Speakers

Jennifer S. LeBlanc is the best-selling author of Launching for Revenue: How to Launch Your Product, Service or Company for Maximum Growth and Changing Tides: Powerful Strategies for Female Founders, and owns the publishing house, HAL House. She is the founder of the Changing Tides Movement, which was developed out of the pressing need for a collaborative community focused on the unique experiences of women founders, entrepreneurs and investors.

Jennifer is known as a high-energy and inspiring keynote speaker and workshop facilitator for startup accelerators and corporate teams. In her private coaching work, Jennifer works with female founders, entrepreneurs, and change agents to provide them with the tools and connections they need to succeed. Jennifer has also acted as an advisor to President Obama, Congress and the SBA via the National Women’s Business Council. The Silicon Valley Business Journal honored Jennifer with its Silicon Valley Women of Influence Award in 2016 and she was shortlisted as Advocate of the Year by Women in IT Silicon Valley for her work with the Changing Tides Movement to support female founders and women entrepreneurs.

Jennifer is also the founder and CEO of ThinkResults, which was ranked as the 10th Fastest Growing Private Company in Silicon Valley in 2017 and has been recognized as one of the top Silicon Valley agencies each year since 2013.

Ita is a Partner at venture capital firm GingerBread Capital, which backs high growth female founded companies. Her mission is to engage, educate, and elevate the next generation of successful women business leaders and investors. In 2014, Ita founded Tigress Ventures, an advisory and consulting firm that tapped her considerable network to bring together visionary entrepreneurs with seasoned professionals to help women scale their businesses and hone their leadership skills.

Ita also served as Venture Partner at Plum Alley Investments, where she oversaw investment opportunities and pipeline for high-growth female-founded and gender-diverse startups. Previously, Ita held product management roles at TravelClick and American Express. She began her career at Goldman Sachs as an analyst in Credit Capital Markets and an institutional trader of preferred stock.

Ita holds an MBA in Marketing and Entrepreneurial Management from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; and earned a Bachelor’s degree, cum laude, in Psychology, with a certificate in Finance, from Princeton University.

Maha spots technology trends early and partners closely with her companies to drive growth and exits. She focuses on e-commerce and enterprise / cloud, and was one of the first investors to recognize the potential of social gaming. She was also the first investor in The RealReal (REAL) and sat on the company’s board through the 2019 IPO. A champion of women in technology, Maha is passionate about funding and raising the profiles of female entrepreneurs and is a founding member of All Raise. She is also a trustee for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Maha holds a B.A. in Economics and an M.A. in Sociology from Stanford University and a Ph.D. in Economics from MIT.

Dr. Sophia Yen graduated from MIT, UCSF Medical School, and UC Berkeley’s MPH program. With 20+ years in medicine, she is a Clinical Associate Professor at Stanford Medical School and on the Executive Committee of the American Academy of Pediatrics’s Section On Adolescent Health. Her passion is Women’s Reproductive Health and she co-founded 3 non-profit projects to improve the lives of women: The Silver Ribbon Campaign to Trust Women, SheHeroes.org, and fffl.co (Female Founded, Female Led, B2C awareness campaign, by from a FFFL!)

Maria Malavenda is a leading authority on Business Trends including Big Data, Predictive Analytics and the future of Information. She currently serves as Founder and CEO of LOOK Enterprises, a personalized, data-driven care management platform for beauty and wellness services. Prior to LOOK, Maria catalyzed several award-winning high-growth ventures in healthcare, consumer products and technology –including companies acquired by Microsoft, Bosch and IMG. She previously served as a Fortune 50 marketing executive for Johnson & Johnson, a Strategy Partner for Deloitte and Accenture, and immersed herself in the “digital data revolution” as VP of Strategy and Corporate Development for Monster Worldwide and ZoomInfo where she played a main role driving their first exit in 2017.

