Lady Empire

Rachel is a Colorado-based marketing technologist and Fractional CMO. After leaving CableLabs as their former CMO, she pursued many different things such as founding BABs Outside, investing in  Soona, Mortal Kombucha, and InterviewIA, and hiking 46 out of Colorado's 58 14ers. Rachel will discuss how she went from living in her car at one point to becoming one of cable's top recognized businesswomen. She will also talk about the memoir she is currently working on and how her childhood trauma changed her life forever. 

https://linktr.ee/rachelbeisel
https://www.rachelbeisel.com/
https://www.amazon.com/Forget-Mentor-Find-Sponsor-Fast-Track/dp/1422187160

Rachel Beisel Bio:

C-Suite Leader, Visionary, Strategist, & Startup Founder of Multiple Companies
· Founder and CEO, full-time CMO, and fractional CMO for both $B and $M businesses in B2B and DTC technology, beauty, CPG, and media companies in both mature to high-growth companies.
· Proven track record of actualizing strategies for $MM results, galvanizing boards, getting executive buy-in, and engaging workforce through confident communication, data literacy, and an agile mindset.
· Experience with R&D, HR, Finance, Operations, Long-Range Innovation, Sales, Product, Development and Design, and mastery of Marketing and Communication functions.

Results-Driven Sales & Marketing Leader
· Successful marketing/sales leader with companies of varying stages (startups, mid-stage, and Fortune 100).
· Trained in/active practitioner of Customer-Centric Selling, Challenger Method, Inbound Marketing Methodologies, SEM and Digital Marketing Growth Strategies; pioneered Agile Marketing.
· Generated 100M+ deals/sales from startup to enterprise.

Operational Transformation via Program and Product Development
· Transforms products and services companies through developing new offerings, uncovering underserved markets, and leveraging disruptive innovation to win new customer segments across multiple industries and business models.
· Known for successful turnarounds, rebrand strategies, and building well-oiled machines.
· Involved in 10 Mergers & Acquisitions including financial due diligence, board presentations, and external communications including managing analyst relations.
· Trained up to 1000s on process efficiency and marketing innovation methodologies across organizations (Kanban, Lean, Agile, Scaled Agile (SAFe), Jobs to Be Done (JTBD), Process Mapping, Customer Journey Mapping, FIRE (Focus, Ideation, Ranking, Execution), Design Thinking, DevOps deployment methodology, Design Sprint, etc).

High-Impact Teams, Coaching, & Mentorship
· Able to build highly skilled, diverse global teams and incorporate processes in new ways that provide a competitive edge enabling companies and teams to win.
· Former pro athlete. Understands the importance of teams. Creates a reliable and robust culture of trust within the organization, powerfully impacting morale and productivity.
· Motived by helping others find their power, become future leaders and reach their potential.
· Highly skilled at recruiting the right people at all levels for the organization. Knows when to build versus buy; hire versus augment.

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Carolyn is the CEO and Founder of ROI Swift, an agency made up of digital marketing experts who are passionate about growing small and medium-sized businesses. She worked many years for Dell and then eventually moved into the marketing consulting space. Carolyn is also the author of “Business Do’s and Absolute Don’ts: Applied Wisdom from my work with Dell, Costco, Amazon, and multiple startups”. Carolyn will discuss how the pandemic has affected the supply chain and how companies should really utilize e-commerce, especially during the holidays. 

https://roiswift.com/team/

Carolyn Lowe Bio:

Founded in 2015, ROI Swift is an agency made up of fun and approachable digital marketing experts who are passionate about growing small and medium businesses. They offer expert management in Google Adwords, Google Shopping, remarketing, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, Pinterest – pretty much every digital platform – and take pride in their results.

ROI Swift was started with one goal: to help small and medium businesses grow through profitable paid advertising vehicles. They were tired of seeing small companies waste money with clueless marketing firms. Emerging brands need a strategic partner that will put them on the same playing field as the big businesses. That’s what they do. When you hire them, you get a responsive team that’s passionate about working with you. Their goal is to grow 1000 emerging brands by 2030.

