Wonder Woman in Business, Lisa Kaplowitz

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Lisa Kaplowitz

Co-Director - Rutgers Business School Women’s Initiative

Lisa is the Co-Director of Rutgers Business School Women’s Initiative and an Assistant Professor of Professional Practice at Rutgers Business School. She teaches undergraduate, MBA and Executive MBA students the fundamentals of corporate finance, with a focus on applying these concepts to decisions typically encountered in corporations and investment banking. She earned the Dean’s Meritorious Teaching Award in 2018.  In addition, she provides career coaching and serves as faculty advisor for Women in Business and the Finance Alumni Network. In April 2019, Lisa launched the Rutgers Business School Women’s Initiative to create a thought leadership loop between industry and academia, with the mission of removing barriers and empowering women with confidence and expertise to succeed in a continuously evolving workforce.

Lisa began her career as an investment banker at Alex. Brown & Sons in the mid-1990s, covering financial institutions, and later moved to Bank of America Merrill Lynch, where she focused on retail and consumer products companies. She then transitioned to the company side, where she served as the Treasurer of Bed Bath & Beyond for 8 years, and subsequently, as CFO of various private equity-backed start-ups.   

Lisa later created Kaplowitz Advisory Group, LLC to support executives, at all stages of growth, with using finance to help direct corporate strategy and decision making.  Specifically, she helps companies with the tactics of strategic planning, including execution, implementation, alignment, prioritization of initiatives and measurement of effectiveness.  In addition, Lisa provides executive management assistance in all functional areas, including operations, finance, legal and supply chain management.

Lisa also serves on the Board and is Treasurer of PowerPlay NYC, a non-profit that uses sports to advance the lives of underserved girls, helping them growth emotionally, socially and academically stronger.

Lisa earned a B.A. in Economics and International Relations from Brown and an MBA from Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management.  While at Brown, she was captain of the Women’s Gymnastics team, 4-year MVP, 4-year All-Ivy, 3-year Academic All-Ivy, 2-year all-ECAC and was inducted in the Brown Athletics Hall of Fame in 2018. Lisa is a tireless advocate of women’s athletics and, in 2018, founded Brown Athletics W.O.M.E.N. (Women’s Opportunity, Mentorship & Empowerment Network).

Lisa resides in New Jersey with her husband and 2 sons, and enjoys traveling, skiing and anything active.

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Enjoy the podcast.

Lisa Kaplowitz

LISA’S RECENT & UPCOMING SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS:

-RBS Executive MBA Women’s Leadership Panel

-Prudential Women’s Breakfast

-Argyle Media – Hosted Fireside Chat with CFO Girl Scouts – “Approaching Mergers, Acquisitions and Divestitures form Differing Arenas” – Part of Event titled” 2018 Leadership In Corporate Divestitures and Aquisitions”

-Bloomberg CEO Breakaway Summit – “Leveraging the Finance Department for Growth” -2017

- Career transition/transformation – How to disrupt your career?  Career innovation

- Who Am I?  Being comfortable with your corporate persona. 

- Empowerment

- Creating a movement

-Using your voice

- Making it Happen -  Moving from strategy/concept to execution

- Getting buy-in/resources (even if they are not technically yours)

-Networking (organically)

- Performance Management – Creating leading indicators to measure success. Motivating teams to aligned goals.

LEARN MORE ABOUT LISA:

CONTACT LISA:

Lisa S. Kaplowitz

Assistant Professor of Professional Practice

Rutgers Business School

lisa.kaplowitz@business.rutgers.edu

(917) 576-5150

 


 

Wonder Woman in Business, Leeatt Rothschild

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Leeatt Rothschild

CEO & Founder of Packed with Purpose

Leeatt Rothschild is the Founder and CEO of Packed with Purpose, a specialty gifting company with a social mission. Founded in 2016, Packed with Purpose was born out of Leeatt’s desire to create a social impact and her appreciation for the importance of gifting in fostering meaningful relationships. She is thrilled to be building a business that creates deep societal impact through the everyday act of gift giving.

Prior to founding Packed with Purpose, Leeatt served as the VP of Advisory Services for Mission Measurement where she developed innovative social strategies for Fortune 500 companies to generate social impact and business results.

