Leadership Tips for Women: A Conversation with Candice C. Jones, Author and President & CEO, Public Welfare Foundation
Join Candice C. Jones, author and President & CEO of the Public Welfare Foundation, as she delves into invaluable leadership insights and practical tips tailored to empower women in their professional journeys. From navigating workplace dynamics to harnessing personal strengths, we'll explore strategies for fostering confidence and resilience. Discover how to overcome obstacles, shatter glass ceilings, and carve out your path to success with grace and determination. Join us for an inspiring dialogue that celebrates the unique leadership potential of women and equips them with the tools to thrive in any organizational landscape.
Candice C Jones
Candice joined the Public Welfare Foundation in Washington, DC, as its President and CEO in 2017. Previously, she served as Senior Advisor at Chicago CRED, an organization that focuses on gun violence in Chicago. In that role, she secured greater investments for violence intervention programs as an alternative to the criminal justice system. Prior to her work with Chicago CRED, she served as Director of the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice, a cabinet-level state agency where she supervised operations, programming, budget matters, and communications. During her tenure, she pushed significant reforms that reduced the number of youth in state custody. She also served as a White House Fellow, managing a portfolio within the U.S. Department of Education that included developing education strategies for correctional institutions and shepherding a plan to reinstate federal Pell grants for youth and adults in custody. Earlier in her career, Candice served as a program officer with the MacArthur Foundation, where she managed a grant portfolio focused on decreasing racial and ethnic disparities in the juvenile justice system and on improving the quality of defense for indigent youth. She currently serves on the board of Cabrini Green Legal Aid, a Chicago-based civil legal service organization. Candice received her J.D. from New York University School of Law and her B.A. from Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri.
Power Your Job Search on PowerToFly
Looking for new opportunities? PowerToFly is here to help! If you want to find great open roles with companies that are looking to hire underrepresented talent, then join PowerToFly’s Amy Beaver as she shares top tips and tricks to navigate our platform. We’ll show you how to filter and navigate the companies looking for talent like yourself. Questions are welcome!
Amy Beaver (She/Her)
Amy Beaver is the Senior Director of New Business Development at PowerToFly. Here she heads up a growth and new logo acquisition team of account executives aimed to serve companies looking for tools to put diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging at the forefront of their candidate and employee experiences. Amy completed her MBA at West Chester University. Through her professional career, Amy has led sales teams in the digital marketing, business intelligence, and DEIB solutions spaces with a focus on SaaS platforms.
Amy balances her professional pursuits with an active family life. She and her wife, Christine, are celebrating 9 years of marriage. They have a wonderful son, Greyson, who is 8 years old. Amy, who would be a self-described work-aholic if not for her family, has found strategies to be fully present both at home and at work.
As a small side project, Amy and Christine share a small baking business, called The Baking Beavers. Their son has appointed himself the official taste tester, so it is a true family business!
How to Take Control of Your Career, Nix Imposter Syndrome & Land a New Job You'll Love
Join Career Strategist and Coach to Corporate High-Achievers Adunola Adeshola for a special talk that will uncover the simple steps you can take to combat your imposter syndrome so you can boost your confidence & elevate your career. We'll discover how imposter syndrome and feeling “lucky” just to be here often holds us back and how to change that perspective so that you show up confidently for the opportunities you want.
Adunola Adeshola (She/Her)
Adunola Adeshola is a career strategist who helps high-achieving corporate professionals secure new jobs they love at companies they love. She’s also a Forbes contributor where her column has been read over three million times and her expertise has been featured in The New York Times, Fast Company, Bloomberg and other publications. Her clients in dozens of industries have landed job offers at top companies such as Google, LinkedIn, Spotify, Vogue, Tiffany & Co. and other companies they love.
Building Inclusive Tech Communities: Strategies for Success
In this fireside chat, join three leaders from Elastic as they discuss technology and innovation, global perspectives and work-life balance. Karen, with her extensive experience in DEI leadership and community engagement, will share her perspectives on fostering inclusive environments both within organizations and broader communities. Jas, a seasoned global team leader specializing in engineering efficacy and diversity, will provide valuable insights into building diverse teams and driving cultural change within technology organizations. Together with moderator Courtney, a Sr. Manager, Engineering Productivity with over fifteen years of experience across multiple industries, they will discuss strategies for overcoming challenges, promoting diversity in STEM careers, and creating environments where all individuals can thrive.
Jas Panaich (She/Her)
Jas has led global teams for nearly a decade where she specialises in producing transformative results in efficacy, diversity and inclusion for engineering. Her responsibilities focus on delivering availability, reliability and resilience in live service platforms and products. She brings in a product and customer focused insight to overcoming technical challenges and building solutions that drive technology and culture changes.
Uniquely, Jas brings a range of experience and insights from a broad range of industries, ranging from Cloud to publishing multiple globally successful AAA Video Games. She has coordinated and led multiple cross-functional gatherings within her industries, to produce collaboration across competitors for delivering aligned results to technology solutions for common problems.
