2010 Panel

Susan Engel

Retired Chair & CEO, Lenox Group Inc.

Susan’s first job was with JCPenney in Human Resources upon graduating from Cornell. She then decided to get her MBA. Upon graduation from Harvard, she returned to JCP in marketing for one year and then joined Booz Allen and Hamilton as a consultant working with retailers and consumer goods clients.

After 14 years at BAH, Susan joined the Sara Lee Corporation as president and CEO of Champion Products, a marketer of authentic athletic apparel. Three years later Susan moved to Minneapolis to lead Department 56, a company well known for its Christmas products and its collectible lighted porcelain villages. In 2005 D56 became Lenox Group Inc, after it acquired the Lenox, Dansk and Gorham china divisions. After restructuring and integrating the two companies with business strategies in place for each brand, she decided in 2007 to move back to NY and become a retired lady who lunches.

Her lady who lunches routine lasted not quite 6 months when she became the CEO of an internet retailer, PorteroLuxury.com, which offers the broadest and best selection of authentic vintage and pre-owned luxury watches, jewelry and handbags.

Susan’s board experience is broad. Currently, she is on the Wells Fargo and SuperValu boards, both very exciting with the recent acquisition of Wachovia by Wells and Supervalu’s acquisition of Albertson’s several years ago. She also sits on a private company board, Coolibar the highest quality provider of sun protective clothing. In the not-for-profit world she has recently joined the board of The Acting Company in NYC. Previously she served on five other public company boards, both large and small as well as four other non-profit boards, including a large hospital system, the Guthrie Theater (where she also served as President and Chair), and Planned Parenthood of MNSD and the St Paul Chamber Orchestra.

Meesha Rosa

Director, Corporate Board Services & Marketing Operations, Catalyst

 
Meesha Rosa coordinates communications with corporate board governance organizations and associations in conjunction with Catalyst’s Corporate Board Services, which focuses on the advancement of women into the corporate boardroom through candidate assessment and preparation. In addition, Ms. Rosa manages the day-to-day operations of Catalyst’s Marketing Department. Through her work as an issue specialist, Ms. Rosa speaks at numerous events around the country about Catalyst’s Censuses of Women Board Directors and Corporate Officers and Top Earners of the Fortune 500. She had worked on the Censuses in her former role as a Senior Associate in the Research Department documenting the status of women in leadership. She also conducts presentations on Catalyst’s women of color in corporate management research and is a member of Catalyst’s Women of Color Issue Specialty Team.

Prior to joining Catalyst, Ms. Rosa worked and consulted at the Columbia University School of Public Health’s National Center for Children in Poverty and Department of Sociomedical Sciences, where she conducted child development research. She has also worked at the New York City Administration for Children Services in the Management and Statistical Reports Division. Ms. Rosa received her B.A. in Black and Puerto Rican Studies and Sociology from City University of New York, Hunter College, and completed a M.S. in Urban Policy Analysis and Management at The New School.

Barrie Berg

CEO, Americas ?What If!

Barrie Berg is the CEO Americas for ?What If!, a fast growing innovation consulting company. ?What If! serves as an innovation partner to help leading companies crack innovation challenges, establish a product/service pipeline, innovate around the brand, positioning and customer experience and develop/design new offerings. ?What If! brings tools, behaviors and skill sets developed over 18 years of doing innovation — and has deep and broad experience creating the kind of workshops, pilot projects and learning experiences that inspire individuals and teams and, when combined into a program, build innovation capabilities and transform organizations. She spends most of her time helping clients and teams dig beyond the obvious to find nuggets of opportunity that can be built into springboards to drive accelerated growth. Barrie started her career marketing bathroom tissue for Procter and Gamble in Cincinnati and then spent several years developing new frozen food products in the early days of the microwave oven. Flash forward: For the last 22+ years, Barrie has supported senior executives of major consumer, retail and media companies in finding ways to expand their businesses. She then spent 16 years with the large consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, about half of that based in the US and half in the UK. Barrie has advised many CEO’s and boards over the course of her career and has been on both a small cap board (EMAK) and a private board (Ford Models Inc). Barrie has a BA cum laude from Yale and an MBA from Harvard Business School. Barrie speaks Spanish, Portuguese and French, in addition to her native English, is a dual citizen of the US and UK and loves the bossa nova.

Panel Facilitator

Marie Wilson

President & Founder, The White House Project

An advocate of women’s issues for more than 30 years, Marie C. Wilson is founder and President of The White House Project, co-creator of Take Our Daughters and Sons to Work ® Day and author of Closing the Leadership Gap: Why Women Can and Must Help Run the World (Viking 2004).

In 1998, Wilson founded The White House Project in recognition of the need to build a truly representative democracy – one where women lead alongside men in all spheres. Since its inception, The White House Project has been a leading advocate and voice on women’s leadership.

Before she took the helm at The White House Project, Wilson was, for nearly two decades, the President of the Ms. Foundation for Women. She is an honorary “founding mother” of the Ms. Foundation. In honor of her work, the Ms. Foundation has created The Marie C. Wilson Leadership Fund.

Over the last thirty years, Wilson’s accomplishments span becoming the first woman elected to the Des Moines City Council as a member-at-large in 1983, co-authoring the critically acclaimed Mother Daughter Revolution (1993, Bantam Books), and serving as an official government delegate to the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women held in Beijing, China in 1995.

Wilson has been profiled in The New York Times “Public Lives” column, has appeared on The Today Show, Good Morning America, CNN, National Public Radio and other national programs and is quoted widely for her expertise. Born and raised in Georgia, Wilson has five children and four grandchildren. She resides in New York City.