Valencia Adams
BellSouth Corporation

Valencia I. Adams , an Atlanta native, is Vice President - Chief Diversity Officer for BellSouth Corp. She has responsibility for BellSouth's diversity and inclusion efforts and will be responsible for inclusion strategy development and implementation across BellSouth, including collaboration with the Chairman's Diversity Council.

Prior to her November 2002 appointment to her current post she was Chief Operating Officer - Consumer Services, responsible for planning, developing and implementing strategies to service the residential market in BellSouth's nine-state territory. She is a former advisory council member to the President of BellSouth Telecommunications Inc., providing feedback and counsel on managing employees, in particular women and minority issues and concerns.

The Governor of Georgia recognized her as an outstanding Junior Achievement volunteer for her many years of service. She is a recipient of the American Business Women's Association Business Associate of the Year Award. She is also a graduate of Georgia 100, a group formed to support outstanding women in business. She currently serves as a mentor in the BellSouth Mentor Exchange program designed to support emerging leaders. Adams is also featured in the 2001 and 2002 "Who's Who in Black Atlanta."

Community involvement has included raising funds for notable institutions. She is a lifetime member of the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. BellSouth Telecommunications has also benefited from Adams's fundraising talents. She was the 1998 Chairperson for the Metropolitan Atlanta United Way Campaign. Under her leadership BellSouth raised more than $4 million dollars in employee contributions. Adams has also served as a departmental coordinator for the Woodruff Arts Center Campaign and a team leader for the Empty Stocking fund.

She currently serves as a trustee for the Georgia Council on Economic Education and is on the boards of the BellSouth Foundation, Prevent Child Abuse Georgia, and the Possible Woman Foundation. She was featured in the March 2001 Ebony and the May/June 2001 Competitive Edge magazines. She is also featured in the 2001 Who's Who in Black Atlanta Millennium Edition as a New Millennium Leader. She is recognized in the July 2002 edition of Business to Business magazine as a 2002 "Diva" in business and in the July 2002 edition of Atlanta Woman magazine.

Adams is a graduate of Georgia State University with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree. She has continued her education by completing management courses at Columbia University and Emory University

Kim Annunziata
Delta Airlines

Kim Annunziata is Director of Supply Chain Management at Delta Airlines. Prior to joining Delta Airlines, Annunziata was the Southern Group Procurement Director for Waste Management, Incorporated, a Vice President at Bear Stearns & Company in the Crude Oil and Natural Gas Trading unit, Corporate Director of Supply Management at M.A. Hanna Company, and Senior Trader at BP and The Williams Companies. She began her career in the U.S. Navy as a Supply Corps Officer, retiring as a Commander. Annunziata received her Bachelors degree in Business Administration from Miami University in Oxford, OH and her Master of Science in Management from the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, CA. Residing in Atlanta, Annunziata regularly supports Westminster School student activities, and is a founding member of the Waste Management Women's Professional Network.  

Dr. Marjorie Barlow

Marjorie Barlow, Ph.D., born in 1929, has had several different careers, primarily as a teacher and counselor. She values most highly her family relationships, which include her five children and her husband, Dr. Paul Barlow In 2001, the Barlows and their colleagues created the Corpus Christi Therapeutic Sound School which is dedicated to bringing "good things to the community”. Marj continues to serve as mentor to young women and consultant to organizations. She is the founder of the Possible Woman concept and author of the book, "The Possible Woman."

Deanna Berg
Innovation Strategies, Inc.

Dr. Deanna Berg is an internationally known consultant, speaker and coach to business organizations. She is President of Innovation Strategies International, a Minneapolis firm known for producing significant improvements for its clients and for unique approaches to the critical areas of change, innovation, and team performance.

Innovation Strategies has won praise from major organizations throughout Asia, Australia, Europe, North America and South America. Dr. Berg is also co-founder of a Singapore-based innovation firm Dr. Berg earned a Doctorate in Counseling Psychology and Business from Indiana University. She is a published author and a member of the National Speakers Association, the International Federation of Professional Speakers and is past Faculty Chair of Innovation University. She is an Associate of The Learning Circle, a Boston-based network of leading thinkers and practitioners in the area of organizational learning Dr. Berg's sessions are best described as non-traditional and highly-interactive, with immediate take-home value.

