The Network of Executive Women presents

The 2009 NEW Leadership Summit

October 12-14, 2009 • Sheraton Dallas Hotel • Dallas

Speakers

Suzanne Bates
President and CEO, Bates Communications

Suzanne Bates is an executive coach, author, certified speaking professional, former award-winning television news anchor, and CEO of Bates Communications, Inc. She is the author of two business bestsellers – Speak Like a CEO: Secrets to Commanding Attention and Getting Results and the just published Motivate Like a CEO: Communicate Your Strategic Vision and Inspire People to Act! She was recently awarded the distinguished Certified Speaking Professional designation by the National Speakers Association. She is a former award-winning television journalist. Her company’s clients include Dow Chemical, Fidelity, State Street, The North Face and Merck. 

Trudy Bourgeois
President, The Center for Workforce Excellence

Trudy Bourgeois is the founder and president of The Center for Workforce Excellence. Her company focuses on providing individuals and organizations with strategies and solutions to bring out their best performance and effect positive change. Bourgeois is one of America’s leading experts on transformational leadership and a highly regarded leader in the field of workforce performance improvement. She conducts numerous seminars and speaking symposiums for corporations throughout the country, teaching men and women how to harness the greatness of the 21st century workforce. Before starting her own firm, Bourgeois had a successful eighteen-year corporate career, rising to vice president of national accounts and leading a $3 billion business unit at a Fortune 100 company. Dollars and Sense magazine honored Bourgeois as one of the “Best and Brightest Women Leaders.” Bourgeois is the author of two leadership books, Her Corner Office: A Guide to Help Women Find a Place and a Voice in Corporate America (2nd edition) and The Hybrid Leader: Blending the Best of Male and Female Leadership Styles.

Kathryn Lowell
Founder, Image Matters, Inc.

Kathryn Lowell launched Image Matters, Inc., in 2001 to show companies and individuals how image enhancement can be a stepping-stone to higher productivity and personal success. Lowell demystifies the complexities of wardrobe, grooming, business and social etiquette, interpersonal behavior, and effective public speaking for hundreds of individual clients and at her popular talks and seminars. Her easy-to-understand principles take people from ordinary to outstanding and from career stagnation to career acceleration. Her rural upbringing, transition to life in the Ivy League and later work on Wall Street taught her the importance of relating to people at every social stratum. With an MBA in finance and entrepreneurship from UCLA and corporate experience in the United States and in Europe, Lowell is uniquely qualified to address the personal image needs of employees at all levels of an organization.

Jo Miller
CEO, Women’s Leadership Coaching, Inc.

Jo Miller has years of experience helping women develop their leadership skills, confidence and presence. She specializes in helping women reach leadership roles in traditionally male-dominated industries like technology and finance, and has developed and implemented coaching programs that have benefited women worldwide. Miller created the Women's Leadership Coaching Inc. leadership coaching system and has logged many thousands of hours coaching women who are or aspire to be in executive and management positions. She has traveled throughout the United States and Europe to facilitate leadership development programs for women’s initiatives at Fortune 1,000 companies, including Oracle Women in Leadership, Nortel Women’s Business Council, National Semiconductor’s Women at National, and the UBS Women’s Leadership Conference.

Kelly Nakasone
Vice President, Strategic Initiative, PepsiCo

Kelly Nakasone is the vice president of strategic initiative at PepsiCo. Her role is to lead change initiatives to reach new levels of growth through innovative partnerships, strategic planning and creative retail marketing. At PepsiCo Nakasone has held leadership positions as the vice president and general Manager of the Target Team, sales director, strategy lead and category management senior manager. Prior to joining PepsiCo Nakasone had previous sales and brand strategy experience at ACNielsen and Kendall Jackson Winery.

Jayne O'Donnell
Retail and Auto Reporter, USA Today

Jayne O’Donnell is a retail and auto reporter for the Money section of USA Today. She is a frequent guest on television, appearing on Good Morning America, Fox Business Channel, CNN and MSNBC. A former columnist for Woman's Day, O’Donnell has written for national magazines, including Good Housekeeping, Parents and CosmoGirl, and is now a contributor to the automotive website Edmunds.com. O’Donnell, who has won awards for articles detailing auto safety problems, now trains her investigative eye on the vicissitudes of shopping. An informative and entertaining speaker, she has addressed many business and academic groups.

