Women Speakers
Mariana Atencio
Peabody Award-winning Journalist, Bestselling Author, Entrepreneur, Inspiring Storyteller, and Host/Moderator
About
Mariana Atencio is on a mission to help people supercharge their careers, their workplace cultures, and their happiness by embracing the power of authenticity. Coming to America from Venezuela as a young girl, Mariana learned first-hand how feeling self-conscious about being different kept her from engaging. After graduating Columbia University, Mariana wanted to take that experience into her journalism career and tell stories that build bridges and foster understanding.
She became a national news anchor and correspondent, earning a Peabody Award for reporting which took her from Haiti to Hong Kong to the Syrian border. The success of her TEDx talk, “What Makes YOU Special?”, viewed over 23 million times, catapulted Mariana into a new storytelling outlet: speaking.
Her first book, Perfectly You: Embracing the Power of Being Real, is a bestselling call to action to unleash the magic of personal and professional authenticity to find purpose and break barriers. Currently head of her own media production company, Mariana pursues stories that capture her curiosity. She also continues to deliver inspiring keynotes and moderate/host at major events.
Heather Hansen
Keynote Speaker on Leadership & Sales, Best-selling Author & Award-winning Trial Lawyer
About
Heather Hansen knows how to build belief. She was a trial attorney for over 20 years and was consistently named one of the Top 50 Female Attorneys in Pennsylvania. She combines that experience with her psychology degree, her mediation training. and her experience as a TV anchor to help her clients build belief and advocate for their ideas, products and services.
For over twenty years Heather was a trial attorney. Her job was to help diverse groups of people believe in her case so that her client could win. She honed the tools for her clients to build credibility quickly so they could persuade diverse juries to see things from their perspective. Now she is sharing the tools with you.
Heather has worked with organizations like Berkshire Hathaway Home Services, Google, SavATree, the American Medical Association, Call Miner and LVMH to help them make the case for their services, products, ideas and their teams. She’s also shared these tools at Harvard Business School, Stanford Law School, The University of Pennsylvania and with audiences across the world.
Heather is the author of the best-seller “The Elegant Warrior: How to Win Life’s Trials Without Losing Yourself” and the host of The Elegant Warrior podcast. Heather’s latest book is Advocate to Win-10 Tools to Ask for What You Want and Get It.
About
As a leadership and inclusion expert, Melissa Majors uses her 25+ years of experience optimizing the business impact of education, innovation, inclusion, and leadership to deliver crowd-pleasing keynotes and workshops with brain-friendly content that engages her audiences and sparks not just inspiration but action. Melissa’s book The 7 Simple Habits of Inclusive Leaders focuses on how great leaders enjoy superior team performance and drive much higher profitability by incorporating inclusive practices.
Melissa started a few successful businesses including Community Keynotes® an inclusive process that draws out game-changing ideas a coaching program, in’klooded® an inclusive strategic planning method that ensures all voices get heard, and Melissa Majors Consulting which drives better strategic decision-making in leadership and inclusion, and works with organizations across the country to effectively measure their inclusion and diversity performance.
Melissa has been a force of change throughout her professional career. She has served on the board of The Propel Group DFW, as the Director of Global Education at Meeting Professionals International (MPI) where she used executive leadership to drive global education strategies and develop excellence in teams. She revamped the educational division to effectively serve 500k+ clients and strategic partners as the Director, Global Education Services at Ellucian. Her extensive experience at these organizations and other companies improved profitability, boosted organizational performance, and optimized inclusion strategies.
Melissa has been featured in publications such as Forbes Magazine, Smart Meetings, The Meeting Professional, NorthStar Meetings Group's Eventful Podcast, and The Event DR. She has a Bachelor of Business Administration and studied strategy and innovation at Harvard University.
Melissa is a crowd-pleasing speaker who masters brain-friendly talks that engage her audiences and spark not just inspiration but action.
April Rinne
Global Authority on the New Economy, Future of Work, and Navigating Constant Change, Humanistic Futurist
About
April Rinne is a change navigator, speaker, investor, and adventurer whose work and travels in more than 100 countries have given her a front-row seat to a world in flux. She is ranked one of the 50 Leading Female Futurists in the world by Forbes and is aHarvard Law School graduate, a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum, a member of theSilicon Guild and Thinkers50 Radar, a Fulbright Scholar, and the author of the international bestseller Flux: 8Superpowers for Thriving in Constant Change.
April is a trusted advisor to well-known startups, companies, financial institutions, non profits, think tanks, and governments worldwide, including Airbnb, Nike, Intuit, the World Bank, theInter-American Development Bank, AnyRoad, and Unsettled as well as governments ranging from Singapore to South Africa, Canada to Colombia, and Italy to India.
For more than two decades, she’s been known for seeing emerging trends early, understanding their potential, and helping others do the same. April is also a bridge-builder between stakeholders, priorities, business models, markets, and those excited about change and those resistant to it.Earlier in life April was a global development executive, an international microfinance lawyer, and a hiking guide. She spent the better part of four years traveling solo, with an insatiable desire to better understand how the rest of the world lives. (One lesson: Change is universal.How we deal with it is not.)
She is as comfortable at Davos as she is talking with micro finance borrowers in an urban slum.A certified yoga teacher, she can often be found upside-down, doing handstands around the world.