Freeman Means Business' Wonder Women in Business Podcast

Keep Calm & Cope Coronacast

Lindsay Griffiths, Marcie Shunk, Susan Freeman & Katie Barnard

Homeira Izadi, MD, Quadruple Board-Certified Physician with over 25 years of experience in a variety of settings from top medical centers where she had used the most advanced technology and been to war zones where her stethoscope was her only tool. She is also a writer and contributor for the Atherton and Los Altos magazines.

Michelle P. Wimes serves as the Chief Diversity and Professional Development Officer at Ogletree, Deakins, Nash, Smoak & Stewart, P.C., one of the nation’s largest labor and employment law firms. In her role, Michelle leads the firm’s efforts to attract, develop, retain, promote and advance a diverse group of attorneys across the firm’s national platform of 53 offices in the U.S., Europe, Latin America, and the Caribbean. Additionally, Michelle leads the firm’s attorney training and professional development efforts. She is based in Ogletree Deakins’ Kansas City office.

Michelle has extensive experience in delivering strategic leadership, client development, and talent management programming. She is deft at implementing change management strategies necessary for comprehensive and effective diversity and inclusion and professional development initiatives and programming. Previously, Michelle practiced law for 14 years where she handled all aspects of employment litigation while serving as an equity partner at a Kansas City-based firm. She focused on matters involving employment discrimination, harassment, and civil rights issues while representing clients before the Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights, the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Missouri Commission on Human Rights, the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, as well as local, state and federal courts.

Later, Michelle spent four years on the senior management team of a premier Am Law 100 law firm as their Director of Strategic Initiatives, spearheading diversity and inclusion strategies and programming for lawyers across nine offices in the United States and Europe.

Prior to a career in law, Michelle was an elementary and middle school teacher in Kansas City. She received a B.A. from the University of Missouri and performed graduate work at the University of Seville in Spain and undergraduate work at the University of Xalapa in Veracruz, Mexico. Due to her studies and her extensive legal work in Latin America, she is fluent in Spanish. Michelle earned her law degree, with trial advocacy honors, from Tulane Law School. She is the proud wife of federal district court judge Brian C. Wimes and the mother of three daughters, Sydney, Gabrielle, and Saige.

Philana Bouvier, Senior Vice President, New Business Development at Young’s Market Company

Philana leads new business development at Young’s Market Company and is responsible for lead generation, prospect management, and new supplier engagement. Philana actively partners with Young’s current and potential suppliers to capitalize on market and category opportunities. Shortly after Philana joined Young's in 2010, she took on the leadership role of General Manager for Young’s Hawaii business unit – a move that would make her the industry’s first non-family, female executive to lead statewide sales, marketing, and operations for a major alcohol distributor in the United States.

Prior to joining Young's, Philana served as co-founder and CEO of Waiwera Artesian Water USA. Philana also owned and led B&Co., a boutique brokerage firm specializing in distributor sales support and delivering exceptional client experiences for suppliers.

Jennifer Hicks, Director of Client Development at Capital Fund Law Group, joined the firm in the early part of 2018 and has quickly become an integral team member. She liaises with the in-house attorneys, assists prospective and current clients with their fund planning and formation process and provides guidance to emerging managers on non-legal fund-related matters. Furthermore, Ms. Hicks organizes the firm's investment fund events and is the point of contact for our Managing Partner, John Lore.

Ms. Hicks, who has been a lifelong student of the legal field, held a career in law enforcement in the state of Utah prior to becoming a part of Capital Fund Law Group. Having been a first responder allowed Ms. Hicks the opportunity to gain valuable skills, which include investigative research, critical thinking, extreme attention to detail and multitasking – all skills required to make the transition to the corporate side of the law. While her client base is now fund managers and not the public, Ms. Hicks understands the importance of public relations and perception. In fact, she partakes in podcasts and interviews showcasing her transition from one area of the law to another.

Diane Schwartz is the Chief Executive Officer of Ragan Communications, a media company that serves communicators with best-in-class events, training, peer-to-peer gatherings and award-winning service journalism via the Ragan and PR Daily brands. Signature conferences cover topics ranging from crisis management to internal communications to PR measurement to employee experience. The Ragan Communications Leadership Council is the premier membership organization for internal communications leaders; and Ragan Training is one of the most-used online training portals for communicators.  She joined Ragan after 23 years at Access Intelligence, where she was senior vice president and group publisher of the Media Communications Group. She led the group to unprecedented growth, overseeing brands including PR News, Cynopsis, AdExchanger, Admonsters, Social Shakeup and Folio. Diane has launched more than 100 conferences, web sites, publications, awards programs, books and e-media ventures. Her board experience includes The Institute for Public Relations, the Alliance for Women in Media, the Specialized Information Publishers Association and American Business Media.  She is a volunteer for Make-A-Wish and Visiting Nurse & Hospice of Fairfield County. She lives in Wilton, Connecticut, has two children, a dog and one husband. Check out Ragan Communications at www.ragan.com.

Melissa Dinwiddie’s superpower is enabling creativity, whether you believe you’re creative or not, helping you push to the fearlessness side of things to spark innovative ideas all throughout your company. Using LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY®, she helps your team “think with their hands,” getting their ideas on the table in 3D. As a visual practitioner, she gets their ideas up on the wall in graphic form, so you can see the big picture—themes AND gaps. Whether in a half-day workshop, a multi-day offsite, or anything in-between, her methods are fun and engaging, and people feel heard and respected while activating both left and right sides of the brain. Teams rave for months about how much fun they had learning. Melissa is a mutiply-certified facilitator of LEGO® SERIOUS PLAY® methods and materials. A professional artist & calligrapher for 15 years, I bring a creative outsider’s perspective to your corporate setting, and now channel my background into graphic facilitation. Also, as a trained improv performer and jazz singer, Melissa teaches teams the skills of collaboration, communication & leaning into uncertainty in high-stakes contexts. As an online business owner since 2010, Melissa has developed the skills to deliver online sessions for distributed, virtual, or hybrid teams.

