Branding Expert | PIHRA Board Member
Corporate Trainer | Leadership & Confidence Coach
VP @Rise Up For You
USA
Lauren Sweeney is the Vice President at Rise Up For You. It is a global educational and motivational company that focuses on enhancing company culture, and on personal development through teaching soft skills. Its mission is to help serve humanity by focusing on its most essential component—the people. The company ‘ s programming is SHRM certified, a Women-Owned Certified Business, and an approved vendor for the County of LA. Lauren was recently awarded the 2021 Ambassador of the Year for the Brea Chamber in Orange County. She serves on the Executive PIHRA Board as the Regional Representative for the Central chapters. She is also a board member of the North Orange County Chamber of Commerce.
Lauren has spoken to thousands of people on confidence, personal leadership, women in the workplace, and more! She has been featured on multiple podcasts, Shout LA magazine, and recognized in a number of California Chamber magazines. She has spoken at HR, Education, and Women in Leadership conferences throughout the United States. She has done keynote presentations on creating intentional company cultures, diverse and inclusive workplaces, and how to build career confidence. Personal branding, public speaking, emotional intelligence, and values-based leadership are some of her favorite topics to coach and teach. She recently built a Leadership Academy to support the social-emotional well-being of classified and credentialed staff for a local school district. Lauren has incredible passion, energy, and relatability with the audiences she serves
Ten-Time Emmy Award Winning Producer
Career & Communications Strategist
USA
Ten-time Emmy award winning producer Valerie Gordon always loved to tell stories as a child, and eventually made it her full-time job. From The Early Show to the Olympics coverage on NBC, Valerie produced stories and segments that often moved audiences to tears. It wasn’t until she transitioned to helping other women discover their own potential as a career strategist that she realized the most important story is the ongoing one we have within ourselves.
As a career and communications strategist, Valerie works with high-achievers, using story to build their brand, manage their message, perfect that presentation and advocate for themselves as they ascend the leadership ladder. As adjunct faculty at the University of Connecticut School of Business, Valerie teaches career development and job search strategies, helping undergraduates prepare a career “toolkit” and create professional social media presence. She has also lectured at Columbia University and the University of Hartford.
Partnering with corporations, Valerie helps bridge the talent gap, encouraging executives to lead with authenticity and empowering women to not only take a seat at the table but to impact the agenda. Her client list includes women’s leadership groups with Pfizer, Citibank, Prudential, Mass Mutual, Aetna, Dealer.com and YES Network among many others. Her innovative keynotes and workshops offer audiences the story strategies to speak up and stand out and create a successful next chapter in their career story.
Founder & CEO Of Powers Peak Potential
Best-Selling Author & Award-Winning Fortune 500 Hi-Tech Sales Executive
USA
Author and Fortune 500 sales executive Becca Powers likes to describe herself as having a full appetite, stating that women with busy careers can have their cake and eat it too without sacrificing a crumb. However, she believes that they should never have to calendar in their self care, family, and free time, believing that it takes away from the spontaneous joy of life.
Becca Powers is an award-winning Fortune 500 hi-tech sales executive, Founder and CEO of Powers Peak Potential, best-selling author and speaker. In her 20+ year career in sales, she’s worked for large companies including Cisco, Dell, and Office Depot, achieving President’s Club 7 times while leading teams of 110+ and hitting $500 million in annual revenue. Becca intimately knows the struggles that have come as a cost to her high achievements. Through nearly losing it all from extreme burnout, she was forced to discover a more supportive and sustainable path to success that she now teaches to others. She founded her consulting and coaching agency to help high achievers and high performance teams breakup with burnout cycles and create WorkLife success. Through workshops, seminars and her signature programs, Becca works with individuals and organizations to create sustainable change by training them to thrive from the inside out — without the cost of compromise.
Learning Professional & Youth Coach
South Africa
Ashalia holds a Bachelor of Social Science and Honours Degrees in Psychology, and is a certified BYCA Life Coach. As an L&D professional, she has just over 14 years of experience within HR and Executive Education and is extremely passionate about a purpose driven life, neuroscience and mindful living. Ashalia uses her energetic nature, love for learning and motivation, her solid experience and knowledge to enable and motivate young minds and nurture an individual’s drive for deeper purpose and motivation. At Sivuka, she addresses the far too large unemployment gap through coaching, work readiness training and recruitment for Youth in SA. Here, she takes an introspective approach to fundamental topics to develop SA’s youth and tackle unemployment. Her primary aim is to equip the graduates and young employees with the tools they need to succeed in the business world in a way that leads to definitive change in their outlook and behaviour. With South Africa’s high strategic focus on Equity for Youth and Black Empowerment, Ashalia is driven to provide companies with the in depth training needed for their young talent at this critical stage of their careers. She leads with a powerful blend of logic and intuition and has designed programmes that make a positive impact on clients such as Hollard, GIBS, SAIPA, SACAP, GroupM, TBWA and Discovery. Her talks and training sessions are inspirational and moving. Her positive, enthusiastic nature and innate ability to discover the strengths within others, helps her unleash potential and purpose within others. Beyond her career, she is a wife to a wonderful husband and mom to 3 young girls in Johannesburg.
College of Liberal Arts & Sciences,
University of Illinois,
Chicago, USA
Title – “Strategies for Publishing in English Language Gender Journal”
Barbara J. Risman is College of Liberal Arts & Sciences Distinguished Professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago. Her areas of expertise include gender inequality, work and family policies and gender identity. She currently serves as the Editor in Chief of Gender & Society, the most highly cited American journal about gender, published by Sociologists for Women in Society. She currently sits on the U.S. National Chapter Advisory board for the Scholars Strategy Network. She has held leadership roles in several professional organizations including President of the Board of Directors and Executive Office of the Council on Contemporary Families, President of Sociologists for Women in Society, President of Southern Sociological Society, and Vice-President of the American Sociological Association. Her most recent book is Where the Millennials Will Take Us: A New Generation Wrestles with the Gender Structure (Oxford, 2018). She has two major current research projects, a study of Covid & Caregiving (with Jerry Jacobs, Kathleen Gerson, and Jennifer Glass) and an international study of people who reject gender categories (with Emanuela Abbatecola, Arantxa Grau, Lucy Nichols, and William Scarborough).