President’s Network

Stacy Blake-Beard is a tenured Associate Professor of Management at the Simmons College School of Management where she teaches organizational behavior. She is also Faculty Affiliate at the Center for Gender in Organizations at Simmons. Prior to joining Simmons, Blake-Beard was faculty at the Harvard University Graduate School of Education. She has also worked in sales and marketing at Procter & Gamble and in the corporate human resources department at Xerox. Blake-Beard holds a BS in Psychology from the University of Maryland at College Park and an MA and a Ph.D. in Organizational Psychology from the University of Michigan.

Blake-Beard’s research focuses on the challenges and opportunities offered by mentoring relationships, with a focus on how these relationships may be changing as a result of increasing workforce diversity. She is particularly interested in the issues women face as they develop mentoring relationships. She also studies the dynamics of formal mentoring programs in both corporate and educational settings. Blake-Beard has published research on gender, diversity, and mentoring in several publications including the Journal of Career Development, the Academy of Management Executive, the Psychology of Women Quarterly, Journal of Management Development, the Journal of Business Ethics, Human Resource Management Journal and The Diversity Factor.

Blake-Beard sits on the advisory board of a number of organizations, including MentorNet, Teen Voices, the Harvard Project on Tenure, the Harvard Medical School Center for the Study of Diversity in Science, and Jobs for the Future. Blake-Beard has been the recipient of a numerous grants and fellowships, most recently from the Ford Foundation and the Robert Toigo Foundation. She has given seminars for and consulted with a number of organizations on issues of diversity, implementing formal mentoring programs, gender and leadership, bystander awareness, unconscious bias, career action planning and team-building, including Hewlett Packard, Jobs for the Future, The Partnership, Hewlett Packard, IBM, Cisco, The Robert Toigo Foundation, Bank of America, Chase Manhattan Bank, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Swissotel, PepsiCo, Goldman Sachs, Intel, Linkage, AstraZeneca, Eli Lilly, Boston Chamber of Commerce, The Conference Board, Massachusetts General Hospital, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Cambridge Hospital, Boston University, Connecticut College, University of Connecticut, University of Michigan, University of Texas, Harvard University, Boston Public School District, The PhD Project, The Compact for Faculty Diversity, New Leaders for New Schools and Working Mother Media.

Ginny Clarke is a consultant, diversity recruiting specialist and career management expert. Ginny leads Talent Optimization Partners, LLC, a talent management consulting firm serving corporations, fast-growing companies and government entities in areas of leadership assessment, talent acquisition and retention, diversity recruiting and executive coaching services.

Prior to launching Talent Optimization, Ginny was a partner at Spencer Stuart. She co-founded and led Spencer Stuart’s Diversity Practice working with global clients to customize diversity recruitment and retention strategies. She also oversaw the global executive search firm’s efforts to provide clients with diverse slates of candidates by embedding diversity and inclusion into the firm’s culture and infrastructure.

Ginny started her career in banking at First National Bank of Chicago (now Chase). After a short stint, she spent the next 10 years in the institutional real estate business with Jones Lang LaSalle and Prudential Real Estate Investors. Her responsibilities included asset management, portfolio management, capital raising and client servicing.

She earned her BA from the University of California at Davis and her MBA from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School. She is a member of the board of the Chicago Sinfonietta, and a member of the Economic Club of Chicago. Ginny is the author “Career Mapping: Charting Your Course in the New World of Work”.

Stew Friedman is the founder of Total Leadership. He is an innovator in both the leadership development and work/life fields. A faculty member at the Wharton School since 1984, in 1991 he founded both the Wharton Leadership Programs and the Wharton Work/Life Integration Project. He created the Total Leadership program in the late ’90s while he was a senior executive at Ford Motor, where he was responsible for leadership development worldwide.

