she has recently launched her own nonprofit, Minorities in Cybersecurity, Inc. (MiC) which focuses on support, leadership and career development for women and minorities in cybersecurity.
Mary hosts a video blog. Today’s blog is about the types of things to watch out for from cybercriminals during this pandemic. You can watch her blogs here: https://youtu.be/flUwiBcVNUA
Our first presenter was Dr. Alicia Clark, (AKA Lilie) who shared her expertise on managing our anxiety when anxiety runs high.
Dr. Alicia Clark is a Washington, DC–based licensed psychologist specializing in anxiety and relationships and author of Hack Your Anxiety: How to Make Anxiety Work for You In Life, Love, and All That You Do, which debuted as #1 New Release on Amazon in 2018. Clark has been named one of Washington’s Top Doctors by Washingtonian magazine and has served as adjunct clinical faculty at the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. Clark is passionate about changing the stigma she believes worsens anxiety, and has has worked with and written for popular outlets including the NYTimes, O Magazine, TIME, the Huffington Post, and Yahoo. She is a contributing blogger for Psychology Today, and maintains an active blog on her website, www.aliciaclarkpsyd.com