Nominated for the Trailblazer Award at the Diversity in Tech Award 2023, Jas is recognised for tirelessly investing in improving access to STEM careers for both engineers and engineering leaders.
Having conquered the challenges she faced in her career, Jas is devoted to sharing her methods, learnings and results. She has consistently found that investing in growing diverse teams are not only more successful, but also produce a higher enrichment and quality of product that is delivered. She takes a multi-target approach to guarantee positive change in her organisation, ranging from building inclusive hiring practices to retaining and growing top talent.
Karen R. Penn, JD (she/her)
Karen leads diversity, equity & inclusion and Elastic Cares, Elastic’s philanthropic goodness program.
Karen is a former civil rights attorney for the U.S. Department of Justice, who was also in-house employment counsel in the private sector before leaning into all things people and culture related. Her more than 20 years of leadership experience encompasses a cross-section of companies and industries ranging from small tech startups to global aerospace enterprises, to US federal government agencies, and outsourced strategic human resources consulting. She has either led the people function, or served as a member of senior leadership with responsibility for key functions like DEI recruiting, EEO & Affirmative Action, and ethics & compliance.
Karen served on the Board of Directors for the Girl Scout Council of the Nation’s Capital for more than 10 years, co-chaired the Women’s Advisory Board and currently sits on the Nominating Committee.
She is co-administrator and Team Lead for Arlington Neighbors Welcoming Afghans, the volunteer grassroots community effort launched in 2021 to aid resettlement efforts of Afghan refugees in the Washington, DC metro area.
She also serves as the volunteer driver coordinator for the Arlington (Va) chapter of Food For Neighbors, a non-profit organization that sources and delivers more than 2000 pounds (907 kg) of individual meals and snack items 5 times per school year to local middle and high school food pantries to distribute during times when students might otherwise go hungry.
Karen holds a Bachelor of Arts in government from the University of Virginia and a Juris Doctor from The George Washington University Law School.
Courtney (CJ) Wilburn (she/her)
Courtney has been in the industry for over 15 years, having worked in tech via media, academia, and medicine before arriving at Elastic in 2020. Courtney's journey began in her hometown of Memphis, Tennessee, by hardware hacking on personal computers and lurking on Prince message boards. She loves finding unusual and elegant ways to solve problems (both human and technical alike), building tools, developing workflows, and building infrastructure almost as much as she enjoys finding ways to keep activists safe organizing online. When she’s away from her desk, she can be found running, hiking, or biking around Philadelphia, cooking, lifting weights, gardening, knitting, building keyboards, or singing karaoke duets with her wife.
Careers Beyond 40: Adapting To The Job Market With Complete Confidence
As we progress in our careers, reaching the age of 40 can bring about a sense of uncertainty when it comes to navigating the job market, especially if we want to make a change. It's essential to adapt with confidence to ensure continued success and to support one another in making it happen. Our network is a crucial aspect of navigating the job market beyond 40. Any kind of relationship has the power to open doors to new opportunities, boost our confidence, show us viable career paths to consider, and offer insightful advice from a woman’s perspective. When seeking new career opportunities, transitioning, or pivoting, it is essential to have confidence in your decisions, resilience, assertiveness, abilities, and expertise. With confidence, we can adapt and navigate the job market successfully and continue to thrive in our careers.
Kelly Kugler (She/Her)
Kelly is a career manager, relocation strategist, and global talent acquisition leader. She is the founder of Allora Collective, a team of coaches who guide people through their job search, career growth and transitions, and relocations. After developing scalable talent programs for Booking.com, the NFL, and General Assembly, Kelly built Allora Collective. She works with businesses to acquire talent, improve their hiring programs, facilitate workshops and design coaching packages for their employees. Connect with Kelly on LinkedIn, follow @alloracollective on Instagram, and book a free session at AlloraCollective.com.
Chez Jennings (She/Her)
Chez helps people develop their careers. She is passionate about lowering job seekers’ barriers to breaking into tech and accelerating their career growth. Her agency and recruiting expertise in tech spans across the US and Canada. Chez is a recruiter turned founder. As a coach, she manages careers leveraging her experience working across tech for Reddit and Lever, and as the founder of Gaze, she strengthens the voice of her community. Connect with Chez on LinkedIn, follow @GAZE on Instagram, and book a free session at AlloraCollective.com.
Bedilia Ramirez (She/Her)
Bedilia empowers first-generation professionals by designing careers that align with their values. This includes helping job seekers become stronger networkers and storytellers. Her experience includes providing recruiting and career services in higher education, tech, and workforce development programs. She currently coaches at Skillcrush, an online coding and design school. She also recruits diverse college students for Management Leadership for Tomorrow (MLT). Connect and follow Bedilia on LinkedIn.
