From Personal Influence to Positions of Influence
Lynn Moran, Former President, Ethel M Chocolates, a division of Mars, Inc. and Member of the Senior Management Team for Mars, Inc. Domestic Businesses

Lynn Moran's story is somewhat atypical for an individual who rose to a division presidency at one of the nation's largest privately-held companies, the 6th largest in the U.S. with annual revenues of $28 billion. Lynn talked her way through the doors of Mars, Inc. early in her career, without the benefit of a college degree or M.B.A. (both of which she earned during the course of her career). During her 26 years at Mars, she developed broad-based skills through leadership positions in Human Resources, Sales and Licensing. The lessons she learned will resonate with women who want to leverage their personal influence into powerful leadership positions as well as with those who have attained and want to achieve maximum results in their chosen leadership positions.

In 1999, she was named President of Ethel M Chocolates, the gourmet confectionary and direct-to-consumer/retail company within Mars. Lynn's accomplishments at Ethel M included repositioning the brand, redesigning packaging and expanding the reach and presence of the product line into event marketing and other high visibility, upscale retailers. She was also promoted to the Masterfoods Management Team, the senior executives responsible for managing all domestic businesses within Mars, a portfolio that included M&Ms, Snickers, Milky Way Bars, Dove Ice Cream, Whiskas, Pedigree and Uncle Ben's food products. Lynn also served as an officer and Executive Vice President at Russ Berrie, the toy and gift company.

While at Ethel M, Lynn launched a literacy program titled “Feed Your Mind” to provide books to children in schools and at home to encourage a love of reading, and served as a board member of HELP of Southern Nevada, a community service organization. A graduate of Centenary College, with a bachelor's degree in business administration, she now serves as a member of the President's Circle at the college. She also serves as a member of the FDU NOW Campaign Steering Committee at Fairleigh Dickinson University, from which she obtained her M.B.A. degree. In 2009, Lynn was inducted into The Pinnacle, the highest award the University bestows upon its alumni.

With over 30 years of extensive business experience, knowledge, and success, Lynn now devotes her time to coaching and consulting. She focuses on executive, leadership, individual and team performance coaching; she coaches around change and major project initiatives and also works with professionals who have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. She is a certified coach and certified Six Sigma Greenbelt.

Recreating the Economy: Leadership and Innovation Through Diverse Perspectives
Billie Williamson, Americas Inclusiveness Officer, Senior Partner, Ernst & Young

Long an advocate for women and the value they bring to an organization, Billie Williamson currently serves as Americas Inclusiveness Officer for Ernst & Young. In this position, she works across Ernst & Young to foster and maintain a diverse and inclusive workplace culture where all people can achieve their full potential. She has also served as a member of Ernst & Young's Americas Executive Board, the top decision-making body of the Americas Area, with accountability for executing strategy, including market leadership and growth, partner and people matters, quality and risk management. Prior to being named to her current role, Billie served as the Americas Director for Flexibility and Gender Equity Strategy. The Americas Area brings together 30 countries, 150 offices and more than 40,000 people. Ms. Williamson is also a senior client-serving Partner on some of the firm's largest global accounts.

Billie began her career at Ernst & Young in 1974 and became one of only five female partners in 1984. She subsequently left Ernst & Young to become CFO of AMX Corp. in Dallas and later became Senior Vice President, Finance of Marriott International, Inc. in Washington, D.C. She rejoined Ernst & Young in 1998 in the Corporate Finance practice, working with CEOs of major companies to structure acquisitions and determine financial strategy. She has served major clients in aerospace, technology and other industries, including Texas Instruments, Lockheed, Sprint, Whirlpool and Kimberly Clark.

Ms. Williamson has been profiled and/or published in the Wall Street Journal, BusinessWeek, PINK Magazine, the Dallas Business Journal, Oprah.com and DiversityInc.com, among others. She was recently recognized by Practical Accounting Magazine as one of the Top 20 most inspirational women in accountancy. Ms. Williamson graduated with highest honors from Southern Methodist University. She serves on the Executive Board of the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and is active in numerous civic and community activities in the Dallas area.

For many years, Ernst & Young has been recognized with "best company" awards for excellence, inclusiveness and workplace flexibility, including citations from Fortune, Working Mother, DiversityInc., Catalyst, Human Rights Campaign, Universum, BusinessWeek and the US Department of Labor.