Prior, she was a Director of Marketing Strategy and Insights at Rosetta, a digital agency within Publicis Groupe.

Leeatt served as a Peace Corps volunteer in Paraguay from 2002-2004, witnessing first hand the profound positive impact that economic development can have on the lives of individuals living in underdeveloped communities. Following her experiences in the Peace Corps, she went on to earn her MBA from the Wharton School of Business, and a Masters in International Studies from The Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania, in 2010.

Leeatt is a board member of the Anti-Defamation League in Chicago, an advisory board member of Bright Endeavors, a mentor for Wesleyan University’s Patricelli Center for Social Entrepreneurship, and is an alumni of the Schusterman Foundation Fellowship.

Education:

Wesleyan University: B.A, Psychology

The Wharton School of Business at The University of Pennsylvania: M.B.A., Marketing, Strategic Management

The Lauder School at The University of Pennsylvania: M.A., International Studies

Connect with Leeatt:

LinkedIn: in/leeatt-rothschild-b470a01/

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Enjoy the podcast.

Leeatt Rothschild, CEO & Founder of Packed with Purpose

Wonder Woman in Business, JoAnn Holmes, Esq.

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JoAnn Holmes, Esq.

JoAnn Holmes ("Jo") serves as Outside General Counsel, providing comprehensive legal solutions and executive level guidance to innovative midsize companies. She helps intimate management teams protect and monetize intellectual property, leverage legal positioning for enhanced profitability, and navigate risks to accomplish business objectives.

With over 20 years of experience serving global organizations, Jo is a pragmatic and trusted advisor. As an external member of clients’ leadership, she focuses on business and legal strategy, commercial contracts, and building licensing programs for recurring revenue. Over her career, Jo has successfully negotiated with multiple Fortune 100 companies, and managed IP portfolios spanning 150+ countries that generate over $2 billion in annual revenue.

Jo founded HOLMES@LAW to provide agile, business-centered legal counsel for the middle market. Our clients often create brands, deliver knowledge expertise, and distribute intellectual property (trademarks, software, creative and business content) with multinational reach. Their diverse industries include tech, food/beverages, manufacturing, healthcare, finance, government, advertising and professional services. The firm’s clients have remarked: “Jo is a top notch professional who brings a wealth of experience. She knows business.”

Jo has been an invited speaker for industry leaders like McKesson Corporation, and respected professional organizations such as the American Institute of Graphic Artists. She's served as an Adjunct Professor of Law, lectured at Cornell and Penn State law schools, and delivered customized workshops to meet client objectives on IP licensing, international expansion, and effective negotiation.

Beyond her legal practice, Jo is committed to service work. She supports local schools, leadership groups, and international charities. A graduate of Stanford University and Emory School of Law, Jo serves on the board of directors for the Stanford National Black Alumni Association. She’s also a member of the advisory boards for two organizations supporting immigrant, and low income, children’s education. Since founding HOLMES@LAW, Jo has dedicated over 300 hours to community service. Please visit our website at www.HolmesAtLaw.com to learn more about how we can work together to support your business success.

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Enjoy the podcast.

JoAnn Holmes, Esq.

Contact Jo:

JoAnn Holmes, Esq.

Holmes@Law, LLC - Your Business Ally™ 

T: 404.941.5770

E: jo@holmesatlaw.com 

W: www.holmesatlaw.com 

P: Click here on the link to Jo’s podcast, Your Business Ally™.

Wonder Woman in Business, Stephanie Corey

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Stephanie Corey

UpLevel Ops

Stephanie Corey, Co-Founder, UpLevel Ops

Stephanie Corey is a co-founder of UpLevel Ops, a consulting firm specializing in providing services for in-house legal departments, universities and law firms. UpLevel Ops provides a complete range of Legal Operations support, including IT solutions, Finance and Budget guidance, Talent Management and Development, Benchmarking, Best Practices and Metrics, and Outside Counsel Selection and Management.

Stephanie is also a co-founder and former executive member of the leading legal operations trade organization CLOC, Corporate Legal Operations Consortium.  She is a widely respected veteran in the Legal Ops field. 