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Naya Tapper is a USA Olympian rugby player who graduated from the University of North Carolina. Naya plays professional rugby for team USA and has become the face of USA Women’s rugby. She will discuss her journey as a female rugby player and how she ended up starring in the 2020 Olympic Games.

http://nayatapper.com/
Instagram: @nayatapper 

Naya Tapper Bio:

Born in Beaufort, South Carolina, and raised in Charlotte, North Carolina, Naya Tapper has played rugby professionally since 2016. After earning All-American track and field honors in high school, she began her rugby career at UNC Chapel Hill where she starred from 2012-2016.

As a professional, Naya has become the All-Time leading try scorer for USA Women’s Eagles. Highlights include the 2017 Sydney Sevens Player of the Final, 2017 Sydney Sevens Dream Team, 2017 Vegas Sevens Dream Team, 2018 Rugby World Cup second leading try scorer, and 2018 NSBC Dream Team. She earned a silver medal at the 2017 Dubai Sevens Tournament gold medal at the 2019 Biarritz Olympique Pays Basque, and a silver medal at the 2019 Pan American Games.  Naya was a member of USA Rugby’s 2020 Olympic team that competed in Tokyo.

Naya’s infectious personality has afforded her the privilege of becoming the face of USA Rugby in the lead-up to the 2020 Games. In the past year, she has appeared on behalf of the organization, as well as the USOC on several cross-over programs and outlets including NBC’s Today Show and Bravo’s Project Runway. Naya has also lent her voice to women and sports-centric organizations such as Women’s Sports Foundation.

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Madeleine is the Co-Founder and CEO of Talentdrop, a talent marketplace that matches talent to your company’s needs. She has had years of recruiting experience working at top-named companies such as Snapchat, Facebook, Uber, and Instacart. As a Co-Founder, Madeleine has partnered with many elite firms such as SV Angel and Y Combinator, both startup seed funds. She will discuss how the recruiting model varies across high-profile companies and how Talentdrop plans to compete with those big named powerhouses. 

Madeleine Nguyen Bio:

I'm originally from the SF Bay Area. I went to Georgetown University in DC for undergrad where I played Women's Golf and studied Classics. I then went to law school at Washington University in St. Louis where I became interested in employment law, which led me to explore careers in HR and Talent. I wanted to get into tech so I pursued opportunities in recruiting, starting at a firm (Riviera) then going in house to Instacart, Snapchat, and Uber between 2013-2019. I left to start Talentdrop!

Talentdrop is turning recruiting into an open marketplace, where hiring companies post bounties for their open roles and any recruiter or other professional can collect it by referring a successful candidate. Companies get more people working on their hiring problem without having to pay more for it, and now anyone can earn big recruiting bonuses previously limited to a few firms.

Professional recruiters can now monetize the excess candidate inventory created from their primary business. This is work they've already done but previously couldn't benefit from. Likewise, candidates won't have to start the vetting process over from scratch again and again since they'll be able to be referred with context and get warm intros into hot hiring companies that can be hard to access. Companies can also share candidates in a more efficient way (for example, Company A has two great product candidates but only one headcount - they can refer the second).

Machine learning will help us make better hiring recommendations faster.

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Sabrina Runbeck is a cardiothoracic surgery PA with more than 10 years of experience in public health and neuroscience. She is also the author of Asian Women Who BossUp, a book about Asian women overcoming difficulties and inspiring change. Sabrina will discuss how she has overcome burnout and a draining career while still being able to do the one thing she loves most, improving people’s lives. 

Instagram: @sabrinarunbeck

Sabrina Runbeck Bio:

"When I was 12 years old, my life was uprooted. I moved around the world, then to the U.S., and a few months later I was spending all my weekends selling goods at a local flea market with my broken English. For a long time, this was my family’s only income. I thought this was a normal teenager’s life. I was just trying to navigate life in a different country while figuring out who I was.

