Agenda

Asha Beh is a former journalist/multimedia producer who is currently a social media specialist and program analyst for the Virtual Student Foreign Service program at the U.S. Department of State. Her work experience at State includes helping set up and organize the first-ever, full day User Experience (UX) event for the Department, leading bureau-wide event planning for Earth Day, managing an environmental social media community of nearly three million people, and overseeing and developing the website and social media for the U.S. Consulate in Chennai, India.

Prior to joining the State Department, Ms. Beh was a multimedia content producer for NBC’s local news station in Washington, D.C., where she also acted as managing editor on weekends for the DC and Philadelphia, PA websites. Prior to that, Ms. Beh worked weekends at NBC, while working full-time as a website writer/editor for the Veterans Health Administration (VHA) and helping VHA launch its Facebook and Twitter pages.

She has also worked as a producer for CNBC.com, a writer for NPR.org, a production assistant at CNN, and the (ad) traffic and program coordinator for America’s Black Forum. She began her journalism career as a print reporter.

Ms. Beh has a Bachelor’s degree in Communication from the University of Buffalo in Buffalo, NY and a Master’s degree in Journalism from American University in Washington, DC. She is a member of South Asian Journalists Association, where she served as a board member and Student Scholarships chairperson. She currently serves as a board member for her neighborhood community association.

Peter is a consultant with PwC Advisory and specializes in helping organizations realize financial and operational improvement through organizational, process and technology change. He has consulted with companies in the Technology, Information, Communications and Entertainment sectors.

Specialties: For 10 years, Peter has worked on numerous consulting projects related to startups, order- to-cash improvement, process reengineering, business process management and workflow automation, platform consolidation, large-scale program management, and application and system development and integration.

Peter is very passionate about Diversity & Inclusion and the Millennial workforce and works with organizations to craft visions and establish environments to engage, equip, and empower their millennial workforce to achieve success, growth, and career fulfillment.

Ronit Avni is the founder of Localized, a soon-to-launch platform for university students and young professionals in emerging markets to access career guidance, role models and expertise from top-tier professionals around the world who share language and cultural roots.

A social entrepreneur, human rights advocate and Peabody Award-winning media producer with 17 years of leadership experience, Ronit’s work has been featured in dozens of global news outlets, including The Washington Post, The BBC, NPR, The Economist and The New York Times.

Prior to Localized, she founded and led Just Vision, which creates digital media, award-winning films (Budrus, My Neighborhood, Encounter Point), news analysis and public education campaigns to raise awareness and support for Palestinian and Israeli civilians working for freedom, dignity, equality and human security. As Executive Director of Just Vision, Ms. Avni managed a diverse team based in North America and the Middle East and was a frequent speaker in think tank, community, government, international, educational and media settings.

Previously, Ronit trained human rights defenders worldwide to incorporate film and digital media into their advocacy campaigns while working for the human rights organization, WITNESS. She co-edited the book, “Video for Change – A Guide for Advocacy and Activism” with WITNESS and now sits on the WITNESS Board, chairing the Program Committee.

Ronit has been recognized with a variety of honors, including the King Hussein Leadership Prize, Search for Common Ground’s Common Ground Award, the Circles of Change Award, Auburn Seminary’s Lives of Commitment Award and the Trailblazer Award from the National Council for Research on Women. She was named a Young Global Leader (2009) through the World Economic Forum and a Term Member of the Council on Foreign Relations (2010).

As a side passion, Ronit has trained hundreds of business leaders, MBA students, nonprofit leaders and civil servants to speak persuasively to the media, on stage and in executive settings with KNP Communications.

Sara Sutton Fell is the CEO and Founder of FlexJobs, an award-winning career website for telecommuting, flexible, freelance, and part-time jobs. Sara founded FlexJobs in 2007 while she was pregnant with her first son, after she experienced first-hand the frustrating search for professional jobs that also offered flexible work options. Having also co-founded an entry-level employment service in 1995 (JobDirect, later sold to Korn|Ferry International in 2000), she has long been passionate about helping people find jobs that make their lives better, and she is thrilled that her own experience as a working mom is now helping others who want or need work flexibility.

