La Toya Haynes is the Director – Racial Equity at Intuit.

Miriam Warren is the Chief Diversity Officer at Yelp and Board Chair of the Yelp Foundation, which counts non profits like La Cocina in San Francisco and Hot Bread Kitchen in New York among its grantees. Miriam joined Yelp in 2007, serving in a variety of marketing and operational roles, including leading the company’s expansion efforts internationally as Vice President of New Markets. Presently, she heads a team working at the intersection of culture, engagement, social impact and diversity, equity and inclusion.

Heather Tinsley-Fix is a Senior Advisor at AARP, where she leads the organization’s work on employer engagement and helps drive AARP’s focus on providing workers 50+ with the tools they need to thrive in today’s work environment.  With a background in marketing, innovation, and program management, Heather works with employers and job seekers, external partners, and academics to provide thought leadership on 50+ labor market issues and create practical resources that enable employers to build age-inclusive organizations that capitalize on the value of experience.  She holds a B.A. in English Literature and an M.A. in Literary Theory, both from the University of Exeter.

As AMC Networks’ first Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer, Aisha Thomas-Petit is charged with building on and advancing the company’s DEI goals and foundation. As a key member of the senior leadership team reporting directly to President & CEO, Josh Sapan, Thomas-Petit is responsible for setting the strategy, roadmap and measures of success to develop, bolster, and retain a diverse and inclusive community both within the company’s workforce, as well as in front of and behind the camera across AMC Networks’ portfolio of entertainment brands. Additionally, Thomas-Petit plays an integral role in advancing the company’s commitment to telling original stories that entertain with vivid characters, stories, and worlds that show the full spectrum of human experiences.

Before joining AMC Networks, Thomas-Petit served as Chief Diversity, Inclusion and Corporate Social Responsibility Officer at ADP. A seasoned DEI executive, she also held various leadership roles in Human Resources including Division Vice President of the company’s Major Accounts and Canada division during her seven years at ADP.

Previously, Thomas-Petit spent over seven years at Barclays Capital (including over two years at Lehman Brothers before it was purchased by Barclays), where she ultimately became the HR Director for Global Operations, driving people strategy for over 4000 employees globally, and partnering with the Global Head of Investment Bank Operations to drive talent and performance management, development and compensation. Prior to Barclays, Thomas-Petit spent eight years at JP Morgan Chase, where she held several roles including Vice President, HR for Shared Technology & Operations and Investment Bank Operations, leading people strategy for a newly merged global organization of 2400 employees.

Thomas-Petit holds a Master of Business Administration degree in Marketing and Business Strategy from Rutgers University and a Bachelor of Science in Marketing from Syracuse University, where she graduated Magna Cum Laude.

She resides in New Jersey with her family.

Gerri Mason Hall is a C-suite leader with more than 25 years’ experience in Diversity, Equity & Inclusion. Her journey ranged from legal compliance, to human capital engagement, to cultural and social transformation. In December 2020 she joined NetApp as its first VP Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging. She is laser focused on accelerating NetApp’s growth and culture shift. Since 2006 Gerri held a series of senior level roles at Sodexo, including Chief Diversity Officer and Chief Human Resources Officer for the Americas, leveraging her employment law acumen with her passion for human capital engagement and unshakeable belief that corporations can and will advance social change. Gerri spent eight years at Amtrak, the US national passenger railroad. She was instrumental in settling a class action lawsuit avoiding millions of dollars in protracted litigation.

Augmenting her commitment to Inclusion and advancing the underserved, Gerri is a member of the UNCF Board and sits on its Audit and HR Committees. She is a Board member of the Congressional Hunger Center and the Sodexo Stop Hunger Foundation and provides pro bono D&I counsel to a host of non-profit organizations. Gerri is a graduate of Vassar College and the George Washington University National Law Center.

Jonathan Mayes is Senior Vice President and Chief Diversity Officer for Albertsons Companies.  Albertsons is one of America’s largest grocery and pharmacy chains. It operates nearly 2,300 stores, under 20 different banners, in 35 states and D.C.  The company employs nearly 300,000 individuals.

Mr. Mayes received a Bachelor of Science Degree in Social Science from Warner Pacific College, in Portland, Oregon.  He received a Juris Doctorate degree from Willamette University College of Law, in Salem, Oregon, where he served as Vice‐Chairman of the Moot Court Board and was inducted into the Order of the Barristers for his exemplary advocacy and leadership skills. He was the 2019 commencement speaker.

