CEDAR RAPIDS — The deadline to purchase tickets for the Women Lead Change Conference: Cedar Rapids is March 15, 2023. The Conference, on April 4-5 at the Cedar Rapids Convention Complex, features 7 keynote speakers including Jen Hatmaker.
Two-day in-person conference tickets are $550/person and include access to all keynote speakers, breakout sessions, breakfast, lunch, peer-to-peer networking, and exhibitor marketplace. Virtual tickets are $199 and include access to on-demand replay of the keynote speakers to be released to virtual ticket holders via Whova on April 10 and accessible for 14 days. Register at https://www.wlcglobal.org/events/2023-cedar-rapids-conference.
Keynote speakers over the two days include Morra Aarons-Mele, Tarika Barrett, Khaliah O. Guillory, Jen Hatmaker, Carey Lohrenz, Ginni Rometty, and McKenna Sweazy. Breakout sessions are led by local leaders and speakers in the Corridor region. The exhibitor area will feature booths from targeted-small businesses, non-profits, and corporations.
Aarons-Mele is the host of The Anxious Achiever, a top-10 management podcast that helps people rethink the relationship between their mental health and their leadership. She founded Women Online and The Mission List, an award-winning digital consulting firm and influencer marketing company dedicated to social change in 2010 and sold her businesses in 2021. She helped Hillary Clinton log on for her first internet chat and has launched digital campaigns for President Obama, Malala Yousafzai, the United Nations, the CDC, and many other leading figures and organizations.
Barrett is the CEO of Girls Who Code, an international non-profit organization working to close the gender gap in technology that has served over 450,000 students to date. She started her career as an educator and has spent two decades building educational pathways for young people at organizations like iMentor, the New York City Department of Education, New Visions for Public Schools, and New York University’s Center for Research on Teaching and Learning.
Guillory, a Certified Sleep Expert, is the creative mind behind Nap Bar™. As a previous C-level executive, she knows a thing or two about handling stress. Nap Bar™, the first white-glove, self-care napping experience in the world, offers communities and companies onsite and en-suite rest sanctuary to help reduce sleep deprivation and increase productivity. She has been featured in a plethora of national publications, not limited to Forbes and Essence. Based on her philanthropy work in the community, Mayor Sylvester Turner declared October 29 as Khaliah O. Guillory Day.
Hatmaker is the New York Times bestselling author of fourteen books including For the Love, Of Mess and Moxie, Fierce, Free and Full of Fire, and her latest project, Feed These People: Slam Dunk Recipes for Your Crew. She is the delighted curator of the Jen Hatmaker Book Club and host of the award-winning For the Love podcast, in addition to being the leader of a tightly knit online community where she reaches millions of people each week. Jen is a co-founder of Legacy Collective, a giving organization that grants millions of dollars towards sustainable projects around the world.
As the first female F-14 Tomcat Fighter Pilot in the U.S. Navy, having flown missions worldwide as a combat-mission-ready United States Navy pilot, Lohrenz is used to working in fast moving, dynamic environments, where inconsistent execution can generate catastrophic results. Carey graduated from the University of Wisconsin where she was a varsity rower, also training at the pre-Olympic level. After graduation, she attended the Navy’s Aviation Officer Candidate School before starting flight training and her naval career. She is currently working on her Master’s in Business Administration in Strategic Leadership.
Rometty was the ninth Chairman, President, and CEO of IBM. Under her leadership, the 100-year-old company reinvented 50 percent of its portfolio and built a $25 billion hybrid cloud business. Rometty also drove record results in diversity and inclusion. She has been named Fortune’s #1 Most Powerful Woman three years in a row. Today Rometty serves on multiple boards and co-chairs OneTen, a coalition committed to upskilling, hiring, and promoting one million Black Americans by 2030 into family-sustaining jobs and careers. She is the author of Good Power: Leading Positive Change in Our Lives, Work, and World.
As an accomplished executive, both in corporate settings and start-ups, and with a top-rated global MBA (INSEAD), Sweazey has had to hone her interpersonal relationship skills over Skype, Google Hangouts, Slack, good old-fashioned phone lines, and now Zoom. Her career includes work with successful start-ups like Taboola, which IPO’d in 2021 and where she spent five years. She also worked at the venerated Financial Times as head of global marketing. Currently, she is a marketing strategy consultant for brands in the US and Europe.
BAE Systems is the Presenting Sponsor of the 2023 WLC Conference: Cedar Rapids. View full agenda and all conference information at https://www.wlcglobal.org/events/2023-cedar-rapids-conference.
IWLC d/b/a Women Lead Change is a non-partisan, 501(c)3 non-profit organization dedicated to the development, advancement, and promotion of women, their organizations, and to impacting the economy and future workforce. For more information visit WLCglobal.org.