Community & Guest List
Natalie Madeira Cofield is the Founder and CEO of Walker’s Legacy, a digital platform for professional entrepreneurial multicultural women. Cofield founded Walker’s Legacy in 2009, with the mission to enhance leadership, create networking, learning opportunities, and bring exposure to emerging trends in business for aspiring professional women of color. Walker’s Legacy celebrated its 10-Year Anniversary this year of empowering women of color in business.
Nancy Sajjadi is the Founder of Life Quality by Design, LLC a business-to-business venture that helps organizations address issues of employee absenteeism, disengagement and rising health care costs. She is a Certified Corporate Wellness Specialist who works with leaders to help employees at all levels identify barriers to their personal well-being and inspires them to a higher level of commitment to sustain changes to improve their quality of life by applying an engineering approach known as "quality by design". She is a well-being enthusiast who has used her Master's degree in Genetic Engineering and extensive experience with a multitude of organizations and teams at all levels, to develop transformative programs and services that foster shared responsibility for achieving greater work-life alignment and encouraging its mutual benefits for the employees and the organizations that employ them.
Nicole is a certified nutrition and wellness coach and owner of Dark Horse Nutrition LLC. Nicole has a passion to help individuals struggling with emotional eating to create healthier habits and alternatives to food. Since Nicole has struggled with emotional eating and needing to lose 50lbs herself just a short few years ago, Nicole can not only empathize with her clients' struggles, but has the education and knowledge she gained through her own journey to help clients lose weight and keep it off while still enjoying the foods they love!
Nicole Maaguo is the Founder & CEO of Cultivate Ink, LLC a boutique tech firm that helps organizations overcome technology and customer churn challenges to reach new levels of success. Cultivate Ink accomplishes this by elevating strategic priorities and goal setting to help customers align investment with desired outcomes. Over the course of her career, Nicole has served non-profits, associations, software start-ups, and Fortune 100 companies. Nicole is also the creator of #ProjectBox, a subscription box of curated professional development for aspiring leaders. In her spare time, Nicole advances the customer success and women in tech movements as the Co-President of PulseLocal DC and as a contributor for MsTech.
Naomi James is a mental performance consultant who runs Naomi James Performance Consulting. As a former athlete, Naomi went through her own hurdles that lead her to study sport and performance psychology. The mental skills she implements are life skills are are applicable across contexts for business people, performers, athletes and high-achievers alike.
Natalie Ruiz is the CEO of AnswerConnect, which is a global company that employs all of its staff remotely. Her company helps small and mid-sized businesses by ensuring they will never miss another call and helps them take their business anywhere. She's an award-winning executive, a published writer, a mentor, and is passionate about making the workplace a more inclusive place for women and other marginalized groups.
Niki Montgomery is a savvy entrepreneur with an eye for innovative and classic business models. The notion that one can create products, opportunities, and experiences for others in exchange for capital has always been inspiring. Her entrepreneurial portfolio includes a myriad of businesses - consulting, real estate, e-commerce, and a brick and mortar. Despite a seemingly innate acumen for free enterprise, Niki earned a certificate in Women’s Entrepreneurship from Cornell University. Through workshops and events like Business Over Brunch, speaking engagements, and other outlets, Niki has shared her knowledge and experiences with many aspiring and current business owners.
Dr. Nicole Rochester is a physician, former caregiver to her late father, and the CEO of Your GPS Doc, LLC. She obtained her undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University, attended the University of Maryland School of Medicine, and completed her residency training in Washington, DC. After practicing medicine for almost 20 years, she left a rewarding career in clinical and academic medicine to follow what she believes is her life's calling.
CEO and Co-founder of GTMPlus (gtm-plus.com) - a software development company that provides IT outsourcing, team extension, customer, and technical support services for businesses that want to work with broad-minded people who understand customer problems and provide excellent solutions. Public speaker, Co-Founder of Startup School University Edition, the get-things-done person with a passion for diversity and leveraging technology to make life digitally better.
Nataliya Kalava is a finance professional with approximately ten years of professional experience in financial services industry including: business valuation, public accounting, and financial planning and analysis (FP&A). Nataliya is the founder and owner of Araliya Valuation Consulting, AVC - a business valuation consulting firm. Nataliya performs valuation analyses for both individuals and corporate entities including for M&A, gift and estate tax planning purposes, financial reporting, transaction support and litigation. Prior to AVC, Nataliya worked at Equinix Inc., Humana Inc., BDO LLP, Sigma Valuation Consulting Inc. and PwC. Nataliya earned a Master of Science Degree in Finance from the University of Tampa and a Bachelor of Science in International Business and Management.
