Board How Women Lead

executive board of advisors

Julie Castro Abrams, Founder and CEO, How Women Lead

Julie Castro Abrams is an expert in board governance and building diverse boards that are a strategic advantage. She is an experienced non profit CEO and entrepreneur and through her consulting practice she supports leaders to build high-performance boards, break through performance for the leaders and high performing multicultural teams. She is Chair and CEO of How Women Lead, a network of over 10,000 women dedicated to promoting diverse women’s voices and propelling women’s leadership forward as well as the Managing Partner of BoardLeaders.com where she actively places leaders on corporate boards and supports them to build inclusive and high-performance boards.

An active investor and advisor to start-ups, Julie also sits on the advisory boards of the fin-tech start-up LENDonate, The New Search Collaborative and is the Governance Chair for the Women’s Funding Network, a network of women’s foundations across the globe. She has previously led the board of multiple nonprofit organizations located throughout the country, including Board Director for the National Council of La Raza, Governance Chair for the Association for Enterprise Opportunity and Board Chair of Cypress String Quartet.

The recipient of many accolades, Julie has won the More Jobs Genius Award, the Morgan Stanley Innovation Award, Cisco’s Innovation in Technology Award, the League of Women Voters’ Women Who Could Be President Award, the Stevie Award for Best Non-Profit Executive, and the Commission on the Status of Women’s Human Rights Award, and is a member of the Women of Color Action Network, Leadership California, and the Marin Women's Hall of Fame. She has also been featured in four books, including “Scrappy Women in Business,” “Women of Courage,” and “The Missing Mentor,” and Fast Company’s video series “30 Second MBA.”

Noni Allwood, Principal, Noni Allwood & Associates

Noni Allwood’s career spans over 20 years as an executive, an entrepreneur and an innovator. Her corporate career includes senior roles for Fortune 500 companies, including Cisco, Tandem Computers, and Exxon Corporation. As an entrepreneur, she is founder of Noni Allwood & Associates and co-founder of Innovo21. In the area of Diversity and Inclusion, Ms. Allwood is a Senior Fellow & Senior Advisor to the Center for Talent Innovation, leading research and innovation of practices to advance women and multicultural talent globally.

Her roles and contributions in the corporate world include education, research and innovation of practices for the optimization of talent, having established a Global Gender Diversity function for Cisco Systems. As an expert in business operations, Ms. Allwood established a function to integrate acquisitions into a global sales organization, created a learning and development group for a global sales force, managed a transformation project for sales operations in Europe, Middle East and Africa and developed a company-wide project management methodology for use by the global sales organization.

Ms. Allwood is Senior Fellow and Senior Advisor to the Center for Talent Innovation, a highly regarded think tank where she leads research and seeding of practices to accelerate integration of all streams of talent. Her client base includes Fortune 500 corporations including technology, healthcare, biotechnology, travel, electronics manufacturing and non-profit industries.

Ms. Allwood currently serves on the Board of Geographic Expeditions. She is a member of the Advisory Boards to the Gender Equality Principles Initiative of the City and County of San Francisco and Co-Chair of the Advisory Board for Professional Business Women of California. She is currently a member of the Bay Area Council for Vital Voices, a global organization dedicated to the development of women leaders globally. Ms. Allwood has a degree in Industrial Engineering from Universidad Centroamericana (El Salvador) and completed the Stanford University School of Business Executive Program.

In 2004, she was honored with the Inspirational Immigrant Award from Upwardly Global. In 2007, she was recognized by Flexperience, as one of the “Top 25 Bay Area Women Redefining Success.” In June of 2008, Mexican American Community Services Agency of San Jose, California named Ms. Allwood one of the “Most Influential Latinos in Silicon Valley”.

Christina Bui, Chief Revenue Officer/SVP, ‎Kranz & Associates

Christina Bui is the Chief Revenue Officer/SVP Business Development for ‎Kranz & Associates. She was most recently the Vice President of Enterprise Solutions for Robert Half the world’s first and largest specialized staffing firm. Christina partnered with the professional staffing divisions of Robert Half and the consulting organization of Protiviti, its wholly-owned subsidiary, to develop business consulting and project staffing engagements. With a focus in finance/accounting project-based engagements, she helped prepare companies for transactions such as IPO, mergers and acquisitions.