Maria believes Innovation is a mindset, as well as a skill set. She has worked with a multitude of individuals and companies with the intent of helping to inspire and motivate them to sustain, grow, and succeed. Maria has raised over $3B in seed, venture capital, Private Equity, IPO and post IPO financings’ and achieved considerable returns for investors. In addition to Maria’s career success, she continues to provide her thought leadership as an advocate and mentor for women as a board member for Planned Parenthood, Harvard iLab, Brigham and Women’s Innovation Hub and TechStars.

Being “blessed” with a chronic skin affliction, Hillary learned early on that not all products work for everyone.  Prior to Wheesearch, she developed B2C marketing solutions for F500 companies including Avon, Yahoo!, eBay and Visa.  She’s an avid product searcher and is passionate about supporting women and female entrepreneurs, is Executive Director of the Founders Network, and was a 2018 Finalist for Entrepreneur of the Year with the Women in IT Awards.

Kyla Lam has been a bartender in the industry for 18 years and is bootstrapping Startender, a much-needed app for the bars/restaurants/nightclub industry, now in beta testing. If there’s anyone who has questions about building an app, she can definitely help avoid the expensive mistakes and pitfalls she has experienced and offer help in designing and building an app from scratch. Champion for other females and lover of cats!

Jennifer Saxton is the Founder and CEO of Tot Squad, which she founded in 2011 during her time at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Saxton is well regarded as an expert in the baby and parenting space, and has been featured on CNBC, Fast Company, Forbes, Bloomberg BusinessWeek and made six appearances on CBS’s The Doctors but none of her accomplishments make her as proud as her daughter, Charlotte, who was born in September 2018. After successfully divesting the legacy service business of Tot Squad in March 2020, Saxton now serves as CEO of the new Tot Squad company: a digital marketplace for parenting services, from lactation consultations to sleep support, and many more.

Xandra Laskowski is a startup advisor with over 25 years of entrepreneurial experience with large multinational tech companies as well as startups as founder, investor, advisor and board member. She has held positions as Worldwide Commodity Manager and National Major Accounts managerial roles before moving into the Angel Investment and startup worlds. She founded OSEA Angel Investors in 2017, a woman focused angel investment group based at the UCI Cove, University of Irvine, California. OSEA Angel Investors is an investment partner with Tech Coast Angels, Titan Angels (CSUF) Angel Syndication Network and Family Office Networks. Through Xolas, Ms. Laskowski provides startup consulting assisting entrepreneurs in producing their “Startup Roadmap”.

In 2019 Ms. Laskowski was included in the Orange County Business Journal OC 500 Directory of Influence for Innovation and in February 2020 was nominated to the Orange County Business Journal Woman in Business Awards. In March 2020 Ms. Laskowski was nominated as a Women of Influence Awards finalist for the Gamechanger Award.

Kate is a Board Director at ABD Insurance and Financial Services and a Business Advisor and Executive Coach. She is also an author and a Senior Fellow at Georgetown University.

Kate is a passionate advocate for diversity at the highest levels of business and is a firm believer that unwavering optimism can transcend even the most daunting systemic barriers in the workplace. She has spent decades as an executive coach, bringing out brilliance in leaders and their teams. Kate launched her career as a member of Palm Inc.’s founding management team before becoming a Senior Vice President at SanDisk.

She has subsequently served as CEO and COO for several start-ups and privately held companies, and serves as an Independent Board Director. Kate now applies her expertise to research gender equity in the C-Suite as a Senior Industry Fellow at Georgetown University.

Kate is a guest lecturer at Stanford Graduate School of Business, University of Michigan’s Ross school of Business and Georgetown University’s McDonough School of Business. She is the author of The Moonshot Effect: Disrupting Business as Usual. Her second book, The Impostor Breakthrough, will be published in 2021.

