Keynote Speaker & Moderator:

Julie Gilbert, Best Buy                                                       www.bestbuy.com 

Julie Gilbert, Best Buy, Senior Vice President , Winning With Women, WOLF (Women’s Leadership Forum), Retail Training, Learning and Innovation.  Julie is a motivator.  She utilizes this passion professionally as Best Buy’s senior vice president of winning with women, women’s leadership forum (WOLF), retail training, learning and innovation. An eight-year company veteran, she has served in many capacities within the company’s customer centricity division, strategic alliances and operations.  Gilbert works to unlock the leader in every Best Buy employee by overseeing teams which develop the training curriculum for global store employees and leverage the experiences of female employees to transform the business. Gilbert has been named one of Minnesota’s Women to Watch by Minneapolis/St. Paul Business Journal and one of the 100 most successful women in business by Profiles in Diversity Journal. Gilbert was also recently honored with the “Circle of 10 Award” from The White House Project, which recognizes exceptional work by women across sectors. WOLF has been profiled by Business Week, USA Today, ABC News and many other media venues. She earned her master’s degree in strategy and marketing and bachelor’s degree in accounting from the University of Minnesota. An avid writer, Gilbert also authors a monthly blog for PINK Magazine and has been published internationally. 

Education: Master’s & BS, University of Minnesota                   

Marital Status: Single                                                                                                        
Children: None  

Christine Hikawa, YWCA ,Greenwich                                       www.ywcagreenwich.org

Chris Hikawa, after obtaining her law degree from Columbia as a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, served as a law associate at the New York firm of Hardee, Barovik, Konecky and Braun. She then joined the Legal Department of the ABC Owned and Operated Stations.   In 1981, she became Director of Legal and Business Affairs for ABC Sports.  In 1988, she was promoted to Vice President of Broadcast Standards and Practices for the ABC Television Network, a corporate post which she held until she retired from the company in 2000.   In 1999, Chris and her husband, David Windreich, adopted twin girls from China.  Since leaving ABC, Chris has been active in her community, currently serving her third year as Chair of the Board of Directors’ of the YWCA of Greenwich.  She is also the Secretary of the Rock Ridge Association Board, serves on several committees for the Chinese Language School of Connecticut and is a class parent at Greenwich Academy.  Chris has always remained very active at both Penn and Columbia Law School.  In addition to working on several reunion committees, she has been a member of the Trustees’ Council of Penn Women since 1991 and served as its chair from 2000-2003.  She is currently a member of the Board of Overseers of the Penn Libraries. 

Education: J.D. Columbia University,  BS, University of Pennsylvania

Marital Status: Married                                                                                                     
Children: Two

Yumi Mera Kuwana is the Founding Principal of Cook Pine Capital LLC, an investment advisory firm in Greenwich, CT that specializes in creating customized hedge fund portfolios for high net worth families.  She handles business development, office management, and finance at the firm.  Yumi has over 15 years of financial experience on Wall Street. Previous to founding her firm, she helped start up Giftken.com, the Japanese affiliate of GiftCertificates.com, where she served as a board member and oversaw the business expansion efforts in the Japanese markets. Prior to Giftken.com, Yumi was a Vice President at Morgan Stanley & Co. in Japan and a senior member in the institutional research sales area for Japanese equities and derivative products.  Her major clients included top tier hedge funds and global money management firms.   

Her passion includes spending time with her family, empowering women, and taking a holistic approach to women's health, wellness and wealth.  She has three children and resides in Greenwich, CT with her husband, Eiichiro Kuwana.  Having spent half her life in Japan and half her life in the USA, she can add a unique perspective to issues.  She is a board member of the YWCA in Greenwich as well as a member of the Japan Society and Japanese American Association in NY, Programs co-Chair for the Harvard Business School Club of Greater NY and member of the HBS Club of CT, Penn Club of Fairfield County, and is involved with her children’s school at Hackley.  

Education: MBA, Harvard Business School, BS, University of Pennsylvania

Marital Status: Married                                                                                     
Children:Three

OptIn’s founder Lisa Paolozzi has long been committed to women’s progress in the workplace. A former senior executive and a mother, Lisa understands the career path complexities facing female professionals in today’s workplace, as well as the benefits to companies with women in key leadership positions. Lisa launched OptIn in an effort to reconcile the two conflicting realities and contribute to the change she believes can make the business world a more successful environment for men and women alike. Lisa’s successful corporate career spans nearly 20 years and includes work with companies such as IBM and The Concours Group. Prior to founding OptIn, she served as the Executive Vice President of Business Strategy and a Member of the Executive Committee for Schieffelin & Somerset, a joint venture of Moet Hennessy and Diageo and a leading luxury organization with more than $1 billion in revenue. With experience in strategic planning, knowledge management and business development, Lisa is helping companies integrate creative, flexible work solutions that attract and retain senior level women in the workforce. 

Education: MA, Columbia University, BS, Purdue University

Marital Status: Married                                                                                                     

Children: One 

Hilary Pearl, Pearl Associates                                              www.hpearlassociates.com   

Hilary Eaton Pearl has more than 20 years of experience enhancing the performance of individual executives, teams and organizations.  Her firm, Pearl Associates, provides executive coaching and organizational consulting to individuals, for profit companies, educational institutions, and non-profit institutions.  Her practical approach to leadership and organization issues was developed during her 10 years at PepsiCo, Inc., where Hilary served as Director of Human Resource Development.  Prior to this role, she served as Manager of Training as well as Director of Staffing, attracting top talent at senior levels of the organization. Prior to her time with Pepsi, Hilary worked in both publishing and advertising and was also the  Group Product Manager at The Forum Corporation, a sales training and human resources consulting firm. Hilary assists clients through human resources planning systems, organization development, and executive coaching of senior executives. At a $10 billion global retail company, Hilary provided 360 degree feedback to the top management team, a cross-cultural group of Americans, British, Chinese and Hong Kong Chinese, as part of an organization- wide leadership development effort.  In the nonprofit sector, she has spearheaded strategic change in compensation and benefits systems to maintain client competitiveness in recruitment and retention, designed and implemented Board evaluation systems to improve Board effectiveness, helped to improve recruitment practices to enhance Board leadership quality and bench, and coached chief executive officers of non-profit firms.Hilary has two grown and two teenage girls and is an active volunteer. She has served on the board of Greenwich Country Day School and is currently on the board of the Greenwich Family YMCA,

Education: MBA, Harvard Business School, MS Communications, Boston University
Marital Status: Married                                                                                           
Children: Four