Before joining Robert Half, Christina was an Associate Managing Partner for Tatum, a national interim CFO firm. Prior to joining Tatum, Christina was responsible for market development as Vice President for the North West region of Parsons Corporation, one of the largest engineering and constructions firms. Christina has also worked with venture capital company Encore Capital Management where she performed financial analyses on investment opportunities for publicly traded companies. Within Encore Capital Management, she was involved with and helped launch a fund with one of the firm’s venture capital projects in Vietnam. Prior to Encore, Christina was part of the Corporate Government Affairs team of Johnson & Johnson and represented the healthcare company on Capitol Hill pertaining corporate and health care issues.

Christina holds a bachelor’s degree in Foreign Affairs and French from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in corporate finance from Johns Hopkins University.

Stacey Kelly Egide

As Andalou Naturals’ Founder, Stacey brings her expertise and intuitive vision to create authentic beauty products with meaningful cruelty-free, organic, and non-GMO standards. As an activist for healthy choices, Stacey’s interest in sustainability extends beyond the natural products world; devoting her time, passion and resources to promote sustainable peace through education, equality, and empowerment for women and girl’s worldwide. 100% of the proceeds from Andalou Naturals ‘A Path of Light’ Hand Creams goes to fund socially responsible programs. Stacey is actively involved at the local level and beyond as President and Chair of the Egide Family Foundation, Charter Member of the Bay Area Council of Vital Voices Global Partnership, and as a SHE-CAN Mentor.

Vivienne Hsu, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, LENDonate

Vivienne’s vision at LENDonate is to create a new ecosystem for nonprofit finances. This idea was a culmination of her 20+ years of experience as an investment professional and a seasoned nonprofit fundraiser.

Prior to her work as a social entrepreneur, Vivienne was Senior Vice President at U.S. Trust, where she advised clients on a wide range of investments. She served a Senior Portfolio Manager for Charles Schwab Investment Management where she oversaw its active equity strategies and was the lead portfolio manager for the Schwab Hedged Equity Fund. Prior to that, she was at American Century Investments where she co-managed mutual funds that totaled more than $10 billion. Rounding out her experience was investment risk consultant at MSCI Barra, and pension actuarial work on retirement plans.

Vivienne’s volunteer fundraising experience includes a one-year position as development director at Women’s Initiative for Self Employment. She has led three successful capital campaigns ($5m+ total) at her church, among other volunteer positions.

She received an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, where she also received an undergraduate degree in applied mathematics. She is a Chartered Financial Analyst® (CFA) charterholder.

Barbara Waxman, Gerontologist, Leadership Coach, Speaker & Author The Middlescence Factor

Barbara Waxman is a gerontologist, leadership coach, and speaker whose insights are illuminating a crucial stage in our personal and professional lives: Middlescence. Between ages 45 and 65, right when we should be embracing life at the peak and taking advantage of our hard-earned wisdom, we often find ourselves tangled in questions about where we’ve been and what’s next. In her forthcoming book, she shows how this new life stage can be a powerful period of self-actualization and an invaluable opportunity to reset our goals, our strategies, and our sense of what really matters. In adolescence, we all experienced a major transition in who we were and how we saw the world. In Middlescence, we encounter another major change... but this time, we can marshal the wisdom and wherewithal to have take full advantage of the promise of this life stage. As one of the foremost gerontologist-coaches in the United States, Barbara is known for inspiring clients and listeners with insights so that they can be effective in planning for themselves and their leadership at home, at work, and in their communities. Certified by both the International Coach Federation and The Hudson Institute, Barbara holds Masters Degrees in Both Administration and Gerontology and is a Wexner Heritage Foundation Fellow. Her work has been featured in SmartMoney.com, Fortune, Newsday, U.S. News & World Report, AARP The Magazine, and more. In consulting and coaching, she brings personal and professional experience to an effective, results-oriented collaboration. Her ability to inspire others with compassion, honesty and a light heart, while incorporating cutting edge leadership principles, distinguishes Barbara’s work. Originally from New York, Barbara lives in Northern California, though in 2015 she and her husband, Scott, spent the year “re-potting” in Italy. Barbara’s community involvement includes work with various non-profits including SHE-CAN and Beyond Differences. She is a lifelong learner who loves hiking cooking yoga and stepping just outside of her comfort zone.