Cheryl Pearson-McNeil
Senior Vice President Public Affairs, The Nielsen Company

Cheryl Pearson-McNeil is the senior vice president of public affairs for the Nielsen Company responsible for widening the scope of the company’s government, community, and corporate social responsibility programs. In this role she works to expand public outreach efforts across the company’s media, business media and consumer businesses in the U.S. by identifying opportunities for external partnerships and fostering greater employee engagement in this area. Before assuming this position she served as senior vice president of communications for Nielsen Consumer North America, developing strong and successful external and internal communications programs. She joined Nielsen in 2004 as a founding member of the community affairs organization for the Nielsen media business in the Chicago area where she helped positively increase Nielsen’s visibility on local, regional and national levels and oversaw its national ethnic advertising and branding strategy. Prior to joining Nielsen, Pearson-McNeil was director of station relations for WMAQ, the NBC affiliate in Chicago; she was press secretary for former city treasurer Miriam Santos; and has been credited with establishing the first marketing and public relations departments for several multimillion dollar non-profit organizations in the Chicago area, including the Girl Scouts, the YWCA of Metropolitan Chicago, and the Boys & Girls Clubs of Chicago. She is a member of the Executives Club of Chicago, the Network of Executive Women, a volunteer tutor at the Midtown Educational Foundation and co-chaired the 2009 Greater Illinois Chapter National Multiple Sclerosis Society’s Women on the Move luncheon. She has won numerous industry awards and was named one of America’s 25 Influential Black Women by the Network Journal. She has been featured in several national, regional and local publications.

Carolyn Polka
Senior Manager, Products Strategy Practice, Accenture

Carolyn Polka is a senior manager in Accenture’s Products Strategy Practice focused on the retail and CPG industries. She has worked with leading retailers, including Walgreens, Staples, Best Buy and Home Depot. She helps clients develop growth strategies, evaluate product portfolios, understand customers better, become more customer-centric and improve marketing analytics and investments. She enjoys traveling, wine and rehabbing her recent investment property purchase. Polka is involved in the local community with the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, American Diabetes Foundation and Pets are Worth Saving. The Wisconsin native earned her MBA from the University of Chicago and has lived in Chicago for more than 12 years.

Donna Rae Smith
Founder and CEO, Bright Side, Inc.

Donna Rae Smith has forged a career and an enterprise teaching leaders to master change. A change leader herself, Smith has pioneered a sought-after approach for preparing people, teams and entire organizations to thrive in changing business environments. Her firm, Bright Side, Inc., customizes personal, team and organizational leader development workshops and processes that accelerate the execution of change. The woman-owned company has played a pivotal role in the strategic development of some of the most influential corporations in the world, including Dow Chemical, Procter & Gamble, Gillette, Rockwell Automation, BASF, ABB and DaimlerChrysler. Smith’s career experiences range from manufacturing executive to broadcast journalist. A writer and speaker as well as an entrepreneur, Smith is the author of two books, Building Your Bright Side and The Power of Building Your Bright Side. She is a graduate of the University of Michigan and has been a guest lecturer at the University of Richmond, Jepson Leadership School, Duke University, Case Western Reserve University, Weatherhead School of Management, West Point Academy, Baldwin-Wallace College, and Ursuline College. She serves on the boards of NorTech, the Mid-Michigan Innovation Center, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and the Catholic Council of Pastoral Leadership.

Leah Reynolds
National Lead, Generational Strategies & Rewards Communication, Deloitte Consulting LLP

Leah A. Reynolds develops people and change strategies for organizations during talent and rewards strategy re-designs, mergers and acquisitions, and shifts in corporate culture. In this role, Reynolds has helped build, energize and sustain a "Total Rewards Communication" practice. Prior to joining Deloitte, she was the owner and president of Leah Reynolds Associates, a leading change management and communications consulting firm. She is in demand as a speaker on generational and workplace issues and is often quoted in the media. She holds a master's degree in organizational communication from Eastern Michigan University.

Karlin Sloan
CEO and Founder, Karlin Sloan & Company

Karlin Sloan is founder and CEO of Karlin Sloan & Company, a U.S.-based leadership development consulting firm with a track record of large-scale, high-impact programs for business. She is the author of the breakthrough business book Smarter, Faster, Better: Strategies for Effective, Enduring, and Fulfilled Leadership, and she co-developed and will co-lead a resilience program this summer at Wharton Executive Education. Sloan is a founding member of the International Consortium for Coaching in Organizations and a popular keynote speaker on leadership and teamwork. She has an M.A. in clinical psychology and has been featured in the Los Angeles Times, Christian Science Monitor, and Fortune Small Business magazine.