Sara also believes that a modern workplace should address the needs of today’s workforce, and that utilizing workplace technology to support telecommuting and flexible work will achieve societal, environmental, and economic benefits for both employees and employers. In support of that belief, Sara launched the 1 Million for Work Flexibility in 2013 and Remote.co in 2015. For her work in the employment and technology fields, she was named as a Young Global Leader (class of 2014) by the World Economic Forum. Sara is a graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, and currently lives in Boulder, Colorado, USA with her two children.

Tolu Olubunmi is an entrepreneur and global advocate for migrants, refugees, and displaced people. An innovative thinker and determined change-maker, she has established and led numerous NGOs and campaigns focused on immigrant integration, employment, access to technology, and education.

Tolu is the founder and CEO of Lions Write, a social venture that builds and manages initiatives committed to giving voice and value to the voiceless and strengthening collaborations between corporations, governments and civil society organizations. She co-founded Immigrant Heritage Month and has helped draft and implement U.S. immigration policies.

Tolu serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on Migration and co-chairs Mobile Minds – a high-skilled migration project advancing cross-border remote working as a 21st century alternative to physical migration. She also sits on the Board of Directors of USAIM for IOM (the UN Migration Agency), and was recently named to the Board of Advisors of the social impact investment platform, BRAVA Investments.  

In 2015, the World Economic Forum named her One of 15 Women Changing the World and an Outstanding Woman Entrepreneur. Tolu is often called upon to share her expertise and inspiring personal story with a variety of entities, including the United Nations, Gates Foundation, World Bank, TIME, and the White House.

Tolu holds a Chemistry-Engineering degree from Washington and Lee University.

At the Boston College Center for Work & Family (@BCCWF), Jennifer is Associate Director, Communications and Programming. She works closely with the Boston College Workforce Roundtable, a learning and networking community for over 50 leading employers as well as the New England Work & Family Association (NEWFA). Jennifer manages all CWF marketing initiatives including the CWF website, social media, member newsletters, research reports and other publications. Jennifer also works with organizations to provide research and consultation on flexibility, work-life balance and other workforce management issues. Jennifer enjoys presenting on workplace flexibility and work-life balance; recent speaking engagements include the Future of Work Forum, WorldatWork Total Rewards, the New England HR Association and the Massachusetts Conference for Women. Jennifer was the founder of and a regular guest on the Fox 25 News Boston Work-Life Wednesday segment. She has been featured on NECN, Marketplace, NPR, in the Boston Globe, Fortune, The Huffington Post, Human Resource Executive and other publications. Jennifer received her BS in Clinical Psychology from Tufts University and her Master of Social Work and Master of Business Administration from Boston College. Jennifer and her husband John are the proud parents of two children.

Kate is president of Global Workplace Analytics (GWA), a research-based consulting organization that helps employers and communities create and communicate the people, planet, and profit business case for strategies that involve workplace flexibility, agility, engagement and well-being.

GWA’s proprietary tools include:

• An extensive digital library with over 4,000 research reports, case studies and news items related to workplace strategy
• A variety of customizable web-based and mobile calculators including a Workplace Savings Calculator™ and Well-Being Savings Calculator™
• Model business cases for a wide range of workplace strategies and stakeholders
• Templates for collecting pre- and post-strategy measures of success
• Customizable eLearning courses specific to agile workplace practices

Under contract with a handful of global product and service organizations, GWA provides on-call research and develops custom ROI calculators, white papers, e-books and other marketing content.

Kate is a highly regarded speaker, writer and thought leader on the future of work. She has co-authored three business books, contributed chapters to two others and written hundreds of articles for major media outlets. Her firm’s research has been cited by hundreds of publications including the Harvard Business Review, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post.

Rose Stanley is a senior practice leader and serves as a spokesperson and ambassador for WorldatWork representing the association in public forums on matters of professional knowledge/expertise, while developing and sustaining relationships with subject matter experts, other professionals and academics.

She is a subject matter expert in the disciplines of work-life, recognition and total rewards, maintaining a wide-ranging understanding of practices across the profession. She is responsible for keeping abreast of changes in the total rewards profession, watching trends and identifying the hot topics important to reward practitioners.

