The Global Connections for Women Foundation launch the GC4W Entrepreneurship Certificate Program to develop and train the next generation of entrepreneurs on ways to scale their business ventures and improve their leadership skills. 16 Female entrepreneurs were accepted into the first immersive program.
We are thrilled to have the support of our esteemed faculty, who represent a variety of leading business professionals and industry experts.
Purpose & Aim of the GC4W Entrepreneurship Certificate Program:
- To invest in a global network of female entrepreneurs.
- To assist entrepreneurs by providing development training to scale their business.
- To develop their entrepreneurial skills and techniques to improve their business success.
- To connect entrepreneurs to successful business leaders and investors.
Are you interested in applying to the GC4W Entrepreneurship Certificate Program? Submit your application now for Cohort 2
Meet the brilliant GC4W Faculty:
Lilian Ajayi-Ore is the Founder & CEO of the Global Connections for Women Foundation. Lilian is an award-winning Digital Marketing Strategist and Big Data Analytics executive with over 16 years of relevant industry expertise helping brands and organizations to identify key market trends, implement a winning marketing strategy, gain market intelligence, and explore new business opportunities. Has been also University Faculty at New York University SPS teaching Digital Marketing, Social Media, and Web Analytics for the past 5 years. Rated by LinkedIn as Top 25 Marketing Professionals in Academia, and nominated by NYU Students for the Teaching Excellence Award.
Lilian is a Doctoral Candidate/Researcher at the University of Pennsylvania, Graduate School of Education. Lilian is a Harvard Graduate and holds a Master’s in Education from the University of Pennsylvania, GSE. An award-winning Humanitarian, Leadership Ambassador, an International Speaker and a media writer for publications and online news sites including GC4Women.org, The Huffington Post, Buzzfeed, and Diplomatic Courier. Lilian has been featured in Forbes, Harvard Business Publishing to name a few
Randall Clark is a corporate and securities associate at Gunderson Dettmer. Randall specializes in the representation of emerging growth companies throughout their lifecycles. Randall is broadly experienced with corporate formation and governance matters, venture capital financing transactions, and a variety of M&A transaction structures.
Randall represents a wide variety of technology companies from consumer internet, software, telecommunications, and entertainment technology industries, as well as a number of leading venture capital firms. He has a J.D. from Harvard Law School, graduated magna cum laude from the University of Texas at Austin, B.B.A., Marketing and summa cum laude from the
Oscar Arias is a Learning and Development Consultant. Oscar works with organizations, universities, and emerging entrepreneurs to release their full potential. He has traveled to 834+ cities in the United States and has conducted more than 3,000 workshops and seminars in eight countries. With every endeavor, Oscar pulls from his extensive educational background, experience working as a Peak Performance Strategist for Tony Robbins, and working with over 65 Corporate Universities.
Oscar has become a driving force of change for Fortune 500 companies and entrepreneurs in the areas of peak performance leadership, organizational behavior, and self-leadership. •Oscar is a highly sought after Learning and Development Consultant, Keynote Speaker and Trainer and is currently pursuing his Doctorate through the University of Pennsylvania’s CLO Program.
Nelly Ortiz is a Design Thinking certified coach. Passionate about Innovation, Nelly found herself in the intersection between Business, Design, and Technology. Throughout her career, Nelly experienced very different roles. Her diverse background includes working as a designer in a boutique agency, a marketer in a mobile payment startup, a business and technology consultant in IBM, and even the owner of a bar in Colombia.
This unique career path ultimately led her to discover the power and value of Design Thinking in small to very large corporations. She has since shared her expertise and passion for Design Thinking with clients that include Citibank, MetLife, StateFarm, L’Oreal, Procter & Gamble, Delta, Novo Nordisk, Univision, among others. Currently, Nelly is leading the Strategy arm of The Digital Pumpkin, the Innovation Studio at Mindtree. The Digital Pumpkin focuses on facilitating the space, skills, and tools to help companies transform their business outcomes through Business Strategy, Experience Design, and Technology Accelerators. Nelly also believes that a strong source for Innovation is diversity, and one way to get exposed to many ways of diversity is by traveling. She has been to 41 countries and constantly looking for new travel adventures.
Marc Cole is the Chief Administrative Officer Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Marc Cole serves as the Chief Administrative Officer for an organization of more than 700 employees, planning, directing, and coordinating the day-to-day administrative and business management activities for the Supervision, Enforcement and Fair Lending Division (SEFL), including budget formulation and execution, human capital management, information technology (IT) user support, manager training and space management.
