Summit Overview
In Today's World, it will be the Innovators, Collaborators, and Reinventors who will Inspire and Lead their Organizations... Details!
Media & Downloads
Conference Attendees and WITI Members can Access Exclusive PDF's, Powerpoints, Audio and Podcasts as well as Event Photos and Videos of Hall of Famers!
Event Schedule
Phenomenal Keynotes, Renowned Speakers, Networking Opportunities and More... Details!
Speakers & Keynotes
WITI's 20th Anniversary Summit will Feature Inspirational Speakers, Innovative Keynotes and Much More... Details!
WITI Hall of Fame Awards
Four Leaders in Science and Technology will be Honored at WITI's Hall of Fame Awards Dinner... Watch Videos of Previous Inductees!
Sponsors & Exhibitors
WITI would Like to Thank All of our 20th Anniversary Sponsors and Exhibitors... Details!
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Who Attends?
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Anne Adams PhD
President, ACS
The World Cafe
Anne Adams PhD
President, ACS
Anne has worked with many Fortune 50 companies and educational institutions both nationally and internationally. She has designed and led organizational transformation programs through seminars, workshops and educational programs for individuals, corporations, professional groups and educational institutions for more than 30 years.
She has been a teacher, school director, university instructor, a manager in an international educational corporation, and a business consultant to both large and small corporations.
Anne has worked with senior leaders and their teams from companies as varied as IBM, Mars, Heinz, AT&T, Lucent Technologies, Procter & Gamble, The Rouse Company, EZ Communications, to government entities like the Pentagon and non profits, e.g. IONS, and many schools throughout the United States and India.
Dr Adams contributes her expertise in Organization Transformation by integrating transformative practices, e.g. The World Café, a process in collaborative dialogue, Appreciative Inquiry, a framework for creating a learning organization, The Collaborative Way, a company’s values and culture brought to the forefront, with Navigating From the Future, an approach FOR sustaining transformation.
Currently her work is focused on integral education practices both within educational institutions and businesses – accentuating the need to honor the integral nature of the human being, e.g., developing and integrating all of our intelligences - mental, the emotional, physical, social and spiritual. The impact this has on our relationships, the quality of results produced, and a worldview literary that is truly integral is of great interest.
Lauren Berger
, Intern Queen/Quarterlife
Sandy Carter
VP, Software Business Partners, IBM
Keynote Lunch
Social Media Café - hands on workshop (bring your laptop)
Social Media Cafe - hands on workshop (bring your laptop)
Sandy Carter is Vice President, Software Business Partners. In this role, she is responsible for worldwide cross-company sales and marketing for the business partner channel for IBM Software Group. This business is one of the three major growth engines for the Software Group business, and where IBM invests $2.5 billion in channel programs. The business partner program at IBM has won awards from VAR Business 2008, CRN Channel Champions, Xchange Excellence, and Forrester ISV Partner Program. In 2009, Everything Channels CRN magazine named Ms. Carter one of the most powerful 100 women in channels, and the World Brand Congress honored her with the Brand Leader of the Year award. Recently, Altimeter Group named Ms. Carter one of the top 10 women in social media.
Prior to her current position, Ms. Carter was VP, SOA, BPM and WebSphere Strategy, Channels and Marketing. Under her leadership, IBM's service oriented architecture (SOA) marketing efforts resulted in 70 percent market share for SOA. In addition, IBM WebSphere® became a market leader and has received more than 34 industry awards. Fast Company named Ms. Carter one of the most influential women in technology.
Ms. Carter is the best selling author of two books, "The New Language of Business: SOA & Web 2.0", which won the Platinum MarCom Award in 2008, and "The New Language of Marketing 2.0: Social Media", which won the Silver MarketingSherpa award in 2009. She is an avid social media evangelist leading an award winning marketing team to over 24 awards, and is one of the top Bloggers and Twitter-ers in IBM. Ms. Carter received a MarCom award for her blogger and Twitter communities.
She is on the board of WITI (Women in Technology International) Executive Advisory Council, WITI GEN (Global Executive Network), the Forrester CMO Council, and International Child Art Foundation (ICAF). She also serves as a Board Member of the Grace Hopper Industry Advisory Committee. She is a member of the Marketing Focus Advisory Council; the Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Inner Circle, the American Management Association (AMA), and the Society of Women Engineers (SWE). She was honored in 2008, and previously in 2005, with the AIT United Nations Member of the Year award for helping developing countries in the area of technology. Ms. Carter is listed in Madison's Who's Who.