Most recently, Stephanie has served as the Chief of Staff and Senior Director of Legal Operations at Flex, which has a global legal department of more than 150 people in 15 countries.  She has spent the better part of her career providing value-added services to Legal Departments, including building and deploying critical infrastructure to enable them to meet their business priorities.  Stephanie’s areas of expertise include Information Technology, Finance, Communications and Administration.

Stephanie began her career at Merrill Lynch in Pennsylvania, and after relocating to California, she worked at Bailard, Biehl and Kaiser, an investment firm in Foster City.  Once she decided to move into Corporate Finance, Stephanie took a position under the CFO, managing the Finance and Accounting Department at Provident Funding Mortgage Bank.

She later moved to Hewlett-Packard, where she was employed for eleven years as the head Legal Operations Manager, running a large IT and Finance Department.  Her most recent role at HP was Chief of Staff to the General Counsel, responsible for managing the daily operations of the Legal Department, working closely with the General Counsel and his reports to develop the strategy for the delivery of technology, finance and administrative solutions.   

Stephanie holds a master’s degree in Business Administration from Lehigh University, and a bachelor’s degree in Economics from Wilkes University.

Who is UpLevel Ops and What Do We Bring to the Table

UpLevel Ops is unique in that both general partners have been in-house for the vast majority of their careers.   The UpLevel team brings real-world knowledge about industry trends, benchmarks and how peers in the market are defining “world class” as it relates to strategy, technology and all processes throughout the department.  Over the course of their in-house careers, they addressed the ever-changing legal environment by developing a governing framework aligned to the corporate business strategy so their departments could appropriately respond to and invest in critical areas of the business.  They created strategies that provided long-term direction and identified and capitalized on the unique competencies of their in-house teams, and now they’re doing the same for their clients.

  • Beyond strategic planning, the team at UpLevel has implemented multiple types of solutions and programs, including:

  • Legal operations strategies and roadmaps

  • eBilling and matter management

  • Contract lifecycle management

  • eSignature policies and software

  • Knowledge management and collaboration

  • Document management and retention

  • Workflow tools

  • Legal intake

  • Budgets and financial analysis

  • Outside counsel management

  • Value based pricing and alternative fee arrangements

  • Data analytics and metrics

  • Alternative support models and use of alternative service providers

  • Communication strategies

  • Growth and development

Most importantly, UpLevel will be available to work with your legal department to implement the recommendations, rather than just provide recommendations and move on to the next project.  UpLevel believes that this is a competitive differentiator and will stay involved to ensure that all proposed deliverables will be in place and fully functioning at the highest levels.

Why Work with a Qualified Operations Expert?

According to the 2017 Blickstein Group/Exterro Study of Effective Legal Spend Management, only 17% of companies find their legal technology to be “Very Effective,” with 33% finding their technology to be downright “Ineffective” or “Very Ineffective.”  Why such disturbing results?  Although solution providers are excellent at showing what their software can do, and legal departments have a clear understanding of their needs, much is lost in translation between the two, resulting in disappointing implementations.

Furthermore, while choosing the wrong tech is a significant problem, another factor that plagues tech implementations even more seriously is that not enough work is done up front to scope out the current state, streamline and document processes, create robust business requirements, and truly understand the needs of the legal department.  Tech vendors are not good at performing these critical steps in the process, and in-house teams often lack the bandwidth or expertise from a tech perspective. 

A qualified legal operations expert will…

  • Learn the culture of the company, the law department and its appetite for change

  • Help the law department understand which technology truly fits its budget, environment and culture, and can even help to find creative ways to fund the purchase (such as sharing the expense with another department within the company)

  • Create an ROI for each solution to facilitate buy-in

  • Provide feedback on which processes should be changed, enhanced, removed or streamlined

  • Suggest which practices can be automated such that attorneys and other team members can move up the value chain

  • Offer insight into industry best practices and provide recommendations on how to achieve them

  • Create a change management and communication plan for the successful adoption of new processes and systems

Lastly, there is an inherent conflict in having the selected vendor perform the implementation because their incentive is to upsell functionality and additional products clients may not truly need.  A third party will advocate on behalf of the client, not the vendor.

Our value add from UpLevel is to be an outside third party with extensive hands-on experience in all these areas, and the time and commitment to drive the process to a timely conclusion, having no separate agenda other than to produce the best results possible.  Most importantly, we will be focused on working with our clients to create a practical plan that can be easily implemented and operationalized.

