Freeman Means Business' Wonder Women in Business Podcast

Stacia Sherman Garr is a researcher and thought leader on employee engagement/experience, leadership, D&I, people analytics, and HR technology. A frequent speaker and writer, her work has been featured in Fortune, Forbes, The New York Times, and The Wall Street Journal as well as in numerous HR trade publications. She has been listed as a Top 100 influencer in HR Technology and in D&I. Stacia co-founded RedThread Research in 2018, after leading talent and workforce research for eight years at Bersin by Deloitte. Before Bersin, Stacia spent nearly five years conducting research and creating learning content for the Corporate Leadership Council, part of CEB/Gartner. She has an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s degree from the London School of Economics.

Meldie Moore, a former prosecutor in Orange County, California, uses her expertise in trial and negotiation to help grow and strengthen families. Moore Law for Children is a comprehensive care family law firm. Meldie lives with her husband and two sons in Laguna Beach, California.

Education and Honors

Meldie Moore graduated with honors from Franklin and Marshall College in Pennsylvania. During her college years, she volunteered as a big sister and as a teacher’s aide at a preschool for special needs children. Meldie moved to California, where she graduated cum laude from Pepperdine University School of Law. During law school, Meldie worked as a judicial clerk for California Supreme Court Justice Armand Arabian and externed at the Los Angeles County Counsel’s Office, Division of Children’s Services. She served as an associate editor on Pepperdine’s law review and competed nationally on the moot court team. In 2009, Meldie furthered her legal education by obtaining a Masters in Law at Chapman University School of Law. She authored a legal article that was published in the California State Bar Journal in 2011. In 2013, Meldie published an article in the Orange County Lawyer Magazine entitled “Senate Bill 115 Would Give Sperm Donors Standing to Petition for Paternity.” [Read the Article] Meldie also published a 2019 article for OC Lawyer on Special Education, titled “Learning your ABCs, 123s, and IEPs: Special Education in Public Schools.”

Career and Service

Passion for public service, and a desire to help women and children, led Meldie to a career in the Orange County District Attorney’s Office. She was a prosecutor for 16 years. During that time, Meldie completed over 100 criminal trials and hundreds of preliminary hearings on felony cases. Meldie specialized in legal research and writing for a large portion of her career. She researched, wrote and argued over 250 felony motions, and she has argued before the Court of Appeal. She also developed and conducted training for the Orange County District Attorney’s Office, various police agencies, colleges, and law schools. Meldie served as an adjunct professor at Western State School of Law, teaching classes on research and writing, and domestic violence.

During the course of her career, Meldie was committed to protecting the citizens of Orange County, especially the most vulnerable, children. Her passion was helping families of domestic violence, and she was specially assigned to handle these cases at both the misdemeanor and felony level. For her outstanding service to victims and witnesses of domestic violence, Meldie was awarded the “Courts Community Service Award” by Victim Assistance Programs, CSP, Inc., and recognized for her hard work and dedication to the community by the Orange County Board of Supervisors. Meldie was also recognized as a “Diligent Prosecutor” for tenacity in the prosecution of DUI cases and sensitivity to the needs of DUI victims by MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Driving).

Law Partnership Dedicated to Children

This commitment to and compassion for helping women and children led Meldie to enter the law partnership of Gurwitz Moore in 2010, a boutique law firm assisting families with children with special needs, children experiencing discipline issues at school and in the criminal justice system, and family formation through adoption and assisted reproduction. In 2012, Meldie opened her own law practice, Moore Law. Meldie continues to grow her firm, practicing with her team at Moore Law for Children, Professional Corporation, in these specialized areas.

Mary Kimber is [a TOTALLY AWESOME HUMAN BEING — my insert] an entrepreneur and business owner, living and working in the mountains of southern Colorado. After working inside of law firms for nearly 40 years, she started her consulting company, Fort Kimber Partners, in 2014, providing marketing and business development strategies to lawyers and law firms. Mary also has a thriving art business, selling her watercolors and doing commissions via her web site, marykimber.com.

Growing up in Montana, Mary was surrounded by mountains, fields, wildlife and nature. One of five siblings in a boisterous, political family, her family encouraged self-expression and the family learned to speak up for and defend arguments over the day’s news at the family dinner table. Mary studied art at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design for two years, and transferred to the San Francisco Art Institute where she earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree. After graduation, like many artists, a lifestyle was difficult to maintain without an income! Mary was fortunate to find a second career that allowed some creativity, in a more traditional setting, and she became a Marketing Director for large law firms. After a long career in the legal industry, Mary recently returned to painting from her home in the Sangre de Cristo Mountains.

Mary is married to Miles and they have two daughters and a granddaughter – the joys of their lives! They taught their children, from an early age, to love reading, fishing, skiing, swimming, hiking and camping. Most importantly, along with an appreciation of nature and all of its bounty, they taught them to engage in the arts via music, theater, writing or other pursuits. Even though their daughters are grown and living in other states, they enjoy the family home, “Fort Kimber” and visit as often as possible.

