Cara Allamano

Cara Brennan Allamano is SVP of People, Places and Learning at Udemy, the leading global marketplace for learning and instruction. She has deep experience scaling HR operations, recruiting, and learning & development at fast-moving, global companies. Prior to joining Udemy, she was SVP of People at Planet (formerly Planet Labs) and previously served in HR leadership roles at Pinterest, Efficient Frontier, Young and Rubicam, and Knight Ridder, among others. Cara is also co-founder of PeopleTech Partners, a group of HR leaders working to bring new HR/recruiting technologies to market.

Liz Gulliver

Liz Gulliver is the co-founder of Kunik, the leading family support solution for employers and caregivers.

The inspiration for Kunik came while Liz was working in finance and considering her own family planning. She saw friends and family struggle to juggle both career and family in a broken system that offered little support to working parents. While the number of working women and dual career couples has been steadily increasing for generations, the support systems for today’s working parents have not changed in decades. Liz and her cofounder, Josh, started Kunik to fill the massive void in employers support: ongoing solutions for all families. Kunik is at the forefront of family benefits developing actionable, practical solutions for all caregivers.

Liz is a mother to a 1 year old and is due with her second at the end of November. She is a graduate of Yale University and Columbia Business School.

Faye Penn

Faye Penn is the executive director of women.nyc, an initiative of the New York City Economic Development Corporation dedicated to helping NYC women succeed in their careers through an array of innovative programs and partnerships. In previous lives, she was a small business owner, founder of the webmag Brokelyn, an editor for titles including New York Magazine, The New York Post, The New York Observer and InStyle magazine as well as an executive at Lifetime Television.

Andy Pittman

As VP of Talent Strategy at Mailchimp, Andy Pittman and his team focus on ensuring Mailchimp grows with a diverse group of humble, creative, and independent thinkers that are passionate about empowering the underdog. He oversees all recruiting and talent acquisition, people development opportunities like apprenticeships and internships, and learning and development initiatives like Mailchimp University, an MBA-style program taught by Emory University professors. Prior to joining Mailchimp, Andy built out the talent function at Pindrop, and helped build Scoutmob by running talent and managing sales and company operations. Andy graduated from Auburn University and also founded an Atlanta-based holiday decorating business and Big Gorilla Jerky, a grass fed beef jerky “business” satisfying the needs of jerky lovers everywhere.

Havonnah Johnson

Havonnah Johnson loves a good challenge. She leverages over 15 years of Communication, Human Capital and Business Development experience across multiple industries including broadcast news, non-profit, education and QSR. The common thread: she invests in people, uses data to implement and streamline processes to grow market share.

As People Officer Havonnah has earned the reputation of being an innovative and energetic Leadership Development principal with the ability to coach people to their potential.  Some days she is strategizing with Franchisee’s on how to improve their Overall Customer Satisfaction. Other days it is coaching colleagues on career-mapping, goal-setting and time management.

Havonnah’s passion for people has resulted in an unorthodox and fascinating career. Google says she is an exercise enthusiast and an Oklahoma news anchor. (You can’t believe that stuff online, although she did spend 10 years as a broadcast journalist.)  Her friends and family say she has a heart for service and loves a good game night. Her colleagues say she is an advocate, thought partner and change agent.

W. Brad Johnson

W. Brad Johnson, PhD is Professor of psychology in the Department of Leadership, Ethics and Law at the United States Naval Academy, and a Faculty Associate in the Graduate School of Education at Johns Hopkins University. A clinical psychologist, Dr. Johnson is a mentoring expert specializing in developing gender-inclusive mentoring cultures for organizations around the globe. Dr. Johnson is the author of numerous publications including 14 books, in the areas of mentoring, professional ethics, gender inclusion. Recent books include: Good Guys: How Men Can Become Better Allies for Women in the Workplace, Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women (both with David Smith) and the Elements of Mentoring 3^rd Ed. (with Charles Ridley).

