The Network of Executive Women maintains a list of speakers on a wide variety of topics, including diversity, corporate management and human resources. Listing in our online Speakers Bureau does not imply an endorsement of a speaker, their organization or their views. Speaker fees vary; to book a speaker for your event, contact the speaker or their representative directly.

Speaking opportunities: The Network is interested in knowledgeable speakers and panelists for our industry events and meetings. Priority is given to members of the Network and representatives of our sponsoring companies.
 
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Stacy Blake Beard
Stacy Blake-Beard is an Associate Professor of Management at the Simmons School of Management where she teaches organizational behavior. Prior to joining Simmons, Beard was faculty at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. She has also worked in sales and marketing at Procter & Gamble and in the corporate human resources department at Xerox. Dr. Beard's research focuses on the challenges and opportunities offered by mentoring relationships, with a concentration on how these relationships may be changing as a result of increasing workforce diversity.
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Trudy Bourgeois
Trudy Bourgeois is one of America's leading experts on transformational leadership and a highly regarded leader in the field of workforce performance improvement. As an acclaimed author, business coach, experiential learning facilitator, and sought after business speaker she has reached millions of people with her positive messages about leadership, personal empowerment, and the search for success and happiness in our lives. She conducts numerous seminars and speaking symposiums for corporations throughout the country teaching men and women how to harness the greatest of the 21st century workforce. 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. Harnessing the greatness of a multi-cultural, multi-generational workforce is the key to success in the 21st century. Trudy maintains that the greatest asset of any organization is its people. In addition, in Today's "knowledge" economy, developing and retaining people becomes more important than ever. After spending eighteen years climbing the corporate ladder and breaking the glass ceiling to become a senior executive, Trudy has dedicated herself to using her knowledge, business expertise and passion to help individuals and organizations experience breakthrough performance.
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Mimi Donaldson
Mimi Donaldson is a former HR executive with Walt Disney and Rockwell who knows how to connect with staff. Co-author of the million plus-selling Negotiating for Dummies book, she has developed upbeat, funny, entertaining programs on skillful communications during the past 20 years. She has shared the stage with Colin Powell, Maya Angelou and Katie Couric and been hired by 32 of the Fortune 500.  Customize programs include: "Men & Women: Can We Talk? ,” "From Competition to Compassion,” "Don’t Wait Negotiate!, ”Five secrets to seal the deal,” "All Stressed Up and No Place to Go” and many more.
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Donna Drury
Donna, a former Procter & Gamble sales and HR executive, is an inspirational speaker, executive coach and "LifeShop" facilitator who specializes in coaching executives, entrepreneurs and professionals by empowering, enlightening, energizing, and encouraging each individual to live their best life by leveraging their passion, talents and experiences. The focus of her practice is "Making a Difference One Person at a Time" and she delivers dynamic and experiential LifeShops that are part of a unique series she created called "The Business of You!"
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Judith Finer-Freedman
Judith Finer-Freedman has 25 years of business experience in the U.S. and Canada. She has worked as a Career Counselor and Coach, Marketing Manager, Human Resource Specialist in Succession Planning, Organizational Development Strategist, University Lecturer and Advertising and Public Relations Account Manager with multi-national companies and organizations such as The Coca-Cola Company (U.S. and Canada), Lintas Worldwide Advertising (U.S.), Rice University (U.S.), The University of Toronto Rotman School of Business (Canada), George Weston Limited (Canada), The Loblaws Companies (largest grocery retailer in Canada), and The Law Society of Upper Canada (Canadian equivalent to a State Bar Association). Ms Finer-Freedman earned her Bachelor’s degree in Advertising in 1981 from the University of Texas at Austin; her Master’s degrees in Advertising from Northwestern University in 1982 and in Counseling Psychology at The University of Toronto in 1993. She expects to receive her doctorate in Counseling Psychology from the Ontario Institute for Studies in Education at The University of Toronto in 2006. Most importantly, Ms Finer-Freedman is a working mother with three young children and identifies with women on the issue of work/life balance. Through her research and personal experience, she is motivated to guide organizations to more effectively support women and men in their quest for balance. Finally, a native of Oklahoma, she resides in Toronto, Ontario, Canada with her husband Jeremy, and their daughter and two sons.
