Michele Shapiro

Michele Shapiro is the Director of Business and Partnerships at AHRC NYC in their Employment and Business Services Unit. She has over 35 years of experience in the field of vocational services for individuals with developmental disabilities. She assists in developing new and creative initiatives to help individuals learn competitive marketable skills and diversify employment opportunities. She is directly involved in creating new business partnerships and with program operations. She has a BA in Psychology from the University of Michigan and a Masters in Social Work from New York University.

Leanna Lee is a future of work and disability writer-journalist who specializes in small business, DEAI, and mental health content. A disabled writer, she advocates for work and health equity, remote work, and workplace accessibility for both freelancers and full-timers. Lee is Co-Chair of the American Society for Journalists and Authors’ (ASJA) DEAI Taskforce. In 2023, she created The Chronic Worker/Chronically Self Employed, a blog and newsletter by and for disabled workers and their employers. Lee is also the co-founder of Bettermental, a mental health podcast for small business owners which she hosts with speaker and corporate wellness specialist, Mike Veny.

Before founding Skillcrush over ten years ago, Adda ran a web design and development company that built sites for media clients such as The New York Times, ProPublica, the Manhattan Neighborhood Network and MTV. She has been named one of the "20 Women to Watch in Media'' by the Columbia Journalism Review, one of the "30 Most Important Women in Tech" by Business Insider, and has been featured on the BBC, PBS, Fast Company, and Mashable. And she was appointed by former Mayor Bill DeBlasio to the New York City Workforce Development board. Adda is a graduate of Yale University and calls NYC home. When not growing or teaching at Skillcrush, she enjoys exploring her home borough of Queens and hanging out with her husband and two sons.

A native of Brooklyn, NY, Ayana is a proud first-generation American, strategist, and serial entrepreneur who learned how to make nothing into something from an early age. She used her English degree from Dartmouth College to launch her career at Booz Allen Hamilton where she fiercely compelled stakeholders and specialized talent alike. Most recently at Google, Ayana drove go-to-market strategies for cloud technologies and is now the Chief Product Officer of publishing and art house, Bond & Grace. As founder of her launch studio Florâcity, Ayana helps talented people live lives they’ve only imagined. Through it all, she keeps contributing to others at the center of her leadership and personal mission–releasing potential, encouraging excellence, and sharing in continuous learning. When Ayana isn’t mentoring high school students or bringing novel products to market, you can find her running home for a quick fix of NYC, planning her next travel adventure, or bravely altering a recipe. Connect with Ayana to share notes on emerging technologies and trends to watch today.

Zane is championing a revolution in marketing from persuasion to instinct. Founder of Triggers Brand Consulting, Zane was the first to take behavioral science theory and apply it to solving some of the toughest Fortune 500 business challenges. This resulted in client growth rates that doubled those produced by the top global management consulting firms.

From the “Real Food” strategy that turned McDonald’s around, to “Stop Hunger from Stopping You,” the Snickers strategy that produced the record-breaking Betty White ad campaign, Zane’s brand reinventions are legendary. Many brand positionings and symbols we take for granted today—from the purity and snow-capped mountains of Aquafina water to Colgate Total’s “Whole Mouth Health” and multi-colored swoosh — came from Zane’s Triggers work. And today, she is dedicated to effecting societal change by applying her proprietary methodology to vexing social issues.

Zane spent more than three decades studying the source of instinctive brand behavior –the moment when consumers reach for their “go-to” brand on autopilot. Her work uncovering the roots of instinctive brand preference for Coke and Pepsi led to the discovery that deep-seated biases like prejudice, climate change denial, and vaccine resistance work much the way that brand preference works in the brain. With that epiphany, she is tackling racism, antisemitism, and climate change denial by addressing the root causes of bias in each instance.

Her TEDx talk, The Hidden Link Between Success and the Subconscious, upended the marketing industry, leading to a book deal revealing how Zane’s counter-intuitive approach creates preference at the subconscious level. The Instinct Advantage will hit bookshelves in 2024: Hachette calls it a “BIG IDEA” book and the most important construct since Malcolm Gladwell’s “The Tipping Point” because it explains how the world works. In the publisher’s words, “Once you understand the construct, you can’t unsee it.”

A Procter & Gamble, Johnson & Johnson, and Bain Capital alum, Leslie is a powerful orator and passionate advocate for shaping human choices at the instinctive level. Her work has been featured in the Harvard Business Review, World Economic Forum, Scientific American, NASDAQ, Ad Age, and more. Her seminal article, Cracking the Code on Brand Growth, was published to much fanfare in Knowledge@Wharton. In 2021, she coined the term “Covidstasis” and predicted the lingering effects of the pandemic from hybrid work to the current recession. Her latest white paper, “Why Brand Growth Depends on Building Your Brand Connectome – The Science of Do-Good Associations in the Subconscious,” will be published and presented at the American Marketing Association 2023 Academic Conference.

Zane received her MBA from Harvard Business School, her BA from Yale University, and serves on the board of El Centro Hispano. She is married with two grown sons.