David G. Smith

David Smith, PhD, is co-author of the forthcoming book, Good Guys: How Men Can Be Better Allies for Women in the Workplace and Associate Professor of Sociology in the College of Leadership and Ethics at the U.S. Naval War College. A former Navy pilot, Dr. Smith led diverse organizations of women and men culminating in command of a squadron in combat and flew more than 3,000 hours over 30 years including combat missions in Iraq and Afghanistan. As a sociologist trained in military sociology and social psychology, he focuses his research in gender, work, and family issues including gender bias in performance evaluations, dual career families, military families, women in the military, and retention of women. He is the co-author of Athena Rising: How and Why Men Should Mentor Women and numerous journal articles and book chapters that focus on gender and the workplace. Learn more about David at: davidgsmithphd.com

Alyson Watson

Alyson Watson is the founder and CEO of Modern Health, the mental wellness platform that combines well-being assessments based on WHO principles, personalized stress management support, an international network of certified coaches, and licensed therapists available in 35 languages to deliver wellness across a broad range of individual needs. Modern Health empowers employers to lead the charge in acknowledging that mental health is just as important as physical health, destigmatizing coaching and therapy, and increasing accessibility of mental health services for all. Prior to starting Modern Health, Alyson held leadership roles including health industry strategy consulting at PwC, healthy behavior change management at Keas (acquired by Welltok), and partner point solution integrations at Collective Health. She graduated from Johns Hopkins University with a degree in global environmental change and sustainability. Alyson has been named to the Forbes 30 Under 30 and Fortune 40 Under 40 lists.

Ali O’Malley

Dr. Ali O’Malley specializes in the design and implementation of interventions to promote positive growth and development in employees and the organizations to which they belong. She has dedicated the past 15+ years to advancing the experience of work.

Ali has a MA and PhD in industrial-organizational psychology from The University of Akron. Her consulting experience spans a wide variety of industries including tech, higher ed, manufacturing and warehousing, agriculture, construction, insurance, and nonprofits (particularly environmental and youth services). In her corporate and consulting roles, she worked closely with C-suite and senior business leaders on talent strategy, the future of work, and diversity and inclusion initiatives.

Ali regularly facilitates workshops, publishes, and presents at national and international conferences on topics including talent analytics and performance enablement.

Marianne Cooper

Marianne Cooper, Ph.D., is a sociologist, speaker, writer, and expert adviser. She is a senior research scholar at Stanford University’s VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab and an affiliate at the Stanford Center on Poverty & Inequality. Dr. Cooper was the lead researcher for Sheryl Sandberg’s NYT best-seller Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead and has been an author on all of the Lean In & McKinsey Women in the Workplace reports.

Dr. Cooper is an expert on gender, women’s leadership, diversity and inclusion, financial insecurity, and economic inequality. Her book, Cut Adrift: Families in Insecure Times, examines how families are coping in an insecure age. A LinkedIn influencer, she has written for The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Washington Post, Harvard Business Review, CNN, and Politico among others. She is a frequent public speaker, most recently at TEDx, the NYT New Rules Summit, Fortune MPW Next Gen, Adobe, Sony, and more.

Dr. Cooper received her Ph.D. in sociology from the University of California, Berkeley.

Lisa Nichols

Lisa Nichols is a Human Resources Advisor parting with the Mortgage organization within Citigroup. She has over 20 years of experience in the financial services industry, where she held various Human Resources roles in Retail Banking, Corporate and Investment Banking, Transaction Services, Cards and more recently in the Mortgage business. Lisa has worked in the United States and abroad in the United Kingdom as both an individual contributor and in people management roles. She has also served on a HR review team for our Consumer Bank in Mexico City, Mexico.

Prior to joining Citi, Lisa worked with American National Bank and Trust Company (now Chase), Executive Compensation for Aon and interned with Hyatt Hotels Corporation.