He has published numerous books and articles on work/life integration, leadership, and the dynamics of change, including the widely cited Harvard Business Review article, “Work and life: the end of the zero-sum game” and, more recently, in the Academy of Management Executive, “The Happy Workaholic: a role model for employees.” “Work and Family: Allies or Enemies?” (co-authored with Jeff Greenhaus, Oxford University Press, 2000) was recognized by the Wall Street Journal as one of the field’s best. With “Integrating Work and Life: The Wharton Resource Guide” (Jossey-Bass, 1998), Stew edited the first collection of learning tools for building leadership skills for integrating work and life. His most recent book is, “Total Leadership: Be a Better Leader, Have a Richer Life”, from Harvard Business Press.

Stew has consulted with a wide range of organizations and executives, including Jack Welch and Vice President Al Gore; he serves on numerous advisory boards; and he conducts workshops globally on leadership and the whole person, creating change, and strategic human resources issues.

Jane Hyun, Author of Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling, Founder and President of Hyun & Associates, is an executive coach and leadership strategist to Fortune 500 companies, schools, and professional associations. Prior to starting this consulting firm, she was a Vice President of HR at JP Morgan, and Director of Recruiting at Deloitte & Touche and Resources Global. Her programs (Bamboo Ceiling® Leadership Series/The Art of Cultural Fluency™) have received international acclaim from Fortune 500 companies, who seek to leverage the cultural capital of their talent pool to compete in today’s global marketplace. She has advised senior management teams of a variety of organizations on the importance of leading effective teams.

“You gain strength, courage, and confidence by every experience in which you really stop to look fear in the face.’
—Eleanor Roosevelt

Her firm is sought after for their expertise in the talent management of women and multicultural professionals. Her clients range from small companies to large multinationals in financial services/banking, consumer products, consulting and professional services, technology, retail, nonprofit, and academic sectors, who seek to adopt next generation leadership practices.

Her work has received international recognition, and Jane appears regularly on CNN, CNBC, National Public Radio, Marketwatch, Time, Newsweek, Fortune, Chief Executive, and other national media. A graduate of Cornell University with a degree in Economics/International Studies, she serves on the Women’s Alumnae Council, and is an advisor to the Hidden Brain Drain Taskforce/Center for Work Life Policy, the organization which authored recent Harvard Business Review studies, On-Ramps/Off Ramps, Sin Fronteras/Advancing Latina Women, The Athena Factor: Women in Science, Engineering and Technology, and The Sponsor Effect.

Her groundbreaking book, Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling released by HarperCollins, opened up a critical dialogue for the need for a culturally grounded talent approach. She has a passion for helping individuals realize their fullest potential in the workplace, community, and marketplace. Jane lives in New York City with her family.

Scott E. Page does research on the roles of diversity in complex systems such as economies and political systems. He earned his PhD from Northwestern University’s J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management. He is the author of numerous academic articles as well as three books including “The Difference: How the Power of Diversity Creates Better Groups, Firms, Schools, and Societies.” His work has been profiled in The New York Times and Business Week. He frequently speaks on the pragmatic benefits of diversity within organizations and societies to academic, business, and government audiences. In 2008, he served as the keynote speaker at the Toigo Foundation’s Gala.

“What is the quality of your intent?’
—Thurgood Marshall

Scott is an award winning teacher and researcher and currently serves as the director of the Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan and as an External Faculty member of the Santa Fe Institute. He also serves on the advisory boards to several organizations. In the past, he has worked with the MacArthur Foundation, The Kellogg Foundation, and the National Academy of Sciences on topics ranging from inequality to modeling complex systems.

Scott lives in Ann Arbor Michigan with his wife, Jenna Bednar, a professor of political science, and their two children, Orrie and Cooper.

Juliet Saxe specializes in career and executive coaching, leadership development, and organizational development consultation. Her clients have included c-suite executives, groups, and teams, and she has worked with such organizations as Bain & Company, Genentech, Lucas Film, The Wharton School of Business, Hewlett-Packard, The Hewlett Foundation, The Packard Foundation, The Robert Toigo Foundation, and the University of San Francisco.