She helps to identify, develop, manage, and grow relationships of critical importance to the association, and as a subject matter expert, helps support WorldatWork’s products, events, and initiatives, while serving as an internal consultant and collaborative partner.

She is engaged with total rewards professionals through authoring articles, blogging, media interviews, and social media platforms, actively working with other subject matter experts to advance thought leadership, while identifying current and anticipated future issues and challenges that are important to rewards professionals.

Other responsibilities include content selection for the annual WorldatWork Total Rewards Conference and Exhibition and Future of Work Forum, as well as serving as staff liaison to the Work-Life Advisory Council.

Prior to joining WorldatWork, Stanley was employed with Circle K for more than nine years where she designed and implemented total rewards programs.

Stanley serves as a spokesperson for WorldatWork. She has been quoted extensively in numerous publications including USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, Business Week, Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, Inc. magazine, CNN Money, KTAR-AM, and many human resources trade publications.

Stanley is a regular blogger for WorldatWork Post and Huffington Post.

Working for FlexJobs has given me an opportunity that I wasn’t sure I could get. I always planned to re-enter the working world once my kids were in school. Once we got to that point, I realized that a traditional job, with the commute, the set hours, days, etc. were still going to require some sacrifices from our family that I wasn’t happy about.

Working for FlexJobs allows me to be a part of something bigger. It allows me to feel important and contribute to something outside of my family. I actually find that it makes me a better wife and mother! The ability to work and help other people find a better balance in their world, while still being there for an occasional lunch date, class party, or dance class gives my family more than I could have hoped for! The team at FlexJobs is fabulous; they really care about helping people find the right company and position. I really enjoy working with them!

Marjorie R. Asturias is a Happiness Engineer at Automattic, parent company of WordPress.com, Jetpack, Woo, and many other fine software products. Based in Dallas, Texas, Marjorie manages the company’s Google Apps reseller program. She also speaks frequently at conferences and meetups about WordPress, content marketing, and social media.

Prior to joining Automattic in 2014, Marjorie ran a small digital marketing agency that specialized in assisting small and medium-size businesses and entrepreneurs with their online initiatives. She founded the company out of her home and grew it into a six-figure business with several employees without ever compromising her commitment to creating a flexible, distributed office environment for herself and her staff. She’s a passionate advocate of remote workplaces and is thrilled to be a part of the most well-known, fully distributed company in the industry.

Marjorie is a graduate of the University of Texas at Arlington. One of the things she loves most about having a flexible work schedule is the opportunity it affords her to volunteer regularly with local animal rescue groups. When she’s not scooping up stray dogs and finding them forever homes, she can be found at marjorieasturias.com.

Nicole McCabe is a Senior Director of Global Diversity & Inclusion at SAP, responsible for the creation and execution of innovative programs that support gender diversity, and SAP’s overall target of 25% women in leadership by 2017. Nicole prides herself in being a connector, a strong collaborator and in her ability to deliver results to the business without having direct authority.

Nicole has had a very unconventional career that leveraged her transferable skills. This has enabled her to gain experience in many aspects of business, from technical implementations, to managing post- acquisition integration, to account management, and Marketing technical services. Through her experience she observed the challenges many women face in the workplace, and her passion to drive impact and create a culture where everyone feels they are valued was sparked. In 2012, Nicole joined the Global Diversity & Inclusion team where she has gathered expertise in Human Resources, and has established a strong of the inter-dependencies between the employees and the business strategy.

The result – Nicole’s programs have been recognized inside and outside of SAP, including an ongoing Women’s Professional Growth webinar series, focused on topics related to the development of women. This series has had over 6800 participants in 2 years, at a cost of less than 5 Euros per participants. Nicole is also the creator and manager of the Women@SAP Jam site, which serves as an online community to communicate SAP’s programs and enables women to connect. The community currently has over 8,500 members.

Jennifer Newbill is the Director Global Employment Brand for Dell within the Global Talent Acquisition COE (Center of Excellence) leading Dell’s candidate attraction, engagement and experience. Jennifer and her team manage the global employment brand strategy including: management of the global recruiting brand campaign, social media strategy and planning, content creation and expertise (visual graphics, multimedia, blogging and social assets), candidate experience, recruiting tools and process, go-to-market recruiting strategies and employee referral program. Jennifer and her team are also heavily partnered with various Dell teams on employee advocacy and measuring employee and market sentiment.