Mary Jane Bills
Vision-Makers and Sprayberry Travel

Mary Jane is Vice President of Vision-Makers and Sprayberry Travel. She has worked with Sprayberry Travel since 1988. Her primary responsibilities include oversight of Vision-Makers, the corporate incentive, meeting planning and special event division and the Leisure division. Sprayberry Travel has grown from revenue of 5 million in 1988 to being ranked as 13th in metropolitan Atlanta by the Atlanta Business Chronicle.

Mary Jane is a speaker whose focus is travel security and travel “deals”. She works with corporations on a variety of employee motivation programs, performance rewards and travel management consulting. Travel is the 3 largest expenditure of most corporations and controlling this cost is a focus for her consulting.

Mary Jane is active in the metropolitan Atlanta community. She is the immediate past president of the Atlanta Women’s Network. She serves on the Atlanta Women’s Alliance board and is a member of the Board of Directors Network. She is also a member of the Georgia chapter of Meeting Professionals International.

Nellie Duke
Georgia Commission on Women

Nellie Duke, Chair, Georgia Commission on Women They Said We Couldn't Get There from Here, merges the qualities of communicator, health educator, poet and athlete, community activist, advocate for women and children, into what has evolved as a leader among women. Sworn in as a commissioner with Georgia Commission on Women in 1992, she has served as Chair since 1994.

Nancy Frenkel
Gifford, Hillegass, Ingwersen, LLC

Do not have

Connie Glaser
Author, Speaker

Connie Glaser, author of When Money Isn't Enough, has assisted thousands of women in breaking the glass ceiling with her best-selling books and dynamic seminars. Her bestseller, Swim with the Dolphins has provided a new navigational map for women in management. She was recently named to The World Who's Who of Women.

Emily Grigsby
Attorney & Mediator

Emily Bourne Grigsby, an accomplished artist, Emily Grigsby's paintings reflect her broad interests, travel and educational experiences and her zest for life. She balances her weekly schedule as an Attorney Arbitrator, Mediator and a painter. She has had 12 one person shows and group exhibits throughout the South, California and France. Emily graduated from Mills College, Georgia Institute of Technology and Woodrow Wilson College of Law.

Kathleen Hall
Sprayberry Travel

Kathleen Hall is a native of Atlanta and attended West Georgia College. She has worked in the travel industry in Los Angeles and Atlanta for the last 24 years, 17 of them with Sprayberry Travel. During her career she has worked in management, corporate and vacation travel and has planned and escorted groups, many of which have been to Mexico. More recently she has been traveling with women's group to spas.

Kathleen has served on the Boards of the Atlanta Women's Network, the Atlanta Women's Alliance and on the membership committee of the International Alliance of Women and is a 20 year member of the Chattahoochee Plantation Women's Club. She is active in fund raising in her community for worthy purposes that benefit the residents and has supported causes that impact women and enrich their lives through a group at her church.

Robin Hensley
Raising the Bar

Robin Hensley is a business development coach for attorneys and CPA's assisting them in achieving their professional goals and objectives, primarily in regard to business development.

Robin serves on the board of directors of Northside Hospital and is one of the few women to serve on the board of directors of a public company and chair the audit committee of a company on the American Stock Exchange.

In 2000, Robin founded the Atlanta Women's Alliance which serves as an umbrella group for over 40 non-profit women's organizations in the city for joint networking and "best practices". She also serves on many other boards including the Possible Woman Foundation. She was founding President of the Georgia Executive Women's Network and was on the founding board of The International Alliance (TIA).

Her honors include honorary lifetime board member of the American Cancer Society, Atlanta Business Chronicle's Top 20 Self-made Women of Atlanta, NAWBO Rising Star Award, United Cerebral Palsy's Woman of the Year and Leadership Atlanta class of 2003.

Joan Herbig
XcelleNet, Inc.

Joan Herbig was named CEO of XcelleNet in February 2000 when the company was purchased by Francisco Partners from Sterling Commerce. For the five years prior to that appointment, she held various positions with Xcellenet including President of the Managed Systems Division and Vice President of Marketing. She was named 2001 Woman of the Year in Technology by Technology Association of Georgia. She is recognized as the driving force behind the re-emergence of XcelleNet and its aggressive move into the mobile and wireless technology market. Herbig earned a B.A. in French from the University of Louisville and an M.S. in Computer Science from the University of Kentucky.

Patricia Koehn
Koehn Financial Group, Inc.

