Alumni & Friends
Women's Leadership Symposium

Our world needs principled leaders capable of tackling society's most complex and pressing problems, growing through curiosity, building and empowering strong teams, communicating across differences and standing up for the inclusive practices that drive results and innovation.
Join the trailblazers, the glass-ceiling breakers and those who support them at the Women's Leadership Symposium! Gain insights from the latest leadership experts, discuss new professional development strategies and techniques, and take advantage of networking opportunities.
Fisher proudly fosters a diverse, supportive and inclusive learning environment. All are welcome!
Thank you to those who attended the Women’s Leadership Symposium on March 24, 2023. Read a re-cap, and check out photos and highlights below. We look forward to gathering again at the annual event in 2024. Stay tuned for details as they are announced!
2023 Schedule Details
Creating Financial Independence
While money management skills are critical for everyone, longer lifespans, weaker earning power and bigger employment gaps (due to caring for young kids or aging parents) often make it more difficult for women than men to excel in the workplace and live fulfilling personal lives. Join us as we discuss how you can be financially empowered at every stage of your career and grow wealth in the process.
Featured Speakers




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Lisa Wesolek (EMBA ’19), Co-Founder, President and Chief Operating Officer
VELA Investment Management, LLCLisa Wesolek has held senior leadership positions across firm operations, sales, client service, marketing, product development, finance, mergers and acquisitions, brand initiatives, product solutions and data driven initiatives in the investment industry. She has worked with mutual funds, mutual fund complexes, mutual fund boards, institutional and retail investors inclusive of all investment type structures in her thirty-plus year career.
Lisa's experience includes senior leadership roles at BancOne Investment Advisors, J.P.Morgan Asset Management, Evergreen Investments (Wachovia Corporation), Wells Fargo Capital Management and Wells Fargo Funds Management Group, as well as Diamond Hill Capital Management. As the chief operating officer of Diamond Hill, Lisa drove the implementation of strategic initiatives while also leading the firm's operations, product, marketing, client service and sales capabilities. Lisa was a member of the executive leadership team and an officer of the public corporation (DHIL).
Lisa received an Executive MBA from The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business and a BS in finance from Franklin University. Lisa also has the CAP designation, Chartered Advisory in Philanthropy.
Lisa and her husband, Kurt, reside in Bexley, Ohio, and have two children.
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Huma Mohiuddin (BSBA ’01), Market President, BNY Mellon Wealth Management
Huma Mohiuddin is the market president for BNY Mellon Wealth Management in Pittsburgh. In this role, she oversees all wealth management teams including portfolio management, wealth planning, new client acquisition and private banking within the market. She is responsible for maintaining industry leading client satisfaction ratings, which entails a dedicated focus on the client experience. She also leads the market in supporting local communities through the scale and power of the firm’s brand and values.
Huma has more than 20 years of experience in the wealth management industry, serving in client advisory roles at JPMorgan Chase, on the equity research team for Northern Trust and as a client advisor for Morgan Stanley.
Huma received her bachelor’s degree in business administration from Fisher and an MBA from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. She serves on the boards of the Carnegie Library of Pittsburgh and the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra and is on the Shady Side Academy Alumni Council.
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Susan Clark (BS ’81, MBA ’83), Senior Lecturer of Finance, The Ohio State University Max M. Fisher College of Business
Susan Clark is a graduate of The Ohio State University, earning both a Bachelor of Science in Metallurgical Engineering and an MBA. After working in the consulting division of Arthur Andersen, Susan taught corporate finance, investments, money and banking, and senior seminar at Franklin University.
In 1999, Susan returned to Ohio State as an adjunct and in 2010 became a senior lecturer, teaching introduction to finance, investments and corporate finance. Susan is a certified master reviewer and peer evaluator for Quality Matters and a faculty partner for Cengage.
Susan was awarded the ENGIE-Axium Max M. Fisher College of Business Distinguished Teaching Fellow in 2019, the Max M. Fisher Faculty Eminence Award in 2015 and the Daniel Westerbeck Teaching Excellence Award in 2013. She resides in Dublin with her husband, Mike.
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Bernadette A. Minton, Professor of Finance and Arthur E. Shepard Endowed Professorship in Insurance, Chair of Department of Finance, The Ohio State University Max M. Fisher College of Business
Professor Bernadette A. Minton is chair of the Department of Finance, holds the Arthur E. Shepard Endowed Professor in Insurance at The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business and served as interim executive director of The Risk Institute. Professor Minton earned a PhD in economics from the University of Chicago.
Professor Minton’s research spans a variety of areas within corporate finance, with particular emphasis on risk management, corporate governance and banking. Her research has been published in top finance journals such as the Journal of Finance, Journal of Financial Economics and Review of Financial Studies.
As a leader in her area of scholarship, Professor Minton has been recognized for both her research and her teaching impact in the classroom. She is a recipient of Fisher's Pace Setters Faculty Research Award and Pace Setters Undergraduate Teaching Award and is a Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics Research Fellow.
Professor Minton is a managing editor of the Quarterly Journal of Finance and an associate editor of the Journal of Financial Services Research.
Developing Career Capital
Career capital is your unique collection of acquired knowledge, skills, relationships and experiences that can be leveraged for your professional advancement. Join us as we discuss how to most effectively invest in yourself to build your career capital and reach your professional goals.
Featured Speakers