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Lois Frankel, Ph.D.
Frankel is the author of Nice Girls Don’t Get the Corner Office, and Quit Being A Girl, and is president of Corporate Coaching International. She is an internationally recognized expert in the field of workplace behavior who works one-to-one with executives helping them develop the non-technical skills required for breakthrough performance.
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Matthew Kelly
Internationally acclaimed speaker and author Matthew Kelly is the founder and president of Floyd Consulting, a consulting firm founded on the belief that organizations are only as good as the people who drive them. Kelly’s books have sold more than one million copies and have appeared on best-seller lists in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today and Publisher’s Weekly, among others. His books include The Rhythm of Life: Living Every Day with Passion and Purpose, The Seven Levels of Intimacy, and The Dream Manager. More than three million people in fifty countries have attended Kelly’s presentations and seminars. Over the past decade, Kelly has given over 2,500 keynote presentations at conferences and conventions for a wide variety of organizations including Fortune 500 companies, national trade associations, professional organizations, universities, churches and non profits. Kelly is an expert on employee engagement and work-life balance issues. His most requested speaking topics include: The Dream Manager; Personal Strategic Planning; and Authenticity, Not Authority: A New Paradigm for Leadership. Kelly has a keen sense of humor and a passion for helping companies develop employees to achieve their corporate goals. Kelly motivates audiences to pursue their highest values and achieve their greatest ambitions with a message that is both timely and timeless.
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Fawn Germer
Best-selling author Fawn Germer has received four Pulitzer Prize nominations for investigative reporting. Germer has written for The US Washington Post and U.S. News and World Report. She has also written two best-selling books - one of which was an Oprah pick. She has become one of the nation's most sought-after keynote speakers, having headlined events for Ford Motor Co., Boeing, Motorola, Novartis, GlaxoSmithKline just to name a few.
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Devon Hansen
Heartpeople, Inc. CEO Devon Hansen is an inspirational speaker, artist, and author, who was the consultant called to work with the Oklahoma City bomb survivors. She presents the seminar, "Humor and Anger in the Workplace" and authored "Angry? Do you mind if I scream?"
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Denise Harrington
It is proven that the ability to express yourself and your ideas is one of the most critical skills for success in business, politics, and the professions. Harrington & Associates help people in this critical area, focused on providing workshops and one-on-one coaching that develop strong spoken communication skills for professionals, managers and executives. The results are that people leave the training and consulting sessions more confident, persuasive, and believable in all their communication situations.
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Jan Hill
Jan Hill is a dynamic speaker, facilitator, and personal coach who is dedicated to helping people recognize their unique genius and maximize their contribution to the world. Jan founded her consulting company, Hill Enterprises, Inc., in 1990 following a successful ten-year career with Procter & Gamble where she led her sales team to #1 ranking (with annual revenues of $300 million) in the competitive paper consumer products business. Hill Enterprises Inc. leverages a diverse group of expert consultants to provide creative solutions to companies around the world. Current areas of focus are strategic visioning, virtual and global teaming, leadership development, diversity initiatives, personal reinvention and executive coaching. Jan’s business has been 95% referral, reflecting the satisfaction of her customers and her practical, hands-on, reality based consulting style. She has a special desire to see women achieve powerful positions in the workplace, and she co-authored a book Smart Women, Smart Moves to show women how to gain control of their careers--and get the recognition and rewards they deserve. Jan lives in Santa Barbara, California and spends her free time pushing her body to the limit to participate in and raise money for those challenged by disease via events like the Breast Cancer 3-Day, the New York Marathon and the AIDS/LifeCycle 585 mile bike ride for the cure from San Francisco to Los Angeles. For relaxation, she crews in sailboat races, enjoys dinner parties with friends, and reads. For torture, she works on honing her skills as a writer.
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JoAnn R. Hines
JoAnn built her brand brick by brick, transforming the way the male-dominated packaging industry perceives women. She is an award-winning author, speaker and business expert with a lifetime of experience on building the personal brand. Her unique delivery engages and entertains audiences, providing both emotional appeal and panache.