Before coming to the U.S., life was much simpler. I only had to go to school, get good grades, be the leading student in my class, and have fun with my friends. Everything else from household chores to preparing for food were all taken care of.

Growing up as an Asian woman, I embraced the power of working hard. I had to get up early and work with my family, among other things to better my family and myself. I put on a “mask,” let’s call it my “not-crying mask,” while continuously finding a way to get to the next level. I held a mentality back then that if I don’t push myself no one will. I think my efforts paid off when I got two master’s degrees and broke into the highly competitive cardiovascular surgery field.

Strangely enough, despite how many marks I was able to check, I was not satisfied. This is a common saboteur for professionals called “Stickler,” and my version of it is “Miss Nothing is Good Enough.” I then decided to break out of my comfort zone to become an international speaker to empower women in healthcare like me. Myself, too, as I had to learn to neutralize “Miss Nothing is Good Enough.” I stepped outside of my comfort zone to become an international speaker to empower women in healthcare. With the right system they can have both — a powerful career and a passionate life without feeling overwhelmed, underappreciated, or being undervalued.

Busy and ambitious healthcare professionals are burning out at record times while experiencing severe mental trauma during this pandemic. Reports also found that they are among 20% of the death rate caused by COVID-19. The stress will likely linger — we just passed the second wave, and now there’s a potential third wave on the way.

Healthcare workers are put in a tough spot, making impossible decisions and working under extreme pressure. They want to show up as the best practitioners but they are already overworked. A national medical research database, Medscape, found that 64 percent of physicians are more stressed out yet receive little support from their organizations during COVID19.

After overcoming constant work-related stress, I now empower busy professionals to restore their mental immunity, reboot efficiency, and create a life they love."

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Inez recently released her memoir, Life After Windows, for the 20th anniversary of September 11th. Inez had her dream job working in the North Tower, until one day it was gone. She has gone through many ups and downs recovering from this dreadful day but her greatest joy in life has been becoming a mother. Inez is also one of the few people in the world to pass the level 3 Court of Master Sommeliers Advanced exam. She will discuss her journey through life post-9/11, and how she has continued to grow into an inspiring woman.

Instagram: @inezribustello

Inez Ribustello Bio:

Inez Ribustello grew up in the small town of Tarboro, and graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 1998 with a degree in journalism and mass communications, but her dream was to pursue a career in the culinary arts. She moved to New York City to attend ICE. After her externship she began a job at Best Cellars wine store. She went on to become an Assistant Cellar Master at the renowned World Trade Center restaurant Windows on the World. She was promoted to Beverage Director, making her the wine buyer for the largest grossing restaurant in North America. For two years, Ribustello worked in Atlantic City and was in charge of wine selection, service, and education for the Borgata’s 11 restaurants. In 2002, she and her husband opened On the Square, a combination restaurant, wine bar, and wine store. In addition to running On The Square, she is an Adjunct Professor at East Carolina University in Hospitality Leadership, Wine & Beverage Management.

That sheer coincidence, the randomness of her, and her now-husband Stephen Ribustello, both being off work that day, and her being home in North Carolina, is the backbone that holds together the two seasons of her life, as told in her new memoir Life After Windows. In it, Ribustello traces her journey from naive, privileged Southern belle to becoming one of the most powerful people in the New York wine scene during the dot com bubble. When the September 11 terror attacks destroyed her world, in both a literal and spiritual sense, she found herself back in the very town she vowed to never return to, opened On the Square, one of North Carolina’s most heralded restaurants, and, eventually Tarboro Brewing Company.