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Elicia Azali (BSBA ’05), Enterprise Chief Marketing Officer, American Family Insurance Group
Elicia Azali is the chief marketing officer of the American Family enterprise. In this role, she leads the marketing and customer functions across the American Family operating companies.
Previously, Elicia served as the chief revenue officer for The General, where she led the company’s marketing, sales and communication departments, and her team was accountable for driving the company’s growth. She also served as the executive advisor for diversity and inclusion efforts.
Prior to joining The General, Elicia served in several executive roles at Nationwide, including vice president of channel marketing and strategic partnerships. She began her career at Proctor & Gamble where she held multiple brand management roles for the Charmin and Bounty brands.
Elicia earned her BSBA in marketing from The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business. She received the Pace Setters Award for her exemplary scholarship as an undergraduate student in 2005 and the Pace Setters Executive Award for her outstanding leadership and commitment to diversity, equity and inclusion as an alumna in 2021.
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Susan Oguche (BSBA ’07), Executive Vice President and Chief Communication Officer, Cleveland Cavaliers, Rock Entertainment Group and Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse
Susan Oguche is the executive vice president and chief communications officer of the Cleveland Cavaliers, Rock Entertainment Group and Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse. Her responsibilities include internal and external communications, basketball communications and public affairs.
Prior to joining the Cavaliers organization, Susan had nearly two decades of communications leadership experience, including her most recent role as communications director at Nike. Her experience also includes leadership roles at Procter & Gamble, Abbott, Home Chef and Sleep Number.
Susan received her BSBA from The Ohio State University Fisher College of Business in 2007. She and her husband Hanson have two daughters, Abigail and Grace.
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Eirini Schlosser (BSBA ’12), Chief Executive Officer and Founder, Dyania Health
Eirini Schlosser is the CEO of Dyania Health, a fast-growing technology company focused on applying clinical natural language processing to pre-screening concurrent and retrospective EMRs for use in patient trial enrollment or in synthetic studies and external control arms. Since founding the company in 2019, she has built a team of engineers, scientists and principal investigators from UCLA Health, Harvard, Regeneron, J&J, Amazon, Northwell Health, and Kite Pharma / Gilead.
A serial entrepreneur, she has spent the last decade building and leading data science and natural language processing applications.
In addition to professional certifications in machine learning from MIT and a master’s degree from London Business School, her prior experience includes working on a $60 billion deal value in technology, pharmaceutical and consumer transactions as a member of Morgan Stanley’s mergers and acquisitions team.
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Lori D. Kendall, Senior Lecturer of Management and Human Resources, Academic Director of Graduate Certificate in IT Business Strategy, Academic Director of Entrepreneurship Programming, The Ohio State University Max M. Fisher College of Business
Lori D. Kendall has over 30 years of experience as a serial entrepreneur and technology executive for venture-backed and publicly traded firms in B2B software, hardware and networking. She has held leadership responsibilities for new product development, portfolio management and cloud services.
At Fisher, Lori teaches graduate and undergraduate courses in entrepreneurship, leadership and professional development, experiential learning immersion and strategy and innovation. She was the 2021 Recipient of Fisher’s Daniel Westerbeck Graduate Teaching Excellence Award.
Formerly a Distinguished Fellow at the Weatherhead Fowler Center, she led researchers on behalf of the Goi Peace Foundation to show performative shifts in the evolution from shareholder models toward becoming positive impact firms.
She earned her PhD in management in building sustainable systems from Case Western Reserve University.
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Rikki Lee, Marketing Student
Rikki Lee is a third-year Fisher student who is studying marketing with double minors in professional writing and entrepreneurship and innovation. She is the recipient of a full-tuition scholarship and currently serves as the president of the Black Advertising & Strategic Communications Association and as the vice president of marketing and communications for the Undergraduate Society of Black Leaders.
Rikki is also a content creator and the chief executive officer of The Rikki Lee Agency, an all-in-one creative consulting solution to solopreneurs, permalancers and small businesses. Through her feel-good motivational content that spans YouTube, Instagram, TikTok and a five-star rated podcast, That Girl Radio, she has engaged a worldwide community of over 85,000 women with impressions exceeding 4 million in 2022 alone. Using her faith and passions for community and digital storytelling, her vision is to help women realize their full potential and begin taking up space.
Keynote: Leading with Impact
Whether you’re an early careerist, a newly promoted leader or venturing into the world of entrepreneurship, being an impactful leader who can affect change will set the framework for your success. Join us as we discuss leadership best practices, which will equip you with the tools to manage the complex challenges of the workplace and inspire others to act.
Featured Speakers