Leading Unlimited Lives: Defining and Embracing Power on Our Own Terms
Gloria Feldt, Author, No Excuses: 9 Ways Women Can Change How We Think About Power, Activist and Author on Women's Rights, Health, Leadership and Politics

Gloria Feldt is a nationally recognized activist, author, keynote speaker and commentator on women's lives, rights, health, media, leadership and politics. A New York Times best-selling author, Gloria has appeared as both a newsmaker and a commentator on most major national radio and television news and public affairs programs, including Today, Good Morning America and The Daily Show. Her commentary has appeared in the New York Times, USA Today, Boston Globe, Elle and MS magazines, among many others.

Among her honors, Vanity Fair magazine named Gloria one of America's "Top 200 Women Legends, Leaders and Trailblazers, Glamour magazine honored her as Woman of the Year and she was one of Women's e-News' 2007 "21 Leaders for the 21st Century". She is a fellow of the International Leadership Forum. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Women's Media Center, on the Board of the Jewish Women's Archive and on the Advisory Board of Our Bodies, Ourselves.

Undoubtedly, Gloria is most well-known for her thirty-year career of leadership in Planned Parenthood. For 22 years, she led its affiliates in West Texas and Arizona. She then served as President and CEO of Planned Parenthood Federation of American and the Planned Parenthood Action Fund from 1996 - 2005. By the time she left Planned Parenthood, the organization's total combined affiliate and national organization annual revenues approached one billion dollars. The 2004 March for Women's Lives, which she helped to spearhead, brought over 1.2 million men, women and families to Washington, the largest march of any kind in the nation's history.

Since leaving Planned Parenthood in 2005, one of the areas that Gloria has focused on is women in leadership and, more specifically, women's conflicted relationship with power. She currently teaches a course at Arizona State University entitled “Women, Power and Leadership.” Also, she is touring college campuses with an intergenerational panel of women called "Women, Girls and Ladies." In her course work, her speeches and her upcoming book, Gloria looks at how many doors have opened for women over the past thirty years but how women still hold just 18% of leadership roles at work and in politics. She provides women with encouragement and with concrete "power tools" to step into positions of power and leadership and to lead unlimited lives.

Achieving the Dream, Despite Overwhelming Odds and Outrageous Demands
Lyn St. James, Pioneering Race Car Driver, Author and Corporate Motivational Speaker

Lyn St. James' story is not just about being a successful racecar driver. It's a story about goal setting, determination, passion and fully utilizing all of her defeats and successes to break into a world no one could have imagined possible for a woman in the '80s and '90s: professional auto racing. The lessons she learned translate into business and virtually every other aspect of women's lives.

Despite an inauspicious start to her career, she became the first woman to win a solo North American road race at Watkins Glen, New York in 1985. In 1996 she acquired her own team, Lyn St. James racing. When she switched from road racers to Indy cars in 1998, she became the first woman to compete full-time on the Indy circuit. She was the second woman to race in the Indianapolis 500 and is one of only five women in history to qualify for the event. She competed in the event a total of seven times (qualifying 6th in 1994 and finishing 11th in 1992) and was the first woman to win the Indianapolis 500 Rookie of the Year. She competed in some of the biggest endurance races in the world, including the 24 Hours of Le Mans, the 24 Hours of Daytona and the 12 Hours of Sebring (with wins at both Daytona and Sebring). During her career, she held 31 international and national closed circuit speed records.

Among countless awards, she was recognized by Sports Illustrated for Women as one of the Top 100 Women Athletes of the Century and by Working Woman magazine as one of the "350 Women Who Changed the World between 1976-1996." In 2001, she received the Guiding Woman in Sports Award from the National Association for Girls & Women in Sports. She has made guest appearances on The David Letterman Show (CBS), The Today Show (NBC), Good Morning America (ABC), CNN, Lifetime, Oxygen, PBS and Fox, and has been a commentator/analyst for ESPN, ESPN2, ABC and Showtime. She has published two books: Ride of Your Life – A Race Car Driver's Journey and Only This Morning You're All Grown Up. Her third book, Lyn St. James – An Incredible Journey, will be released in late summer 2010.

She is committed to providing inspiring role models for girls and young women and to advancing the role of women in sports and in society through her personal leadership of and involvement in numerous charitable and not-for-profit organizations, including the Lyn St. James Foundation, the Women Sports Foundation (President 1990-1993), the Kettering University Board of Trustees, Women in the Winner's Circle Foundation and Project Podium, an endowed scholarship fund.

