Awnya Creque is a Principal Technical Specialist at Microsoft, renowned for her expertise in eDiscovery and digital forensics. With a Master’s degree in Criminal Justice from Norfolk State University and a Bachelor’s degree in Criminology from the University of Maryland, College Park, Awnya has built a distinguished career in program management, data governance, and compliance. 

Her professional journey includes key roles such as a law enforcement officer, a Senior Manager of eDiscovery at CBRE and eDiscovery Consultant at AlixPartners, where she led cross-functional teams and implemented strategic plans that resulted in significant cost savings. Awnya’s technical skills encompass Microsoft O365, Logikcull, Relativity, OpenText Axcelerate, and Brainspace. 

A dedicated mentor and trainer, Awnya has developed training programs for new hires and conducted forensic analysis training for law enforcement agencies. She is actively involved in professional organizations, including Women in eDiscovery and Sigma Gamma Rho Sorority, Inc., and is a founding member of Tech Ladies. 

Shar Lawson brings experience from companies such as Microsoft, Apple, and NetApp where she held various roles in sales leadership, non-traditional talent recruitment programs, program management, and event planning. While serving on two non-profit boards, Shar had the opportunity to contribute to donor management, corporate gifts, volunteer matching, website and donor CRM system enhancements, and event planning. She holds a bachelor’s degree in business management from Oakland University and a master’s degree in administration with a concentration in leadership from Central Michigan University. I have also obtained certifications in change management and DEIB (Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging). Her own non-traditional career path and personal challenges have fueled her passion for promoting Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging within the tech industry.

Dr. William Keepin is co-founder of Gender Equity and Reconciliation International, and he has co-led intensive gender diversity trainings in several countries. He is a physicist with extensive research on sustainable energy for mitigating climate change, and is author of four books, including Divine Duality: The Power of Reconciliation Between Women and Men, and Song of the Earth: A Synthesis of Scientific and Spiritual Worldviews.

Cynthia Brix, PhD (hon) is co-founder of Gender Equity and Reconciliation International, and she has co-led intensive gender diversity trainings in several countries.  She is an ordained interfaith minister with a background in public relations, wellness management, gerontology, women’s issues, and race relations. She is contributing author of Divine Duality: The Power of Reconciliation Between Women and Men, and co-author of Women Healing Women: A Model of Hope for Oppressed Women Everywhere.

Currently, Krishna is the Head of Digital, Data and Analytics  at Zoetis. Krishna leads digital and analytic transformations that reshape the organization with a focused strategy, recruiting top talent, creating a clear vision, and building lasting partnerships with business unit leaders.

Before joining Zoetis in 2020, Krishna served as chief data officer and head of enterprise digital strategy at Bristol Myers Squibb for 5+ years. He established and built a world-class data and analytic organization from the ground up and advanced digital capabilities while expanding data leadership. Additionally, he served as an executive leader for global IT service provider relationships.

In prior roles, Krishna contributed by overseeing commercial data, leading business architecture and business intelligence, consulting on strategy, and serving in other progressive leadership roles. Krishna has served on the board of directors at Gartner Research, is a founding member of the IEEE Fair Trade Data Standards Group, and is a featured leader in the recently published book TRUST: The winning formula for digital leaders.

In addition to his digital and technology, Krishna serves as a digital and data strategy adjunct faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University’s Executive Education Program. He mentors 15+ chief data officers and chief data analytics officers, is a sought-after industry forum speaker, and has produced several digital and analytic transformation publications.

Krishna’s education accomplishments include securing a Master of Business Administration degree from New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business. Krishna completed his Bachelor of Science in Electrical and Electronics Engineering at the University of Kerala.

Maria is also the owner of MFR Securities, Inc., the Broker Dealer subsidiary of MFR. MFR Securities is a certified Woman-Owned Minority Broker Dealer. It participates in underwritings of equity and debt securities and executes fixed income product transactions for its many institutional clients.

In the not-for-profit sector, Maria has been Director or Trustee for 25 entities currently including the Board of Brooklyn Hospital, Morris Museum and for several years was on the boards of The Brooklyn Community Foundation, Notre Dame Highs School, Lupus Research Foundation & More Project Brazil. Maria graduated from Pace University and was honored as a distinguished alumna of the Pace University Lubin School of Business.

Kristin brings more than 16 years of senior leadership experience making her a SME on diversity growth and development. As the Director of Field Projects for a Fortune 200 company, she was responsible for establishing and executing the organization’s diversity objectives, initiatives, and strategies, as well as focusing on the company’s optimization & localization initiatives.

Most recently Kristin served as the Chief Operating Officer for a National Non for Profit organization, where she created and led the vision and strategy for the organization in partnership with the National Board of Directors and other senior leaders. In her role as COO, Kristin placed a large focus on identifying, on boarding and managing strategic partnerships of all kinds. Kristin is a graduate of Western Illinois University for her undergrad and holds her MBA from WIU.

• Put customers at the center of our design of all research products and services;
• Use cutting-edge digital technology to improve data accessibility and broaden the customer base;
• Extract maximum meaning from performance and other administrative data for continuous program improvement and strategic decision making.