Vicki P. Wilkerson Director, Global Trade Programs at Salesforce

Vicki has managed and directed trade compliance programs at companies such as Fortinet, Business Objects/SAP AG, HP, and Bay Networks/Nortel. For more than 20 years, she has helped to shape educational programs for the global trade community and currently serves as Chairwoman of Women in International Trade – Northern California (WIT-NC) chapter where she has participated in numerous national and international public policy alliances affecting global trade controls. Vicki serves on the boards of How Women Lead and RiseUpTogether.org advocating for the global advancement of women's economic, social and health initiatives.

Silicon valley

executive board of advisors

Julie Castro Abrams

Susan Akbarpour

Entrepreneur, Investor, Board Member and Forbes Contributing Writer

As a media guru, product designer, entrepreneur and investor, Susan Akbarpour has over 30 years of hands-on experience building innovative products and businesses in technology and media. She is currently the CEO & Co-Founder of Mavatar, the company she founded in 2011 based on her research in graduate school, soon after receiving her MS in Management from Stanford University in 2010.

Throughout her journey as an entrepreneur, journalist, publisher, investor, board member, community advocate and political fundraiser, Susan has received multiple media, community and business awards, spoken at various conferences, and is frequently featured in mainstream media.

Susan is also a partner at Candou Ventures, member of the board of directors at IMA International Executive Council and VOMax Corporation, advisory board member to Trustroot, member of Stanford Business School Alumni Association and Stanford Women on Boards, a prestige member of Watermark (a nonprofit organization that is a community of executive women), and a contributing writer to Forbes and the IPR Journals.

Christina Bui

Chief Revenue Officer, SVP, Kranz & Associates
A refugee from the Fall of Saigon who embraced the opportunity to pursue a corporate executive career. She has been an accomplished business development executive in a variety of industries, including healthcare, venture capital, finance/accounting, engineering/construction, and management consulting, She currently serves as the Chief Revenue Officer at Kranz & Associates, a finance consulting firm for technology companies and venture capital firms in Silicon Valley. She is Chairwoman of the Board at Siembra, an education technology start-up, Advisor at Andra Capital, and Strategic Advisor at BoardLeaders. She believes in giving back to the community and serves on the Board of Asian Pacific Fund, University of San Francisco Center for Asia Pacific Studies, How Women Lead, Association for Corporate Growth Global. Christina holds a bachelor’s degree in Foreign Affairs and French from the University of Virginia and a master’s degree in corporate finance from Johns Hopkins University. She was awarded “Most Influential Women in Business” in 2016 and 2017 in the Bay Area by the San Francisco Business Times. Christina has Co-Chaired the Association for Corporate Growth’s M&A West Coast Conference seven years in a row from 2012-2019 and Co-Chaired Women On Boards 2020 Conference in San Francisco in 2017-2018.

Petra Chequer

VP, Strategic People Solutions & Leadership Solutions Architect - IMPACT Group, Unlocking Leadership Potential in YOUR Leaders, Alliance Director – Alliance of Chief Executives, Silicon Valley Executive Board Member, How Women Lead

Petra Chequer is an empowering strategist, innovative thinker and global connector. She is a German native, but has lived and worked in the United Kingdom, Italy, France and Australia before moving to the United States.

Throughout her career Petra’s primary interests have been business development, strategic alliances and cross-cultural communication. She was fortunate to apply her passion to the tourism, finance, telecommunications and the software industry working with clients such as Latitudes France, Deutsche Bank, Siemens and Digital Equipment. She was also instrumental in helping the Aluminum Company of America expand their Automotive Division throughout Europe by working closely with the executive teams at Audi, Renault, Mercedes and Ferrari. Currently Petra is focusing on growing the unique and diverse Alliance community of executives and creating local and global connections to empower its members.

Previously, Petra was President of Chequer Consulting assisting companies and their leaders in developing growth strategies and penetrating national and international markets. The company provided its clients with a deep understanding of the respective local markets and business practices as well as establishing valuable strategic alliances.

Petra attended the University of Passau (Germany) and the University of East Anglia (UK) where she majored in French and English Literature and Linguistics. She subsequently graduated from the Language Academy of the City of Munich in French Economics. She also holds diplomas from the University of Cambridge, Le Chambre de Commerce et d’Industrie de Paris and L’Universite di Perugia per Stranieri. She is an avid learner and is always looking for opportunities to expand her knowledge in business strategy, leadership development, global communication and innovation.

