Chicago Chapter

X In 2007, Barbara Landers Bowles, retired as Vice Chair of Profit Investment Management where she managed its mid cap portfolios. After an illustrious career in the investment management arena, she left to pursue her longtime goal of establishing and funding the Landers Bowles Family Foundation that focuses on charity related to education. She was the founder and served as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Investment Officer of The Kenwood Group, Inc. from 1989 until it was acquired by Profit in January of 2006. From 1984 to 1989, Barbara served as Corporate Vice President of Kraft, Inc. and headed the investor relations department.

Barbara, a Nashville native, holds an M.B.A. degree in Finance from the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and a B.A. degree in Mathematics with Honors from Fisk University. She received the Chartered Financial Analyst designation in1977.

She is the retired presiding director of WEC Energy Group,Inc. Barbara now serves as a director of several organizations including: the Museum of Science and Industry, National Council on White House History, and senior director of the Chicago Urban League. She also served as Chair of the Board of Trustees of Fisk University from 2013 until the end of 2017.

Barbara was named a HistoryMaker in 2002. In 2003, Barbara was honored with the Alumni of the Year Award from the African American MBA Association of the University of Chicago Booth School of Business and in February 2008, received the Chicago African American History Maker Award from the DuSable Museum of Chicago. She received the Midwest Regional UNCF award in 2015. In addition to mentoring young people, Barbara enjoys bridge and tennis. She and her husband Earl are residents of the Hyde Park-Kenwood Community of Chicago.

Washington D.C. Chapter

X Agenia Clark is the president and CEO of Girl Scouts of Middle Tennessee. Prior to joining Girl Scouts, she was vice president of human resources for the Tennessee Education Lottery Corporation, senior director of human resources at Vanderbilt University and worked in government relations, marketing, business ethics and human resources at Nortel Networks, a multinational telecommunications corporation. Clark is a member and co-chair for Women CorporateDirectors (WCD)-Tennessee Chapter, where she's currently serving on the 2020 WCD Visionary Awards Selection Committee.

She’s also a member of the International Women’s Forum (IWF), Nashville’s Agenda and is a member of the 2016 Class of Leadership Tennessee and 1996 Class of Leadership Nashville. Agenia serves on the corporate board of directors for FirstBank Financial Corporation (NYSE: FBK) where she’s the Chair of the Compensation Committee and serves on the Nominating and Governance Committee.

Prior to FirstBank, she was a founding corporate director for Avenue Bank (2007), one of Nashville’s fastest growing banks before an IPO offering in February of 2015 and a September 2016 merger with Pinnacle Bank. Most recently, she became a trustee for Simmons University, a women-focused university in Boston, Massachusetts. She also serves on the boards of the Ayers Family Foundation and is on the Advisory Council, Emerita, for the College of Business at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville.

Most recently, she was appointed to the James Massey School of Business Advisory Board, Belmont University. Agenia was named by the Nashville Business Journal as one of “Nashville’s 100 Most Powerful People'' in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018 and 2019. An inductee into the Academy for Women of Achievement, she is also a “Nashville Post” Person-In-Charge (2014–2019).

Agenia was a gubernatorial appointment to the Tennessee Board of Regents, the governing body for the state's community colleges, technical colleges and universities, in2006–2012 and a gubernatorial appointee to the Governor’s Healthier Tennessee (2015–2019). Agenia has a Bachelor of Science and Master of Business Administration from the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a Doctorate of Education from Vanderbilt University. In her spare time, Agenia enjoys family trips, running, sprint triathlons, cooking and her book club. She currently resides in Brentwood, Tennessee, with her husband, Charles Clark, Jr. They have two adult children.

London Chapter

X Noel Harwerth is Chairman of the UK Export Finance agency and serves on the board of the UK Department of International Trade. She serves on the boards of One Savings Bank (SID), and Scotia Bank Europe (SID). She serves as an advisor to the Bank of England on RTGS/CHAPS and is a member of the Regulatory Decisions Committee of the FCA. She served on the boards of Standard Life (Chair, Risk committee, member Audit and Nomination committees) from 2012 to 2018, and London Metal Exchange (Audit and Risk, Nominations Committee, and Enforcement Committee) from 2012 to 2018.

She was Chairman of GE Capital Bank Europe until April 2017and served as Chairman of Sumitomo Mitsui Bank (Europe Middle East and Africa) from 2004 to June 2015. In 2006, she was appointed by the UK Government to the Board of the Tote (Chair Audit Committee) and served on the board until its privatization. She has served on the boards of Alent (Chair of the Compensation committee), Corus (British Steel), Logica (Chair of the Compensation committee), Impellam Group (SID), RSA Insurance Group (Chair Risk committee), Avocet Mining, Anglo Irish Bank, and Dominion Diamond Corporation (Chair of the Audit Committee).