Ms. Carter holds a Bachelor of Science degree in math and computer science from Duke University and an MBA from Harvard, and is fluent in eight programming languages. She received a patent for developing a methodology and tool to help customers create a technology deployment path in automation of their IT processes.
Visit her best rated blog at: http://socialmediasandy.wordpress.com/ and Twitter - http://twitter.com/sandy_carter
Jori Clarke
CEO, SpectraCom
Social Media Café - hands on workshop
Maggie Fox
Founder and CEO, Social Media Group
Keynote Lunch
Social Media Café - hands on workshop (bring your laptop)
Maggie Fox is the founder and CEO of Social Media Group, one of the world's largest independent agencies helping business navigate the new socially engaged Web. Widely acknowledged as industry-leading pioneers, SMG has created and executed social media strategies for Ford Motor Company, SAP, Yamaha Motor and Harlequin Publishing.
Maggie is a communications and content expert who has never met a medium she didn't like. Over the course of her career, she has led teams that have marketed, written and produced television and web content for some of the biggest and best-known in North America, including Sears, Deloitte and Disney. Maggie is often asked to speak to the press and business groups about the importance and use of social media in the enterprise.
Feather Hickox
Director, Web Channel, FICO
Social Media Café - hands on workshop (bring your laptop)
Feather Hickox is Director of Web Channel for FICO. In this role, she oversees all digital marketing efforts as well as the development and design of all customer-facing web properties. She led the effort to develop the company’s community website, decisions.fico.com, and is a champion of web 2.0 marketing techniques.
Prior to joining FICO, Feather spent 10 years in the retail eCommerce space, running the Digital Marketing efforts for Restoration Hardware and NapaStyle.
Marjorie Kase
Co-Founder, MarKyr Media
Social Media Café - hands on workshop
Marjorie Kase is the Co-Founder of MarKyr Media, an L.A. based Social Media PR consulting firm dedicated to teaching entrepreneurs "how to fish" using leading-edge Social Web tools and technology. Marjorie has over 15 years experience in marketing, publicity, and content production online. Prior to co-founding Markyr, she founded Blogger Reps (www.bloggerreps.com), a blogger relations firm located in San Francisco. The Blogger Reps Network, comprised of top entertainment and tech sites, holds a collective reach of over 44 million monthly unique visitors and 420 million monthly page views.
Marjorie was the Managing Editor of the entertainment blog, TV with MeeVee. There, she oversaw all editorial and marketing efforts, blogger relations, TV network relations, and red carpet reporting. Prior to joining MeeVee, Marjorie held promotions project management positions at Yahoo, Red Bull GmbH, and the first permission marketing firm, Yoyodyne.
Marjorie holds a Bachelor's Degree in American History and Film from Oberlin College, and a Master's Degree in Media Studies from the University of Texas at Austin.
Betty LaMarr
Executive Coach, Nadisa Associates
Discovering a Path to Business & Life Success Without Compromise
Betty LaMarr, international speaker and author is President of Nadisa Associates an executive coaching and consulting business. Betty’s many years in business are distinguished by significant accomplishments in a wide range of senior positions. She has served as the Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing for a South African telecommunications company, Executive Vice President of an Orange County IT Consulting firm, Global Alliance Executive for a Boston-based technology integration firm and Director of Business Development for a worldwide diversity consulting firm.
Betty specializes in supporting women to achieve success by valuing their talents and abilities while focusing on strengths instead of fears. She can help you understand the politics so you can influence the decisions in your favor. She will show you how to separate emotions from the facts and get the best from your work relationships.
Shira Lazar
Founder, Shira Lazar Productions, Inc.
Social Media Café - hands on workshop
Shira Lazar has made her name on TV as host of the weekly lifestyle magazine show FIRST LOOK and OPEN HOUSE on NBC, and as a correspondent on Reelz Channel's daily movie news show DAILIES. You can catch her own daily adventures in lifestyle, entertainment and tech on her blog, The Pop Report, where she has partnered with Nokia to lifestream "On the go" video uploaded directly from her phone. Her most recent projects include hosting DirecTV's live one-hour interactive special from the Detroit International Auto Show, participating as a social media maven on Ashton Kutcher's 24 HOURS AT SUNDANCE and as a blogger/vlogger on Travel Channel's upcoming CONFESSIONS OF A TRAVEL WRITER. Shira also appears frequently on Fox News Channel, CNN and MSNBC.
