[Past Event] Women & Worth Summit 2021: Reset. Refresh. Rebuild.

Mandy Bowman is the founder and CEO of Official Black Wall Street, the largest app and digital platform helping consumers find, review and patronize Black-owned businesses. After studying Entrepreneurship and Global Business Management at Babson College, she set out to empower the Black community through economics and ownership. The Brooklyn native felt called to launch the Official Black Wall Street platform in 2015, and the app in 2017, after witnessing the many challenges Black-owned businesses endured in her hometown of Brooklyn, New York, from lack of funding to being priced out due to gentrification.

Since then, Mandy has been at the forefront of the #BuyBlack movement, helping Black businesses around the world gain the exposure and resources they deserve. In 2017, Mandy was invited to TEDx Dover, the first TED event held at an HBCU, to give a talk on ownership and long-term wealth in the Black community. In 2019, she made her return to the TEDx stage at TEDx Babson. In the past year alone, Mandy was honored for her work with a citation from the Brooklyn Borough President, named one of Entrepreneur Magazine’s 100 Powerful Women in Business, and became a Forbes Magazine Next 1000 Honoree. Today, she is a fierce advocate for economics and ownership within the Black community.

Emily Cegielski is an award-winning multimedia journalist and editor based in New York City, currently serving as the Editorial Director at Worth Media.

Prior to joining the Worth team, she worked as a Senior Editor at the New York Observer, where she built out its Business, Tech and Innovation vertical—refining beats, recruiting expert contributors and leading a team of staff reporters and freelancers. Previously, she worked as Director of Digital Media at High Times, where she drove creation of cannabis-related stories; programmed content; managed social media; planned and executed marketing campaigns for High Times events; covered breaking news; edited content; and led a site redesign.

In the past, she has worked as a staff writer, photographer, designer, copy editor, fact-checker, section editor, managing editor and senior editor for a wide array of newspapers, magazines and websites. 

Gloria Feldt is an acclaimed expert on women, power and leadership with frontline leadership experience, a bestselling author and in-demand keynote speaker. She is cofounder and president of Take The Lead, whose mission reflects her life’s passion: to prepare, develop, inspire and propel women to take their fair and equal share of leadership positions across all sectors by 2025 by providing breakthrough training, mentoring and coaching, role modeling and thought leadership. She is the bestselling author of five books. Her latest, Intentioning: Sex, Power, Pandemics and How Women Will Take The Lead launched September 28, 2021, shows how we can seize the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity of massive disruption to build back stronger with women at the center of the recovery. Through the lens of women’s stories, it delivers a fresh set of leadership tools, skills, and concepts that help all women reach their own highest intentions, purposefully creating new norms, while guiding institutions to break through the remaining barriers to gender and racial parity for everyone’s good.

She is formerly president and CEO of the world’s largest reproductive health and advocacy organization, Planned Parenthood Federation of America. She was named by Vanity Fair one of “America’s Top 200 Women Leaders, Legends and Trailblazers,” Glamour’s “Woman of the Year,” She Knows Media Inspiring Woman, Women’s eNews 21 Leaders for the 21st Century, Women Economic Forum Circle of Light award, Texas Monthly’s Texas 20, Martin Luther King Living the Dream Award, Diversity Leadership Alliance Diversity Leader Award and Forbes 40 Over 40.

She teaches “Women, Power and Leadership” at Arizona State University. Feldt has been widely quoted and published, including by the New York Times, Washington Post, USA Today, The Daily Beast, Forbes, Fast Company, Time, Huffington Post, Glamour, Elle and Ms. She has appeared on CNN, MSNBC, The Today Show, Good Morning America and The Daily Show, and an infinite number of podcasts.

Gloria is an awesome chili maker. She and her husband Alex Barbanell live in New York City and Scottsdale, Arizona; they share a combined family of six children and 15 grandchildren. She spends too much time on social media and invites you to connect with her there @GloriaFeldt.

Andrea is a strategist, dealmaker, author and the founder and CEO of Culture Shift Labs (CSL) a diversity and innovation consultancy. She’s been at the forefront of diversity and innovation since 1999.

CSL advises Fortune 500’s, Tech Companies, Investors (Private Equity|Venture|Impact|Family Offices), Non Profits and Private Clients on growth and innovation through diversity and inclusion. Andrea consults with C-suite executives and their teams across a wide range of industries to identify opportunities that deliver social and financial returns.

Andrea conceived the Knowledge + Network Formula to help companies drive tangible outcomes. She also conceived and produces invite-only convenings like the Culture Shifting Weekend. This summit unites over 350 technologists, innovators, investors, tech leaders, CEOs and social impact leaders of color and allies to enable deals and collaborations.