Morvareed Z. Salehpour is Managing Partner of Salehpour Legal Consulting, a law firm specializing in handling a diverse range of complex legal matters both in and outside the courtroom. She is experienced in negotiating a variety of contracts and legal agreements and handling cases from inception to trial and appeal. She has represented clients across the nation ranging from entrepreneurs and small businesses to Fortune 500 companies and works in a variety of industries, including technology, media and entertainment, and real estate among others. Ms. Salehpour is a graduate of UCLA and UCLA School of Law, where she also served as a Managing Editor for the UCLA Law Review. Ms. Salehpour previously practiced at BakerHostetler, a national firm where her work included being a member of the legal team seeking to recover the principal lost in the Madoff Ponzi scheme, and then at Strange & Butler, a complex litigation boutique. Ms. Salehpour is also President-Elect of the Santa Monica Bar Association, Board Member of the UCLA Westside Alumni Network, Board Member of the Rabbit Hole Network Women’s Blockchain Community, and a regular speaker and writer on tech, real estate, and business law issues.

Briana is a writer, creative & business woman of many trades. As a self-professed “literary artist”, her talents lie primarily in using her communication/storytelling abilities to bridge gaps & cultivate community. Having put her skills initially to work through her ventures, The English Major Takes Tech & Just B. Frank, she later pivoted into wellness before shifting focus following the George Floyd protests to champion for equity via The Prosp(a)rity Project.

Christy’s professional education expertise has afforded her the opportunity to work around the world. Since achieving a Masters Degree and Teaching Credentials in Sussex, England, she has created and developed two companies focused on Leadership Development Programs through education and conservation projects overseas.

She has delivered leadership initiatives internationally to individuals, universities, small companies, and non-profits in the UK, Europe, Cambodia, Thailand, Indonesia, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, South Africa, Canada, the USA, and Australia.

Through her company, Venture Within, she creates transformational experiences for personal and professional growth. She lives a full and meaningful life while inspiring and enabling others to do the same.

• Expert in leadership development amongst professionals
• 20 years an Educator, CEO of Venture Within, and formerly Co-Founder of EDventure International
• Curated strategic leadership workshops catered for traveling professionals, with a focus on personal development and growth.
• Utilizes cultural immersive experiences as transformative opportunities.

Dr. Ashie Bhandiwad is an entrepreneur, scientist, and educator. She is a strong advocate for food based STEM education for young children. Ashie founded StemChef on this principle to keep STEM interest kindled and alive in children to inspire the next generation. Happily she also tackles the female “pipeline” issue that is blamed for under-represented female gender in STEM careers. Prior to that she had dedicated a decade of her life working on renewable energy to combat climate change. Her papers have been published in top scientific journals. Now Ashie is out to inspire the teeny tots to take on global issues of their generation. Ashie holds a PhD in Engineering from Dartmouth College.

Suzanne is a General Partner with Prime Movers Lab investing in breakthrough scientific startups in energy, transportation, infrastructure, manufacturing, human augmentation and the future of computing. She has 20 years of experience working in the technology and investment space. Most recently, she spent five years at StartX, the Stanford University focused entrepreneur community, managing the Stanford-StartX Fund and working directly with hundreds of entrepreneurs. Prior to that, she spent ten years doing secondary private equity investing. Suzanne started her career at Morgan Stanley in the Technology Financial Sponsors Group. As Fund Manager at StartX, Suzanne oversaw $175M of direct investment in 300 start-ups across 500+ rounds, from seed through Series D, in industries ranging from Enterprise, Consumer, Hardware and Medical. She earned an MBA from Stanford University and a BS in Finance and Information Systems from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania magna cum laude. Suzanne lives in Silicon Valley, she is happily married to an entrepreneur, and is a mom to human twins & lot of pets!

Maria Tamellini, is a co-founder of GamerSafer, a company designing technologies to help online games prevent fraud, toxicity and child exploitation. She was named a Headstream Innovator this year for creating positive, ethical and healthy technologies for teens and is a Child Safety co-chair at XR Safety Initiative. Before GamerSafer, she had a successful CSR consultancy B Corp certified company and advised eighty businesses across the world. Maria is a UC Berkeley SkyDeck alumna, a Board Member of Latinas in Tech, holds an international certification in social business. She is also a gamer, a mom of two passionate gamers and an Ambassador for Women in Games.