Alison McNeill
Journalist, 2.0
Alison McNeill is an account manager at FutureWorks, an award-winning social media and PR agency in Silicon Valley and San Francisco founded by Brian Solis. McNeill has helped launched numerous startups in the Web 2.0 space where she has secured favorable coverage in prominent tech blogs such as TechCrunch and Mashable, as well as many mainstream outlets from the New York Times to CNN. She’s also a reporter with bub.blicio.us
Miiko Mentz
Senior Director of New Media & PR, FutureWorks
Social Media Café - hands on workshop (bring your laptop)
Miiko Mentz is the senior director of New Media & PR at FutureWorks, an award-winning social media and PR agency in Silicon Valley and San Francisco founded by Brian Solis. Mentz is also a web video producer/editor, marketer and blogger. She serves as video producer to Bub.blicio.us, a technology blog that covers the Social Economy. Her social media and blogger relations work has helped numerous companies increase their brand awareness, visibility and credibility among industry influencers, partners and customers. Mentz has been in PR and marketing communications for more than a decade, and is currently working with startups in the Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 space.
Nilofer Merchant
Entrepreneur, CEO & Chief Strategist, Rubicon Consulting
Reinvention as an Economic Necessity
Social Media Café - hands on workshop (bring your laptop)
CEO, Author and Strategist, Nilofer is a leading authority on creating business strategy to win markets. Having worked inside and outside major corporate brands like Adobe, Apple, Nokia, SAP and others, Nilofer has honed her collaborative approach to solving tough problems.
As Rubicon’s founder and CEO, she leads a distinguished team of operational veterans. Her firm is hired by global brands such as Hewlett-Packard, Pinnacle, Logitech, Openwave, Symantec and others to create the solutions to win markets.
Her keynotes attract SRO crowds at business leadership events, technology expos, women’s conferences and universities – ranging from AjaxWorld to CTIA and PBWC to Stanford. Having won multiple awards for her insights on applying strategic thinking and innovation, she’s been quoted or published in major business publications such as BusinessWeek, Entrepreneur, Fortune and The Wall Street Journal.
Nilofer earned her MBA from Santa Clara University, a BS in Economics from University of San Francisco and is a certified Instructor of Facilitative Leadership from Interaction Associates. O’Reilly Media is publishing Nilofer’s book on the art of collaborative strategy creation, in Fall ’09.
Jane Pak
CEO, NAWBO-LA
Jane Pak currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of the National Association of Women Business Owners, Los Angeles Chapter (NAWBO-LA). Ms Pak is responsible for the development, oversight, implementation, communication and evaluation of all strategies and activities related to the day-to-day administration of the organization. NAWBO-LA is one of the largest and most dynamic of the 83 nationwide chapters of the National Association of Women Business Owners, NAWBO-LA represents the interests of an estimated 543,000-plus privately held, 50% or more women-owned firms in the greater Los Angeles region, employing over 692,000 people and generating nearly $125 billion in sales. In her capacity as CEO, she also serves as Founding Chair of SCORE Chapter 705, the first chapter in the history of the organization created exclusively for women.
Prior to joining NAWBO-LA, Ms. Pak spent over 10 years in various capacities in the public and private sectors. Best known as a solutions strategist, she spent nearly 4 years as a consultant specializing in brand and business development strategies around global citizenship profiles. Prior to private practice, Ms. Pak served as the youngest Asian-American Presidential Appointee to serve the U.S. Small Business Administration. As Director of External Affairs, she created and implemented national strategic alliances with major national and regional business trade associations delivering sound and measurable directives for robust agency engagement with key business and community stakeholders. With the 43rd Administration, Ms. Pak served as a liaison to the White House Initiative on Asian Americans; a Presidential Advisory Board and later as an advisory council member to the Race and Ethnic Advisory Committee (REAC) to the U.S. Census Bureau. During her tenure, more Asian Americans were appointed by the President to serve the 43rd Administration than all past Presidential Administrations combined.
Leading up to her service in Washington, DC, Ms. Pak served in various State and Local Government capacities. An alumni of Florida State University, Ms. Pak began her career in Tallahassee, Florida where she holds the distinction of being the first and youngest Asian American to serve an elected official in both Houses of the Florida Legislature, first as Senior Legislative Aide to Former House Representative James Tullis and later as Chief of Staff for Former State Senator and Chairman of the Democratic Black Caucus, Daryl Jones. She later went on to spearhead the $100 million federal appropriations package for Miami Dade County, under the leadership of former County Mayor Alex Penelas.