Mr. Mayes is a Certified Diversity Executive and frequent featured speaker at conferences, corporate gatherings, and universities across the U.S. on the topic of diversity, equity & inclusion.  Mr. Mayes received the Martin Luther King Jr. Service Award from Willamette University, and is a member of Phi Beta Kappa.  He also has been honored by the SF Bay Area Minority Bar Coalition and the Charles Houston Bar Association for his exemplary service to the legal community. He also has been honored as Warner Pacific College’s Alumnus of the Year.

Mr. Mayes serves on the boards of the California Chamber of Commerce (and Executive Committee), California Grocers Association, Children Rising (currently chairperson), and Bay Area Council (currently co-chair of Diversity & Inclusion Committee). He has formerly served as Chairman of the Board of the California Grocers Association; Chairman of the Board of the Charles Houston Bar Association; Vice Chairman of the Board of Warner Pacific University; and Chairman of the Food Marketing Institute Government Relations Committee. He also has served as a Committee Chairman or board member in other professional organizations.

He has been married for over 30 years to his best friend and wife, Varetta Mayes, a former management consultant and senior staff member of an Oakland-based non-profit. They reside in San Francisco, California.

Rocio is an experienced Senior Manager in Accenture’s Management Consulting Health & Public Service group.  She is the North America Technology Strategy lead for our Higher Education practice, specializing in Student Experience and large scale program delivery.  She is passionate and fortunate for 25+ years to have led our people, C-Suite leaders, clients and organizations through complex, technology transformations and strategic enterprise platform delivery projects. Rocio is a proactive change agent who, with an innovative approach, reengineers, redesigns and implements IT capabilities to processes that improve customer centricity, productivity and performance. She leads key Educational racial equity initiatives focused on closing the digital divide for the Hispanic and Black communities. Rocio is an alumnus of Notre Dame, holds an AI certification from MIT and is leading several workforce efforts around our practice in an effort to increase diversity in Technology careers.  She currently sits on the Board of the Khipu Institute of Peru.

Emtrain founder and CEO Janine Yancey is a passionate advocate for healthy workplace cultures. Janine’s unique approach blends technology, behavioral science, data analytics, and social media-inspired interactions to help inform and improve workplace behavior. Janine presides over a team of experts and an extensive library of content including courses, video, resource guides, checklists and analytic reports that define the modern workplace.

Janine is a proponent of neutral, third-party guidance and problem-solving. By orchestrating a publicly-accessible community interface for employee questions and concerns, Janine stays at the forefront of real-world, real-time harassment, bias, discrimination, and ethics issues.

A tireless visionary, Janine writes extensively, has provided expert testimony and advice to state legislatures, and helps leading companies implement harassment prevention, diversity, ethics, and compliance programs. Janine is a sought-after speaker and has been published and interviewed in the mainstream media including The Washington Post, Fast Company, USA Today, Bloomberg Business, TechCrunch, and Startup Grind. She’s presented at Society of Ethics and Compliance; Techstars FounderCon; Founders Network, and The Club.

Prior to founding Emtrain, Janine was a partner at Employment Law Partners where she specialized in solving labor and employment problems for high tech firms including Google, Intuit and a variety of start-ups. Janine also worked as counsel at Liebert Cassidy Whitmore, served as Board Member of the Northern California Human Resources Association, and authored The HR Handbook, designed to help young tech companies navigate workplace laws.

Janine earned her JD at the University of California Hastings School of Law and a BA in English and Political Science at the University of California Berkeley.

Odessa Jenkins is the Founder of the Women’s National Football Conference (WNFC), and sought after executive leader. She most recently served as the Head of Business Develop for Parity, and VP of Support/Ops at YourCause. An in demand national speaker, Jenkins is also the founder of multiple nonprofits. She is a recognized market leader in CSR, DE&I, Team Dynamics, and SAAS technology with multiple years of leadership experience in private funded start-ups, joint ventures and fortune 100 public companies. Jenkins served for several years as an executive leader at YourCause, a start-up which helped to revolutionize the CSR industry.

As a disrupter in sports, Jenkins is paving the way to create inclusion and equity in sports for women and girls. She was an inaugural participant in the NFL’s first Women’s Career in Football Forum and is one of the first women to obtain the coveted NFL Bill Walsh Diversity Internship in an on-field position (Running Backs Coach – Atlanta Falcons). Featured on Fox, Sport Illustrated, CBS, ESPN, Yahoo Sports, The Undefeated and more, Jenkins was recently recognized as one of the most influential and powerful women in sports by Sports Illustrated (Unrelenting).

Jenkins has 22 years of coaching and leadership experience, is a Hall of Fame, a 5X National Champion, 2X USA National Team captain, 2X Gold Medalist, and heralded as one of the top leadership experts in the country.

