As an HR Visionary, Samm has spent the last decade passionately pursuing the missing elements for employee engagement within organizations. 

This path led her to studies in Classical Oriental Medicine, and now as a certified Medical Qigong Therapist (pronounced “chee-gong”), Samm brings both Western and Eastern perspectives on wellness into workplaces to heal burnout.  She’s discovered that energetic health is key to building thriving workplaces. 

Samm founded a workplace wellness center called the HRart Center (pronounced “heart”). Also the author of four books, her most recent book Workplace Healers dives into her latest work.

LaFern Batie, MBA works with leaders to help them maximize their potential through effective leadership, developing compelling strategies, excellent execution and creating the exceptional experience. As CEO of The Batie Group, a boutique management consulting firm, LaFern is committed to creating practical, high-impact organizational solutions.

With a strong corporate and civic leadership track record, the value LaFern provides to leaders – including small business, nonprofit and Fortune 500 executives – helps them deliver what they promise to their customers through people, processes, products and services. Clients value the results her business strategy, leadership consulting, corporate training and professional speaking competencies help them achieve. With accounting, operations and human resources experience, she is a visionary leader with high business acumen and a commitment to excellence.

In addition to extensive professional coach training, LaFern is a published author and professional speaker. She earned a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting from Salisbury University, Master of Business Administration degree from the University of Maryland and a leadership certificate from Harvard University. She holds the SHRM-Senior Certified Professional (SCP) and Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR) designations.

Janine Driver is the CEO of the Body Language Institute, the NY Times Best-Selling author of YOU SAY MORE THAN YOU THINK and top business-seller YOU CAN’T LIE TO ME, an international trainer, an award-winning keynote speaker, and a retired ATF Investigator.

Janine spent over 16 years as a federal law enforcement officer within the Department of Justice and now shares her cunning people-reading skills with thousands who work in the field of executive leadership, law enforcement , finance, law, human resources and sales; as well as the ATF, FBI, CIA, and  DIA.

Janine attained rank #1 in the “Inspiration” category in the World’s Top 30 Body Language Professionals for 2017. In 2015, Janine was named one of the top twenty educational trendsetters in the meetings industry by Meetings Today magazine. Janine is a popular media guest on NBC’s TODAY Show, Harry Connick Jr’s show called HARRY, Steve Harvey Show, CNN Morning Show, and more. She has been quoted in publications, such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, Cosmopolitan and Psychology Today.

Janine’s corporate clients include companies such as Proctor & Gamble, Salesforce, ABA, Lockheed Martin, ADP, KRONOS, Charles Schwab, Prudential, Remax, and YPO.

FUN FACT: In the mid 90s while Janine worked as a Public Information Officer for ATF in NYC, in the World Trade Center, she did stand up comedy at night. She even opened for Robin Williams, Chris Rock, and Ray Romano at Stand Up New York Comedy Club.

As Owner of Evolve Global, she works primarily with Senior Leaders, High Potentials and Teams on: Leadership Development & Team Building. Heather is a Professional Member of the National Speakers Association and serves
on the Board of Directors as President-Elect for the Florida Speakers Association.

Using her expertise in behavioral analysis and executive alignment, Heather helps leaders grow their influence by developing others. As a professional speaker, she has mastered a practical and entertaining delivery methodology –
all of her program material is designed to inspire and motivate change. She gives each audience practical and actionable steps to apply each concept that she shares.

Heather’s guiding principle is to increase employee engagement and bottom line results through leadership development. She works with her clients to build their self-leadership; anticipate and embrace change; and to understand and adapt their behavioral style to improve communications and influence others to increase results.

Heather is also a Certified Speaking Professional (CSP). The CSP designation is the highest earned specification that can be achieved by a member of the National Speakers Association or Global Speakers Federation Member
Associations.

Angelina Darrisaw Cheeks is a business and career coach, who firmly believes that career advancement is a social justice issue. As the founder and CEO of C-Suite Coach, a career-coaching platform that provides accessible professional development resources to diverse working professionals, Angelina collaborates with employers to create business solutions that empower and educate teams, as well as retain and engage diverse employees. She also facilitates transformative career workshops and experiences that have reached over 6,000 working and aspiring
professionals in person, through outlets like outlets including: TEDx, Brown University, West Point, Bank of America, the 2016 Democratic National Convention, WICT, Ebony Magazine’s WomenUp Series, and The NYC BAR Association. She has also appeared as a career expert on Univision and Fox 5.

A 1st prize winner of Uber’s NYC Pitch Competition, C-Suite Coach has a growing global client footprint with companies like BLKTechCLT, TIAA, and individual entrepreneurs and across the United States, Israel, Australia, Canada, and more. C-Suite Coach has been featured in
numerous media outlets, including Business Insider, Fast Company, Forbes, Black Enterprise, Thrive Global, Essence, and career sites such as Levo.com, Recruiter.com and Monster.com. Angelina covered Google’s Thrive magazine, highlighting women business owners who
partner with Google, and services small businesses as a Google Digital Coach. She joins Google in bridging the digital divide, by offering free coaching and resources to over 2500 NY-based small businesses. She’s helped these businesses strategically revamp their digital
outreach strategies through over 70 in-person programs. C-Suite Coach now runs the program, nationally, supporting coaches for 8 major markets in this same work. She has also mentored entrepreneurs through General Assembly’s inaugural mentoring program and teaches related
content as an adjunct professor at New York University. These efforts helped her earn “Program of The Year” by Black Googlers and Walker’s Legacy Power25 award in 2017.

Prior to C-Suite Coach, Angelina was the Senior Manager of Digital Business Development at Viacom, developing strategic business partnerships with social media platforms like Twitter, Snapchat, Tumblr and more. She did similar digital strategy work at ESPN. As a My Black is Beautiful and Pantene brand ambassador, Angelina was featured in national ads in Oprah, Ebony and Essence magazines and profiled in Buzzfeed, Huffington Post and on BET. She has also appeared in ad campaigns for 23andMe, Hairfinity and more.

Angelina holds an M.A. in Management from Wake Forest University, a Certificate of Coaching from New York University and a B.A. in Political Science from Davidson College. Angelina serves on the board of Youth Communication and the steering committee for the Alvin Ailey’s Young Patrons Circle and was a founding member of the Wake Forest School of Business’ Development Council. She is a two-time Top 20 finalist for Miss New York USA, a marathoner, and a proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated.

Dr. Brené Brown is a research professor at the University of Houston where she holds the Huffington Foundation – Brené Brown Endowed Chair at The Graduate College of Social Work.

She has spent the past two decades studying courage, vulnerability, shame, and empathy and is the author of five #1 New York Times bestsellers: The Gifts of Imperfection, Daring Greatly, Rising Strong, Braving the Wilderness, and her latest book, Dare to Lead, which is the culmination of a seven-year study on courage and leadership.

Brené’s TED talk – The Power of Vulnerability – is one of the top five most viewed TED talks in the world with over 35 million views.  She is also the first researcher to have a filmed talk on Netflix.  The Call to Courage special debuted on the streaming service on April 19, 2019.

Brené lives in Houston, Texas, with her husband, Steve.  They have two children, Ellen and Charlie.