(BSBA '71)

(BSBA ’89)


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Paula Bennett (BSBA '71), Former President and Chief Executive Officer, J.Jill
Paula is a highly experienced CEO and independent board member from the retail industry with proven success at creating brand value and driving profitable growth across omni-channel platforms. As CEO of J.Jill from 2008 to 2018, Paula led the transformation of the company to an industry-leading brand and led its successful IPO (NYSE:JILL) in March 2017. Her passion for combining the art and science of business began as a merchant at Bloomingdale’s. This led to senior leadership positions at Tiffany & Co., Calvin Klein and Eileen Fisher, where she developed and leveraged her extensive experience in women’s apparel, jewelry and home decor. She served on the board of At Home (NYSE:HOME) through the company’s transition to private ownership in 2021.
Paula actively supports the advancement of women in business. She serves on the board of Women Business Collaborative; is a member of the Committee of 200, Women’s Forum of New York and Paradigm for Parity; and is a managing director at Golden Seeds Capital. She established the Women in Leadership Fund in 2017 to advance mentorship of female students at Fisher and support the growth of their leadership opportunities. In 2015, she established the William Davidson Undergraduate Scholarship at Fisher in recognition of the impact Professor Davidson has had on her life and career, and her commitment to inspire the next generation of leaders. The fund provides scholarship support to students specializing in marketing with an interest in multi-channel retail. Paula is an active member of the Dean’s Advisory Council and Fisher Leadership Initiative at Fisher. She received the college’s Pace Setter Executive Award in 2012 and the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2017.
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Melinda D. Whittington (BSBA ’89), President and Chief Executive Officer, La-Z-Boy Incorporated
Melinda Whittington is president and chief executive officer of La-Z-Boy Incorporated (NYSE:LZB), one of the world’s leading residential furniture producers and retailers, and serves on its board of directors. Prior to her appointment in 2021, she served for three years as chief financial officer for the company.
Prior to joining La-Z-Boy, Melinda was the chief financial officer for Allscripts Healthcare Solutions (NASDAQ:MDRX), a healthcare information technology solutions company, and was senior vice president, corporate controller and chief accounting officer for Kraft Foods Group, Inc. (now The Kraft Heinz Company) (NASDAQ:KHC), one of North America’s largest consumer packaged food and beverage companies.
From 1993 to 2014, Melinda held various finance roles of increasing responsibilities at The Procter and Gamble Company (NYSE:PG), including roles in Global Home Products, North America Home Care, Corporate Accounting, and Global Business Services. Her experiences included international assignments in Belgium and Costa Rica.
Melinda is a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council at Fisher and serves on the boards of the American Home Furnishings Alliance, Business Leaders for Michigan and the YMCA of Monroe, Michigan. She is a summa cum laude graduate of The Ohio State University, earning her Bachelor of Science in Business Administration. She is also a Certified Public Accountant.
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Cynthia W. Turner (MA ’95, PhD ’96), Assistant Dean and Chief Diversity Officer, The Ohio State University Max M. Fisher College of Business
Cynthia W. Turner serves on the leadership team at Fisher as the assistant dean and chief diversity officer and has become a widely sought-after facilitator and guest speaker on the topics of diversity, equity and inclusion.
As a faculty member in 2016, she developed the award-winning Project THRIVE program, a diversity initiative designed to increase representation within the undergraduate accounting and management information systems department. In 2018, she was honored with Ohio State’s Distinguished Diversity Enhancement Award for her success in doubling the diversity within the undergraduate program in two short years.
Since taking on the position as assistant dean and chief diversity officer at Fisher in 2019, Cynthia’s strategic efforts have helped secure over $2 million dollars in external funding for scholarships and DEI initiatives; facilitating the development of a formal partnership with the city of Columbus to support pre-collegiate programming for its underrepresented and first-generation high school students; developing programming to engage Fisher’s diverse alumni, including the Alumni of Color Network Weekend and the Women’s Leadership Symposium; and creating a new DEI course offering at Fisher.
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Amy Sheneman, Professor of Accounting and Management Information Systems, The Ohio State University Max M. Fisher College of Business
Amy Sheneman joined Fisher in 2017 after completing her PhD at Indiana University as an AICPA accounting doctoral scholar. She also holds master’s degrees in accounting and business from Grand Valley State University and Indiana University, respectively. She earned her BA in economics summa cum laude from DePauw University.
Amy’s research focuses on management control systems, risk measurement and disclosure, and accounting measurement issues. Her research has been published in The Accounting Review and Contemporary Accounting Research. In addition to presentations at academic institutions and conferences, she has presented her research at the International Accounting Standards Board.
Amy teaches audit principles and procedures in the undergraduate and honors programs at Fisher. She has been honored with the 2020 AAA Accounting Ethics Award for Best Innovation for Teaching and the 2018 EY Excellence in Undergraduate Accounting Teaching Award.
Prior to academia, Amy worked at Deloitte and EY and is a certified internal auditor and a certified six sigma green belt.
Thank you to our alumnae for their generous support!

