Equity in the workplace
begins with us.

Beverly is an energetic and passionate coach-sultant. Beverly brings to AWE over 15 years of experience in leadership development, with an emphasis in coaching, consulting, facilitating, and teaching. She is a big-picture strategist who enjoys formulating a meaningful story and conveying that story with detail yet simplicity. She has worked with industries including technology, higher education, non-profits, hospitality, professional services, and athletics.

As Senior Director of Content & Delivery, Beverly is responsible for content design, training facilitation and experience, and coaching at AWE. Prior to joining AWE, Beverly served as a Learning Consultant designing, developing, and implementing coaching experiences for leaders, teams, and individual contributors. She also taught Leader Development courses in Master’s and Doctorate programs at Alliant International University.

Beverly received her Ph.D. in Industrial and Organizational Psychology from Alliant International University. Beverly continues to advocate for professional development and executive opportunities for women in the working world. She also provides coaching and consulting services to Coaching for Everyone, a 501c3 nonprofit organization providing complimentary coaching and leadership services to the BIPOC community.

Born and raised in Southern California, Beverly finds ultimate serenity near water. When she is not working, you can find her spending time outdoors with her husband and 2 children paddle boarding, riding skateboards, or hiking trails in the Pacific Northwest. You might even catch her at a football game cheering very loudly on the sidelines!

Meiko is a visionary CEO and entrepreneur, founding AWE | Advancing Women Executives, the leading enterprise solutions company focused on creating sustainable workplace cultures by embedding equity into companies. A 26th generation rebel born of immigrant parents, Meiko is a connector, a global change agent, and a tireless advocate for equity in the workplace. She is a sought after thought leader and expert and speaks annually to thousands of professionals on the topics of diversity in the workplace, branding, networking, sponsorship, unconscious bias and storytelling in business.

After graduating from Bryn Mawr College, Meiko had a successful career in the art field in Europe and New York before changing her focus to business consulting. She was a Managing Director with CEB (now Gartner), through the company’s successful IPO and growth to $450 million in revenue. After many years of managing the West Coast business, Meiko became an executive recruiter and continued to experience first-hand the lack of diversity on leadership teams. In an effort to create a paradigm shift in the way companies look at accelerating the careers of underrepresented professionals, Meiko created AWE in 2012.

Meiko has been named a Women of Influence by LA Biz, a Woman of Promise by Comerica Bank and the LA Lakers and was featured in BCBG’s Holiday Catalog as part of their series on influential and powerful women. She’s been on the Board of Directors for South Central Scholars and is active with her sons’ school. Meiko speaks regularly at Fortune 500 companies and conferences, including Northwestern University, Occidental College, IIT Global Conference, West Hollywood Women’s Leadership Conference, Women in Technology Hollywood, UPWARD, Women of LAVA, Harvard Business School Association of Southern California and Silicon Valley’s Influencer Series.

While making the world a better place, Meiko can also be found laughing with her husband and two sons in Los Angeles, enjoying a meal and mahjongg with friends, supporting political candidates and dreaming of her next international holiday.

Collaborative by nature, Ronnie thrives in relationship-building settings and brings this passion for connection to her work as a Client Solutions Manager at AWE. In prior positions, she has helped manage and scale a mentoring program for first-generation college students, trained volunteers on communication and mentoring skills, and advised and managed relationships with hundreds of students navigating the college search process. Ronnie is energized by those moments of communication where both parties feel seen and heard, and looks forward to many of those moments with her clients and colleagues at AWE.

Ronnie is a proud and passionate midwesterner, currently living in Cleveland, Ohio but traveling whenever she can. Her favorite travel partner is her husky, Oliver, who responds to the command ‘Mush!’ on hikes and uses his momentum to pull his mom up hills. Her favorite not-traveling partner is her cat, Wendy, who responds to zero commands but gets treats anyway! Besides hanging out with her pets, you can usually find Ronnie training for some upcoming half marathon, watching or thinking about Survivor, or reading on her porch.

Bami Kuteyi is a Young Fearless Entrepreneur, having founded the international dance fitness brand Bam Bam Boogie when she was only 22 years old.

In February 2018, Bami decided to risk it all and leave her full-time job at Google Ireland as an advertising executive, to focus on empowering women and young girls all around the world through “Fearless Dance Fitness”.

She not only aims to transform the way that womxn feel about their bodies and minds, but she’s a huge advocate for diversity, inclusion, and equality. As someone who has been a minority within the workplace, she has a passion for long term change, and she’s driven change, growth and helped to reshape businesses through her engaging training and workshops.

Bami focuses on racial equality workshops, as this is the area where she has the most experience and knowledge. Bami has worked with Google, Facebook, Nike, Puma, Eventbrite and more.