Mrs. Harwerth was appointed by the UK government as Partnership Director of London Underground and served in that role from 2003-2008, having previously served on the Board of Transport for London, where she chaired the Audit Committee.

From 1998 to 2004, Mrs. Harwerth was Chief Operating Officer of Citibank International PLC in London. She was responsible for infrastructure and governance of Europe’s first truly pan European bank, with branches in 18countries. Prior to joining Citicorp in 1988, Mrs. Harwerth held senior positions in Dun & Bradstreet and Kennecott Copper Corporation, where she worked on large, complex international mining transactions.

Mrs. Harwerth was educated at the University of Texas in Austin and holds a Juris doctor degree from the University of Texas Law School. She holds both U.S. and British citizenship. Mrs. Harwerth is a liveryman of the Worshipful Company of International Bankers, Chairman of the UK chapter of Women Corporate Directors, member of The Committee of 200 and International Women’s Forum, and served on the board of the British Horseracing Authority from 2013 to 2019.

Chicago Chapter

X Christie Hefner is a seasoned professional with more than thirty years’ experience at executive levels in both public and private companies, as well as multiple company directorships.

Presently, her portfolio includes advisory work for Newlight Technologies which patented a technology to convert methane into ocean biodegradable plastic, Forum Communications which owns newspapers and TV stations, Public Good which is an AI driven digital platform that allows brands to scalably engage with consumer, and Belushi Farms a cannabis company. She serves as Chairman of the Board of Hatchbeauty Brands, is a Board member of Fyllo, a leading innovator in data, media and compliance solutions for highly regulated industries and of Healthwell, a SPAC company targeting technology-enabled healthcare businesses. She’s also on the Advisory Board of the Offutt Companies, a multi-billion-dollar agricultural conglomerate.

Previously, Christie served as Chairman and CEO of Playboy Enterprises for 20 years making her the longest serving female CEO of a publicly traded company. She was widely credited with developing and leading strategies that repositioned the company from its legacy domestic magazine business to a global multi-media and lifestyle company while building its institutional shareholder base. She was on the Fortune 100 Most Powerful Women list for three years.

Christie was a founding member of The Chicago Network, The Committee of 200 and the Chicago chapter of Women Corporate Directors. She is also on the Council of National Advisors for Springboard Enterprises, an accelerator for women-led growth ventures, which includes raising capital.

Christie was selected by Private Company Director magazine in 2020 as an honoree in its fall 2020 edition of Directors to Watch.

Chicago Chapter

X Ashley Duchossois Joyce is President of The Duchossois Family Foundation. She received her Bachelor of Artsfrom University of Colorado and her Master’s degree from University of Chicago, School of Social Service Administration (SSA). Ashley serves as a trustee for the University of Chicago and sits on the Audit committee and is Chair of the Outward Engagement Committee. Ashley is also on the University of Chicago Medical Center Board. Shehas been involved with the not-for-profit organization, Metropolitan Family Services, for more than twenty years in various leadership positions and currently is Board Chair.

She is a Director of The Duchossois Group, Inc., a privately held, family-owned enterprise comprised of operating companies and an investment company, and serves on the Compensation, Nominating, and Shareholder Committees. Ashley is a 2018 Leadership Greater Chicago fellow, is a member of the Economic Club of Chicago, the Commercial Club of Chicago, and Women Corporate Directors. Additionally, she is on the Executive Committee for The Duchossois Family Council and the Advisory Board for the Duchossois Family Office. Ashley lives in Chicago with her husband, Michael, and their two sons.

Anastassia Lauterbach

Germany Chapter

Italy Chapter

X Cristina Finocchi Mahne has over a 20-year experience as C-suite executive/board member of financial groups and top management consulting firms - including over 10 years serving as a board member of companies listed in Italy and the U.S. She has served as director in the following industries: banking, industrial, consumer discretionary, telco towers, ITcommunication, and healthcare. She has over 10 years’ experience as board member of listed family businesses, and over 8 years as an adjunct professor of faculties of finance and economics at top-ranked Italian universities.

In her different roles, she has been proactively dealing with ESG sustainability matters since 1999. She has been a board member of publicly traded companies since 2010 and chair of board committees since 2015. Currently, she is chair and a member of risk, audit & sustainability, and nomination committees in banking, consumer discretionary and industrial sectors. She is a corporate governance expert and was a C-suite executive as a member of the executive management committee, in financial blue chips and in top management consulting firms.

