Equity in the workplace
begins with us.

Born with the gift of gab and an electric energy, Jessica can strike up a meaningful conversation with anyone, anywhere. She has an innate ability to make people feel comfortable and is looked upon as a trusted advisor to many. Jessica brings to the table an incredible drive for uncovering challenges and opportunities and then finding solutions for them. Her passion to help her clients, colleagues, and her family succeed is infectious.

Jessica comes to AWE with over 20 years of successful sales, marketing, and leadership experience, 15 of which were spent in the death care industry. She has curated sales and marketing strategies and built sales teams from the ground up, earning millions in annual revenue year over year, catapulting her company from an idea to a nationally respected resource. As a relationship builder with a consultative and big picture mindset paired with a work hard, play hard attitude, Jessica creates long-lasting relationships with her clients and brings 100% commitment to all that she does. In her role as Director of Business Development at AWE, Jessica is responsible for driving new logos and is dedicated to helping her clients identify and achieve their goals, while rapidly expanding AWE’s mission and reach.

A Hoosier native, Jessica earned her bachelor’s degree in Public Affairs and a minor in Communications from Indiana University, where she was also a 100M hurdler for the Women’s Track & Field team, until an injury earned her early retirement. She currently splits her time between Indiana and Florida with her husband, 3 kids, and 3 dogs, who she affectionately calls the “floofs.” As a family, they are passionate about motocross and can often be found at national events around the country.

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.

Based in the UK, Jennifer is passionate about empowering women to fulfill their potential. She delivers a variety of Learning and Development work for women leaders and women-owned businesses and has been in the training field for more than ten years. Jennifer has delivered leadership training programs designed to engage employees, elevate performance, and improve productivity. She has designed and facilitated on-boarding, leadership, and performance management programmes in organizations.  She has also designed and facilitated coaching, mentoring, unconscious bias and entrepreneurship training programs for business owners and business support advisors. 

Jennifer has a passion for training and enjoys sharing her knowledge with a calm and encouraging approach to help individuals and organizations achieve results.

She is an Associate member of the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development with a Certificate in Learning & Development Practice, a member of The Institute of Leadership & Management and also holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Business and Management.

Lara is passionate about engaging and fun learning, upholding principles of equity, diversity, and inclusion in all aspects of life, and empowering women in their professional and personal journeys. Lara brings 26+ years of “surviving and thriving” experience in corporate America, specifically in the financial services area, where she led teams on strategic initiatives and functions including training and project management.

Lara received a B.A. from University of California, Irvine and currently resides in the beautiful Hudson Valley of New York. She also attended Wharton University of Pennsylvania Executive Education and earned the Certified Regulatory and Compliance Professional designation.

As an immigrant from South Africa, Lara is an avid traveler and culture enthusiast. She has visited 35 countries and 48 states in the USA so far, and she loves meeting people (everyone has a story!). As an ambivert at heart, Lara also enjoys solitude in reading, hiking, motorcycle riding, camping, and creating pottery.

SEAN MORONG works with executives, private clients and corporate teams to leverage their natural gifts and talents, with a goal of living their most authentic life. His focus areas include improving team engagement, increasing morale, individual strengths assessment and shifting organizational culture. He is often referred to as “The Corporate Therapist.” Sean is also an HR Executive for one of the largest technology consulting firms in the world. He has over 18 years of experience leading teams at some of the largest corporations in Retail and Health & Public Service industries. With a Bachelor of Arts in Health Administration, Sean continues to be passionate about the study of human behavior and changing mindsets. He is regularly consulted to speak on topics including fear, anxiety, purpose and what makes people act and think the way they do. If you ask Sean where he gets his positive beliefs and inspiration, he’ll likely tell you about his good fortune of having a wise and spiritually connected grandmother, who was his teacher, mentor and biggest fan. Sean is a certified Gallup® Strengths & Engagement Coach and a Certified Professional Co-Active® Coach (CPCC).

Yennie Rautenberg-Loya empowers and develops leaders to flourish and leave a positive mark in the world.  Through her proprietary Authentic Inclusive Collaboration® framework, she enables teams and individuals to build  inclusive, productive and collaborative work environments where everyone experiences a sense of belonging, is  empowered to participate and has equal opportunity to thrive.  

Originally from Mexico, she is a bilingual (Spanish/English) and multicultural ICF-certified leadership coach with  25+ years of global experience in corporate and executive communications, and 15+ years delivering life and  executive coaching and training programs to hundreds of people. She has championed, participated and served as  an ally of multiple inclusion and diversity initiatives, and collaborated with teams in 25+ countries.  

Yennie designs customized programs in the areas of inclusion and belonging, employee resource groups (ERGs), emotional intelligence, leadership, resilience, communication, career advancement, and career/life transitions  (relocation, job termination and retirement). Based on client’s needs, the programs may include one-on-one  coaching, facilitated group/team sessions, workshops and/or consulting services. 

Yennie has provided services in different capacities to multiple organizations including Accenture, ASML,  Autodesk, Edmunds, Global Foundries, Google, Intel, Meals on Wheels, Meta, Metlife, NAB, National Restaurants  Association, New York Times, NHL, Pinterest, Qualcomm, Tesla, UNICEF, University of California San Diego,  VMWare and Yelp. 

For 11 years, Yennie worked at Qualcomm, where she was responsible for global communications programs for  India, Latin America, Middle East, Africa and Southeast Asia. During her tenure, she also championed diversity and  inclusion initiatives, supported corporate social responsibility projects, as well as high-visibility programs such as  the company’s partnership with the World Economic Forum.  

Yennie worked at Porter Novelli in Mexico City and South Florida for nine years managing local and Latin American  programs for several accounts including Fortune 500 companies.  

Education and Certifications  

Yennie is a Professional Certified Coach (PCC) credentialed through the International Coaching Federation  (ICF) and an Emotional Intelligence (EQ-i2.0 and EQ360) Certified coach. She holds a Certification in  Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in the Workplace by Muma College of Business at the University of South Florida  and a Leadership Coaching Certification by the University of San Diego School of Leadership and Education  Sciences. She’s also a certified Gold-tier facilitator of Google’s #IamRemarkable global initiative. 

In 2019, Yennie graduated from Cornell University’s Certificate Program in Strategic Human Resources  Leadership, and from the Latina Success Leadership Program by MANA de San Diego, a National Latina  Organization.  

Before immigrating to the U.S., Yennie received a Diploma on Organizational Communications and  Behavior by Universidad Panamericana in Mexico City, a Diploma in International Marketing by Universidad La  Salle in Mexico City, and a Trade Degree in Business Administration, Management and Operations by Colegio  Alemán Alexander von Humboldt in Mexico City.