Featured Speaker(s)

Mary Elizabeth Reiss is the Vice President of the Office at RTI International. She will kick off the RTP WITI Network's "Her-Story" Series. Mary Elizabeth negotiates contracts and leads the Contracts and Operational Compliance Departments. She manages a staff of approximately 80 people and nine departmental functions, including export compliance, industrial security, corporate systems and reporting and business process initiatives.



"Her-story" includes 20 years of navigating and progressing in a traditionally male environment. She started her career as a Navy buyer and spent the majority of career working on defense contracts. Still today, she frequently still enters environments and finds that she the only or one of very few females in attendance. During the years she has worked in the area of Aerospace and Defense Contracting, the career field has opened up significantly and the number of woman has increased. However, it is still apparent at the upper levels, particularly the senior management levels, that the career path is still a male dominant one.



Mary Elizabeth earned a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and English. She earned her MBA from the Florida Institute of Technology and completed a Graduate Certificate in International Trade Compliance. She is a Black Belt Six Sigma (Lean Six Sigma GE model) and has been trained to be an ISO 9000 auditor.



She is a member of the following organizations:

* Member of National Contract Association holding the certification of "Certified Professional Contracts Manager"

* Society of International Affairs

* National Classifications Management Society

* CFO Conference Board



She is most proud to have set up two International Licensing / Compliance Departments at two different organizations. She revamped the process at one organization from requests on "Sticky Notes" to a well organized and fully automated process using web based tools. RTI recruited Mary based on her process skills and international compliance expertise. She currently is working on an executive team focused on the institute’s organizational effectiveness and efficiency and within her own office, she is focusing on transforming the departments to activity based functions. The goal of her work with her Contracts Office team is deliver world class services to the rest of the organization and their clients, by focusing on the effectiveness and efficiency and agility.