An avid learner and systems thinker, KeyAnna Schmiedl loves to create solutions and discussions that center OD and DEI as tools for supporting authenticity and empathy. She believes that highlighting the need to move from “careful” to “thoughtful” conversations in the workplace is key the success of DEI and am evolved workplace culture overall. Bridging the gap between difference is key for any successful endeavor and ensuring leaders and employees have the tools necessary to do just that is the goal of her work.

KeyAnna is currently the Global Head of DEI at Wayfair where she puts to application a breadth of DEI experience, most recently as the US Head of D&I for Santander Bank, N.A where she led the bank’s employee networking groups and other D&I priorities.  Prior to her time at Santander she was a senior consultant at IBIS Consulting Group where she developed innovative and collaborative ways of implementing DEI intervention strategies.

Josetta has been with Chevron for 19 years and prior to taking on her role as Chief Diversity & Inclusion Officer, she was Managing Counsel for Intellectual Property Law Group. She served as Chair of our Law Function Diversity Counsel where she led the development of initiatives that demonstrated her dedication in driving greater D&I in the Law Function.

Christine Trodella serves as the Head of Americas at Workplace from Facebook. She joined Facebook in 2011 as a Group Director, leading sales and account teams across verticals in the mid-market channel.

Prior to Facebook, Christine held sales leadership roles at WebMD, Yahoo! and AOL. She holds a M.A. in Economics from the University of California at Santa Barbara.

Sharon Epperson, named one of “12 to Watch in TV News,” can be seen regularly on CNBC television and other media platforms.

As CNBC’s senior personal finance correspondent, Epperson covers the many facets of how people manage, grow and protect their money. Her expertise includes saving and investing for retirement, paying for college, managing mortgage, student loan, credit card and other debt, and building a financial legacy through estate planning.

Preparing your finances for the unexpected is another critical (and personal) aspect of her reporting. In September 2016, Epperson sustained a ruptured brain aneurysm and she nearly lost her life. She has become a staunch advocate for health and wellness issues, raising awareness about brain aneurysms and funding for research. In September 2018, she and her family established “The Sharon Epperson Chair of Research” through the Brain Aneurysm Foundation to provide grants for research on early detection and innovative treatments.

Epperson is a lead contributor to “Invest in You: Ready. Set. Grow.,” a multi-platform financial wellness and education initiative at CNBC in partnership with the micro-investing app Acorns, and developed its companion 8-week learning course and weekly newsletter, “Invest in You: Money 101.” She also contributes to NBC’s TODAY and NBC Nightly News as well as Today.com and NBCNews.com.

Her book, The Big Payoff: 8 Steps Couples Can Take to Make the Most of Their Money-and Live Richly Ever After, was a finalist for the Books for a Better Life Awards, honoring works that have “changed the lives of millions.” She also was a contributing writer for The Experts’ Guide to Doing Things Faster. Her personal finance expertise has been featured in numerous publications, including The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Boston Globe, USA Weekend, Self, Essence, Ebony and TIME, where she had covered business, culture, social issues and health as a correspondent prior to joining CNBC.

Epperson has numerous industry and civic awards, including the Special Achievement Award from the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors (NAPFA) and the Savvy Inspiration Award from the non-profit, financial empowerment group Savvy Ladies. She won an Alliance for Women in Media’s Gracie Award for Outstanding Online Host for her “Financial Advisor Playbook” video series on CNBC.com. She has received the Vanguard Award for her distinguished career in business and personal finance reporting from the National Urban League Guild, and the All-Star Award from the Association of Women in Communications. She also has won awards from the New York Festivals, the New York Association of Black Journalists and the National Association of Black Journalists.

She currently lives with her husband and two children in Westchester County, N.Y.

Rocky is the Founder & CEO of the NoW of Work Inc. - a business transformation firm whose primary focus is helping executives build future-proofed, resilient organizations that are anchored on cultures of innovation and agility. He couples a decade of senior leadership roles in large enterprise, with 5-years in start-up tech to form what he believes is the culture and operational DNA for all modern companies.

Craig Goodfriend runs the Large Enterprise segment in North America for Workplace from Facebook, working with companies that have 10k+ employees.  His team works with client across all industries helping them learn about and onboard Workplace for their Comms needs.

Craig holds a BA from UMass Amherst where he was the manager for the 1996 Final Four basketball team. He resides in Princeton, NJ with his wife Hallie and their two children, Ben & Leo.