Lisa holds both a BA in Economics and an MBA in Human Resources from the University of Illinois in Champaign-Urbana. She is also currently pursuing a HR Advisor certificate at Cornell University.  She has served as the HR Liaison for both the Citi Chicago Women’s and Black Heritage Networks and has previously helped create and serve on several diversity councils.

Outside of Citi, Lisa is a member of the National Black MBA Association, a former board member for the Delaware Business Roundtable and the Delaware Bankers Association. She has volunteered with American Corporate Partners, Associated Colleges of Illinois, Junior Achievement, and Pathways to Progress affiliate nonprofits organizations.  She mentors several people both inside and outside of her company. She also serves as the Vice President for her local elementary school PTA and assists her local schoolboard by serving on the selection and assessment committee when there are schoolboard vacancies.  Lisa lives in Skokie, IL with her husband and two sons.

Rochelle Rosato

Myla Skinner

As chief of staff to the CEO at OneGoal, Myla provides partnership and support to the CEO and other staff across the organization. She works to ensure that strategic organization-wide efforts and initiatives are moving forward in ways that advance the mission and build the culture of the organization. Myla is currently pursuing her MBA at Loyola University Chicago as a Baumhart Scholar. Baumhart Scholars MBA prepares leaders from the private, government, and social sectors to thrive at the intersection of profit and purpose.

Myla is also the founder and managing partner of Quarter Five. After working in nonprofits in Chicago for more than 15 years, Myla saw a gap in how businesses and organizations were (or were not) managing complex change. Myla often witnessed amazing organizations, productive teams and talented people becoming overwhelmed and fatigued by the amount of change around them. When asking business leaders what they need to better navigate change and care for their people the consistent answer was always “time.” Businesses and leaders would tell Myla, “I don’t have enough time to do this work.” Thus was born Quarter Five, an opportunity to build on the time you have in order to build the businesses the world needs. Myla leads with a constant, consistent and unwavering belief in the power of love and how it can transform how we live, work and do business. She has an unfaltering commitment to respect, equity, thoughtfulness and intentionality. 

Gina Nebesar

Gina Nebesar is the cofounder and Chief Product Officer of Ovia Health, the leading women’s and family health technology company. She leads product development and marketing, and has scaled the solutions to over 15 million women and families globally. Gina is also an Ovia mom of two and women’s health ambassador with over 50 million views of her Ovia Pregnancy video series chronicling her journey to motherhood.

Prior to Ovia Health, Gina was the founder of Automatic Apparel, an automated retail company for electronics and apparel sold through vending machines located in international airports and transportation hubs – featured in the Boston Herald, Martha Stewart Show, CNN, and USA Today.

Gina began her career in engineering and manufacturing at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems, supervising assembly line production of spaceflight hardware.

Rachelle Carpenter

Rachelle Carpenter serves as DISH’s Vice President of Employee Experience and HR Operations.  She is responsible for overseeing all major HR operations functions including shared services, HRIS, compensation, benefits administration, compliance and leadership development.  Rachelle is committed to enhancing the employee experience while ensuring the business is delivering profitable results for DISH.

Throughout her time at DISH, Rachelle has held numerous leadership roles that included responsibility for the company’s people strategy and talent acquisition function.  Prior to DISH, Rachelle spent over 6 years in operations with GE in the company’s Finance sector and over 5 years with a boutique staffing firm.

Rachelle received her Bachelor of Arts degree in Business Administration from the University of Northern Iowa.

Lauren Lopez

Lauren Lopez is a progressive HR Executive with over 15+ years of experience in industries ranging from financial services, technology and most recently media and sports entertainment. Lauren manages the Talent and Engagement function where she oversees the learning, talent analytics and recruitment verticals. In her role, Lauren focuses on creating candidate and employee experiences that equitably advance the attraction, retention, promotion and succession planning of the league’s employees.

By aligning the evolving shape of the game to her strategic vision, Lauren has positioned herself as a trusted advisor to leadership and mentor to emerging talent. Lauren is responsible for the planning and execution of human capital initiatives such as learning and development, workforce planning, organizational design, talent management, year-end performance cycles, culture and career pathing.