(BSBA '71)

(BA '78, MBA '83)

(BSBA '84)
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Paula Bennett (BSBA '71), Former President and Chief Executive Officer, J.Jill
Paula is a highly experienced CEO and independent board member from the retail industry with proven success at creating brand value and driving profitable growth across omni-channel platforms. As CEO of J.Jill from 2008 to 2018, Paula led the transformation of the company to an industry-leading brand and led its successful IPO (NYSE:JILL) in March 2017. Her passion for combining the art and science of business began as a merchant at Bloomingdale’s. This led to senior leadership positions at Tiffany & Co., Calvin Klein and Eileen Fisher, where she developed and leveraged her extensive experience in women’s apparel, jewelry and home decor. She served on the board of At Home (NYSE:HOME) through the company’s transition to private ownership in 2021.
Paula actively supports the advancement of women in business. She serves on the board of Women Business Collaborative; is a member of the Committee of 200, Women’s Forum of New York and Paradigm for Parity; and is a managing director at Golden Seeds Capital. She established the Women in Leadership Fund in 2017 to advance mentorship of female students at Fisher and support the growth of their leadership opportunities. In 2015, she established the William Davidson Undergraduate Scholarship at Fisher in recognition of the impact Professor Davidson has had on her life and career, and her commitment to inspire the next generation of leaders. The fund provides scholarship support to students specializing in marketing with an interest in multi-channel retail. Paula is an active member of the Dean’s Advisory Council and Fisher Leadership Initiative at Fisher. She received the college’s Pace Setter Executive Award in 2012 and the Distinguished Alumni Award in 2017.
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Camille Gibson (BA '78, MBA '83), Chief Executive Officer, Sana Foods
Before embarking on her new adventure at Sana Foods by The Real Coconut Products Co. LLC, Camille was most recently the vice president of marketing at General Mills and business unit director for Cheerios, Wheaties, Nature Valley and Cascadian Farms. She was responsible for the growth and profitability of the $2.5B business unit, including vision and strategy development and marketing and new product innovation. During her career she led several businesses including Pillsbury, Green Giant, Yoplait, Nature Valley and Cheerios.
One of 10 children, Camille was born in London, England, and has lived in Vancouver, British Columbia, and Columbus, Ohio. She earned her bachelor's degree and an MBA from The Ohio State University and was the first woman selected to receive Fisher's Distinguished Leadership Alumni Award. In 2014, she was named one of the "100 Most Creative People in Business" by Fast Company, received Adweek's Brand Genius Award, and was recognized by Brand Innovators as one of the "Women to Watch."
Currently, Camille lives in Seattle and has two adult children.
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Joyce Mace (BSBA '84), Retired Partner, PwC
Joyce began her 36-year professional career in the Columbus office of Price Waterhouse and was admitted to the partnership of PwC in 1998 as a lead client service tax partner. During her PwC career, Joyce was selected for a tour of duty in the Washington National Tax Services office and held various client service and internal management leadership roles while working in the Detroit, Atlanta and Dallas offices.
After retiring in 2020, Joyce joined the Founders Group of the Fisher Leadership Initiative and became a liaison for United to Learn, a Dallas-based education nonprofit with a stated mission of changing lives by transforming the relationship between schools and community. She and her dog, Bella, are a registered therapy team and love to visit students and teachers at J.P. Starks Elementary School in Dallas.
Joyce earned her bachelor's degree in business administration from The Ohio State University in 1984. Joyce received the Excellence in Service Alumni Award in 2022.
Questions?
Please contact Ashley Papenbrock at papenbrock.4@osu.edu or 614-247-4760.
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