Juliet Saxe holds a PhD in Clinical Psychology and is a Certified Integral Coach from New Ventures West. She was also an early entry employee and highly successful senior manager at Telephia, a market research start-up in the wireless sector. There, she cultivated client relationships with AT&T, T-Mobile and helped build a client services department which generated over 20MM in revenue in two years through its market research work and products. She then successfully transitioned her role from client services and consulting to developing new market research products. Telephia was acquired by The Nielsen Company in 2008.

Prior to her work with executives, Juliet served as a staff researcher at the University of California, San Francisco, worked with underprivileged adolescents and their families, and held management positions in several non-profit organizations.

Gabriela Snyder is a Professional Development Consultant, currently working with the Robert Toigo Foundation and the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC). Prior to her role as Consultant, she worked as Associate Director of MBA Admissions & Financial Aid at The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. In addition to her admissions responsibilities at Wharton, Snyder managed all diversity outreach and pipeline development at the MBA level.

Prior to joining Wharton, Snyder oversaw the fellowship selection process and program for The Robert Toigo Foundation. Snyder also spent several years at Goldman Sachs & Co., first in New York City in Learning and Professional Development, and later in San Francisco as a Human Capital Management Generalist focused on recruiting, training and other human resources initiatives for the West Coast Offices.

Snyder holds a degree in Psychology and Spanish from Amherst College. She has served on the GMAC Diversity Advisory Group, as co-lead for the Ten School Diversity Group, as Board Member of Hands on Bay Area and as a Hispanic Scholarship Fund Mentor. She currently lives in the suburbs of Philadelphia with her husband and two boys.

Karen W. Solorow has significant experience both as a line manager (relationship and portfolio) and as an HR/Leadership Development professional, having worked for 25+ years in financial services and publishing. Solorow managed talent development and leadership initiatives including the highly regarded MBA Management Development Program for The McGraw-Hill Companies, responsible for recruiting, interviewing, hiring and developing top MBA emerging leadership talent for the organization. Currently, Solorow is Founder & President with her own leadership, career coaching and training & development consulting practice, Coaching For Success, LLC with a special emphasis on coaching women and minorities to leverage their skills to achieve success.

Previous positions included Vice President, Training & Development for Bankers Trust Company and Bank of Montreal/Harris Bank, where she transitioned from VP and Team Leader (managing a portfolio of clients) to Vice President, Talent Development. At BMO/Harris, Solorow also created and led a global MBA leadership development program. Solorow has been a guest speaker and moderator at industry conferences and has facilitated workshops focusing on interviewing, mentoring, communication skills and presentation skills at academic and corporate entities including Columbia Business School and Standard & Poor’s. Solorow is also a professional resume writer.

Solorow received her MBA from the Simmons Graduate School of Management and her BA degree (with double majors in music and liberal arts) from Syracuse University. She serves as a corporate advisory board member with The Darden School of Business and The Career Resources Consortium and is a Board Advisor for ConceptLink Consulting.

de Winter L. Stewart heads The dLS Group, a consulting firm which has provided executive coaching and leadership development to the Los Angeles Dodgers and Wells Fargo. Mr. Stewart is also Senior Vice President with MB Interim Leaders, a consulting placement partner of the executive search firm, McDermott & Bull.

Mr. Stewart’s corporate experience includes GlaxoSmithKline, Robert Half International and Goldman Sachs. He has extensive experience advising executives, and training and leading teams. He compliments his corporate background with 10+ years of entrepreneurial experience.

Mr. Stewart holds a BS in Industrial & Labor Relations from Cornell University, where he was awarded the Cornell Tradition Fellowship. He earned an MBA from Columbia University Graduate School of Business, where he was the inaugural recipient of the Goldman Sachs Minority Fellowship.

He credits his cultural competence and leadership skills to living in Europe and South America, backpacking across Africa, and riding his motorcycle 5,000 miles through Mexico and Central America. A native New Yorker, Mr. Stewart lives in Los Angeles and sits on the board of the Columbia Business School Alumni Club of Los Angeles and Orange County.