Her 25-year career has been dedicated to using research to inform policies and programs, with an emphasis on improving the lives of low-income people. Prior to coming to LWD, she was the founding director of the NYC Labor Market Information Service (NYCLMIS) at the CUNY Graduate Center. The NYCLMIS provides research and consulting to policy makers and providers in the region’s workforce development system.  Before NYCLMIS, Lesley was the research director of the Education Law Center in Newark, New Jersey, a public interest law and advocacy firm that successfully sued the State of New Jersey for equitable school finance on behalf of 300,000 of New Jersey State’s poorest schoolchildren. She is a graduate of Barnard College at Columbia University and has completed all but the dissertation in political science/public policy at the CUNY Graduate Center. Ms. Hirsch also has taught political science and public policy courses at the City College of New York.

Jackie lives in Moorestown with her husband and two sons.

Mr. Doran is an accomplished development, hosting and managed services executive with deep experience in the telecommunications industry building products at scale for over 20 years. He possesses extensive architecture, software development, hosting and international management experience in large scale telecommunications and internet/intranet products. His responsibilities include leading our architecture, development, testing, hosting, IT and services organizations that successfully leverage talent around the globe.

Prior to his current position, Mr. Doran served in various roles at Synchronoss, including VP of Development, Chief Architect and Senior Software Engineer. Before joining Synchronoss, Mr. Doran was a Senior Development Engineer at Agility Communications from 2000 to 2002 and a Member of Technical staff at AT&T/Lucent from 1996 to 2000.

Mr. Doran received a bachelor’s degree in Computer and Systems Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and a master’s degree in Industrial Engineering from Purdue University.

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Denise sees the Future of Work as an unprecedented opportunity to reimagine work in a way that allows us to live balanced, purposeful, and meaningful lives; and has a burning desire to develop a Future of Work mindset in the everyday person.

As an undergraduate from the University of Limerick in Ireland, Denise came to New York on a one-way ticket to embark on a ten-year Wall St. career in financial oversight and operational controls at Merrill Lynch & Goldman Sachs.

As an eternal optimist and a keen innovator with a desire for flexibility, Denise transitioned to the startup world as a founding team member of a successful high growth technology startup company.

Denise holds an MBA from Fordham University and a BBS in Finance & Economics from the University of Limerick, Ireland. She lives in New Jersey with her husband and three children.

Buteas also serves as the Executive Director of the NEW JOBS PAC, the State’s largest and most influential ideological business political action committee.

Prior to joining NJBIA, Buteas served as the president and CEO of the Home Care & Hospice Association of New Jersey, representing New Jersey home health agencies, hospices and health care service firms servicing the state’s Medicare, Medicaid and private pay patients. She serves on the board of trustees of Middlesex College, Girl Scouts of Heart of NJ and is a member of the Northern Board of Junior Achievement whose mission is to inspire and prepare young people in grades K-12 to succeed in a global economy through real world relationships with business, government, and education partners that can help them develop the employability and financial literacy skills needed to succeed in the 21st century.

Buteas is also the former president and current board member of the Women’s Political Caucus of New Jersey, a statewide nonprofit dedicated to advancing women in government.

Buteas serves as a member of the New Jersey Medical Assistance Advisory Council, New Jersey Small Employer Health Benefits Program and the New Jersey Mandated Health Benefits Advisory Commission, which responds to requests from the State Legislature to provide independent analysis of the medical, financial and social impacts of proposed health insurance benefit mandates.

Buteas served on the Murphy-Oliver Transition 2018 Healthcare team. She also serves on the board of Focus NJ, an independent research non-profit conducting timely, innovative, nonpartisan economic and workforce research.

Previously, Buteas served as vice president of the Capital Impact Group, a public affairs and business development firm that advocates on behalf of nonprofit organizations and Fortune 500 companies. She was also a policy specialist at the New Jersey Board of Public Utilities.

In 2021, Buteas was named a Woman of Distinction by the Girl Scouts of the Jersey Shore, NJBIZ’s 2021 Next Generation of Leaders, a Barrier Breaker as part of Jersey’s Best magazine’s Spring issue honoring trailblazing women in the state and recognized on ROI-NJ’s Influencers: Power List for Government Affairs. In 2018, Buteas was named to NJBIZ’s Best 50 Women in Business list. She was named to NJBIZ’s “40 Under 40” and “Power 50 Health Care” lists in 2017, as well as the 2017 “Insider 100 Policymakers” list by Insider NJ.

Buteas holds an MPA from the School of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers University-Newark and a BA from Rowan University. She is also a graduate of Leadership NJ, a leadership development program, and served as a Raimondo Fellow at the Eagleton Institute of Politics. She is a member of the Rowan University Alumni Association and Eagleton Institute of Politics Alumni Association.

She is experienced in all aspects of business from start up to scale up. Dr Dosunmu is passionate about helping the professional woman thrive in leadership and entrepreneurship, without sacrificing her personal health or family commitments.

Dr. Ronke Dosunmu, is a board certified pediatrician and the founder and Medical Director of Foundation Pediatrics, a 26 year old private practice providing quality care to an underserved urban population in Essex County, New Jersey.