Cristina was co-founder of the Italian chapter of WCD Foundation in 2012, and is a member of WCD’s Visionary Awards’ steering committee since June 2020. She is an adjunct professor of sustainability strategies at the Faculty Of Financial, Banking and Insurance Sciences at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuorein Milan. Previously, she was adjunct professor of advanced business administration at the Faculty of Economics at La Sapienza University in Rome and of corporate governance at the international MBA at Luiss Business School.

She holds a degree in economics and business from the University La Sapienza, an MBA at LUISS Business School in Rome, and further qualifications in finance, financial communication and management skills from London and Los Angeles. She is a frequent speaker at national/international conferences and seminars on corporate governance/ESG matters.

Chile Chapter

X Financial Services Executive with 25 years of experience developed leading Financial Infrastructure Providers and Exchanges in Latin America.

Co-Founder and COO of BVM12, Coordinator of the Diversity in the Financial Markets WG at the Brazilian Financial Innovation LAB, member of the Visionary Awards Committee and Development Committee at the Women Corporate Directors Foundation, and member of IBGC, WCD Brazil, 100 Women in Finance Brazil and Impacto por Elas.

Former Chief Corporate Relations and ESG Officer and Chief Commercial Officer of Bolsa de Santiago and of CCLV–Chilean Central Counterparty Infrastructure (as the only female and foreigner executive in the C-level), International Business Managing Director of BM&FBOVESPA and International Business Manager and Analyst roles of BOVESPA (São Paulo Stock Exchange), where she started working in 1994.

Acted at the Board of Directors at the FIAB (Ibero-American Federation of Exchanges), Global Compact Chile, and the international representative offices of BM&FBOVESPA in New York, London and Shanghai, and pro bono at the Armenian Relief Society Board at the United Nations ECOSOC, as well as representative of the CEO of BM&FBOVESPA at the Board of Directors of World Federation of Exchanges. Travelled to more than 30 countries worldwide to represent the company she worked for in Non-Deal Roadshows, Congresses, Seminars and Panel Discussions, as well as high-level and strategic meetings, being responsible and with the working group of iconic events and projects such as BEST (Brazil Excellence in Securities Transactions), Brazil and China Exchanges Partnership and Integration of Latin-American Exchanges. A Business Manager with a Masters degree in Economics, with several executive specialization courses at Stanford GSB, IBGC (Brazilian Corporate Governance Institute), Singularity University, INSPER, Wharton University, among others.

Silicon Valley Chapter

X Theo has over 38 years of experience in the investment and wealth advisory business, and is a Certified Wealth Strategist®. She started her career trading foreign currencies, gold and silver, and also acted as the municipal bond coordinator for Dean Witter, one of the largest San Francisco offices during the 1980’s. In the 1990's, she ran an equity portfolio and coordinated the Branch Investment Consulting Services.

Her current position as Executive Director of “The Schwabacher Group” at Morgan Stanley concentrates on consulting for affluent families. Her comprehensive planning includes helping with asset allocation, assisting with investment policy formulation, manager search, performance monitoring and due diligence. Each client’s investment plan is customized, providing access to tax advice, estate planning strategies, philanthropic objectives with family and institutional goals. Theo is a fourth generation San Franciscan. Her grandfather and father were both involved in the brokerage and investment banking business and sold their company, Schwabacher and Co. to Dean Witter in 1968.

Her own philanthropic participation has led her to participate on many boards in San Francisco. These include the San Francisco Cancer Society, Red Cross, San Francisco Mental Health Association, Merola and the San Francisco Opera Board. Her professional associations include Technical Analysts Association of San Francisco, Certified Investment Management, and the Morgan Stanley Presidents Club from 2006-present. Her current affiliations include: MorganStanley Women’s Business Exchange, The Women’s Global Warming Initiative, and National Women Board of Entrepreneurs. She co-chairs Women Corporate Directors Foundation of Northern California, which helps create diversity on public boards. Theo focuses on integrating your personal mission statements by investing with Impact for individual and institutional clients.

South Florida

X As Governance Advisor to Atlantic Street Capital, Susan launched the first private equity firm effort to recruit women for portfolio executive positions, company boards, and customer advisory boards. Susan recently retired as Chair and Co-Founder of the Women Corporate Directors (WCD) Foundation, the only global membership organization and community of women corporate directors. WCD has more than 2,500 members in 80 chapters around the world. She is the President and CEO of PartnerCom Corporation, and co-founded OnBoard Bootcamp (OBB), an insider’s guide on how to be selected to a corporate, private company, or advisory board director position, and the Belizean Grove, a preeminent community and retreat for leading women who share knowledge and connections.