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Mike Jaffe
Mike Jaffe, founder of Jaffe Life Design, LLC, is a powerful and inspiring coach, motivational speaker, and seminar leader whose programs empower professionals to redefine what’s possible in their personal and professional lives. A 9/11 survivor who has transformed his own life, Mike serves as a Human WakeUp Call™, using his own brush with tragedy as a message of self-discovery and empowerment. Mike stands out for his energetic, authentic and thought-provoking messages and real life approach to the issues and opportunities that people and organizations face in today’s complex, fast-paced world. Drawing upon his varied background experience, he masterfully relates to a wide variety of audiences using the power of humor, storytelling and insightful content to touch the hearts and minds of his audiences, spurring them into empowered action. Mike Jaffe has taught his methods of personal empowerment to audiences at Fortune 500 companies, the 2008 NEW Leadership Summit, NYU and Columbia Universities and elsewhere. In Mike’s inspiring and powerful talks, participants learn what it takes to make real and lasting changes in their businesses and their lives, shifting their perspective from entitlement to accountability, moving from victim to leader. Topics include: Wakeup! Life Lessons from a 9/11 Survivor; Surviving the Storm! Thriving Through Change; Walk Your Talk: Authentic Living and Leadership; Play Big! Do More With Less; and   Redefining What’s Possible! Balancing Work and Life.
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Catherine Kaputa
Catherine Kaputa is a personal branding strategist, speaker and author. She is the founder of SelfBrand, a New York City-based personal branding company. From Madison Avenue to Wall Street to the halls of academe, she has "perfected how to brand and market products, places and companies.” Kaputa learned brand strategy under Al Ries and Jack Trout at Trout & Ries Advertising. She led the award-winning "I Love New York” campaign at Wells Rich Greene. For more than ten years she was senior vice president, director of advertising and community affairs, at Citi Smith Barney, and taught advertising at NYU’s Stern School of Business. She discovered that the most important application for branding is not products, places and companies – it’s for individuals to define and own their career identity. Personal branding can help people create more success for themselves and the companies they work for. This is the topic of her book, U R a Brand, How Smart People Brand Themselves for Business Success (winner of the Ben Franklin award for Best Career Book of 2007). Kaputa is also active as a speaker and workshop leader on women’s leadership, the topic of her new book: The Female Brand: Using the Female Mindset for Business Success. She has worked with a wide range of organizations focused on creating career and leadership development opportunities, particularly during turbulent times. She has participated in talent development, sales force meetings and diversity and women's initiatives for a variety of firms, including PepsiCo, Microsoft, Intel, UBS, Boehringer-Ingelheim, Bank of New York, Purdue Pharma, and UST.
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Peggy Klaus
Trusted by attorneys, consultants, CEOs, media personalities, politicians, celebrities and managers. "Brag” events show professionals how to effectively "toot their own horn” within their company and to clients. Forget boring overheads, flipcharts and formulaic approaches – relies on interactive, skills-based programs with videotaping and instant constructive critiques. Programs customized to cover: Brag! The Art of Tooting Your Own Horn Without Blowing It -- Comfortably sell yourself wherever you go without appearing too eager, egotistical or self-aggrandizing. Speaking Your Way to the Top and The Perfect Pitch -- Learn techniques for presentation preparation, stage fright management, voice/body control. Women in Leadership -- Maintain an authentic image without adopting a traditionally masculine style.