Kevin Frank is a Leading Marketing Strategy & Sales Planning. He is a 20 plus year veteran of the Consumer Packaged Goods and Consumer Electronics industries with a proven track record of cross-functional collaboration and leadership within the Sales and Marketing arena. Kevin’s professional experiences include leading marketing strategy and sales planning for national new product introductions as well as developing annual marketing plans and brand activation campaigns to grow sales and market share.
Kevin has demonstrated a history of success across a wide array of marketing communication platforms (TV, Print, Digital, Retail, Ethnic, Experiential, Social Media) and classes of trade (Mass, Club, E-Commerce, Sporting Goods, Drug, Grocery, etc). Kevin’s executive leadership roles include overseeing channel marketing and operations for the Alpha Guardian family of secure storage brands, responsibility for global sales and marketing on the water bobble brand and serving as Board Chair for the Global Connections for Women Foundation.
Alexander “Lexx” Ore is a VP Retail Banking. He is a thought leader in financial services and a current VP in retail banking with over 14 years of banking and finance experience. Lexx specializes in all things banking from small business lending and growing banking revenue.
Lexx is also an award-winning filmmaker and scriptwriter. He received the Actor Danny Glover Leadership Award for his full-length film, The Dance Movie Project (#TDMP), African’s First Afrobeats Dance Movie. Lexx self- funded his debut film, TDMP, and then partnered with one of the largest film distribution companies in Africa, Filmone Filmhouse for a multi-region theatre release of TDMP across Nigeria. TDMP was picked by several international Film Festivals, and is currently showing on DSTV -Africa Magic Showcase, DSTV is the largest cable provider and media company in Africa. With DSTV, TDMP is currently showing in over 50 countries across Africa. Lexx has been featured in the Huffington Post, Microsoft News, Ariana Huffington’s Thrive Global, Vanguard, Tribune, NTA News, and Bella Naija.
Maggie Arvedlund is a Managing Partner at Turning Rock Partner. Prior to founding Turning Rock Partners, Ms. Arvedlund was a Managing Director at Fortress Investment Group where she spent eight years. Fortress Investment Group is a global investment firm. While at Fortress, Ms. Arvedlund was responsible for private equity and debt investments for the Fortress Partners Fund, a multi-strategy vehicle which invested across asset classes and capital structures.
During her tenure at Fortress Partner Fund, Ms. Arvedlund served on the Investment Committee from 2010-2015 and allocated capital across the alternative landscape including hedged equity, private equity, real estate, distressed and other hard assets. Prior to joining Fortress, Ms. Arvedlund worked at Hall Capital Partners where she held roles in the portfolio management and research divisions. Hall Capital Partners is a privately held registered investment advisory firm. Prior to Hall Capital Partners, Ms. Arvedlund held a number of senior operating roles in several privately held businesses. Ms. Arvedlund received a BS with Honors from Vanderbilt University in Economics and an MBA in Finance from NYU’s Stern School of Business. Ms. Arvedlund serves on several non-profit boards including Summer Search New York City and is a founding member of the NYU Stern Private Equity Advisory Board.
Jonathan “JC” Carvajal is a CEO at The Optimal Performance Group and GC4W Academic
Consultant. Today, after having reached many peaks in his life and overcome several troughs, JC is the founder of the Optimal Performance Group and Creator of “In, Up & Out – the keys to optimal performance.” His aim is to help people ask deeper questions that keep us awake, aware, alert and engaged through our days. Questions that bring the best out of us more consistently and where we can actually break into and become more acquainted with our potential that is always expanding. Since 2016, JC has worked with Professional Athletes, Olympians, Top Executives, Leadership teams, Entrepreneurs and hundreds of clients from all over the world to help OPTIMIZE their current strategies and create a simpler framework where they go “In, Up & Out” in order to establish stronger foundations.
JC believes that within each person exists an inherent greatness that we either have never experienced, or have not consistently harnessed because we live on such narrow and short edges of personal and professional performance. What would be possible if we widened our edge and became more resilient? What would be possible if we engaged with the day more fully? What would be possible if we lived each moment
with greater intention? What would happen if instead of maximizing each moment so that we can get as much out and do as much as possible, we OPTIMIZED ourselves so that we can consistently bring the best out of ourselves and others? This is JC’s burning obsession and his mission – to serve others by helping them reach their Optimal Performance States so that they can live fuller lives and achieve the results they want with joy, harmony, excitement and in full contribution.