Living in the mountains above Colorado’s San Luis Valley has afforded Mary the opportunity to participate in community art shows, such as the Monte Vista Crane Festival, as well as public art projects, notably, the 2019 Swoop of the Cranes. Her cards are for sale at the Narrow Gauge Bookstore Cooperative, in Alamosa, Colorado, where she has twice exhibited her paintings as their artist of the month. Her art has been published in the Conejos Writer’s Circle books in 2018 and 2019, as well as the on-line art and writing blog, Monologging. Mary believes that painting is a constantly evolving endeavor. While she primarily work in watercolor, she also uses charcoal, pastels, pen and ink, and in recent years, has been involved in printmaking.

Lori Gibson-Washington, AKA Lori Gee Dub - the lady with 3 names is a laid-back facilitator, a calming speaker, an engaging mediator and a witty blogger that makes her The Calming Communications CoachTM.

Formerly, an instructor for International Business Negotiations at the University of California, Berkeley's International Diploma Program, Sacramento Area resident, Lori Gee-Dub has over 20 years’ experience consulting and coaching in the areas of differences in communications, conflict resolution, and leadership.

A wife, a bonus mom of 2, Gigi of 2 grandsons, a singer, Lori was educated at Georgetown University and UCLA. A certified Transformational Life Coach through the Life Mastery Institute, she is also certified in such personality styles instruments as Myers-Briggs, LIFO, and FIRO Element-B.

GeeDub loves consulting with groups to improve team dynamics for better productivity and profitability, and coaching individual professionals and leaders who are embattled and weary in their current work situations who want to use their wealth of experience to make major mindset and life changes.

As an ICF certified Leadership and Career Transformation Coach and Owner of Better With ROSE LLC, Mindee Mosher works with growing professionals to find potential, possibilities and greater fulfillment. Using principles and insights from her experience in Psychology, Education, Marketing and Business Development, Mindee provides the “Career Change Method” online course and coaching packets that are accessible to everyone, in addition to one on one virtual coaching. Mindee also serves as Director of Marketing at Whiteford, Taylor & Preston LLP, a mid-size, regional law firm in the Mid-Atlantic.

Joleen Winther Hughes is the founder, principal, and fearless leader of HMLG. With experience that spans the technology, entertainment, and digital media world, Joleen created HMLG specifically to support entrepreneurs, innovators, and visionaries of all sizes who push the boundaries in business.

As a longtime entrepreneur herself, Joleen also understands the practicalities of starting and running a successful business. Over the years, Joleen has contributed her expertise and insight as a strategic advisor to companies navigating all aspects of their business from formation/structuring, operations, launch, fundraising, growth, strategic relationships and alliances, implementation of processes, and – her favorite – deal-making.

Joleen has been an important team member on her clients’ executive staff for nearly 2 decades in businesses ranging from gaming, product development, technology, consumer products and services, motion pictures, e-commerce, and everything in between.

Prior to owning and operating her firm, Joleen served as Senior Counsel to the media/technology company that invented streaming media and was one of the first lawyers who created the business and legal models which brought media to consumers via online and mobile platforms.

As an entrepreneur, Joleen owned a successful artist management and production company during the height of the 90’s Seattle music explosion. She sold a successful Irish pub business co-owned with her husband. She also is an acting CEO for a worldwide stationery company and a best-selling romance author under her pen name.

Joleen regularly speaks at events and conferences on entrepreneurship, media, and business matters. You can hear her interview business badasses on her podcast The Lawyer Who Rocks.

Joleen’s also an avid supporter of the arts, serving as Vice President on the Seattle International Film Festival Board and as a Music Commissioner with the City of Seattle.

Olivia Vizachero, a former BigLaw litigator turned solo-practitioner, runs The Less Stressed Lawyer, a boutique life coaching practice for lawyers. As a Certified Life Coach, she works with lawyers were are over-worked, over-stressed, overwhelmed and over it. Through her coaching work, she teaches lawyers how to practice emotional management, improve time management, balance their workload and make themselves and their wellbeing their top priority so they can start living lives with less stress and far more fulfillment.

In addition to her one-on-one work with clients, Olivia hosts a variety of online events geared at helping as many attorneys as possible apply her coaching concepts themselves to transform their everyday lives. She currently hosts a monthly learning series, Less Stressed Sessions, where each month she focuses on one particular problem, like time management or people pleasing, and teaches attendees comprehensive strategies for solving it. Olivia also hosts a weekly Zoom meet-up for lawyers on Sunday evenings called Less Stressed Sundays, where lawyers come together to recount the previous week, specifically focusing on what worked and what didn’t, and then discuss what they’ll do differently in the coming week in order to remedy what didn’t work.

In June 2020, Olivia hosted the first THRIVE in FIVE Virtual Summit, a five-day virtual event designed to help attorneys leverage quarantimes by giving them the tools to develop personally and professionally. To do this, THRIVE in FIVE brought together over 30 experts over five days to discuss five topics: mindset, relationships, branding, legal innovation, and leadership, giving attendees an opportunity to understand what’s not working in every area of their lives and develop a comprehensive plan to fix it.