Ms. Pak is an ardent personal supporter of philanthropic causes including the San Diego Officers Wives Club, the Korean Youth & Community Center, the LA Philharmonic, Avon Walk, National Foundation for Teaching Entrepreneurship, Big Brothers Big Sisters and First Tee.
Michelle Price
CEO, Social Media Savvy
After 23 years of working in huge organizations and corporations, Michelle Price took a leap of faith to go from wage slave to the entrepreneur lifestyle she craved - her first client went from unknown author to popular cultural hero in less than 18 months - mega entrepreneur John Assaraf is now a featured teacher in the wildly popular movie The Secret, has a major book deal with Simon & Schuster, and has launched small business coaching franchise, OneCoach.
As CEO of the new media company A Third Mind Interactive, Michelle Price is known for staying on the cutting edge of what's next online. Now, she's blazing a trail for women entrepreneurs to follow in Web 2.0 and the "Social Web" - social networking and internet community development.
Michelle is the secret internet weapon behind some of today's most successful NY Times best selling authors, influential bloggers, entrepreneurs and speakers and her clients have been on Oprah, The Donny Deutsch Show, Larry King Live, blog for the Huffington Post, and have been written up in Fortune, Business Week, and many others.
Neerja Raman
Senior Research Fellow, Stanford University
Social Media Café - hands on workshop (bring your laptop)
Neerja Raman is a recognized author and executive in management research. Neerja is former Director, Strategic Planning and Imaging Systems Lab, Hewlett Packard Labs and currently Senior Fellow at Stanford University where she is developing business and leadership models for social entrepreneurs. She is on the advisory committee for Cyber-Infrastructure, National Science Foundation and board member of several non-profits. She was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame in 2005 for global leadership and was recognized with a Distinguished Citizen Award by Federation of Indo Americans in 2006. Neerja’s book, “The Practice and Philosophy of Decision Making” was featured in the category “Books that Empower Women” by WITI. Her research at Stanford has been published in various conference proceedings and as chapter “Eco-Stacking: A Strategy for Success in Social and Business Agendas” in the summer 2007 book “Innovative Approaches to Reducing Global Poverty”. Neerja is a graduate of the Kellogg Executive Program, Northwestern University, and has Masters degrees from S.U.N.Y Stony Brook, New York and Delhi University, India.
Kyra Reed
Co-Founder, MarKyr Media
Kyra Reed is the Co-Founder of MarKyr Media, an L.A. based Social Media PR consulting firm dedicated to teaching entrepreneurs "how to fish" using leading-edge Social Web tools and technology. Kyra possesses more than 15 years of experience in marketing and Social Media. Prior to forming MarKyr, Kyra was a New Media Consultant working with clients such as Little Radio, The Monterey Pop Festival, Unsigned Artists, MoPo Productions, The Upsidedown and many other Los Angeles-based independent bands.
Kyra has held Director of Marketing positions at Playback Systems, Norde-Oust, and Turn Events. She was also the Director of Business Development at Amp Studios and co-founder of the Ground Floor Cinema, a monthly film festival dedicated to honoring local Pacific Northwest filmmakers.
Kyra is the author of Blog 101 (www.blog101book.com), a beginners guide to blogging. Her passionate writings on Social Media PR and Marketing can be found both on her personal blog, Kyrareed.com (www.kyrareed.com) and Blog 101.
Stephanie Schlegel
Brand Manager of New Media & PR, FutureWorks
Stephanie Schlegel is the brand manager of New Media & PR at FutureWorks, an award-winning social media and PR agency in Silicon Valley and San Francisco founded by Brian Solis. Ms. Schlegel has represented clients ranging from startups to large corporations in the consumer and technology space, including Amazon.com and Microsoft. Her work as both a traditional and new media public relations professional has helped clients increase visibility, credibility and brand awareness. She also writes about technology and the Internet on her personal blog PseudoTechGirl.com. Ms. Schlegel is a graduate of the University of San Francisco.
Joey Tamer
Consultant, Expert, JoeyTamer.com
Social Media Café - hands on workshop
Joey Tamer (http://www.joeytamer.com ) is a widely-acclaimed strategic consultant to Fortune 500 companies, mid-sized businesses, and capitalized start-ups, often serving as a “shadow CEO” to extend her clients’ bandwidth. She advises both product and service companies.
Her work drives up her clients’ valuations, profitability, growth and dealflow. She has a specialty in strategies to use new social media networks to optimize market share and revenue.
Her clients have included J.P. Morgan Capital, Sony, IBM, Apple, Hearst, Blockbuster, Technicolor, Harper Collins, Discovery Channel, Time-Warner, Agfa and Scitex, and many early stage ventures such as Earthweb (IPO 1998) and iSuppli.