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Enjoy the podcast.

Stephanie Corey

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Wonder Woman in Business, Renee Branson

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Renee Branson

Resilience.Bounty

Combining 20 years in education, counseling and non-profit management, Renee Branson's passion and purpose is helping individuals, teams, and organizations cultivate resilience. After years of working with survivors of trauma and the caregivers who help heal them, she became enthralled with what it is that allowed people to not only survive, but thrive through their greatest crisis. The answer is resilience. The more valuable lesson is that resilience can be taught, strengthened, and cultivated.

As a Certified Resilience Coach (CReC), Renee provides clients with immediately usable tools to increase resilience, well-being, and optimism in the workplace. She works with lawyers, legal marketers, business professionals, non-profit leaders, and others to help them understand and incorporate resilience in their own professional lives and in the teams they lead."

Featured Contributor, BIZCATALYST360.COM

Administer the PR6™ resilience assessments, presentations, and workshops on the six domains of resilience for professionals and business organizations. These include law firms, practice groups, non-profits, and business teams within an organization. This allows leaders to address organizational strengths and weaknesses and to implement growth plans through coaching, consultation, and the Driven™ app-based tools.

Common Use Case Scenarios:
-On-boarding new associates
-Newly formed teams/divisions
-Management training programs
-Organizational restructuring, mergers, large-scale organizational change
-Crisis recovery
-Underperforming/dysfunctional teams

Photos in Renee’s Words…

Photo 1:

Branson Beach Photo: The entire Branson tribe. We don't all get together in one place very often, so this was pretty special. 

Photo 2:

Buckeyes: I am a born and bred Buckeye. I grew up in Ohio and graduated from Ohio State. Fall would not be complete without at least one trip to the Horseshoe to see my Buckeyes play football. This photo is of me, Tim and the boys along with my brother and his family. 

Photo 3:

With Tim Corcoran at COLPM: This is proof we can still get fancy. :) 

Photo 4:

Parent's Weekend: While my oldest didn't choose OSU for school, we love to spend Parent's Weekend with him and his fraternity. 

Photo 5:

Sydney Opera House: I have always been passionate about travel. The only place tied with Sydney as my favorite place is Barcelona. I took a week long solo trip there and the experience was life-changing. There are so many places still left on my bucket list! 

Photo 6:

Tough Mudder: I talk about grit being a domain of resilience. I've done 5 Tough Mudders, 2 marathons, and over 20 half marathons. I learned grit from the physical limits that I've pushed. 

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Enjoy the podcast.

Renee Branson

Connect with Renee:

Website: https://reneebranson.blog/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/resilience.bounty/?tn-str=k*F

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/reneebransonmancc/

Email: rb@reneebranson.blog

Phone: 434.326.6620

Wonder Woman in Business, Kim Stuart

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Kim Stuart

CEO of Key Group

Kim Stuart, Founder and CEO of Key Group, is a strategic advisor for professional services firms, non-profit organizations and business executives. She has more than 20 years of experience in constructing and advancing business development initiatives and marketing strategies.

Kim also serves as Senior Advisor and Faculty Member for Ackert Inc., the company behind the award-winning business development training platforms. Kim has personally facilitated hundreds of training sessions with lawyers at both the senior associate and partner level. Kim led the development and implementation of the Managing Partner Institute a comprehensive professional development program that provide the insights, management principles, and framework essential for effective law firm leaders. 

A passionate advocate for cultivating and supporting the advancement of women and diverse leaders, Kim co-founded the Diversity in Leadership Forum, formerly the Women Leaders Forum, a leadership and management development program and peer-group network of female and diverse legal leaders. The Forum brings managing partners and other law firm leaders together to address and overcome management challenges, leverage market dynamics, and target key business opportunities. She also develops formal women’s initiatives focused on professional, business and client development,

community and culture and executive branding. Her programs garner multiple industry awards and lead to new and enhanced client relationships as well as internal professional development and talent retention.

Kim and her kiddos enjoyed a recent summer getaway in New YorK, walking the Brooklyn Bridge and visiting Lady Liberty.

CONTACT KIM:

kim@key-grp.com

Website: Key-Grp.com

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