A member of Glassdoor’s Advisory board, Jennifer was voted one of the top Talent Warriors by Glassdoor in 2014. She has published numerous online articles on Direct2Dell, LinkedIn and Slideshare.net about Employment Branding best practices.

Jennifer has been with Dell, Inc. for 13 years in various Human Resources roles including Recruiting, Leadership and Development and HR Operations project management.

Prior to Dell, she was with several Austin, TX based start-up companies including pcOrder.com (a spin-off of Trilogy), eLaw.com and Ignite! Learning in various HR roles including Recruiting and HR Generalist.

She started her career after graduating from Austin College in Sherman, TX and earning her Master’s degree in Business from the University of Dallas with executive search firm, Heidrick & Struggles where her passion for Recruiting began.

As a Sr. Director of Talent at Appirio, Julie has overseen the Global Field HR and Recruiting functions of the organization for the past three years as the company has more than doubled in size. Appirio is a global services company that helps customers create next-generation Worker and Customer Experiences using the latest cloud technologies.  43% of global team members and 66% of US team members are based remotely from their homes within Appirio.  Julie drives her team with a laser-focus on candidate and team member experience resulting in new candidate experience surveys, a top-to-bottom revamp of the interview process, and high level business partner engagement across the business.

Julie has been a speaker and panelist at LinkedIn Talent Connect, 2014 and was the 2015 recipient of the Indiana SHRM Professional Excellence Award.  She graduated with a B.S. degree in Business Administration with concentrations in HR Management from Indiana University.

Prior to Appirio, Julie has built her tech-focused career through companies like Interactive Intelligence, Teradata, & Aprimo in roles spanning all areas of HR operations, recruiting, and talent management.  She started her career in university recruitment a ProTrans, a logistics company.

Kristin Thomas is a passionate Flex Work Champion with more than 20 years of diverse experience in human resources. She has spent most of her career focused on talent acquisition and talent management for a wide variety of industries, including Insurance, Software, Dot Com, Hardware, Financial Services, Hospitality, and Nuclear Power. Kristin is also a leader in her community. She founded an organization to improve local parks and playgrounds, and started Malvern Community Arts Project, which has created six community-funded, public art projects in her small town. As a former Silicon Valley commuter, a mother of four, a community volunteer, and a breast cancer survivor, Kristin has a deep appreciation for flexible work, and is proud to be working as the Director of Employer Engagement for FlexJobs – a company that is centered on the value of such opportunities for both job seekers and employers.

Amy Freshman is the Senior Director – Global Workplace Enablement at ADP. In her 20th year with ADP, Amy has had the fortunate opportunity to hold multiple roles within the same organization and grow her career. Beginning with ADP directly out of Bryant University in 1995, she spent nearly 15 years in the Sales organization with roles in direct sales, leadership, training, operations and leadership development for ADP’s small business division.

During her tenure, she achieved multiple awards and recognition including the President’s Club award both as a sales associate and in her leadership role. In 2008, she completed a one year internal coaching certification program and was certified as an ADP coach where she actively takes on coaching engagements with leaders focused on developing their skills in efforts to move their career forward.

In 2010 she transitioned into a role in a newly centralized sales operations organization assisting the US sales teams navigate workspace changes and piloting new facility programs. Amy joined the HR organization in 2012 continuing her work with the sales and our real estate partners and took on the new responsibility in leading ADP’s Global Workplace Enablement program across the enterprise. Her focus has been on our remote workers; specifically assisting with their transition from office to home, associate engagement, improved collaboration, ensuring they feel connected to the rest of the organization & working with our internal partners to provide enhanced tools & technologies for seamless connectivity and telephony. She has conducted annual reviews of data comparing office based population with our home based population including areas such as engagement, productivity, & overall performance.

In the summer of 2012, ADP launched a business resource group “Virtual Connections” where Amy has taken on an advisory role leading the core team to lend support to ADP’s virtual, remote workers & our highly dispersed teams around the world. Amy’s current scope of work is focused on shifting to a more holistic approach on workplace flexibility; in general terms: With the levels of technology available to us, we have significant opportunities to offer flexibility in where, when and how work gets done.