Pat Koehn, President, Koehn Financial Group, Inc., an independent, fee-based financial planning firm, is an expert at assisting a wide range of clients - from small business owners and corporate executives to retirees and women in life transition. As a certified financial planner with more than 25 years of experience, she helps them to develop their financial goals while helping them to conquer procrastination and to increase their confidence in making financial decisions. A financial consultant for the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Atlanta Business Chronicle, Ms. Koehn is also featured guest on the local radio talk show "Women Want To Know" and a frequent speaker at meetings of women's organizations in the Southeast.

Candace Mathis
Pharos Associates LLC

Candace O'Keefe-Mathis has more than 25 years experience in continuing education and leadership development programming. The former newspaper and magazine journalist previously spent many years leading the Foundation for Women's Resources (FWR), a position to which she gladly returned in 2007. She leads a team of dedicated colleagues overseeing Leadership Texas, the Power Pipeline, Foundation alumnae efforts and the creation of the next generation of projects and programs aimed at continuing the advancement of women leaders in the 21st century. She has counseled Leadership America and oversaw the 1996 launch of the national emerging women's leadership retreat, the Power Pipeline. She was also the founding Executive Director of The Women's Museum: An Institute for the Future, which opened in conjunction with the Smithsonian Institution as the nation's first comprehensive women’s history museum in Dallas, Texas, in September 2000.

Astrid Pregel

Astrid Pregel is Canada's Consul General resident in Atlanta. She heads a team of 40 Canadians and Americans working in the Canadian Consulate General in Atlanta and the Canadian Consulate in Miami. She is responsible for the entire scope of Canada's relations with the seven southeastern states, a region whose GDP is larger than all but 5 industrial nations. Astrid has been with Canada's foreign service for 22 years. In the early eighties she spent three years at the Canadian High Commission in Naiobi, Kenya where she was responsible for 10 east African countries. From Africa, she returned to Ottawa to focus on accelerating Canada's commercial ties with the Republic of Korea. From East Asia she turned her attention to India, Sri Lanka and Nepal in her position as Counsellor Commercial at the Canadian High Commission in New Delhi, India. She returned to Ottawa in 1993 as the Director of Trade Information Systems at the Department of External Affairs and International Trade where she lead the development of the specialized software essential to the success of Canada's diplomatic commercial teams around the world. Astrid was born in the Netherlands and immigrated to Canada as a child. She holds an honors Bachelors degree and an MBA from York University.     

Jill Pryor
Bondurant Mixson & Elmore LLP

Jill attended the College of William & Mary for undergraduate school and graduated from Yale Law School in 1988. She is a partner with Bondurant, Mixson & Elmore and has practiced business litigation for nearly 20 years. A former Georgia Association for Women Lawyers (GAWL) president, she received GAWL’s prestigious Kathleen Kessler Award. This award is given annually to a female attorney who exhibits the highest degree of professionalism and dedication to service in the legal community. Jill obtained a $281,000,000 jury verdict in a plaintiffs’ business case, the second largest verdict nationally in 2008, according to Lawyers USA. She has been recognized in The Best Lawyers in America and “The Most Effective Lawyers in Georgia” (Georgia Trend), among other publications. Past Chair of the State Bar’s Appellate Practice Section, In addition to serving on the PWFI board, Jill is currently Vice Chair of its Long Range Planning Committee and chairs the Atlanta Bar’s Judicial Selection Committee.

Barbara Rose
New Generation Partnerships, Inc.

President of New Generation Partnerships, Inc. and partner of RoseField Productions, Barbara has more than twenty-five years experience in management, development, recruiting and fundraising. Before coming to Atlanta in 1980, she had been Director of College Relations for seven years at Keystone College, LaPlume, Pennsylvania. Barbara has also been a Senior Consulting Associate with Grenzebach Glier & Associates, Inc., one of the leading consulting firms specializing in philanthropic management. Rose has been heavily involved in major gifts development and was the lead administrator for capital campaigns at Keystone College and Scottish Rite Children's Hospital. She has worked with CARE recruiting development officers for their international organization. Her experience covers strategic planning, foundation/corporate relations, board development, recruiting, public relations, program development, annual giving, training of volunteers and staff, and other related services. In 1981, Ms. Rose was among twenty women in the United States chosen for the American Council on Education's National Identification Program. The Association of Fund Raising Officers, Inc gave her their 1983 Distinguished Service Award. She was in the 1995 class of Leadership America and as a member of that organization participated in the United Nations Forum on Women in Beijing, China. She was active for more than 15 years in the Council for the Advancement and Support of Education (CASE) and the National Association for Hospital Development. Barbara is the co-author of Dollars for Dreams: Student Affairs Staff as Fundraisers, a book on focused fundraising on campuses. In 2007, Ms. Rose was a keynote speaker at the 9th Global Businesswomen's and Leaders Forum in Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

