Karen Blackwell
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Karen M. Blackwell is the founder and CEO of Sage & Alms™, a benefit corporation with the brands Kanda™ Chocolates and DewBurst™. With servant leadership as her North Star, Karen created a benefit corporation to further illustrate her commitment to social and environmental justice. As CEO, Karen develops and executes on strategic business models through global partnerships; with a current focus on Ghana.
Kanda™ Chocolates was created to bring awareness to superior quality of the chocolate that is made in Ghana. It is a source of pride for Karen to have single origin chocolate that is grown, processed, and packaged in Ghana. Karen delivers on the company mission by maintaining operations in Ghana, purchasing fair-trade cocoa, purchasing carbon offsets, and donating 10% of proceeds to charitable organizations.
Prior to creating Sage & Alms™, Karen was a healthcare leader with 15+ years in the healthcare industry. In her last role, she was the Director of Strategic Solutions for the Americas Region within the Diabetes Group for Medtronic plc – a $28.8B global healthcare solutions company. Karen has also held leadership roles in Marketing, Strategy, Sales, and Operations.
Throughout her career, Karen has maintained her passion for service. She currently serves as Treasurer and Board Member for Social Justice Learning Institute. Prior to, she has held leadership roles as an Advisor and Chair for Medtronic Employee Resource Groups, as a Class Leader for Dupage AME Church, and as a Committee Chair for the Professional Organization of Women, Inc. She has also served as a volunteer with Step Up Women’s Network, Chicago Public Schools, Community Women Against Hardship, and through her membership with Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.
Karen has a Master’s in Business Administration from Webster University and a B.S. in Biological Sciences from Northern Illinois University.
Abigail Wald
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Abigail Wald started the Yes Bar out of love for her family. Her son was born with so many food sensitivities, she was always having to say “no” to the foods he wanted to try. In frustration and out of love, she went into her kitchen one day, and took out all the ingredients that she could say “yes” to, and made him a snack. Her goal: to make something so yummy he'd say YES to it, and still so healthy she'd be able to say YES as a mom too! Goal accomplished! He loved them because they looked and tasted like a cookie. She loved them because of their nutritious, premium-quality organic ingredients. From that day on her plant-based, vegan & paleo snacks became known as the Yes Bar.
Today, Abigail also runs another company called Mother Flipping Awesome, which also serves families, and furthers her mission to give back to the world for the second half of her life, and continuing to connect people to their innate power to heal themselves, mentally and physically.
Ita Ekpoudom
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Ita is a Partner at venture capital firm GingerBread Capital, which backs high growth female founded companies. Her mission is to engage, educate, and elevate the next generation of successful women business leaders and investors. In 2014, Ita founded Tigress Ventures, an advisory and consulting firm that tapped her considerable network to bring together visionary entrepreneurs with seasoned professionals to help women scale their businesses and hone their leadership skills.
Ita also served as Venture Partner at Plum Alley Investments, where she oversaw investment opportunities and pipeline for high-growth female-founded and gender-diverse startups. Previously, Ita held product management roles at TravelClick and American Express. She began her career at Goldman Sachs as an analyst in Credit Capital Markets and an institutional trader of preferred stock.
Ita holds an MBA in Marketing and Entrepreneurial Management from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania; and earned a Bachelor’s degree, cum laude, in Psychology, with a certificate in Finance, from Princeton University.
Perry Yeatman
Perry Yeatman is a seasoned, high-impact executive whose career has spanned sectors (business, government, academia and philanthropy); geographies (from Asia to Russia to Europe); functions (from marketing to HR to general management); and organizations (from Kraft Foods and Unilever to WPP and Shandwick plc, to founding her own consulting firm and social enterprise).
Today, Perry is the Head of Corporate for Save the Children. In this role, Perry is leading a committed and capable team of professionals focused on developing and delivering innovative, holistic, sustainable, scalable partnerships with leading corporations – partnerships that simultaneously deliver business benefits while furthering Save the Children’s mission focused on survival, education and protection of the world’s most marginalized kids.
Prior to joining Save the Children, Perry was SVP, Corporate and Government Affairs, at Kraft Foods and President of the Kraft Foods Foundation. During her tenure as President of the Kraft Foods Foundation, Perry streamlined the foundation’s focus and began to leverage the power of the business – vs just philanthropic dollars – to tackle the two sides of malnutrition, namely hunger and obesity, in key markets around the world. While at Kraft, Perry also led the World Economic Forum’s Consumer Community in developing the New Vision for Agriculture. Additionally, she was a key leader in the company’s early work to create Cocoa Life, a multi-faceted program designed to ensure that there would be future generations of cocoa farmers in key markets in Africa and Asia.
Before joining Kraft in 2005, Perry was Vice President, Corporate Affairs, for Unilever North America. She was also a member of the Unilever HPC-NA management board. In this capacity, among other things, Perry led the work to develop Unilever’s first nationwide community partnership with the Girl Scouts of the USA. This partnership focused on girls’ self-esteem - work which later became part of the Dove “real beauty” campaign.
In addition to her “day jobs”, Perry is an award-winning author, a frequent blogger, and vlogger, a Board member, and a staunch advocate for women and girls. She also still heads her social enterprise called Your Career, Your Terms.
Turiya Gray
Turiya is a strategic HR leader with progressive, hands-on experience in various industries. She currently serves as Jellyvision’s Chief People Officer.
Prior to joining Jellyvision, Turiya served as Chief People Officer for Financial Health Network. She’s also held leadership roles at The Chartis Group, Capital One, Redbox and more. Her specialties include change management, leadership coaching, organizational effectiveness and talent management.
Turiya is a co-host of HR unConfidential, a podcast that offers a behind-the-scenes look at life in Human Resources and what’s really happening in the workplace. She holds a B.S. from National-Lewis University and a Master’s degree in Human Resources from Loyal University’s Quinlan School of Business.
Laura Rodnitzky
Laura Rodnitzky is Chief People Officer of 3Q Digital, one of the world's largest independent growth marketing agencies. In her 12+ years at 3Q Digital, Laura has been instrumental in growing the organization from a team of three to over 450 employees in the U.S. and abroad. She has led People Operations at 3Q for the past eight years, with a strong focus on building a psychologically safe and inclusive culture, where every employee has a voice and feels comfortable bringing their authentic selves to work.