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Deborah Kolb
Deborah Kolb is an authority on gender issues in negotiation, and leadership, especially how women can negotiate the conditions for their own success while at the same time contributing to the effectiveness of their organization. Kolb has co-authored several books on this subject. Everyday Negotiation: Navigating the Hidden Agendas of Bargaining shows women (and men) how they can become more effective in their everyday negotiations by attending to the dual requirements of the shadow negotiation – advocacy for oneself and connection with others. Originally titled, The Shadow Negotiation, Harvard Business Review named it one of the ten best business books of 2000 and it received the best book award from the International Association of Conflict Management in 2001. Her new book Her Place at the Table: A Women’s Guide to Negotiating the Five Challenges of Leadership Success describes how successful women negotiate for what they need to be effective in leadership roles at all levels of an organization. Kolb publishes extensively on these topics and regularly presents her work to national and international audiences. Kolb has recently done work with: Campbell Soup, Credit Suisse First Boston, Deutschebank; Deloitte and Touche; Eli Lilly; EMC, W.L. Gore, IBM, JP Morgan-Chase, Phillips Medical, Pricewaterhouse/Coopers; Time, Inc., and Verizon. Non profit organizations have included The Ford Foundation, The Consultative Group in International Agricultural Research (CGIAR), Girl Scouts, USA, The Society for Human Resource Management, Financial Executives International, Financial Women’s Association, the Mayo Clinic, Network of Executive Women, Women in Technology International, among many others. Dr. Kolb is a principal in Negotiating Women, LLC., a company that provides negotiation training and consultation especially designed for women. Kolb joined the Simmons faculty in 1977. From 1991-1994, she was Executive Director of the Program on Negotiation at Harvard Law School. She is currently a Senior Fellow at the Program where she co-directs The Negotiations in the Workplace Project.
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Laura Lopez
As a former Marketing VP with The Coca-Cola Company, Laura Lopez knows how to get things done. Throughout her 20-year corporate career, she has effectively led teams of people to launch products, build advertising campaigns and achieve results year after year. She succeeded at climbing the corporate ladder despite the odds; learning how to effectively overcome obstacles, accept change as a catalyst for growth and become a leader who engages both mind and heart. Leadership is like parenting? Laura Lopez says, "Yes” in her book. Leadership in the 21st century is not reserved for "the top dogs.” Skills for managing time lines, projects and deadlines are not the same skills needed for leading people. When leaders micromanage, people under-perform. Laura Lopez’s new book, The Connected and Committed Leader, Laura explains the importance of bringing our hearts to work. Getting reluctant employees to accept new ideas is not much different than convincing a two-year-old that it’s time for bed. While being an effective leader is not easy, the rationale, insights and experiences offered in The Connected and Committed Leader will help CEOs, school principals, mid-level managers, teachers, and everyone in every organization to become the best leader they can be. Laura Lopez spent more than twenty years in the corporate world, launching products, building ad campaigns, and achieving results. She was successful at climbing the corporate ladder with The Coca-Cola Company by effectively overcoming obstacles, accepting change as a catalyst for growth and becoming a leader who engages her mind and her heart.
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Courtney Lynch and Angie Morgan
Lead Star's founders, Angie Morgan and Courtney Lynch, received their leadership training as Marine Corps officers. Serving in an organization where 94 percent of their peers were men, they gained a unique perspective on what it takes to be a leader and how to achieve success as a minority in an organization. After they left the Corps, Angie and Courtney were astonished by how effective they were as civilians when they applied their Marine Corps training to both their professional and personal lives. Though the Marine Corps trains its Marines to lead in combat, both women quickly realized that Marine Corps leadership tactics had value beyond the battlefield.
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Linda McKenna and Terry McKenna
Terry McKenna and Linda McKenna founded Employee Performance Strategies in 1997 to help retailers achieve greater profitability through their front-line store-level employees and managers. Terry McKenna is a nationally recognized author and speaker on such topics as Brand Differentiation, Employee Motivation, Customer Service and Leadership. His sister Linda McKenna is a nationally recognized author and speaker on such topics as: Managing Generation Y to Matures, Emotional Retailing, Customer Service and Leadership.
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Sandee Nielander
Building relationships that bridge gaps in business makes for an overall successful business environment. Sandee’s approach to customer relationship management (internally and externally to the business) makes doing business fun and easy. Having the right people in the right place doing the right tasks is of utmost importance today. Sandee has been in the consumer goods industry for over 30 years. She has now dedicated her passion to helping others take experiential expertise and to put knowledge into action in today’s consumer-centric world. Her focus on HR development, Customer Relationship Management, and supply chain/logistics management will make your company a "stellar” performer regardless of size! Sandee speaks regularly on relationship building, leadership, communication and collaboration. In addition, with a consulting and coaching process that has proven successful, her business model will enhance performance and increase profits through powerful solutions.
