2021 Keynote Speakers
We are excited to announce this year’s keynote speaker lineup! More to come….
Carla Harris, Vice Chairman, Managing Director and Senior Client Advisor
Morgan Stanley
Carla Harris is a Vice Chairman, Managing Director and Senior Client Advisor at Morgan Stanley. She is responsible for increasing client connectivity and penetration to enhance revenue generation across the firm. She formerly headed the Emerging Manager Platform, the equity capital markets effort for the consumer and retail industries and was responsible for Equity Private Placements. In her 30 year career, Ms. Harris has had extensive industry experiences in the technology, media, retail, telecommunications, transportation, industrial, and healthcare sectors. In August 2013, Carla Harris was appointed by President Barack Obama to chair the National Women’s Business Council.
Ms. Harris was named to Fortune Magazine’s list of “The 50 Most Powerful Black Executives in Corporate America”, Fortune’s Most Influential List, U. S. Bankers Top 25 Most Powerful Women in Finance (2009, 2010, 2011), Black Enterprise’s Top 75 Most Powerful Women in Business (2017), and “Top 75 African Americans on Wall Street”, and to Essence Magazine’s list of “The 50 Women Who are Shaping the World”, Ebony’s list of the Power 100 and “15 Corporate Women at the Top” and was named “Woman of the Year 2004” by the Harvard Black Men’s Forum and in 2011 by the Yale Black Men’s Forum.
Prior to joining Morgan Stanley, Carla received an MBA, Second Year Honors from Harvard Business School and an AB in economics from Harvard University, Magna Cum Laude. Carla has also received Honorary Doctorates of Laws, Humanities and Business from Marymount Manhattan College, Bloomfield College, Jacksonville University, Simmons College, the College of New Rochelle, St. Thomas Aquinas College and Fisk University, Wake Forest University and Felician University respectively. Carla Harris is actively involved in her community and heartily believes that “we are blessed so that we can be a blessing to someone else.”
Ann Shoket, Author, Speaker, Next Generation Expert & Former Editor-in-Chief of Seventeen
Ann Shoket has been a key architect in shaping the national conversation about ambition and success for a new generation. Shoket has appeared regularly on Good Morning America, Today, The Oprah Winfrey Show, The View and CNN, and was a guest judge for four seasons on America’s Next Top Model. She speaks for conferences and corporations including TEDx, SXSW, The Pennsylvania Women's Conference, Facebook, Hyatt and more.
Shoket’s widely-acclaimed book, The Big Life, was hailed by The New York Times as “a guide for women in their 20s and 30s who are hungry for a job they love, a supportive network of friends, respect from their bosses and partners who want all those things for them as badly as they do.” She’s also the founder of a vibrant nationwide community of men and women who meet online and in person to help each other succeed—in work and life.
Over the last 15 years, Shoket brought two major young women’s media brands to number one across every platform: digital, video, social, and newsstand. As Editor-in-Chief of Seventeen from 2007 to 2014, Shoket repositioned the iconic brand to dominate as the most relevant voice for its 13 million readers. As part of the launch team of CosmoGIRL in 1999, she helped revolutionize teen magazines by talking about ambition and career—issues that weren’t yet addressed by traditional publications. Forbes has named her one of the ten “Most Powerful Fashion Magazine Editors” in the country.
Mala Gaonkar, Managing Director
Lone Pine Capital
Mala Gaonkar is the managing director at investment firm Lone Pine Capital. After graduating from Harvard College, she worked for The Boston Consulting Group and completed her MBA at Harvard Business School before Lone Pine's inception in 1998.
She is a trustee of the Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), and was a founding trustee of Ariadne Labs, The Queen Elizabeth Prize for Engineering, as well as Surgo Foundation, which provides data science tools for a smarter public health ecosystem. She also serves as a trustee of RAND and the Tate and is a member of Harvard’s Global Advisory Council.
Meena Harris, Founder and CEO of Phenomenal, NYT Bestselling author, Kamala and Maya's Big Idea
Meena Harris is one of the most powerful and dynamic young leaders in America. As the founder of the groundbreaking Phenomenal brand, she is a respected entrepreneur and is recognized as an influential voice for women's equality. Meena also is an attorney with extensive experience in consumer protection, data privacy, and cybersecurity. On June 2, 2020, Meena published her first book, a New York Times bestselling children's book entitled Kamala and Maya's Big Idea. On January 19, 2021, Meena released her second children's book titled Ambitious Girl. Meena has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Harper's Bazaar, AdWeek, and more. She is a graduate of Stanford University and Harvard Law School, and currently resides in San Francisco with her partner and two daughters.
Colleen Ammerman, Director
(Opening Remarks Day 1)
Harvard Business School Gender Initiative
Colleen Ammerman is the Director of the Harvard Business School Gender Initiative, which catalyzes and translates cutting-edge research to transform practice, enable leaders to drive change, and eradicate gender, race, and other forms of inequality in business and society. She has authored various articles and teaching materials on gender and work and is a researcher with Life and Leadership After HBS, a longitudinal study of the post-MBA paths of Harvard Business School alumni that examines how race, gender, and other factors shape their life and career experiences. Colleen is the coauthor, with Boris Groysberg, of Glass Half-Broken: Shattering the Barriers That Still Hold Women Back at Work (Harvard Business Review Press, 2021).
Kathleen McGinn, Professor, Associate Dean (Opening Remarks Day 2)
Harvard Business School
Kathleen L. McGinn is the Cahners-Rabb Professor of Business Administration and Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Recruiting and Strategy at Harvard Business School. Professor McGinn studies the role of gender at work, at home, and in negotiations. Her research investigates these issues internationally—in families across 29 countries, in organizations and communities in Mexico and India, among female professionals in North America, and in relation to teenage girls’ health and welfare outcomes in Zambia.
Professor McGinn advises for-profit and not-for-profit organizations on inclusion and diversity. Before coming to Harvard, Professor McGinn taught at Cornell University’s Johnson School and Northwestern University’s Kellogg Graduate School of Management, where she received her Ph.D. Prior to her academic career, Professor McGinn was a director of labor relations in the public sector. When her daughter left for college, Professor McGinn and her husband moved to a long-abandoned farm and are (forever) in the process of bringing it to some semblance of its prior self.