Conversation & Cocktails
An exclusive, invitation-only network of leading C-suite women executives across over 20 different industries
This forum was designed as a way to connect, share thoughts, and discuss issues critical to leading in today's complex environment.
Event Photos
Take a look at some photos from our events.
Event Guest Speakers
See what your colleagues are reading and watching!
Mindy Grossman
Renowned Business Leader
Partner & Vice Chair of The Consello Group
Former CEO of WW International and HSNi
Mindy Grossman is a Partner and Vice Chair at Consello. She is a high-energy, disruptive leader with extensive experience in building and transforming consumer brands.
Previously, Mindy served as President and CEO of WW, Int’l , where she led the company’s evolution to a holistic wellness brand and spearheaded its digital transformation. Prior to WW, Mindy was the CEO of HSNi, where she led a $4 billion direct-to-consumer retail portfolio, building a reputation for pioneering digital strategies in retail. She previously served as CEO of IAC Retail, successfully taking it public as HSNi in 2008.
Before joining IAC, Mindy served as the Vice-President of Global Apparel for Nike, Inc., President and CEO of Polo Jeans Company, Vice-President of New Business Development at Polo Ralph Lauren Corporation, President of Chaps Ralph Lauren, and Senior Vice President of Warnaco Menswear. She also held senior roles at Tommy Hilfiger and Oxford Industries.
Mindy has been recognized among Forbes’ “100 Most Powerful Women.” She was appointed to the Digital Economy Board of Advisors during the Obama administration and served as Chairman of the National Retail Federation and Chairman of the NRF Foundation.
She currently serves on the Board of Directors of VF Corporation, Fanatics, Inc., Hungry Root, Springboard Enterprises, and the American Heart Association.
Jane Hanson
Emmy Award-Winning Journalist & Communications Coach
Emmy award winning television journalist and media/presentation/video coach Jane Hanson has spent over 30 years helping people learn to communicate better. Hanson focuses on three core elements: what you say, how you say it, and how your body language keeps it all in sync.
Among her clients: top tier leaders in finance, insurance, startups, pharma, technology, education, fashion and media; chefs, sports figures and restaurateurs. She hosts programs on cable, digital and life streaming channels. And she is a frequent speaker, emcee, and panel moderator.
Jane spent most of her broadcast career at NBC New York, including anchoring "Today in New York”, appearances on the Today show, reporting on every major event from the tragedy of 9/11 to the joy of Yankees victory parades to Wall Street and Washington. She also hosted Jane’s New York that traveled the world; and later New York Live. Jane has won 9 Emmy Awards. She's been honored by New York's Police Detectives, New York's Firefighters, and numerous other groups, and has served on the board of several philanthropies.
Aliza Licht
Award-winning marketer, bestselling author, podcaster, personal branding expert, career development coach
Aliza has been a prominent figure in the fashion and media industries for over 25 years, contributing to her extensive experience in branding and career development.
Her second book, On Brand: Shape Your Narrative. Share Your Vision. Shift Their Perception (2023) is a comprehensive guide to personal branding and was awarded Best Book of 2023 in Business: Marketing and Advertising by the American Book Fest. Aliza is regularly featured in the media, with appearances that include Good Morning America, The Today Show, E!, Bloomberg, and more.
Lisa McCarthy
CEO and Co-Founder
Lisa McCarthy is the CEO and co-founder of The Fast Forward Group, a training and executive coaching company that gives people a proven approach to think big, manage stress and achieve success and fulfillment in their whole life. Prior to starting Fast Forward, Lisa spent 25 years at prominent media companies Univision, Viacom and CBS leading sales organizations responsible for billions in revenue. She experienced firsthand the toll of high-pressure, always-on workplaces where people feel professional success requires personal sacrifice.
She and co-founder, Wendy Leshgold, set out to challenge this belief and designed a bold yet simple and immediately actionable approach that helps people achieve success and fulfillment in their whole lives.
Recognized as a people-first leader and change agent with significant commercial impact, Lisa was named a “Woman to Watch” by Advertising Age and Crain’s New York “Business 40 Under 40.” Lisa received her BA from Georgetown University. She lives an “overly fulfilled” life in Port Washington, NY with her husband and three children.
Sally Susman
Executive Vice President and Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Pfizer, Author of WSJ Bestseller Breaking Through (Harvard Business Review Press)
Sally Susman is Chief Corporate Affairs Officer at Pfizer and vice chair of The Pfizer Foundation. In 2022, Forbes named Susman one of the World’s Most Influential CMOs for Pfizer’s efforts to combat vaccine misinformation. She received the prestigious Matrix Award from New York Women in Communications in 2019 and was named a LinkedIn Top Voice that same year.
Born and raised in St. Louis, Missouri, Susman graduated from Connecticut College with a B.A. in government and studied at the London School of Economics and Political Science. She served on Capitol Hill as a Legislative Assistant handling trade and foreign investment issues for the Senate Commerce Committee, then as Deputy Assistant Secretary for Legislative Affairs in the Clinton Administration.
Before joining Pfizer in 2007, Susman held senior roles in communications and government relations at The Estée Lauder Companies and American Express.
She currently serves as co-chair of The International Rescue Committee, one of the world’s largest humanitarian aid organizations, and on the board of UL Solutions, a global leader in applied safety science. She is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.
Susman and her wife divide their time between New York City and Sag Harbor, NY. She is an avid reader and burgeoning gardener. Breaking Through is her first book.