Intentional Transformation: Making Your Career Purpose a Reality
Marcia Reynolds, Psy.D., Author, Wander Woman: How High-Achieving Women Find Contentment and Direction and Outsmart Your Brain

Dr. Marcia Reynolds is fascinated by the brain, especially what triggers enthusiasm and innovation in the workplace. This fascination has led her down many roads in her desire to stay on top of the shifts in leadership development and employee engagement. On this journey, she has developed and woven together three areas of expertise: organizational change, coaching and emotional intelligence. She is able to draw on these areas as she works with her latest passion: helping high-achieving women examine and strategize their full and amazing lives.

Her first expertise, organizational change, developed out of necessity when facing the challenges of running corporate training departments in the 1980's and 90's. Her greatest success story came as a result of designing the employee development program for a semiconductor manufacturing company facing bankruptcy. Working with the executive staff, the company not only turned around, it became the top IPO in the country in 1993. During this time she learned the power of teamwork and the importance of having a compelling vision, for yourself and for your organization.

As a corporate trainer, Marcia experienced the typical frustration of watching people participate with gusto in training classes and then, when back on the job, apply very little of what they learned. She quickly saw the power of coaching to make the mental shifts required before behavioral change can occur. Her passion for the profession led her to hold the position of president of the International Coach Federation in 2000 and become one of the first 25 people in the world to hold the certification of Master Certified Coach. She now coaches executives and teaches coaching in her leadership classes worldwide.

Marcia also discovered and became absorbed in learning about emotional intelligence. She designed and taught courses around the world and was the first to teach EI in Russia, Kenya and for the agencies in the US National Institutes of Health. Her doctoral work, in organizational psychology, helped her to define "the burden of greatness" that high-achievers experience and the steps to help them resolve their urgent issues. These are crucial concepts in her current work with high-achieving women.

Excerpts from Marcia’s first book, Outsmart Your Brain, have appeared in many places, including Harvard Communications Newsletter, Cosmopolitan, and The New York Times and she has appeared on ABC World News.

Using Social Media to Build Your Brand
Marianne Curran, Executive Vice President, Media & Communications, GoDaddy.com

Marianne Curran is responsible for the strategic expansion of Go Daddy's Communications efforts, overseeing Public Relations, Go Daddy Productions and Social Media. Her goal is to ensure the company's outreach initiatives provide best-in-class community engagement, brand exposure and customer support. She also leads Go Daddy's Culture Team, to ensure Go Daddy preserves its unique qualities.

Marianne's eight years with the company have brought a wide range of experience. She successfully launched Go Daddy's Dream Design Team and held the position of Business Unit Manager for hosting-related products.

Marianne has a Bachelor of Science in Biology from the University of Iowa and a Master in Medical Science from Midwestern University. When @MarCurran is not tweeting, Facebooking or Linking In, she enjoys running (it’s more like a jog), playing cards, spending time with friends and family, relaxing and enjoying life.

Unleash Your Inner Leader
Loretta Love Huff, Leadership Consultant, Coach and Author, Leadership Without Limits and 6 Keys for Resolving Disputes

An award-winning performance improvement consultant, professional speaker and executive/business coach, Loretta Love Huff helps corporate leaders and small business owners optimize their performance and accomplish their business and professional objectives. The vision of her company, Emerald Harvest Consulting, is that people express their unique gifts and manifest the highest possible level of self-actualization and that organizations honor those gifts in pursuit of compelling business goals. In her Unleash Your Leader program, she helps participants discover what it takes to be a transformational leader, to step out with confidence, influence with integrity and live a life with passion and purpose.

Loretta is a seasoned executive with corporate experience in human resources, IT and commercial banking, plus 10 years as an entrepreneur in management consulting. She has taught graduate programs in Transformational Leadership, Systems Thinking, Business Communications and Conflict Management for the University of Phoenix and Ottawa University. She is also the author of two books, Leadership Without Limits: Inspiring the Best in Yourself, Your People and Your Organization and 6 Keys for Dissolving Disputes: When "Off With Their Heads!" Won't Work.

Loretta is a Phoenix Business Journal Top Women in Business honoree, a National Council of Negro Women Sun Section Women of Excellence honoree and a two-time recipient of the prestigious MBE (Minority Business Enterprise) Supplier of the Year award. She has been featured in business publications including the New York Times, Arizona Republic, Phoenix Business Journal, Arizona Woman and Working Mother. She is President of the Phoenix Chapter of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) and former Board Member of the Women's Enterprise Foundation and the Arizona Chapter of the National Speakers Association.

Loretta holds a B.S. in Psychology from Howard University and an M.B.A. in Finance from the University of Chicago. She is certified by the International Coach Federation.