Challenge, Adversity & Triumph: Supporting Women, Trans, and Non-Binary Individuals Within the Workplace

Tara Marshall-Hill

With over 20 years of experience in legal services, B2B / B2C sales, consumer marketing and business development within corporate America, Tara Marshall-Hill (she/her) is also a serial entrepreneur who has never met a pain point, she didn’t want to solve. After closing her last business in 2018 and taking some time to pivot back into corporate, in Tara answered the wake-up call of “a neurological event, i.e. stroke” to get back to her true self and create impactful solutions to problems affecting historically marginalized groups in corporate spaces. Since then, she has launched or is in the process of launching a handful of important ventures focused on disrupting the status quo in the corporate arena when it comes to DEI initiatives and programming that too often miss the mark. The first season of her upcoming podcast, appropriately titled - At the Intersection™ will soon be available for you to binge on your favorite podcast streaming platform. Tara is also CEO and Inclusive Marketing and Brand Strategist for her consulting firm, MarsHill Consulting, Co-Founder and Lead Designer for ecommerce gender-inclusive fashion startup, Umoja Threads Apparel Company™, and Founder and CEO of Heads Up @ Work™ - a technology startup whose mission is to democratize DEI and the revolutionize the standards by which we hold corporate America accountable.

Tara currently serves on the Board of Directors of JCADA (Jewish Coalition Against Domestic Abuse), supporting the legal and advocacy departments. She is also the founding co-Chair of the Washington DC chapter of StartOut, an organization dedicated to driving the economic empowerment of the LGBTQ+ community through entrepreneurship. When she’s not trying to create spaces, solutions and systems for greater diversity, inclusivity, and equity, you can find Tara professionally speaking on those subjects, advocating for greater accessibility for disabled and neurodiverse professionals such as herself, or cuddled on the couch with her wife, their two children, and family pet, Asher.

Dr. Kryss Shane

Dr. Kryss Shane, LSW, LMSW (she/her) has been featured as America’s go-to Leading LGBT+ Expert in The New York Times, ABC News, Yahoo!, and CNN. She is a cast member of TLC's "I Am Jazz." Her writing has appeared in the Journal of Nonprofit Education and Leadership, Huffington Post, International Council of Professors of Educational Leadership, The New Social Worker Magazine, and many more.

She is the author of 3 books: "The Educator's Guide to LGBT+ Inclusion," "Creating an LGBT+ Inclusive Workplace: The Practical Resource Guide for Business Leaders," and "Creating an LGBT+ Inclusive University: A Practical Resource Guide for Faculty and Administrators."

For more: ThisIsKryss.com.

Christine Cariño (she- her/"siya")

Christine Cariño, Founder and Managing Partner, a consulting firm with a mission to bring back the human at the center of corporate businesses. Christine has designed and facilitated workshops both within the U.S and internationally. Her coaching practice is centered in helping underrepresented leaders and executives reach their next level of success through healing and authenticity so they can create impact on their own terms. Prior to her work, she spent over eight years in Recruitment and Business development where she coached professionals throughout the hiring process and advised business leaders in different industries on staffing and retention strategies best fit within their organizational needs. She is also a queer nonbinary immigrant of Filipino heritage and believes that in order to create a thriving, loving and inclusive world, we must start the work within. To heal, love and include all parts of who we are creates the ripple of change we want to see in our family, relationships, communities and society.

Niiya “NIILEE” Grant

Niiya Grant is a transgender & queer experience educator, motivational speaker, and liberator. As a transwoman of color herself, she has cultivated spaces for engaging conversations surrounding the intersectionalities of being black, a woman, and trans in today’s society. To hold space to uncover unconscious cultural assumptions about gender and how they impact the understanding of the trans community is to orchestrate a haven of vulnerability in regards to lived experiences. It is to exude patience, grace, and compassion. This is what Niiya does best. She is a creative and critical thinker, an independent and collaborative educator, and an organized and meticulous manager – she knows effective communication. Currently, she is a Commercial Real Estate Property Manager managing commercial properties throughout Metro-Atlanta and Columbus, Ga. In 2020, Grant established her own consulting business, JeSuisNiiLee Consulting, that assists businesses and corporations of policies and procedures that encompass trans, gender non-conforming, and queer individuals in the workplace. JeSuisNiiLee Consulting also assists with educating leadership and personnel on appropriate language surrounding gender diversity and inclusion as well as highlights the importance of inclusive workplace cultures. Grant has been on several panels discussing topics from the trans experience to the importance of trans visibility in the workplace. She was recently a guest speaker on the Marketplace Morning Report, a program that reaches more than 7 million people on public radio stations nationwide. Grant attended Georgia State University and studied Psychology with a focus in Clinical Mental Health. When not orchestrating, Niiya enjoys all things creative arts, the outdoors, traveling, and photography. Niiya thoroughly enjoys public speaking and connecting with new

Jen Bailin

Jen Bailin is the Chief Revenue Officer at SAP, Customer Experience and has spent more than 20 years building and leading high-performing sales and technical teams. Jen has held senior executive roles at leading cloud companies, including Microsoft, Salesforce, Amazon Web Services and Cisco. Most recently at AWS, she oversaw a global sales and architect team focused on cloud migration sales. At Salesforce, she focused on delivering connected experiences for customers through Commerce, Service, Marketing, Sales, and CPQ cloud technologies. During her 16-year tenure at Microsoft, Jen drove sales of hundreds of on-premise to cloud customer transformations. An effective and proven leader, Jen is focused on building high-performing global teams that help drive significant business outcomes for SAP customers. She is dedicated to SAP’s mission of helping the world run better and improving people’s lives.

Vera Blossom

Vera Blossom (she/they) is a writer, editor, and producer. They make work about the complex intersections of race, gender, fashion, beauty, magic, and pop culture. They like to make rich pieces of audio storytelling in collaboration with diverse artists, writers, and storytellers of all kinds.