She has worked in management as well as in consulting in the field of drug safety, for many major multinational pharmaceutical companies. She also works to increase minority representation in clinical trial research.

She is a serial entrepreneur who has built many thriving business ventures in the retail, beauty and healthcare spaces, and is experienced in all aspects of business from start up to scale up.

She is passionate about helping women build their brand and business so they can harness their training, experiences, passion and purpose to generate wealth, leave a legacy and make a social impact in their communities.

She has followed her own advice and turned this passion into her newest business venture called Maven CEO, where she provides coaching for leaders and entrepreneurs.

Dr. Dosunmu has been married for over 30 years and is the mother of 3 adult children.

Mr. Jain holds a master’s degree from the Indian Institute of Technology and was part of the Fellows Program at The Wharton School of Business.

Prior to joining Accenture, Shail was CEO of Knowledgent – a leading data and analytics company that Accenture acquired in December of 2018. Shail Jain is a serial entrepreneur and has helped build three technology services firms successfully over the last twenty-five years. The companies he co-founded and co-led were aimed at transforming businesses through technology and data in the Life Sciences, Healthcare, Financial Services and Communications industries. Shail has also held senior leadership positions at Fijustu and EMC Corporation.

Dr. Dorai was at IBM as an IBM Fellow (first woman of Indian origin to receive this recognition in the globe) and her last role was Global CTO for cognitive services in IBM’s Global Business Services unit. During her tenure at IBM (in TJ Watson Research Center, GTS, and GBS), Dr. Dorai was a recipient of IBM’s highest honor in 2011 – the Gerstner Award for Client Excellence; she was recognized as an IBM Distinguished Engineer in 2012 and was appointed by the IBM CEO as an IBM Fellow, the company’s preeminent technical honor in 2015. Her ground-breaking work from 2009 until 2015 on customer focused analytics and AI solutions in mortgage servicing saved thousands of struggling home owners facing foreclosure with the right home ownership retention programs and alternative workout options during one of the most challenging times in the history of the U.S. housing market. In 2014, Dr. Dorai received the Tamil American Pioneer Award for Excellence in Finance and Business from the Federation of Tamil Sangams of North America. In 2016, she was profiled as a “Societal Innovator” in the IBM HQ. In 2018, she received “The Visionary” award from the National Association of Women in Real Estate Business.

Dr. Dorai graduated from IIT Madras with an undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering and received her Ph.D. in Computer Science at Michigan State University with the Distinguished Academic Achievement award. She is the co-inventor of 48 patents and has received multiple high-value patent awards, having been recognized as a Master Inventor thrice at IBM. She has co-authored 100+ technical papers in IEEE and ACMconferences and journals, edited a book and received 5 best paper awards at international conferences. She has presented keynote addresses and technical talks at academic research conferences, industry symposia and panels, and has served in many organizational roles on committees at the International Conferences over the past three decades. She is frequently interviewed or cited in press, news and blogs, and YouTube video on a wide variety of topics from AI, Machine Learning, Blockchain, Big Data and Analytics to human technology balance. With her passion for nurturing global talent in STEM, in addition to her mentoring and advocacy work at IBM, she mentored over 15 university students, served as a Co-Advisor for 5 Ph.D. students and was active on University Advisory Boards (Industrial Advisory Board of Univ. of Illinois, Univ. of Mysore).

Following two decades of a highly decorated career at IBM, Dr. Dorai is currently focused on her entrepreneurial ventures and her continued passion to make AI accessible to everyone with her conference presentations, webinars and podcasts.

Julie Dabrowski is the Chief of Staff for Microsoft’s Northeast Enterprise Commercial region. Her responsibilities include business strategy, operations, communications, customer and partner engagement, and internal stakeholder management across a multi-billion business. Julie has been at Microsoft for 9 years in a variety of sales and sales leadership roles across account and solution area sales, services, and now Operations. She is active in women in technology and with Microsoft’s Aspire (recent college and MBA grad) mentorship programs. Julie is a co-sponsor for the newly formed Microsoft US Ambassador council for the DC offices and also serves as a sponsor for the Northeast inclusive hiring program and Northeast Leadership Excellence forum.

Prior to joining Microsoft, Julie held various Sales and Sales Leadership roles at EMC as well as VMware. Julie has her degree in Business Administration with a concentration in marketing and statistics from Indiana University of Pennsylvania. She has also continued her education through Wharton and INSEAD Executive education certifications focused on Executive selling and Business Strategy & Financial Acumen.

Myra Kinds is the BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and People of Color) Lead and Trainer with GERI. She is a licensed American Baptist Minister to Youth, and a recognized leader in underserved communities, specializing in addiction and recovery, mental health, and domestic violence. Myra collaborates with The Black Ministerial Alliance and The Institute for Global Youth Programs and is a certified instructor in Mental Health First Aid and Recovery Coaching.  Prior to entering the non-profit sector, Myra held executive-level positions responsible for hundreds of employees, as well as working in local government, where she led several initiatives for the City of Boston.