Sonali Satpathy is the Vice President, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion & Well-Being at Schneider Electric. She joined the company in December 2010, and in 2017, became the Head of Diversity, Equity & Inclusion where she is spearheading the global strategy to build a strong diverse and inclusive culture. In 2019, she took on the additional responsibility for Schneider’s Well-Being transformation. She has worked for Schneider Electric in Paris, Hong Kong and is currently based in Boston.

Prior to this role, she oversaw the Leadership Pipeline and Programs in the Talent Management Center Of Excellence, and held roles in project management and communications.

Before joining Schneider Electric, Sonali worked in the Broadcast News industry in India for 11 years for NDTV and Times Now news channels. She has been a journalist, an anchor and a news producer. She was also head of Channel operations for NDTV Profit, a 24-hour business channel.

Sonali has an honors degree in Economics from Miranda House, Delhi University and an MBA from HEC, Paris.

Larry applies 20 years of adult learning experience in leadership development, performance improvement, and diversity and inclusion initiatives to design LCW programs that offer practical, performance-based impact. Often described as an engaging and motivational master level facilitator, Larry has a unique ability to take the learner on a pathway to discovery.

A Chicago native, Larry’s career in the Fortune 500 space spans the financial services, insurance, retail, human resources, call centers, and IT sectors. His earlier career included a role at State Farm as a Performance Improvement Consultant and Development Advisor, and later as an executive team member at Target. Today, Larry encourages and inspires individuals at Eli Lilly, Boston Consulting Group, US Bank, and others to cultivate a deeper self-awareness that allows them to enhance their relationships with their colleagues and the communities they live in.

Larry has a B.S. in Sociology from Illinois State University, which allows him the ability to examine how an individual’s social condition could potentially have a systemic impact on an organization’s inclusion objectives. He lives in Chicago with his lovely wife and his three wonderful children. Away from work, you can expect Larry to be attending one of his children’s events, spending quality time with his spouse, rooting for his Chicago based sports teams, or participating in activities sponsored within his church.

Emily Nordquist is the senior program manager for the Baumhart Center, an interdisciplinary center at Loyola University Chicago that equips leaders with the business tools to accelerate social impact. The center is home to a highly selective MBA program, called Baumhart Scholars, that prepares working professionals to marry profit and purpose in their careers.

Before joining Baumhart, Emily worked for LISC’s New Markets Support Co. (NMSC), a Chicago-based social enterprise, and a subsidiary of one of the largest community-development financial institutions in the country. NMSC delivers creative financing solutions to expand economic opportunity and has created over 7,000 jobs in low-income communities across U.S. cities and in rural America. In her role, Emily led the impact management process for NMSC’s portfolio of $1 billion of investments in health-care centers, schools, community centers, industrial facilities and more. Emily also developed and supported internal fund management, impact compliance, and asset management processes.

Emily is a 2018 inaugural Obama Foundation Community Leadership Corps (CLC) Member and a current Alumni Ambassador for the CLC program. She is also known for her efforts in helping young women in Chicago achieve financial wellness through her community-based organization, Penny. She was given the opportunity to speak about her work in reimagining financial well-being for women at the 2018 Obama Summit.

Emily has a bachelor’s degree in economics and an MBA from Quinlan School of Business at Loyola University Chicago. She currently serves on the Impact Investing Advisory Council of the YWCA Metropolitan Chicago and volunteers her time with the Illinois Diversity Council.

Lydia Dishman is Fast Company’s senior editor for growth and engagement. She has also written for CBS Moneywatch, Fortune, The Guardian, Popular Science, and the New York Times, among others.

Based in Rochester, New York, Denise has been involved in diversity and learning-related endeavors for 30 + years.  Her career has encompassed Secondary Education, Professional Leadership Coaching, Leadership, and Instructing at both the University of Rochester’s Simon Business School and Monroe Community College’s Corporate College program.  She has served as Global Chief Diversity Officer at Atos for 5 years, and has won over 40 International D&I awards for the programs and policies she has implemented.

With a love for coherence and efficacy, Dion works as a strategist and coach to help organizations operate in alignment with their values. Currently, Dion serves as Bravely’s Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Belonging (DEIB) Strategy Lead, helping to integrate those lenses within the employee experience, the customer success, and social impact functions.

Prior to joining Bravely, Dion has spearheaded DEIB, strategic planning, learning and development, and operations within New York City government. Throughout his career, Dion has led with a passion for enhancing the power of people and communities to drive systemic change. Dion holds his BA in Human Development and Social Relations from Kalamazoo College in Kalamazoo, MI.

Courtney Connley is the Senior Editor at Chief.