Andrea serves on the advisory council of JPMorgan Chase Advancing Black Pathways and as a Senior Fellow of Social Innovation at Babson College, a top-ranked entrepreneurship business school.

Andrea is a frequent speaker, having moderated or participated in panels and keynotes at Milken Global Conference, National Association of Corporate Directors, Congressional Black Caucus, Association of National Advertisers, Honda Motor Company, Billie Jean King’s Leadership Institute and XCON among others. She has also been featured in Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Fortune and on Bloomberg TV.

Andrea is the author of The Innovation Diversity Connection, co-author of Black Is the New Green and 50 BILLION Dollar Boss: African American Women Sharing Stories of Success in Entrepreneurship and Leadership (nominated for a 2015 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work).

Dr. Angela Jackson leads New Profit’s Future of Work Initiative, which seeks to close the career-readiness gap for Americans from low-income backgrounds. Angela’s career started in the private sector leading business development for organizations like Viacom and Nokia. While working internationally, she began to wonder: if multinational companies can deliver their products consistently and with quality at scale, what would it take to deliver social interventions like education and health in a similar manner?

She began to tackle this question by founding Global Language Project, a social venture that aimed to transform how we prepare students with skills to succeed in a global economy and workforce. Angela completed a Doctoral degree at Harvard University, where her focus was on this question, along with the role of scale and strategic capital deployment and philanthropy in systems change initiatives.

Angela’s work with New Profit allows her to marry her research interests with practice. She currently leads New Profit’s $15M Future of Work global fund to invest in entrepreneurs and companies developing innovative technical solutions to upskill low-income and entry-level workers at scale. Angela recently launched a $6 million Future of Work Grand Challenge, powered by XPRIZE and MIT Solve, to rapidly reskill 25,000 displaced workers into living-wage jobs in the next 24 months.

Her work and writing has been featured in CNN, Huffington Post, Chicago Tribune and Harvard Business Review. You can read her thoughts on the intersection of race and the Future of Work on Medium and follow her on Twitter at @angjack.

Alicia Levine is Head of Equities, Capital Markets Advisory and Vice Chair of Wealth Management’s Investment Strategy Committee. Alicia oversees the Large Cap U.S. Equity, Equity Trading and Capital Markets Advisory groups and is one of the firm’s leading voices for market analysis and investment outlook. She is the go-to person for client-facing economic analysis, market strategy and asset allocation across the bank.

Alicia is a regular on-the-record source, live broadcast commentator and breaking news analyst for a variety of media outlets including, Barron’s, Bloomberg, CNBC, CNN, Financial Times, Fox Business News and the Wall Street Journal. She has also been the cover feature on Kiplinger’s annual “Where to Invest” issue. 

Alicia was previously the Chief Strategist at BNY Mellon Investment Management where she identified macro themes, policy choices and economic factors that affect global asset classes.

She joined BNY Mellon in 2016 from Angelo, Gordon and Co., a multi-strategy alternative asset manager, where she served as the Director of Communications. Prior to that, she was a research analyst and portfolio manager at Bentley Capital Management, where she invested in public equities and built long/short portfolios for clients. 

Alicia earned a Bachelor of Arts from Brown University and a Master of Arts and Doctor of Philosophy from the University of Chicago. She was awarded a pre-doctoral fellowship from Stanford University, a post-doctoral fellowship from Harvard University and a research fellowship from the Hoover Institution. Alicia is a member of the Investment Committee for the National Academy of Design.

Lauren Maillian is a change agent committed to diversity, innovation and inclusion. She brings her unparalleled energy, creativity and problem-solving skills to her role as CEO of digitalundivided, the social startup that leverages data and advocacy to catalyze economic growth and create pathways for Black and Latinx women entrepreneurs.

Lauren is a consumer brand strategist, an award-winning marketer, a chief operating officer, and a technology startup investor and advisor. Lauren was invited by Walmart’s CEO to join theBoard of Disruptors, their first-ever Innovation Council. A pioneer in the tech space, Lauren was the first Black woman to start an early-stage venture capital fund, as a founding partner and managing director at Gen Y Capital Partners. She has advised and invested in over 40 startups, which have generated over $700 million in revenue. She serves on the Board of Directors atCoSign and LIQS. She is also the Founder and CEO of LMB Group, a strategic marketing and brand advisory company driving consumer connection and brand innovation for companies including J.P. Morgan Chase, Cover Girl, Brooks Brothers, Bumble and Bumble, and HSN.

Lauren has long been committed to empowering and advocating for women, lending her expertise and sharing her own experience. She serves as an advisor to Pipeline Angels, asocial enterprise that trains executive women to become angel investors. She is the founder of Straight Up and Successful, a community and personal and professional development company, and is the Founder and Creator of The Collab, an arts and culture club committed to championing artists of color and diversifying the face of future collectors. She has distilled what she’s learned about entrepreneurship in her best-selling memoir, The Path Redefined: Getting To the Top On Your Own Terms, and she’s shared her passion for innovation as the MasterMarketer and co-star of the Oxygen startup-focused docu-series Quit Your Day Job.

