Judith DeLeo Willson is founder of Washington Women’s Weekly,  a networking group dedicated to helping professional women achieve their greatest potential through the guidance, leadership and inspiration of other highly accomplished women.  Judith has more than 20 years of experience as both an entrepreneur in co-founding a management consulting firm and as a senior executive for such global companies as Bernstein Global Wealth Management, a unit of AllianceBernstein L.P., Unisys Corporation and Arthur Andersen LLP.
www.womensweekly-wdc.com

Holly Bass, poet and performance artist, is a poet-in-residence at Busboys and Poets, where she coordinated open-mike nights. She has won widespread recognition as a writer and performer at some of Washington’s most celebrated venues, including the Kennedy Center. Bass, who studied modern dance and creative writing at Sarah Lawrence and has a master’s in journalism from Columbia University, is known for her performances featuring a creation she calls “the booty ball” - a large, prosthetic rear end that she wears to challenge stereotypes of African-American women. Her most recent body of work explores the endless allure of booty – from the Venus Hottentots to video vixens. A Cave Canem fellow, her poems have appeared in Callaloo, nocturnes (re)view, Beltway, Role Call (Third World Press) and The Ringing Ear, an anthology of Black Southern poetry. Her pieces have been work-shopped and presented at respected regional theaters and performance spaces such as the Kennedy Center, Arena Stage, the Whitney Museum and the Experience Music Project in Seattle.

www.hollybass.com


 

In July 2011, Mary Anne Hitt watched New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg give $50 million to Beyond Coal, her Sierra Club campaign that aims to fight climate change by retiring the nation’s aging coal plants. The gift was announced with the smokestacks of Alexandria’s Potomac River Generating Station belching sulfur plumes in the background. A month later, city officials unveiled plans to close the plant.  Beyond Coal’s record of success is what earned Bloomberg’s seal of approval. The project has already closed 125 of the nation’s 522 coal plants – the number-one producer of greenhouse gases – and is working to replace them with clean energy by 2030. http://content.sierraclub.org/coal



 

Vice President Powell Tate/Weber Shandwick

Recently named as one of PR News Rising Stars of PR for Agencies 2012, Heather Cable is a Vice President at Powell Tate/Weber Shandwick and manages and implements public affairs, advocacy relations and strategic communications programs for health care clients. Her current clients include the Medical Imaging & Technology Alliance (MITA), the trade association for medical imaging equipment manufacturers, innovators and product developers, and the Healthcare Leadership Council. For MITA, Heather coordinates an integrated communications campaign to support federal policy objectives and raise awareness of the value of medical imaging. As a winner of Powell Tate's "Living the Dream" program, which encourages staff to try something they have always dreamed of, she used the $1,000 and five extra vacation days to document the oral history of her grandfather, a Korean War veteran at www.powelltate.com

President and CEO, Vital Voices Global Partnership

Author, Vital Voices: The Power of Women Leading Change around the World

Featured in Newsweek in 2011 as one of ''150 Women Shaking the World,'' Alyse Nelson is president and chief executive officer of Vital Voices Global Partnership, the preeminent non-governmental organization (NGO) that identifies, trains and empowers emerging women leaders and social entrepreneurs around the globe.

A co-founder of Vital Voices, Alyse has worked for the organization for 15 years, serving as vice president and senior director of programs before assuming her current role in 2009. Alyse has worked with women leaders to develop training programs and international forums in over 140 countries and has interviewed more than 200 international leaders, including Liberian president Ellen Johnson Sirleaf and former president of Ireland Mary Robinson and former U.S. president Bill Clinton, as well as Nobel Peace Prize laureates Aung San Suu Kyi, Wangari Maathai and Muhammad Yunus. Under her leadership, Vital Voices has tripled in size and expanded its global reach to serve a network of over 12,000 women leaders in 144 countries.

www.vitalvoices.org


 

Director of Communications and Strategy, U.S. Chamber of Commerce

Katie Denis, named one of PR News Rising Stars of PR for Corporations/Non-profits 2012, develops and executes comprehensive communications campaigns on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce's key issues and special initiatives. She leads the communications efforts for some of the Chamber's most complex issues, including the Center for Capitol Markets (CCMC), the Institute for Legal Reform (ILR) and the Global Intellectual Property Center (GIPC). Denis also works with the Chamber's youth programs, including the Young Entrepreneurs Academy (YEA!), an entrepreneurial education program that takes students in grades 6-12 through the process of starting and running a legally registered business over the course of a full academic year. In 2012 Denis revamped the program's communications efforts that resulted in multiple media hits, a print series in the Chamber's magazine and a contest that brought two of the students to Washington D.C. to attend the Chamber's small business summit.

www.ncf.uschamber.com

Coolidge High School
6315 5th Street NW, Washington, DC 20011

Natalie Randolph may have a timid sounding voice, but she roars like a lion. She became the first female football varsity coach in Washington, D.C. and the third woman ever to serve as head coach of a high school football team in the nation. After assistant coaching at H.D. Woodson High School, Natalie was hired as the head football coach of the Coolidge High School Colts. Under Natalie’s leadership for two seasons, the Colts have improved their overall grade-point average and have twice made the DCIAA playoffs. Outside of her roles as a coach and a science teacher, Natalie is an athlete in her own right having been a hurdler at the University of Virginia and a wide receiver for the DC Divas, a professional team in the Independent Women’s Football League. Former Washington, D.C. Mayor Adrian Fenty celebrated Natalie’s pioneering spirit when he declared a “Natalie Randolph Day” in her honor.

Randolph received a Women of Distinction Award from the American Association of University Women and NASPA at their June 2011 National Conference for College Women Student Leaders. Randolph was recognized for breaking through barriers for women in sports

View Natalie in action in this YouTube video at http://espn.go.com/video/clip?id=5527785

 

Becky Lee witnessed the effects of domestic abuse when she worked with criminal law attorneys who specialized in acquitting battered women that had been imprisoned for killing their abusers in self-defense. She was inspired to embark on a career of her own in exposing and preventing domestic abuse. She used her prize winnings as second runner up in the show “Survivor” to fund Becky’s Fund, a domestic violence awareness non-profit organization. The mission of Becky’s Fund is to foster awareness, encourage advocacy, promote activism and create support. In addition, she aims to raise awareness for the lack of reporting of domestic violence cases in the Asian community.

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/pub/becky-lee/6/486/1B0
Twitter: @BeckysFund
Facebook: www.facebook.com/BeckysFund
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