Most recently, Olivia co-authored a pandemic anthology titled #Networked with 19 other women lawyers. #Networked, which hit #1 on Amazon’s New Release charts, tells the story of how these 20 women came together in March 2020 an overcame the confines of COVID-19 social distancing to create connections, cultivate community, and build businesses in the midst of a global pandemic.

Before launching her coaching practice Ms. Vizachero worked as a complex commercial litigation associate at Michigan’s largest AmLaw 200 firm and as a criminal defense attorney at the boutique criminal defense firm where she previously worked as a full-time clerk while she attended Wayne State University Law School as an evening student.

Still having a passion for criminal justice, Ms. Vizachero continues to practice law on a limited basis, putting her needle-in-the-haystack research skills to good use by taking on select criminal defense matters in Detroit.

LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/oliviavizachero

Website: thelessstressedlawyer.com

Less Stressed Sessions — A Monthly Virtual Learning Series: lessstressedsessions.com/signup

Olivia Vizachero

Certified Life Coach

Meenakshi is a global citizen, an inclusive and collaborative servant leader, and a professional thinker and doer. "Stop. Breathe. Think. Act." is her motto.

Born and raised in India, she has been in the US for over a decade now. She is fluent in four languages; and has lived and worked in 10+ cities in India and the US. She is passionate about democratizing access to, and opportunity for, people development across the world.

Meenakshi founded NorthStar Solutions and Services in August 2019 – as a 100% virtual business - to partner with mid-career IT/Agile professionals and leaders, and small to medium-sized businesses, globally, in designing successful outcomes for their transformation journeys, especially in this digital, VUCA economy. She partners with them to help them learn and adopt ‘Future of Work’ skills and behaviors such as: agile, collaborative, and inclusive ways of working; remote leadership; and impactful change communication.

A T-shaped servant leader with a 22-year international and interdisciplinary career in IT, Agile/Business Process Transformation, international healthcare, HR, and Training, she is a champion of cross-cultural and cross-functional leadership. Having started off in the non-profit healthcare sector in India where, among other things, she learned the inner workings of a regional eye bank, the breadth and depth of her professional experience span cultures, geographies, industries, and hierarchies.

Meenakshi is an IC Agile certified Agile Coach (ICP-ACC), and her Agile experience is in B2B product development and client implementation in the healthcare space in the US. She excels in the application of Lean and Human-centered Design in organizational and agile transformations. ​

As a professionally trained and an experienced ESL Trainer, she has helped hundreds of aspiring and working professionals become proficient in their use of business English. She is particularly empathetic towards the challenges faced by non-native speakers of English in the workplace; and has consistently worked towards making culturally competent communication central to creating inclusive work environments.

Meenakshi holds an Executive MBA from Virginia Commonwealth University, Richmond, VA; a BS in Physics from Bharathiar University, India, and an Advanced Diploma in Software Engineering also from India. She has an Executive Master's Certificate from MIT Sloan School of Management in Business Process Design for Strategic Management; and is a Scrum Alliance Certified ScrumMaster®. She is currently on her path to earning an ICF-PCC credential as a Professional Coach.

An active member of the Lean In Agile community – a professional networking group for women professionals in the Lean/Agile space - Meenakshi is on the Catalyst team for the Washington DC area Spiral group. She lives in Ashburn, Virginia in the US, with her husband. In their free time, they enjoy going on road trips to the countryside, and visiting local wineries and breweries.

Sarah Feingold is a co-founder of The Fourth Floor, a next-level community democratizing womxn's access to board seats and investments to drive systemic change. Previously, she was the General Counsel and first lawyer at Etsy and Vroom. She is a creator and producer of Legal Madness, an NYU Law School Engelberg Center fellow, a board member, an investor, and a speaker. You can also find Sarah hammering silver, eating candy, and chasing her child.

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Sarahfeingold.com

Shani Barrax Moore (she/her/hers) is a strategic diversity and inclusion practitioner with more than 20 years of experience in training and development, strategic planning and change leadership, and coalition building. Shani currently serves as the Director of Diversity and Inclusion at the University of North Texas (UNT) in Denton (a city in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex)  where she leads a learning and development team, executes planning and delivery of the UNT Equity and Diversity Conference, manages employee resource groups, and develops strategic partnerships for the university. At both UNT and Tarrant County College District where she served as the Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer, she led an institution-wide campus inclusion climate survey and strategic planning process leading to institutional diversity and inclusion infrastructure. She led similar initiatives as the Director of Diversity and Inclusion at Cary Academy, a 6 – 12 independent school in North Carolina, which earned her membership on the Executive Committee of the National Association of Independent School’s Call to Action, the Association’s think tank for diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. Shani is a partner with Aurora Change Agency, a consulting firm that provides diversity, equity, and inclusion strategic learning and development for corporate, non-profit, governmental, and educational entities. She serves on the boards of Child Care Group, North Texas Diversity Council, and the Social Action Committee of the Lambda Upsilon Sigma chapter of Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Incorporated.  A Cornell University Certified Diversity Advanced Practitioner and an Intercultural Development Inventory Qualified Administrator, Shani is a native of Raleigh, North Carolina, an alumna of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the mom of two teenage daughters. She is currently a City Council candidate for Carrollton, and is pursuing a doctorate degree in higher education administration.