Formerly, as Vice President, Talent Acquisition and Inclusion for Condé Nast, Lauren led the talent strategy across the organization’s iconic brands. Lauren reimagined the operational footprint of the recruitment function prioritizing efficient processes, enhanced metrics and an elevated candidate experience. Lauren also led key initiatives such as workforce planning, the inclusion roadmap, launch of employee resource groups and contingent labor compliance.

Lauren also held progressive management positions on the Talent Acquisition and Business Partner teams supporting the NBC News portfolio (Dateline, The Today Show, NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt and MSNBC Primetime). Earlier in her career at McGraw Hill Financial and Bloomberg she built capabilities across a variety of HR disciplines and led large scale initiatives such as building out of career architecture, total rewards programs, talent development and talent acquisition.

Bryan Walsh

Bryan Walsh is the Future Correspondent for Axios, covering emerging tech and future trends as well as the author of the existential risk book END TIMES.

Lydia Dishman

Lydia Dishman is a business journalist who writes about the intersection of tech, leadership, commerce, and innovation. She is a regular contributor to Fast Company and has written for CBS Moneywatch, Fortune, The Guardian, Popular Science, and the New York Times, among others. She is coauthor of the book Survive to Thrive. Over the course of her career, she’s interviewed a variety of well-known executives including Diane Von Furstenberg, Gregg Steinhafel, former CEO of Target, Mickey Drexler, former CEO of J.Crew, Christopher Bailey of Burberry, Mary Barra of General Motors, Scott Borchetta of Big Machine Records, Alexis Ohanian of Reddit, Tony Hsieh of Zappos, and other luminaries such as Adrian Grenier, Romany Malco, and Tom Brokaw.

Amelia Wilcox

Amelia Wilcox is the Founder and CEO of Zenovate, a company providing employee stress management and mental health services that employees can access – anytime, anywhere. Recently listed as a Forty Under 40, Fast 50, Twice on the Inc 500 and twice awarded National Woman-Owned Small Business of the Year, Amelia has exponentially grown her company from a solo living-room service business to an international technology brand. She operates Zenovate with a virtual team and provides flexible work for over 1200 practitioners across North America while balancing the demands of motherhood with her three daughters.

Sarah Sheehan

Sarah began her career in Human Resources at companies like SiriusXM, Coach, and Gilt Groupe before transitioning to the role of Head of Sales at Gilt City—the company’s luxury lifestyle experiences arm. In this role, Sarah ran a 65-person sales team, managed $60 million in yearly revenue, and expanded the brand to top cities across the U.S. It was there that she identified the direct correlation between culture and the bottom line—when employees failed to address their issues with colleagues and managers, revenue suffered.
Before co-founding Bravely, Sarah launched an EdTech company (accepted into the acclaimed 500 Startups accelerator) that helped educate kids on the importance of environmental and wildlife conservation.
Sarah’s experience in HR, team management, and tech—combined with an ongoing obsession with helping people gain the confidence they need to find meaning in their work—inspired her to co-found Bravely in 2017.

Luciana Duarte

Luciana is the vice president and Global Head of Employee Experience at HP. In this role, she oversees HP’s culture, employee communications, engagement, social impact, change management, and employer brand.

With 25+ years of experience, Luciana specializes in helping corporate leaders achieve business results by driving culture and engaging employees with the company, their colleagues, and their work through effective programs and communications.

Luciana has led both internal and external communications teams. Prior to joining HP in 2015, Luciana spent four years at Apple. Before that, she was at PricewaterhouseCoopers. Luciana began her career at Sapient. She consulted for MIT, Merck, and Manulife, among other clients.

Luciana has twice received the prestigious International Association of Business Communicators’ Gold Quill Award. She has a BA in English and Anthropology from Amherst College and an MBA from Boston University, both with high honors. She is married, loves to travel, and is happy to call the Napa Valley her home.