Kwanza Price moved to Silicon Valley in 2018 from NYC after being recruited by a mid-sized pharma company based in Palo Alto. Kwanza has worked in healthcare for more than a decade and has a graduate degree from Columbia University. Prior to grad school, she worked for an international non-government organization focused on development in Africa. She lived in Niger for two years helping to oversee a multi-million dollar project aimed at reducing food insecurity. Kwanza studied French and Mathematics at Bryn Mawr College.

In the community, Kwanza is part of a Black Biotech group focused on developing an African-American Art museum and Center of Inclusive Innovation along the San Francisco Bay pier. She is also in discussions with leaders in East Palo Alto to renovate the library there. 

Kwanza is a health economist in her current role and has a strong interest in technological innovation and opportunities to address inequality. She grew up in Washington, DC and still has a large extended family there. This is her first time living in California and she is based in Menlo Park.

Dr. Neesheet Parikh is a Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine. He practices Lifestyle Medicine, Primary Care, Family and Sports Medicine.

He is the CEO of ParikhHealth, a Medical and Wellness Center located in Santa Clara, CA.  Dr. Parikh whole-heartedly believes in caring for patients in a compassionate way, where he can be fully present and empathize with each one of his patients.

He created Lifestyle Medicine to afford him the time to provide personalized medical care and coaching to patients no matter where they are.  Lifestyle Medicine gives patients a 360-degree approach to preventative care, healing, and transformation; focusing in areas such as stress, relationships, food, exercise, habits/mindset, and sleep.

He’s has served on the California Interscholastic Federation Sports Medicine Committee. Dr. Parikh regularly teaches for the Yale School of Medicine and Georgetown School of Nursing.  He works with some of the top athletes in the world including Olympic athletes, team USA athletes as well as NFL, NBA, NCAA and X-Game athletes from his sports medicine knowledge.

Through his experiences in the fast-paced high demand world of sports, Dr. Parikh has taken that mindset and has been applying it to high-level executives in Silicon Valley. Just as an athlete doesn’t like to sit on the sidelines, neither do executives, parents, or anyone who wants a fulfilling and thriving life.

He's happily married to his wife, Mansi, for 14 years, and has 3 daughters and 1 son.  He enjoys cooking, trying new foods and restaurants, and traveling.

Kate Isler has over 20 years of international executive leadership gained working for fortune 100 companies to startups and has now turned her passion for supporting gender parity into a thriving business. Kate is the Co-Founder and CEO of Be Bold Now, a conscious consulting practice whose mission is to build an intersectional community of women and men, who strive to inspire, empower and support each other to take bold pragmatic action to accelerate gender parity and support the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Kate is a change agent and thought leader. Her experience in high tech as a CEO of a digital health startup, and as an Executive at Microsoft where she spent many years living and working overseas, provides a powerful platform of real-world expertise and examples to draw from when addressing gender equity and balanced management practices.

Kate’s journey of leadership, challenging the status quo, overcoming adversity and breaking gender stereotypes motivates and inspires. She has successfully navigated the complexity of a global company and tested her agility and ability to innovation leading as an entrepreneur.

She is a published author and recently completed her memoir to be released by HarperCollins Leadership in 2020.

Kate is an active and committed mentor for the International Women’s Forum, and, serves on the global board of Girl Rising, and several startup advisory boards.

Sharon Harris is an experienced digital media professional. She has over twenty years of cutting-edge knowledge in branding and launching numerous campaigns and products for several world-renowned brands. Microsoft, T-Mobile, and Reuters are just a few of the leading companies that she has worked with to help them define and translate their brand and business strategies in revenue.

Sharon made her mark at Microsoft as the Senior Global Product Marketing Manager, becoming a fundamental launch contributor for Microsoft Windows 8 Ads-in-Apps. She constructed the fall 2012 launch of advertising on Microsoft Windows 8. In early 2012, Sharon coordinated the launch of advertising on Skype mobile, which was acquired by Microsoft in 2010. Mastering many challenges, she also designed the sales coordination efforts, as well as the overall messaging for advertising on Microsoft Windows 8.

Ms. Harris managed multimillion-dollar accounts and directed company-wide projects for companies like IAC, and Discovery Networks. Presently, she is employed by Deloitte Consulting as a Senior Manager serving as the VP of Alliance Relationships supporting its Google Marketing Platform Alliance.

Sharon’s tenacity of being a seasoned advertising and digital media professional does not limit her ability to give back to the community. Being an advocate of change, she has been an active participant in diversity and inclusion efforts in advertising and technology, while mentoring college students who are interested in both fields of study. She also serves on several non-profit boards including, The Marcus Graham Project, Be Bold Seattle - International Women’s’ Day, Challenge Day, Ignite and the Sustainable Impacts and Strategic Global Initiatives (SISGI).

BE BOLD NOW: International Women's Day Event:

Title: Be Bold: International Women’s Day Celebration 2020

Date: March 5, 2020

Time: doors open at 5:30pm, program is 6:30-8:30pm

Location: Benaroya Hall, 200 University St, Seattle, WA 98101

Twitter: @beboldnow0308

Facebook: @beboldnow0308

Instagram: @beboldnow0308

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/beboldnow0308

Event Hashtag: #BeBoldNow

Be Bold website & registration: http://bboldnow.com/

Check it out: http://bboldnow.com/