Ribustello’s memoir is a microcosm of her personality — fast-paced, bubbly, with the occasional epithet tossed in to remind you that she’s not the proper Southern girl she once was. But it’s also raw and honest and at times gut-wrenchingly sad. For someone who lives and raises her family in the same small town where she grew up, that kind of brutal honesty, about her struggles to return to her Christian faith after 9/11, about how the restaurant industry both brought her some of her greatest joys and lowest lows, about any myriad of issues that “we just don’t talk about in public,” can be terrifying. Ribustello seems to approach the act of revealing her entire life to the world with the same pragmatic optimism she has leaned on to get her through the past 20 years. The book is woven through with opportunities to take a break from the dark stuff and laugh, and one would imagine that’s exactly how Ribustello lives her life. When things get hard, when the world gets dark, there is always family, friends, work, and of course, laughter.

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Two-Time Track & Field Olympian, Kendell Williams placed 5th in the Heptathlon at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games. During her time as a Georgia Bulldog, she and her brother made history in 2017 when Kendell won her fourth NCAA Indoor championship in the pentathlon and Devon Williams captured the national heptathlon title. This was the first time that siblings recorded a sweep of the multi-events at the same NCAA meet. Kendell will discuss her Olympic appearances and how she continues to grow as a huge asset for the USA Track & Field program.

Instagram: @kdubb_100

Kendell Williams Bio:

Daughter of Blane and Terri Williams...Brother, Devon Williams, is a multi-event competitor and Team USATF teammate...The sibling-duo often credit one another as being the largest source of motivation in each others’ lives...Williams first became involved with track when she was seven years old...In 2012 and 2013, she was named the Gatorade National Girls Track and Field Athlete of the Year...She also competed on four U.S. Junior National teams and won the 100m hurdles, long jump, high jump, and heptathlon at the USATF Junior National Championships...In 2016, Williams was named the U.S. Track and Field and Cross Country Coaches Association National Women’s Field Athlete of the year. Then in 2017, she received the Honda Collegiate Women’s Sports Award.

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Juanita is the Founder & Executive Producer of PURPOSE Productions, an attorney, an author, and a mother to name a few. She received the Attorney For Justice Award from the Supreme Court of Tennessee in 2018 and 2019 and travels internationally speaking on various topics regarding female empowerment. She is also the Founder and current Chairman of the Board of Trustees for Dress For Success Greater London, an organization that helps disadvantaged women become economically independent by styling them and giving them interview attire and career training. Juanita will discuss her life as an ex-pat and how she has helped women remain confident in the workplace.

https://www.iamjuanitaingram.com/

Juanita Ingram Bio:

Juanita, the President, Founder and Executive Producer of PURPOSE Productions, is originally from Chattanooga, Tennessee, where she received her Bachelor’s Degree in Accounting from Tennessee State University. In postgraduate study, Juanita received her MBA and Juris Doctorate degrees from the University of Memphis.

She is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., The Links Incorporated Circle City Chapter, and the American Bar Association. Not to forget she is a loving wife and mother of two, currently residing in the United States of America.

Juanita is a licensed attorney with 17 years of experience. She received the Attorney For Justice Award from the Supreme Court of Tennessee in 2018 and 2019; was awarded the Up and Coming Leadership in Law Award in 2007; was named Top 40 under 40 in 2004.

As an advocate for young girls and women, Juanita travels internationally speaking on various topics regarding female empowerment and self-worth; delivering motivational messages to women and children throughout the US, Europe & the UK.

She is the first African-American woman to compete and win the title of Mrs. Indiana United States in 2007 and has since gone on to compete and become the first African-American Ms. World International 2012, Mrs. Great Britain World 2011, Mrs. UK Universe 2013 and Mrs. UK International 2014 (placing Top 3 at Nationals).

Madame Noir acknowledged her as one of the Top 7 Black Women in Pageantry to turn Beauty into Business along with Halle Berry, Oprah Winfrey, and Vanessa Williams.

Juanita created a multi-cultural Christian children’s series – The Wonderfully Made Pals Presents which is a series of books with a mission of introducing the word of God to kids.  The series currently includes Kind Kinsley, Wonderfully Made Wanita, Confident Keynan, and Generous Gregerio and her two  newest additions– Heng and the Holy Spirit & Carisa’s Curls!