As a Westinghouse/Group W TV correspondent covering the White House and Capitol Hill, Susan was the first woman and one of the youngest to head a Washington TV bureau. Susan then became the first TV journalist to be chosen as a White House Fellow where she worked for both Vice President Nelson Rockefeller and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. Her considerable consumer products experience includes positions as the Director of Communications for the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission and for McNeil Consumer Products.

Deciding to become an entrepreneur, Susan founded MasterMedia, Ltd., the only company to combine publishing with a speaker’s bureau. In her capacity as a corporate and nonprofit director, Susan has served on or created advisory boards, for numerous organizations. Susan has also served on Presidential Commissions, Boards, and Foundations. Susan is a board member of the Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties. Susan’s active involvement in The Preservation Society of Newport County is longstanding; currently she chairs The Elms Committee and was a member of the Capital Campaign Council. She is also a member of the C200, International Women’s Forum, and the Council on Foreign Relations. Susan holds a Bachelor of Arts from Wheaton College, and a Master of Arts in Public and International Affairs from George Washington University, and she completed an Executive Education Program at Harvard Business School.

She addresses groups across the world, including leading business schools and national and international conferences. Her writing consists of seven books, including Betrayed: A Survivors Guide to Lying, Cheating & Double Dealing; Women on Board: Insider Secrets to Getting on a Board and Succeeding as a Director; and Selected Quotations that Inspire Us to Think Bigger, Live Better and Laugh Harder. She has written or been featured in numerous articles including International Herald Tribune, Businessweek, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Directors and Boards, The Financial Times, and others. Her on-air interview experience includes CNBC, Oprah, The Today Show, CBS Evening News, CNN, and many others. Susan has received numerous awards and honors including an Honorary Doctorate of Law from Wheaton College, and WCD’s Visionary Award for Strategic Leadership. Harvard Business School is writing a case study on how Susan and co-founders created WCD and sold it to KPMG which has turned it into a non-profit.

Chicago Chapter

X Joan E. Steel is CEO and founder of Alpha Wealth Advisors, LLC, a financial consulting firm advising family offices, private foundations and endowments in the U.S and South America. Prior to founding the firm,she was a senior investment advisor with the global asset manager, Capital Group where she built a sizable private client business.

Ms. Steel became Aon Corporation’s Chief Marketing Officer after leading their global investor and media relations. Priorto Aon, she was a senior executive in her family’s privately held water treatment chemical manufacturing business that was sold to Olin Corporation.She also co-founded and headed institutional fixed income sales and trading for E.F. Huttonin Chicagoafter starting her career at Salomon Brothers as an institutional fixed income broker and one of the first professional women on Wall Street.

Ms. Steel Is an independent director of Mercer Funds, a family of institutional mutual funds and former independent director of the Hershey Trust Company, controlling shareholder of The Hershey Company. She is a trustee of Rush University Medical Center, Cuneo Foundation and a vice chair of National Association of Corporate Directors’(NACD) Chicago Chapter. She is a former trustee of Loyola University Chicago where she chaired their Endowment. She holds an MBA from the University of Chicago, a BS from Georgetown University and has completed continuing education at Harvard Business School and Stanford Directors’ College.

Greater Colorado Chapter

X Mary Beth Vitale is a sitting public company director and former CEO. She was CEO/Chair of Westwind Media, President/COO of Rocky Mountain Internet and President/corporate officer for AT&T. Currently, she serves as Chair for Pareteum, a global cloud-based platform company, Chair of Nom/Gov for Luna Innovations, a global fiber optics firm and Chair of Risk and Technology for GEHA, a medical and dental insurance provider.

She is a SEC qualified financial expert and is known as a board Cyber expert, receiving the Cybersecurity Oversight Certificate. She was a Commissioner for Colorado Governor Owens Commission on Science and Technology for nine years. She is a National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD) Leadership Fellow and faculty member.

She was recently recognized as one of NACD’s top 100 directors and Corporate Board Magazine recognized her as a “Top Director to Watch.” Ms. Vitale launched the Women Corporate Directors, Colorado Chapter and now serves on their national board of directors. She chaired the successful Colorado legislative resolution to encourage women on public boards. She is an author and frequent speaker on Cyber and board governance topics around the world.