John O’Duinn is a software developer, architect, Director and Founder who has written code and lead teams in companies ranging from four person startups to multinationals and back to a startup with no office.

In addition to technology, John loves growing a culture where humans work well together in a distributed global workplace. Almost every company in his career has been distributed in one form or another. The most extreme was a team he grew at Mozilla, with 18 people in 14 cities, in 4 non-adjacent timezones, working with Mozilla’s globally distributed open source community. John is currently writing a book on leading distributed teams for O’Reilly.

John blogs at oduinn.com, practices Aikido, loves travel and is on track to fill his passport again.

Nicole McCabe is a Senior Director of Global Diversity & Inclusion at SAP, responsible for the creation and execution of innovative programs that support gender diversity, and SAP’s overall target of 25% women in leadership by 2017. Nicole prides herself in being a connector, a strong collaborator and in her ability to deliver results to the business without having direct authority.

Nicole has had a very unconventional career that leveraged her transferable skills. This has enabled her to gain experience in many aspects of business, from technical implementations, to managing post- acquisition integration, to account management, and Marketing technical services. Through her experience she observed the challenges many women face in the workplace, and her passion to drive impact and create a culture where everyone feels they are valued was sparked. In 2012, Nicole joined the Global Diversity & Inclusion team where she has gathered expertise in Human Resources, and has established a strong of the inter-dependencies between the employees and the business strategy.

The result – Nicole’s programs have been recognized inside and outside of SAP, including an ongoing Women’s Professional Growth webinar series, focused on topics related to the development of women. This series has had over 6800 participants in 2 years, at a cost of less than 5 Euros per participants. Nicole is also the creator and manager of the Women@SAP Jam site, which serves as an online community to communicate SAP’s programs and enables women to connect. The community currently has over 8,500 members.

Alex Konanykhin, CEO of TransparentBusiness, designated by Citigroup as the “Top People Management Solution”.  TransparentBusiness.com platform greatly increases productivity of remote work, protects from overbilling, allows for easy monitoring and coordination of geographically distributed workforce and provides real-time information on the cost and status of all tasks and projects. TransparentBusiness is an Integrated Partner of ADP and Technology Partner of Facebook and is in use in 140 countries.  TransparentBusiness is a part of KMGi Group, an internationally acclaimed IT group, founded by Alex in 1997.

Working for FlexJobs has given me an opportunity that I wasn’t sure I could get. I always planned to re-enter the working world once my kids were in school. Once we got to that point, I realized that a traditional job, with the commute, the set hours, days, etc. were still going to require some sacrifices from our family that I wasn’t happy about.

Working for FlexJobs allows me to be a part of something bigger. It allows me to feel important and contribute to something outside of my family. I actually find that it makes me a better wife and mother! The ability to work and help other people find a better balance in their world, while still being there for an occasional lunch date, class party, or dance class gives my family more than I could have hoped for! The team at FlexJobs is fabulous; they really care about helping people find the right company and position. I really enjoy working with them!

Greg Caplan is the founder and CEO of Remote Year, a program of 75 professionals traveling together for a year while working remotely.  Prior to Remote Year, Greg founded oBaz.com, which was acquired by Groupon.  He went to the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.

I fundamentally believe great work can be done from anywhere and people perform at their peak when they are inspired by their surroundings.  With clear goals and communication, remote workers are happier and more productive.

Richard G. Rosenblatt has a diverse practice, handling wage and hour class and collective action matters, restrictive covenant and trade secrets litigation, employee benefits litigation, and a full panoply of discrimination, retaliation, contract and common law claims on behalf of employers in courts, arbitral tribunals and agencies around the US. He also represents and counsels employers on unfair labor practices, mass picketing, employment and severance agreements, and employee manuals and policies.

Rich has argued appeals at the US Courts of Appeals for the Second, Third, Fourth, and Sixth Circuits and in the state appellate courts of New Jersey and Pennsylvania. He also has authored briefs filed with the US Supreme Court.