Cori is a passionate speaker, writer, educator, and consultant with over 15 years of training and leadership experience related to intersectional feminism, antiracism, social justice, and inclusive culture change. Cori is committed to helping others clarify how and why their leadership matters to create more equitable and inclusive realities. With strengths in systems-thinking, vision, strategy, and facilitating difficult dialogues, she is a thought leader on how to connect everyday choices, behaviors, and practices to movements for systemic change. Her approach is rooted in feminist theory and liberatory praxis and fosters conditions for transformation by cultivating authentic relationships across differences. Values of love, creativity, and freedom inform the means and ends for her work, while support, truth-telling, care, humor, and playfulness are among the essential ingredients.

In addition to ten years college-level teaching, Cori developed concepts such as feminist friendship, positive philosophy, and honest confidence, and began publicly sharing reflections through her own YouTube channel and blog over a decade ago. Her work has since been featured in two TEDx talks, journal articles, and numerous podcasts. She also offers a unique approach to coaching and consulting services through her business, Positive Philosophy Consulting, LLC, which was featured in Oprah’s Spring 2021 Issue of O Magazine.

Cori previously led diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging initiatives as an Assistant Vice President at Colorado State University. She earned a dual-title PhD in Philosophy and Women’s Studies from the Pennsylvania State University and completed the Embodied Social Justice Certificate Program from The Embody Lab. Always an artist, she is consistently creating side projects that explore connections between writing, comedy, intimacy, community building, and performance art.

Passionate about empowering women, Jessika Portney is an executive and leadership coach and founder of Journey On. Jessika has worked in the field of leadership development for over a decade, supporting leaders of all backgrounds and tenures. In addition to her work with private clients, Jessika coaches and facilitates leadership development training programs for non-profit organizations and government agencies. Her approach to leadership has been informed by the cross-cultural experiences she’s sought out: pursuing a graduate degree and teaching English in Rome, facilitating Fulbright fellowships for mid-career leaders from 90 different countries, and implementing USAID projects for Egyptian women pursuing a STEM education.

Clients value Jessika’s deep curiosity about the human experience and ability to create a warm environment for them to be vulnerable and dig deep. She became a coach to honor these gifts and create space for those who want to do similar transformational work. Jessika finds true joy in partnering with clients to embrace their superpowers and manifest their potential.

Jessika obtained an M.A. in Government and Politics with a concentration in International Relations and a certificate in Diplomacy and International Law from St. John’s University in Rome, Italy. She received a B.A. dual degree in Communication and Italian Language & Literature from the University of Maryland, College Park.

Patricia is a Certified Coach, Facilitator, Trainer & Speaker. Sometimes known as the Human Hacker through her extensive social experiments. In over 25 years of diverse corporate and training experience, spanning 17 countries in 3 continents, Patricia has acquired deep knowledge and understanding of the challenges that organizations and their employees face. Drawing on this rich experience, she creates opportunities for her workshop participants to resonate and respond to those challenges with a positive mindset and outcome. 

Patricia approaches life with an extraordinary dose of can-do attitude. Her vision and life work is to help individuals in organizations “find their cape and become the superheroes that they are”.  She firmly believes that individuals have power to transcend learning barriers – if given the opportunity to learn after being positively encouraged and coached.

Patricia is also a Certified Trainer in Insights Discovery ® Profiling, DISC Flow ® Profiling, Lego Serious Play®, Points Of You®, Genos Emotional Intelligence® and Mental Toughness®, enablers to support, transform and develop talents for business sustainability and growth.

Being naturally people-centric, Patricia is ever ready to support all levels of individuals to stand tall and stand strong, both personally and professionally, amidst a VUCA world. empowering them to make significant contributions to their organizations and to society. Based in Malaysia and Singapore, she loves having #conversationthatmatter with people from different walks of life over a nice cup of coffee or tea!

Sydney is a people-first conflict transformation and restorative justice practitioner. She is an educator, facilitator, coach, partner, and lifelong learner in the work of unpacking cultural conflicts and identity and creating liberated spaces for all people to thrive and belong. She is a mental health advocate, an empowerer of womanhood, and has a heart for truth, humility, restoration, dignity, and community. 

Her background in DEIJB work is in education. She previously worked as a Black Student Achievement Program Liaison in Howard County Public Schools in Maryland to advance racial equity education and decrease achievement gaps for black high school students. She is a trained facilitator with Maryland Leadership Workshops and she now works with a Baltimore non-profit to increase the academic and personal capacity of black youth attending Baltimore City Public Schools and private schools. 

Sydney graduated cum laude from Temple University in Philadelphia, PA with a Bachelor of Science in Human Development & Community Engagement, and a focus on African American Studies and Sociology. She spent time in Philadelphia with the Urban League, AVID, and served in numerous middle and high schools supporting urban education. She is currently working towards her M.A. in Restorative Justice from Eastern Mennonite University with a specific focus on racial trauma healing.

In her work, Sydney uses her education, experiences, passions, and skills to connect the head and the heart of understanding across differences and how the concepts of power, privilege, oppression and bias affect us all interpersonally and in policy. Sydney is energized by peeling back the layers of this complex human experience, guiding people in self-reflection, and taking their personal, relational and organizational development to the next level.