Petra is a travel fanatic and outdoor sports enthusiast and has recently discovered her passion for the game of golf.

Randi Feigin

CEO Americas, SafeToNet
Randi is CEO, SafeToNet Americas, the award-winning intelligent app that analyzes online behavior to
identify concerns, filter risk and provide advice and guidance in real-time.
Randi is a dynamic and accomplished Silicon Valley leader with 25 years of cross-functional experience in
public and private companies, and Wall Street. She is highly regarded for her strategic planning, execution,
business development, alliances, operations, finance, sales, go-to-market and merger and acquisition
knowledge.
As a member of the leadership teams at Arx Pax, Juniper Networks, Cisco, and StrataCom, Randi has grown
and scaled businesses from early stage to multi-billion-dollar companies, including the IPO of Juniper and
the sale of StrataCom to Cisco. While Randi was President and Chief Financial Officer at Arx Pax, she was
responsible for driving day to day execution of the strategy, operations, business development, and go to
market, as well as funding initiatives and financial oversight which resulted in technology licensing,
partnerships, and funding. Prior to that, Randi spent over a decade at Juniper Networks in a variety of
operational roles in Strategic Alliances, Business Process Re-engineering, and Investor Relations which led
to a significant increase in revenue, implementation of worldwide global process and systems, and the
most successful IPO to date. Randi held management positions in investor relations at Cisco and
StrataCom leveraging her sell-side analyst knowledge from the equity research departments of Morgan
Stanley, Smith Barney, and Robertson Stephens.
Randi is deeply passionate about helping empower women to be great leaders. Randi currently serves on
the board of directors for SafeToNet Limited, Pavement Recycling Systems and Arx Pax. She is also on the
board of directors for How Women Lead and the Saratoga High School Drama Board. Previously, Randi
served on the board of directors for Extreme Networks (NASDAQ: EXTR), including the Audit and Strategy
committees and the board of directors for the National Investor Relations Institute for several years.
Randi attended Stanford Directors’ College, the Beyster Institute’s Corporate Director’s Exchange at UC
San Diego, and holds a BS degree in finance from Ithaca College.

Tamara Gracon

Management Consultant, Consultants Collective
Tamara Gracon is a highly-skilled tech savvy consultant with 12 years of executive experience, including expertise in strategy, process improvement, technology selection and deployment, and global project management.Tamara provides efficient and accountable guidance to harmonize diverse points of view and drive solutions that are feasible in real world situations given her client’s capacity and budget.

Prior to Consultants Collective, Tamara was a managing director at KPMG for over a decade. Tamara has in-depth executive experience identifying and resolving multi-disciplinary (tax, transfer pricing, supply chain, and valuation) issues facing firms in high technology and life sciences industries, specifically cost sharing/complex IP structure implementation and maintenance.

Prior to KPMG she worked in corporate finance/investment banking and as a congressional staffer in Washington, DC.

She has an MBA in Finance from Georgetown University's McDonough School of Business and a BA in Political Science and Economics from the University of Colorado Boulder.

In addition to the How Women Lead Silicon Valley Executive Board, she sits on the AYSO Region 26 (Palo Alto) Board and is an active youth coach in soccer, basketball, and Little League.

Heather Jerrehian

Chief Operating Officer, Emtrain
Heather is the Chief Operating Officer at Emtrain, where she leads the operations, finance, sales, and marketing functions for the company. Her passion is inspiring and motivating teams to make the “impossible possible”, building diverse, cohesive teams anchored in integrity, loyalty, and respect.

In her 20+ years of experience, Heather has repeated success at structuring start-ups and growing existing businesses in hardware, software, and consumer product industries with proven results in developing innovative brands from initial concept to selling millions in revenue, typically scaling within a year or two and lean resources.

Before joining Emtrain, Heather was VP/GM of Custom Products at community-driven commerce platform Massdrop (now Drop), where she built a new division that designed, developed, and manufactured over 100 Massdrop Made (now Drop Studio) products across hardware, electronics, outdoor gear, clothing, and accessories. She delivered 2 to 3x revenue year over year and was awarded Watermark’s prestigious Make Your Mark Award for Senior Executive of the Year in 2017 for her work at the company.