Habiba Haider is a Manager based out of Deloitte’s Northern Virginia Office. She has over 8 years of working experience in various financial management roles. She currently provides advisory services to her clients in internal audit and risk management. Habiba has a Bachelor of Science degree in Accounting and a MBA in finance. She is a certified Project Management Professional and currently in the process of becoming a Certified Information System’s Auditor (CISA). Outside of work, Habiba loves spending time with her husband and three little girls. Her hobbies include reading, cooking, and traveling.
Stuart Harker is a Vice President and Small Business Relationship Manager for TD Bank. He is part of the Queens Commercial Lending team at TD and has worked for the bank for 7 years. Stuart has over 20 years’ experience in the industry as a Commercial and Small Business lender with various financial institutions including M&T Bank and HSBC.
In addition to his industry experience Stuart is a NYS Certified Business Advisor, an MBA Graduate of Hofstra University and has in the past served as a board member for community based non-profit organizations as well as having served as a credit committee member for the Church Avenue Merchants Business Association (CAMBA).
Dr. Noémie Le Pertel is a licensed provider for East Asian medicine. She offers acupuncture, Chinese herbal medicine, Eastern integrative nutrition, qi gong, reiki, color therapy, cranial-sacral, and neuromuscular therapy. Dr. Le Pertel serves as the staff center acupuncturist in primary care at Columbia University Medical Center and holds a private practice in Columbus Circle/Lincoln Center. She has been teaching yoga and meditation in the context of personal wellbeing, performance, and leadership since 1998.
Dr. Le Pertel has consulted for a variety of organizations including Ireland’s Health Service Executive (Irish Government) for Healthy Ireland, Columbia Women in Business, Columbia Women’s Alumni group, AppNexus, Exubrancy, Mount Sinai Beth Israel’s Department of Integrative Medicine, and Columbia University Center for Family and Community Medicine, and more. She currently offers individualized executive coaching, leadership development and facilitation for enhanced performance and wellbeing and is working on a second doctorate in Adult Learning and Leadership at Columbia University.
Janett Liriano is a Co-Founder COO at MadeMan. She is an executive and entrepreneur, with a focus on empathetic innovation. She is the Co-Founder COO at MadeMan. Known for her leadership, Janette was the former CEO of LOOMIA, a smart materials company based in NYC, she is committed to delivering value, advancing growth, and creative solution wayfinding. Prior to LOOMIA, she worked in the medical technology field creating high fidelity simulations with medical mannequins for doctors-in-training. Janett is a formally-trained audio engineer and master electrician and has held various roles in production as a programmer, stage manager, director, engineer, and lighting designer.
As one of 30 women named to Project Diane, a database of Black and Latina women who have raised over $1M in venture funding, Janett is committed to using her position in leadership to advocate for diversity in STEAM fields and challenge the corporate culture in the tech and apparel industries. She is a launch member of the United Nations Decade of Women. Janett studied design and technology at Emerson College and audio engineering at SAE Institute. Janett holds two patents, with five pending. She is an active member of the Leadership Council for Tech: NYC, sponsor of the WACO Theatre Center, and a 2018 Forbes 30 Under 30 Listmaker for Manufacturing and Industry.
Alisa Runsanoff is Co-Founder of Newbridge Global Sourcing, a full-service finance firm focusing on providing supply chin financing as well as factoring, ABL and other types of specialty finance facilities to SME and larger enterprises in the U.S. and abroad. Before joining Newbridge, she was a Vice President of Zenith Insured Credit, an international alternative investment manager focused on trade finance. Previously, she served as a senior associate for Forefront Capital Advisors where she also was a member of the Investment and Valuation Committees.
Earlier in her career, she was an investment banking associate at Martel Capital, where she worked alongside
senior bankers advising clients on mergers and acquisitions and private placements engagements.
She holds a Bachelor of Arts from State Academy in Russia with a dual degree in Psychology and French linguistics, and Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Finance and Investments from Baruch College, City University of New York. Alisa is a CFA Level II Candidate. As a hobby, Alisa is a singer and an actress with over 40 live performances in New York and other states of the East Coast.
