Texas Women’s Foundation (TXWF)
held its 42nd annual Leadership Forum and Awards Celebration
(LFAC), presented by AT&T, on April 29. The Foundation honored five Maura Women Helping Women recipients and two Young
Leader Award recipients who have made positive impacts in
the lives of women and girls. The keynote conversation featured Adriana
Gascoigne, author of Tech Boss Lady and founder
and CEO of Girls in Tech, interviewed by AT&T’s Senior Vice
President of Engineering and Operations Marachel Knight.
After the compelling talk, the
honorees and TXWF leaders and supporters participated in leadership forums with
event attendees. LFAC netted $475,000 to further the mission of Texas Women’s
Foundation.
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| Co-Chairs Hattie Hill and Jana Etheridge |
Co-chairs Jana Etheridge, senior
vice president, chief of staff & customer office, Financial Services,
Capital One, and Hattie Hill, president and CEO of T.D.
Jakes Foundation, welcomed everyone and discussed how difficult the pandemic
has been on women, particularly working moms who have had to balance work,
school, child care and family duties – if they had a job where they could work
from home.
Brenda Jackson, Leadership Awards Selection Committee co-chair,
gave a history of the leadership awards.
A. Shonn Brown, Chair of the
Texas Women’s Foundation’s Board, introduced
three of the award recipients.
· Maura Award Recipient Trisha
Cunningham is leading in calm and in crisis as the president and CEO
of North Texas Food Bank by leading a staff of 180 that helped serve 97 million
meals in 2020.
· Rani Puranik, Maura Award recipient, is an
intrapreneur and global change agent as co-owner and Global CFO of
Houston-based Worldwide Oilfield Machine and leading supporter of an Indian
school.
· Young Leader Award
Recipient Kim Roxie is an entrepreneur and catalyst for women
of color as founder and CEO of LAMIK
Beauty that caters to multicultural women.
Co-chair Hattie Hill introduced
the two award recipients:
· Maura Award Recipient Judy
Treviño is paying it forward as executive director of CCVI Ministries,
an international nonprofit organization that is transforming the lives of
people and the community.
· Cheryl Polote Williamson, Maura Award recipient, is
helping people find their power through their purpose as founder of Soul Reborn
and Cheryl Polote Williamson LLC.
Co-chair Jana Etheridge
introduced two award recipients:
· Young Leader Award
Recipient Diana Mao is transforming women from victimized to
victorious as the president of Nomi Network whose mission is to eradicate human
trafficking.
· Jin-Ya Huang, Maura Award recipient, invests
in women as the founder of Break Bread, Break Borders that empowers
refugee women economically through the storytelling of cooking, food and
culture.
Jennifer Biry, chief financial officer of
AT&T’s Warner Media business and presenting sponsor, introduced the
keynote speaker, Adriana Gascoigne and Marachel Knight.
Marachel Knight moderated
the discussion with Adriana Gascoigne and asked her questions about her life,
career and advice. Gascoigne, who has often been the only female and woman of
color at many start-up companies gave the following advice:
· Leadership starts at the top.
· Resiliency is an important quality in starting a
business.
· Find your passion and purpose.
· Find the right partners and the
right funding sources.
· Don’t be afraid to take risks.
In addition to the video recordings,
Texas Women’s Foundation launches Gender Matters™, a podcast series
sponsored by Kimberly-Clark Corp. that features in-depth interviews with each
award recipient with Kimberly-Clark Corp. executives and TXWF CEO Roslyn Dawson
Thompson. More information can be found at txwfleadership.org.