Deborah Sessions
Porter Keadle Moore, LLP

Debbie Sessions is a partner at Porter Keadle Moore, LLP, a nationally recognized Atlanta based accounting and consulting firm. Debbie is an honor graduate of Mercer University. She joined the firm in 1983 and as the firm's Chief Operating Officer she is responsible for coordinating the financial, personnel and administrative aspects of the its operations. Debbie is a member of the AICPA and the Georgia Society of CPAs and has held numerous executive positions with a variety of civic and professional organizations including the Partnership Against Domestic Violence, the Atlanta Women's Network, the Henry W. Grady Foundation, and the Association for Accounting Administration. She has been on the board of the Possible Woman Foundation International since 2003, serving on a variety of committees including branding and scholarship.

Dr. Betty Siegel
Kennesaw State University

Dr. Betty Siegel, inducted into the 1999 Atlanta Business Hall of Fame and named for the third time to Georgia Trend Magazine's list of "100 most powerful and influential Georgians," has been president of Kennesaw State University since 1981, when she became the first woman to hold this distinguished position in the University System of Georgia. Since then, the university has evolved from a four-year college to its current university status and has been lauded by U. S. News and World Report as a "rising star" among colleges and universities in the South. A nationally known speaker, civic leader, and administrator, Dr. Siegel uses the "invitational model" to espouse methods for strengthening the education and leadership process. She has lectured or consulted with educational, professional, government, and civic groups in all 50 states, Puerto Rico, and nine foreign countries.

Patricia Willis
Bellsouth Foundation (retired)
Executive Director, VOICES for Georgia's Children

Pat Willis is the executive director of VOICES for Georgia’s Children, a statewide organization that supports research, communication, and advocacy for public policy related to children and families. She became the first director of VOICES in August 2003 after achieving over 30 years of accomplishments in the corporate sector, the public sector and in volunteer service.

During 20 years at BellSouth Corporation, she was the founding director and subsequent president of the BellSouth Foundation, an endowed trust devoted to improving education in the Southeast and Latin America. Through almost $50 million of grants and programs, the foundation achieved national recognition and respect in the issues of teacher preparation, school leadership and education technology, and international recognition for Pronino, an education initiative in 10 countries of Latin America.

In Atlanta Ms. Willis currently serves on the boards of the Atlanta Women’s Foundation and Imagine It! The Children’s Museum of Atlanta. Nationally she is a board member of the Foundation Center in New York and the Center for Leadership in School Reform in Kentucky. She also serves on the Ethics and Accountability Committee of the Independent Sector and the Task Force on Cross Sectoral Relations at the Aspen Institute. Ms. Willis is vice chair of the board of trustees of Marietta (OH) College, her alma mater.

Linda Wind
President, Possible Woman Enterprises

Linda Wind is President of Possible Woman Enterprises, a corporation committed to the personal and professional development of the business and executive women and career mothers. She is also chair of the Possible Woman Foundation International,a non-profit 501c3 whose mission is to change the lives of women and girls globally through inclusive and collaborative leadership, integrity, and lifelong learning.With an MBA from the University of Dallas in Irving, Texas, and BBA from Texas A&M University at Corpus Christi, Texas, she is a recipient of the Y Women in Careers Award and a Mentor for the 1998-01 Georgia 100 Mentor Exchange Program. Her career has included positions with IBM, Sharp Electronics, Pitney Bowes, Panasonic and AirTouch. She is a past-president of the Atlanta Women’s Network and is actively involved with the Georgia Commission on Women. She serves on the boards of the Northside Hospital Foundation and Atlanta Women’s Alliance (founding member.) Linda is a member of The International Alliance, Atlanta Women in Business, Board of Directors Network and is a graduate of Leadership Corpus Christi Class XV and Leadership Atlanta, Class of 1999. She is on the Advisory Board for the Georgia 100 Mentor Exchange Program, and was selected by Women Looking Ahead Magazine as one of the Top 100 most powerful and influential women business owners in Georgia, 2000 and 2001. She was recently selected to be a member of Leadership America, class of 2003. Her Possible Woman seminars and leadership conferences have been featured in several local and national publications including the Wall Street Journal.