Lauren began her entrepreneurial journey at age 19, co-founding a boutique winery, Sugarleaf Vineyards, which quickly became an internationally recognized, award-winning brand. Lauren
was the youngest self-made winery owner in the country; she served as Chief Operating Officer from inception through the brand’s acquisition in 2011.

Lauren is a sought-after speaker who has offered thought leadership at Harvard, Columbia, andCornell Universities; at Fortune 500 companies including Google, Dell, Ernst and Young (EY),Prudential, Ogilvy, L’Oréal, LinkedIn and Bloomberg; and at industry-leading conferences and events such as Social Media Week, ColorComm and AdWeek. Her work has been featured in many national media outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Business Insider, FastCompany, Entrepreneur, Cosmo, Inc., Jet, Essence, CNBC’s Nightly Business Report, MSNBC, and Black Enterprise. Lauren was recently named to The Root 100 List of most influentialAfrican-Americans in 2020. She has received numerous awards including a 2011 Kauffman Foundation Empact 100 top entrepreneurs under 30 Award; a nod from Essence as a 2013“Shot Caller” to watch in business; a Smart CEO Brava Award in 2015; and a spot on Walker’s Legacy’s 2016 WL50Power List, honoring women making strides in the business and philanthropic community.

Lauren serves on the Board of The Metropolitan Museum of Art’s Advisory Committee on Cultural Engagement. She is Vice-Chair of The Apollo Theater Foundation Young PatronsSteering Committee, a member of New York Urban League’s Development Committee, a founding member of the Young Entrepreneur Council, and a Lifetime Member of the Children’sAid Society. Lauren is the creator and co-founder of the exclusive art series The Collab, which brings together artists and their supporters to uplift the work of artists of color. In 2014, the New York Urban League’s Young Professionals named Lauren Philanthropist of the Year.

Lauren holds a Bachelor of Science, Magna Cum Laude, in International Trade and Marketing from the Fashion Institute of Technology. She lives in New York City with her two children and her husband.

Beverly Malbranche is the founder and CEO of Caribbrew, an impact-driven company that specializes in Arabica beans sourced from farmers in Haiti. The Newark, N.J.-based business aims to bridge the gap between the Caribbean’s centuries-old coffee and cacao traditions and its consumers in the United States.

As a Black female business owner, she is working to close the racial representation gap in the coffee industry. Malbranche grew up in Haiti and came to the U.S. in 2009 to study business administration. She knew early on she wanted to start a business selling a product of Haiti to U.S. consumers. While pondering this, she fell in love with the aromas and history of Haiti’s coffee and chocolate. Since 2016, she decided to embark on a journey to revive Haiti’s coffee sector and create opportunities. In her spare time, you can find her exploring NYC or reading a book at local café.

Flori Marquez is a Founder and SVP of Operations at BlockFi. In this role she currently oversees institutional and retail operations, client service, project management, in addition to our APAC teams. At BlockFi, Flori has built and managed many critical functions including the Trading, Risk, Compliance, Marketing and People Operations teams. Flori has spent her career managing alternative lending products. In the marketplace lending industry, she helped build, scale, and optimize a $125MM portfolio for Bond Street (acquired by Goldman Sachs). As Head of Portfolio Management, Flori managed all operations from point of origination through default and litigation. Prior to Bond Street, Flori helped develop and maintain institutional partnerships at Oak Hill Advisors, a $30B fixed income asset manager. Flori graduated from Cornell University, majoring in pre-law with a minor in economics.

Raeshem Nijhon is the founder of Culture House—a Black-, brown- and women-owned production company where she and her partners, Carri Twigg and Nicole Galovski, produce entertainment forward work at the intersection of pop and politics. Select current projects include premium doc series The Hair Tales with Tracee Ellis Ross and Oprah Winfrey for Hulu and OWN, a Netflix series about women in hip hop, a doc/narrative hybrid series for Disney+, and development projects with Amazon, Freeform and AMC Studios. Raeshem sits on the board for the New York Center for Communications, an organization dedicated to bringing more diversity to the media and entertainment industry, serving over 4500 students from 185+ colleges and universities annually. She serves on the Creative Council for EMILY’S List. Select pro-social work includes partnerships with Planned Parenthood, the National Council for Behavioral Health and the Committee to Protect Journalists. In 2021, Raeshem launched the Culture House Consultancy, a resource for networks and studios to engage with a range of experts across issues like race, gender, mental health and socio-economic diversity that require nuance and knowledge when being addressed through entertainment and media.