Ruth Stergiou
CEO & Co-Founder, Invent Your Future
Ruth Stergiou is CEO and Co-Founder of Invent Your Future Enterprises. For 20 years, Ruth has run a thriving event and non-profit management company, Planning Dynamics. In that role, she served for 19 years as the Founding Executive Director and event producer for the Professional BusinessWomen of California, building their highly successful annual conferences in San Francisco and Sacramento to 5,000 and 3,000 attendees respectively. Ruth also produced the highly-acclaimed California Governor’s Conference for Women in Los Angeles for 17 years, working with four administrations, and building the conference to over 10,500 participants. Ruth serves as a faculty member for San Jose State University’s Professional Development Center and on the Advisory Board of the Anita Borg Institute for Women and Technology. She has been recognized by the Northern California Chapter of Meeting Professionals International with the “Meeting Planner of the Year” award. Ruth is also an active member of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO). She has been featured in the San Jose and Silicon Valley Business Journal’s “Who’s Who in Silicon Valley Business.” Ruth holds a B.A. (Hons.) degree in Geography from Leeds University in England.
Susan K. Black
Treasurer, Invent Your Future Foundation and CEO, Pinnacle Bank
With more than 20 years of leadership experience in the banking industry, Susan has served as President of the Community Banking Group of Greater Bay Bancorp and President and CEO of Mid-Peninsula Bank. Awards include: “Business Athena Award,” “Distinguished Citizen of the Year” by the Skyline for Community Development and “YWCA Tribute to Women and Industry (TWIN)” award.
Deborah Collins Stephens
Secretary, Invent Your Future Foundation; Co-Chair of the 2011 Midwest Invent Your Future Conference; and Co-Founder & Managing Partner, Center for Innovative Leadership
Deborah Collins Stephens is the Co-Founder and Managing Partner of the Center for Innovative Leadership that works with leaders and organizations on improving customer service, creating inspired teams, and building the link between employee motivation and customer loyalty. Deborah is the author of six books with three reaching the bestsellers list: “Maslow on Management,” “One Size Fits One,” and “Revisiting The Human Side of Enterprise.”
Advisory Council
Diana Adachi
Diana Adachi is a global leader who has launched and grown enterprises in the Electronic Payments, Information Technology, Communication and Financial sectors for over 20 years. Most recently she served as President of RS Software with offices in the US, UK, APAC where she spearheaded 100% growth to $44M and over 800 employees since she joined the company in Feb 2007. Diana was featured in Dataquest’s India edition as one of the top IT women in India. Corporations large and small have benefitted from her leadership including IBM, Bell Canada, Cybersource and Bank of Montreal.
Denise Brosseau
Co-Founder, Invent Your Future; CEO, Well-Connected Leader
Denise Brosseau serves as CEO of Well-Connected Leader, an executive talent agency. She has spent over 10 years in the women’s leadership arena, founding and serving as the first CEO of the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs (FWE) and growing FWE into the country’s leading organization for women-led startups. Denise also co-founded and continues to be an advisor to Springboard Venture Forums, which have led to over $3.7 billion in funding for women entrepreneurs. A Wellesley graduate with a Stanford MBA, Denise also completed Stanford’s Executive Education program in Negotiation and is a licensed facilitator for “The One Page Business Plan®.” Prior to starting Invent Your Future Enterprises, Denise ran her own successful strategic consulting practice for four years and she spent 10 years as a successful marketer at Motorola, Broderbund, and Kensington.
Billie Dragoo
Co-Chair of the 2011 Midwest Invent Your Future Conference and President & CEO of RepuCare and RepuCare Staffing
An entrepreneurial executive with 23 years in the medical staffing industry, Billie founded RepuCare in 1995 with the mission of providing allied health staffing to hospitals, clinics and nursing homes. Billie is the recipient of several business awards: the “2003 Blue Chip Community Business Award for Entrepreneurial Business Excellence,” “2006 Outstanding Small Business Award,” the “Starkey Entrepreneurial Women’s Award,” the “Torchbearer Award for Entrepreneurial Advocacy” and IBJ’S “2009 Women of Influence Award” in recognition of business and community excellence and leadership. 2009, Dragoo was appointed to the National Board of Directors of the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO). She is also Chairman and Founder of the Indiana Women Business Owner’s Political Action Committee (IWBOPAC).
Sam Horn
The Intrigue Expert
Sam is a sought-after keynote speaker, best-selling author, creative consultant, and media resource. The fourteen-time emcee of the world-renowned Maui writer’s conference, she is the author of “Tongue Fu!” and “POP! Stand Out in Any Crowd.” Clients include Hewlett-Packard, Fortune 500 Forum, NASA, and Lockheed Martin. Sam works with individuals and organizations to create one-of-a-kind identities that help their business, brand, or idea POP! out of the pack.
Sydnie Kohara
Award-winning Journalist
Award winning journalist Sydnie Kohara brings more than two decades of experience to her position as news anchor at CBS-5/KPIX TV. The founding host of CNBC Asia’s first show about the Internet, “dot.com,” she later anchored CNBC’s “CNET News.com” that explored the tech revolution. Sydnie was part of the KGO-TV newsroom that won the prestigious “George Foster Peabody Award” and the “Edward R. Murrow Award” for coverage of the 1989 earthquake.
Jackie McNab
Past-President, Executive Women’s Leadership Forum at Invent Your Future Enterprises; VP, Quality & Reliability, Bridgelux, Inc.
Jackie is former Vice President, Global Quality & Reliability for FormFactor, Inc. Previously, Jackie served as Senior Director, Worldwide Manufacturing Quality for Western Digital as well as Vice President of Customer Engineering for Quantum Corporation.
Jennifer Millier
VP, Mission Critical Business Solutions Group, Business Critical Systems business unit, HP
As the leader of HP UNIX, Windows, Linux, OpenVMS, Tru64, Alpha and MPE Research and Development organizations, Jennifer is responsible for the design and delivery of all HP operating environments with robust mission-critical virtualization, in-depth security and mainframe-class availability. Previously, Jennifer was the Enterprise Storage and Servers operations manager, where her team was responsible for driving all aspects of the ESS Global Business Unit. As a result of her efforts, the business completed a significant transformation to profitability.
Jennifer’s broad managerial experience includes stints in marketing, research and development, supply chain, and international business development. As a member of HP’s PC business unit, she pioneered the company’s first worldwide volume direct sales program, building the go-to-market plan. She also managed point of sales systems at major retailers and has extensive experience in all routes to market.