Kory Marchisotto
Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer
Kory Marchisotto has served as Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer of e.l.f. Cosmetics since February 2019. Under her leadership, the Company recently unveiled a recharged brand direction with an energizing and diverse perspective on beauty, that incorporates a number of digital elements to showcase disruptive visual assets, interactive social campaigns, a robust rewards program, exciting collaborations and more, while staying true to the brand’s DNA of being for every eye, lip and face.
Prior to joining e.l.f., Kory led strategic brand management for Shiseido, the fifth-ranked global beauty corporation, and served as Senior Vice President of Marketing for Shiseido Americas’ bareMinerals brand, where she played a key role in bareMinerals’ ongoing transformation – most notably leading the brand’s digital transition and integrated marketing strategy, while also solidifying its stronghold in complexion through core franchise invigoration and top-ranked foundation launches.
Kory has more than 20 years of prestige beauty experience, across a diverse portfolio of brands, business models and distribution channels, and holds a Masters of Professional Studies, Cosmetics & Fragrance Marketing & Management from the Fashion Institute of Technology and a B.B.A. in Marketing from Pace University’s Lubin School of Business.
Chelsie Hall
CEO and Founder
Chelsie founded ViralMoment because social video moves fast, and algorithm fog keeps us from seeing it clearly.
Her mission is to ensure that we can build a better world where the internet is a safe, equitable and positive space – and to do that she’s shining a light on the influential content where we spend our attention, short form video.
Her proudest accomplishment is her 1 year old son, Augustus.
Jocelyn Mangan
CEO and Founder
Jocelyn is the founder and CEO of Him For Her, a social enterprise with an aim to change for-profit boards of directors to include the world’s most talented women. Him for Her is building the boardroom of the future by making female candidates more visible. As the CEO, Jocelyn oversees the brand, products, culture and how these resonate out via all internal and external channels. She currently serves on private and public boards, including Papa John’s International, Wag!, and ChowNow. She is a Henry Crown Fellow out of the Aspen Institute.
Jocelyn serves as an Insights Council member with the Nasdaq Center for Board Excellence, shaping its strategy, contributing insights, and working with other council members to identify and address important board governance matters.
As a product technology executive with over 20 years experience building iconic global products for CitySearch, Ticketmaster, OpenTable and Snagajob, Jocelyn's focus is on what the technology is doing for the business. She believes in a broad application of design and design thinking particularly applied to organizational development and inclusive of cross-functional teams.
Jocelyn’s leadership methodology is rooted in the real world. She builds organizations that foster collaboration and accountability together and has a track record of injecting creativity into organizations by recognizing other people’s superpowers and putting them in positions to optimize them.
As a business leader, entrepreneur and mother of two, Jocelyn is an advocate that work and family can thrive together.
John Dick
CEO and Founder
John is a serial entrepreneur with extensive experience in new business formation, business development, and marketing. He is the host of the successful podcast, The Dumbest Guy in the Room and author of What We’re Seeing, the weekly email newsletter read by a who’s-who of business leaders, policymakers, and celebrities. He is also a frequent speaker at the Carnegie Mellon University Swartz Center for Entrepreneurship, a contributing writer for AdAge, Microsoft News, and Forbes and has appeared on Good Morning America, Yahoo! Finance, Cheddar, and AXS-TV. John is the lead singer of Moscow Mule, an alternative rock cover band, a recipient of the distinguished Jefferson Award for his charitable works.
Rebecca Thornton
Managing Director and Head, Director Advisory Services
Rebecca has over two decades of experience in director recruitment, board advisory services and CEO succession planning at J.P. Morgan, Spencer Stuart and Heidrick & Struggles. Over the course of her career she has advised over 2,000 companies across a wide range of industries and special situations including IPOs, SPACs, spins, activism defense and companies exiting bankruptcy. She has also worked with private equity firms, families and founders looking to evolve their governance models.
Heather E. McGowan
Future-of-Work Strategist, Keynote Speaker, Executive Consultant, Lecturer and Author
Through her wide range of roles and projects, she helps individuals and organizations lay the foundation for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, which will be notable for the rapid advancement of technology tools into the domain of human knowledge work.
Heather is best known for her unmatched ability to bring pure and memorable clarity to this incredibly complex topic, often through her illuminating graphic frameworks and powerful metaphors— all backed by deep and proven research on diversity, equity and inclusion, empowerment, engagement, retention, culture, human resources, leadership, healthcare, technology and education.
Heather performs 75 keynote events a year all over the world for clients in every industry and sector from the military to the beauty industry to financial services to publicly-traded flagship technology companies and everyone in between. Often quoted in the media, notably in the New York Times, McGowan serves on the advisory board for Sparks & Honey, a New York–based culture-focused agency looking to the future for brands.
Heather’s academic work has included roles at Rhode Island School of Design and Jefferson University, where she was the strategic architect of the first undergraduate college focused exclusively on innovation. Launched a decade ago, the award winning, core undergraduate curriculum designed by Heather is now the foundation for navigating the VUCA world with courses in design and propositional thinking, human behavior, business models and science-systems thinking.
Stephanie Dismore
Senior Vice President and Managing Director, HP Northwest Europe Market
Stephanie, a 25-year HP veteran, is responsible for leading market strategy and managing the multibillion-dollar P&L for HP’s Northwest Europe Market, spanning commercial and consumer channel and customer segments.
Stephanie is an executive board member at Large at the Consumer Technology Association (CTA). Previously, she was an independent director at Tessco Technologies, Inc. and chair of Boys & Girls Clubs of Austin Area.