Also- after many requests for a more in depth workbook, Juanita is excited to announce the release of Fabulous, Faithful & Free: The Workbook. It is an 8 week comprehensive guide to a journey of self discovery and reflection.

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Andria is the 2018 Global Teacher Prize winner, or better known as “The Best Teacher in the World.” She is an Arts and Textiles teacher at Alperton Community School in northwest London, England. Learning the basics of many of the 35 languages represented in Alperton’s student population, including Hindi, Punjabi, Nigerian and Ghanaian, Andria has been able to reach out to her once marginalized students to earn their trust and, crucially, establish relationships with their parents, many of whom do not speak English. Andria has gone against the grain, taking the time to understand her students’ lives beyond school by visiting their homes, riding with them on the bus, and standing at the school gates with police officers to welcome students as they arrive at the start of the school day.

Thanks to her efforts, Alperton is now in the top 1 to 5% of the country in terms of qualifications and accreditations.  Andria will discuss her book, “Those Who Can, Teach” and the many hardships that teachers have had to overcome while being very underappreciated by society.

https://www.andriazafirakou.com/
Instagram & Twitter: @andriazaf

Andria Zafirakou Bio:

Andria teaches at Alperton Community School, a secondary school academy in the inner city borough of Brent. It’s no easy task. Brent is one of the most ethnically diverse places in the country and 130 languages are spoken in its schools. Pupils come from some of the poorest families in Britain, many sharing one house with five other families and others exposed to gang violence in the London borough with the third highest murder rate in the UK. Children arrive at the school with limited skills and already feel isolated from staff and each other, making engaging with them all the more difficult and all the more vital.

The odds were stacked against her succeeding, but Andria defied them. Working as an art and textiles teacher and as a member of the senior leadership team tasked with earning the trust of her pupils and their families to better understand the complex lives they’ve come from, she redesigned the curriculum across all subjects from scratch  while carefully working alongside other teachers so that it resonates with her pupils. She helped a music teacher launch a Somali school choir and she created alternative timetables to allow girls-only sports that would not offend some of the more conservative communities, leading the girls’ cricket team to win the McKenzie Cup.

Learning the basics of many of the 35 languages represented in Alperton’s pupil population, including Gujarati, Hindi, Punjabi, Nigerian and Ghanaian, Andria has been able to reach out to her once marginalized students to earn their trust and, crucially, establish relationships with their parents, many of whom do not speak English. Andria has gone against the grain, taking the time to understand her pupils’ lives beyond school by visiting their homes, riding with them on the bus and standing at the school gates with police officers to welcome pupils as they arrive at the start of the school day.

Thanks to her efforts, Alperton is now in the top 1 to 5% of the country in terms of qualifications and accreditations.  This as a colossal achievement given how low the students’ starting points were and how rapidly they progressed during their five to seven years at the school – a point recognized by the national inspection team.

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Kristin was in a jet ski accident when she was 14 years old, killing her friend and nearly killing her. She ended up paralyzed and was told she would be nothing more than a vegetable for the rest of her life. She turned her story into one of happiness and positivity by publishing 3 books, one of which is being turned into a tv show. Kristin will discuss the adversity she has had to overcome at such a young age and how she has truly embraced living with a disability.

https://kristinbeale.com/
Instagram: @kristin.gupta

Kristin Beale Bio:

My name is Kristin, and I’m a published author and illustrator from Virginia. I’ve completed 14 marathons, I’m a nationally-competing wheelchair fencer, and I work for Morgan James Publishing as a literary scout. I truly love my work, and I’m excited to share with you.

At age fourteen, Kristin Beale was enjoying a happy summer vacation when a Jet-Ski accident turned her life upside-down—and nearly ended it. Ever since then, she has had to struggle to overcome not only the physical but the psychological toll of her injuries—and her grit and courage have been an inspiration to countless people.
 
In Greater Things, Kristin offers a raw perspective on everything from how people react to her, to learning how to navigate in and through an inaccessible world, to just trying to make the best of a crummy situation.

My book is also available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, & Borders.

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