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Joan Pastor
Top expert on Conflict Management, Emotional IQ and Leadership. Certified Speaking Professional and Ph.D. in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. Joan Pastor’s facilitation methodologies are in place at over fifty major organizations. A funny, down-to-earth speaker with over 25 years of training, project management and consulting experience. Programs customized to cover: The Connection between Emotional Intelligence and Leadership Leadership: When It’s Healthy, When It’s Not and What We Can Do About It Five Secrets to Successful Conflict Resolution How to Give Bad News and Criticism Dynamic Interviewing Skills Beginning and Advanced Facilitation The Power of Positive Persuasion.
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Ann Marie Sabath
Global authority on business etiquette and protocol, recognized as a business priority by the Wall Street Journal, USA Today and many others. Trained more than 50,000 individuals. Seven popular books advise for American and international settings. Fun, "Lunch and Learn” or Lecture formats enable audiences to apply advice instantly. Essential for anyone with daily client contact. o Satisfaction Guaranteed. Programs customized to cover: Body language, image/accessorizing, business introductions, conversations, mixing and mingling, listening, time management, job interviews, first week on the job, e-mails, netiquette, telephone, high-tech, grammar, correspondence, office, table manners, fundraising and business dining. Geared to enhance effectiveness in business situations.
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Carol Scott
Carol J. Scott, MD, is a top stress release coach for executives and Fortune 100 companies. Family, work, relationships, finances, kids, aging parents and your own health -- if you're taking care of everyone and everything you're bound to get stressed. While there is no silver bullet to eliminating stress, you can reduce stress and increase your energy, health, joy, performance and business results. Audiences love Dr. Scott’s engaging, inspirational and motivating presentations. Her can transform lives in less than an hour and they especially resonate with high-achieving women. Dr. Scott is a practicing emergency physician and health educator trained at Johns Hopkins University. She is an expert on the connections between stress and health and the developer of the Best Stress Zone concept. A speaker and one-on-one stress relief coach, Dr. Scott helps executives understand and manage stress, helping to extend and save lives in the process. Dr. Scott trained at Duke University in internal medicine and emergency medicine at Johns Hopkins University. Her clients include Morgan Stanley Smith Barney, Microsoft, McDonalds, UPS, Civil Service Employees Union of New York, IBM, Merrill Lynch, and Johnson & Johnson.She was a keynote speaker at the Working Mother 100 Best Companies Work Life Congress. She has been featured inFastCompany, the Montel Williams Show,The Wall Street Journal and many other media outlets. Her new book, Optimal Stress: Living in Your Best Stress Zone, was released in November 2009 by John Wiley & Sons.
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Mary Shapiro
For more than 20 years as a consultant, executive trainer, and faculty member, Professor Mary Shapiro has worked with public and private companies to develop the infrastructure and competencies critical to reaching organizational goals. She joined the Simmons MBA faculty in 1993 and has developed and delivered Simmons Executive Education programs since 1988. Shapiro specializes in four areas: team building and intervention, communicating in a diverse and virtual environment, personal effectiveness in influence and motivation, and strategic career management.
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Karlin Sloan
Karlin Sloan believes that business leaders have a responsibility not just to make their organizations better, but to contribute to the world in a positive way. She is the author of Smarter, Faster, Better; Strategies for Effective, Enduring, and Fulfilled Leadership (Jossey-Bass, 2006) As the founder and CEO of Karlin Sloan & Company, Ms. Sloan provides leadership development consulting to clients in the U.S., Europe, South America and Asia. She has helped organizations to develop clearer, more effective communication, enhanced teamwork and powerful leadership in times of growth and change. Ms. Sloan is considered a thought leader in executive leadership development. She is a energetic and engaging speaker on the topic of leadership, and appears often in national radio and print media. She has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Christian Science Monitor, and numerous other publications as an expert in workplace behavior. Fortune Small Business Magazine recognized Ms. Sloan for her consulting work with organizations in New York City following the terrorist attacks of September 11th 2001. Her client list includes Yahoo!, Leo Burnett, Wrigley, Interbank, Starcom MediaVest Group, Citigroup, Procter & Gamble Productions, Rodale, José Cuervo International, Universidad Peruana Ciencias Applicadas, and New York University's Stern School of Business. She holds a BA from Mills College, and an MA in clinical psychology from the Professional School of Psychology in San Francisco.
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