Her clients say she is “a brilliant strategist and a practical, down-to-earth, get-it-done person,” “invaluable in understanding the competitive landscape and alternative strategies” and that she “cuts right through the noise, giving a clear vision of the future,” “protecting us from liability and cutting our costs.”
Since 1981, her clients have been in the business, enterprise and consumer sectors, with companies in technology, hardware and software, media and entertainment, publishing and advertising, distribution, and investment and venture funding. She has worked in the U.S., Europe and China.
A strategist, policymaker, dealmaker, and negotiator, her work includes strategies on entry, exit, capitalization, return on investment, growth, positioning, leveraging the new social media networks, pricing, distribution, risk-assessment, new market and international expansion, due diligence, and intellectual property.
Lorrie Thomas M.A.
Marketing Therapist, Web Marketing Therapy
Social Media Café - hands on workshop
Social Media Café - hands on workshop (bring your laptop)
Lorrie Thomas, M.A., is a marketing educator, writer, strategist, web marketing expert and speaker. She is the founder of Web Marketing Therapy, a smart, fun, full-service marketing agency and a recession-friendly self-help online marketing educational resource. Her "wild web woman" team serves small businesses, entrepreneurs and marketers. Their work ensures marketing treats the cause (vs band-aiding symptoms) so all marketing pieces click. She teaches Web Marketing Applications, Social Media Marketing and Search Engine Marketing Applications classes at UCSB Extension and UC Berkeley Extension. Ms. Thomas was on the founding team at ValueClick Media. She launched Lorrie Thomas Web Marketing (LTWM) in 2005 to help small business owners use the web to boost their business. LTWM now serves organizations exclusively for advisory, speaking, training and classes. Organizations bring her on as an expert advisor to get their web marketing on the fast track for success. Ms. Thomas speaks nationally on a number of marketing-related topics and caters her presentations to the business, niche, skill sets and professional concerns of her attendees. She writes for several online publications and has been interviewed by the eCommerce Times, DM News and Tech News World and quoted frequently as a nationally recognized marketing expert. You can learn more about Lorrie Thomas at www.webmarketingtherapy.com or www.lorriethomas.com
Julie Youngblood
Co-founder/Career Advisor, dear jane...
Charlene Li
Founder, Altimeter Group
Social Media Café - hands on workshop
Keynote
Charlene Li is an independent thought leader on emerging technologies, with a specific focus on social technologies, interactive media, and marketing. She has a blog, "The Altimeter" that discusses these topics at blog.altimetergroup.com.
She is also the co-author of the business bestseller, "Groundswell: Winning In A World Transformed By Social Technologies", published by Harvard Business Press in May 2008.
Charlene is one of the most frequently-quoted industry analysts and has appeared on 60 Minutes, The McNeil NewsHour, ABC News, CNN, and CNBC. She is also frequently quoted by The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, USAToday, Reuters, and The Associated Press. She is a much-sought after public speaker and has presented frequently at top technology conferences such as Web 2.0 Expo, SXSW, and adTech.
Most recently, Charlene was a Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research. She joined Forrester in 1999, after spending five years in online and newspaper publishing with the San Jose Mercury News and Community Newspaper Company. She was also a consultant with Monitor Group in Boston and Amsterdam.
She is a graduate of Harvard Business School and received a magna cum laude degree from Harvard College.
Carolyn Leighton
Founder/Chairwoman, WITI
Founder's Reception
Carolyn Leighton founded WITI in 1989 as a worldwide e-mail network for women in all technology sectors. At the time WITI was established, Ms. Leighton was President of Criterion Research, a research consulting firm for the high tech industry which she founded in 1984, as well as chair of the Core Competency Database Project at Stanford University.
Due to Ms. Leighton's leadership and vision, WITI has grown to be the premiere brand and worldwide organization dedicated to empowering women worldwide to achieve unimagined possibilities and transformations through technology, leadership and economic prosperity.
Ms. Leighton has 35 years of experience as an educator and entrepreneur. In addition to WITI, she founded four start-ups in the high-tech, legal sectors and, most recently, the pet industry. She attended the University of Michigan and has a bachelor's degree in human development from Pacific Oaks College. Ms. Leighton was named one of the "Top 100 Women in Computing" in 1997 and 2000.
In addition to her continuing work with WITI, Ms. Leighton now runs a dog camp on the central coast of California.
And more to be announced soon!