Prior to Massdrop, she was COO/CFO of AgLocal, where she pivoted and re-launched the venture-backed AgTech company is six weeks, eventually negotiating and managing a strategic partnership with AmazonFresh. Heather also co-founded The Proportion of Blu, a premium denim brand that amassed a cult following and gained worldwide distribution in more than 200 top-tier stores before her selling the company in 2009.

She has a particular passion for helping other women succeed and is on the Silicon Valley Executive Board of How Women Lead, an Ambassador and WLU Co-Lead for Watermark, an advisor to female-founded companies, and provides grants to bay area organizations focused on women and girls through How Women Give.

Heather earned her BS in Business Administration/Entrepreneur Program from the University of Southern California, Marshall School of Business.

Hannah Kain

President & CEO, Alom Technologies
Hannah Kain is President and CEO of ALOM, a global supply chain company she founded in 1997 headquartered in Fremont, California.
Hannah was born in Denmark and immigrated to the US in 1990. She taught at Copenhagen Business School and holds three university degrees.

Hannah is a Board member of the National Association of Manufacturers and the Women’s Business Enterprise National Council (WBENC). She serves on the Advisory Council of Heritage Bank of Commerce, AM BayArea, ACG-SV, and The Michelle R. Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. Kain is a member of the exclusive invitation-only Committee of 200 for executive women.
She has received numerous awards, including 2018 WBEC-Pacific Pinnacle Award, 2017 Woman of The Year in Manufacturing Gold Stevie Award, been named a 2017 Connected World Magazine Women of M2M / IoT honoree, and won the 2017 Silver Stevie Award for best global woman-owned business. She has been honored as a Top 25 Champion of Diversity in STEM, won the Manufacturing Institute STEP Ahead Award, the YWCA Tribute to Women Award, inducted into the Silicon Valley Capitol Club wall of fame, won the global Vistage Leadership Award, and named a WBENC Business Star.

Rika Nakazawa

Rika Nakazawa is an entrepreneur, investor, keynote speaker, and senior leader in the realm of business transformation driven by technology. She is the CEO and Co-founder of BoardSeatMeet, Inc. a public benefit corporation focusing on gender-balancing corporate board rooms by empowering women to build and leverage social capital with modern technology - delivering “High-Performance Board Room of Tomorrow”. She is also Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Ascent Robotics, a Tokyo-based AI software venture.

Trilingual in Japanese, German and English, Rika grew up in Japan and moved to the US initially to attend Princeton University as an International Student. Rika has since worked internationally over two decades in senior executive roles in strategy, business development, and marketing with Fortune 500 companies - NVIDIA, Sony, Accenture, American Express - and Silicon Valley startups. She is a technology industry veteran and serves on venture boards in next-gen computing and artificial intelligence ecosystems.

Throughout her career, Rika has been an avid advocate for advancing women's leadership in governance, technology and business across industry verticals and global lines. Rika is also the only woman on the Dean's Council for Embry-Riddle Aeronautics University, where she addresses the matter of gender parity in STEM Higher Education.

Rika is passionate about deepening intersection of human and digital through transformational innovation and the pursuit of purpose-driven collaboration.

Julia Vax

Julia Vax focuses her practice on corporate and securities laws in representing emerging growth and public companies, primarily in the life sciences and technology sectors, from formation and early-stage capital raising to publicly traded entities.

Ms. Vax has advised clients in the biopharmaceutical, genomics, medical device, diagnostics, Internet and digital media, software, IP telephony, telecommunications and financial services sectors in all aspects of their corporate development and in connection with a broad range of financing and strategic transactions.

Ms. Vax has extensive experience in IPOs, Rule 144A transactions, shelf registrations, private placements, including PIPE transactions and venture capital financings, as well as in executive compensation, corporate governance and SEC reporting and compliance for public companies. She has been involved in numerous public and private financing transactions representing companies, investors, underwriters and placement agents. Ms. Vax is a faculty member at the Center for International Legal Studies and has taught US corporate securities laws at the University of Tartu, Estonia, School of Law, as a Visiting Professor in the Fall 2017.

How Women Lead

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executive board of advisors

Silicon valley

executive board of advisors

Philanthropic Advisors Committee

How Women Give executive Committee

WOmen leaders of the world executive Committee