His clients operate in a wide group of industry sectors that include financial services; insurance; pharmaceuticals and healthcare; technology, information management, and telecommunications; online retailing; utilities; real estate investment trusts (REITs); chemicals; defense contracting; outsourcing; business process consulting; energy; transportation; manufacturing, warehousing, and logistics; customer care; brick-and-mortar retail; food service; food and fragrance; and personal and professional services.

Certified as a Legal Process ManagerTM, Rich has a deep interest in legal process management (LPM). Rich served as the operations partner for the firm’s labor and employment practice for eight years.

Rich also has been deeply involved in bar-related activities, including as a founding member of the Academy of New Jersey Management Attorneys for which he has served as recording secretary and, currently, treasurer.

In addition to frequently lecturing at Temple University’s undergraduate School of Business on compensation matters, Rich has been an alumni interviewer for Duke University for more than 20 years.

Win Khanijoun as a Workforce Experience Advisor at Cisco Systems drives digital transformation for leading commercial organizations.

Win advises organizations on how to achieve the true potential of technology by partnering with CRE, Facilities, HR, IT and business leaders.  He helps create agile teams and an engaging culture to change the way employees work, live, play and learn by maximizing the value of people and their work environments.

Win is passionate about the role of culture, social trends and digitization and their impact on the global business environment. Coming to the United States at an early age, he recognizes the value of freedom and it is part of the very fabric for how he approaches his work. He understands the importance of the liberty to work from anywhere and the significant opportunity for us as a community to create the workplace of the future.

Mohammed is the Global Human Resources Director at Dell and leads global strategic programs within Dell’s Human Resources Organization including M&A, Transition Services Agreement, and Dell’s work flexibility programs. In his current role Mohammed also leads the function’s innovation and design thinking agenda. As the leader of Dell’s work flexibility programs, Mohammed’s focus is to further Dell’s work flexibility strategy and increase its positive impact on Dell and its Team Members.

Throughout his 14+ years at Dell, Mohammed has held a variety of leadership and program management roles in different HR domains including HR Shared Services, Training, Talent Management, Mergers and Acquisitions and Managed Services Deals. Mohammed’s background in IT and experience in Human Resources makes him continuously explore and research how technology changes how work is defined and the impact it has on the purpose and role of the HR function.

Monica Frias is Diversity Program Director at Anthem, Inc. In her role, Monica consults with different areas of the business to insert the diversity lens into strategic initiatives, policies and practices; drives strategy around diversity branding, communication and training, and provides oversight to Anthem’s associate resource groups (ARGs).

Monica has been a work@home associate for about six years. She is a founder and co-chair of W@VE (Working at Anthem in a Virtual Environment), one of nine associate resource groups. W@VE was launched in 2013 and has now more than 1,200 members across the enterprise. This community focuses on developing and expanding practices that allow for effective collaboration, networking and personal and professional development in a virtual setting. Before joining Anthem in 2007, Monica served roles in the Human Resources organizations of Nationwide Insurance and Abbott Laboratories.

Monica grew up in Chile and now lives in Grand Rapids, MI, with her husband and two children. She holds a Master’s in Labor and Human Resources (MLHR) from The Fisher College of Business – The Ohio State University, and a bachelor’s degree in Journalism from the Catholic University of Chile.

Sacha Connor works for The Clorox Company as the Marketing Director for Pine Sol, Liquid Plumr, Clorox Fraganzia & Green Works. She has been with the company since 2004 and has worked in a variety of roles across new product innovation, sales, and base brand marketing. Clorox is headquartered in Oakland, California, however Sacha has been working remotely from her home office in the Philadelphia suburbs for the past 5 years. To help Clorox succeed in an increasingly decentralized work environment she co-created an Employee Resource Group named ORBIT that has grown to 550 global members.

Prior to Clorox, Sacha worked in advertising account management, first for a small agency in the Philadelphia suburbs and then for Goodby, Silverstein & Partners in San Francisco.

After working in Clorox Corporate Headquarters for 6 years, she and her husband moved to Berwyn, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Philadelphia where they both grew up. They have a 6 year old daughter and a 4 year old son who have flourished by being in close proximity to their grandparents and extended family.