Saidah Grayson Dill

Vice President and Deputy General Counsel, Cisco

Saidah Grayson Dill is responsible for Global Employment Law and leads a team of compliance and investigation professionals at Cisco. Cisco is a global company with over 80,000 employees and operations in over 100 countries that designs and sells networking, voice, collaboration and communication technology services and solutions.  

At Cisco, she provides advice on a myriad of employment law and employee relations issues, including acquisition integration, litigation, compliance, investigations, and inclusion & diversity. In this role she is the lead legal partner for Cisco’s People, Policy and Purpose team which includes People and Communities (HR) and Social Impact teams. She helps ensure that Cisco’s people policies and decisions are legally sound and aligned with the company’s culture. She regularly speaks at conferences on the topic of the intersections between law, culture and business. Saidah is a member of the Chief Legal Officer’s senior staff and provides counsel to Cisco’s Chief People, Policy & Purpose and People Officers.

Prior to joining Cisco, Saidah worked for two international law firms, Skadden and Paul Hastings, litigating on behalf of and providing advice and counsel to employers in a variety of industries.  

She received an A.B. in Public Policy from Stanford University and her J.D. from Georgetown University Law Center. She’s proud to have received recognition from organizations including The Network Journal, The San Jose Silicon Valley Business Journal/San Francisco Business Times and the Golden Gate Silicon Valley YWCA, for her influence in business, diversity and the law. She is a founding member of Chief SF Bay Area and a member of the Silicon Valley chapter of the American Leadership Forum (Class XLI). She has previously served as the president of the Palo Alto chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc., and co-president of the Stanford National Black Alumni Association.

Kavitha Imani

Vice President, IT, Dell Technologies

Kavitha Imani leads the Voice and Contact Center Services, Database Engineering Reliability Engineering Organization in Dell Digital. In this role, Kavitha is focused on delivering best-in-class stakeholder experience. Kavitha is keen on delivering robust and effective engineering and operational processes in line with industry best practices and transformation of the organization to enhance agility, performance and availability. 

Kavitha has 24+ years of experience in Information Technology and 20+ years of leadership experience leading software development engineering teams across several business units including Services, Channel Solutions and Dell Financial Services. She also led the middleware, quality engineering and IT Operations organizations. She has expertise across the entire software development lifecycle and several products in the technology stack. 

Kavitha believes transformation and innovation is fundamental to building a highly productive and efficient organization and makes it an instrumental focus for all organizations she is a part of. She loves to connect with and work closely with people to deliver results. You can expect complete transparency and a lively work environment when working with Kavitha. 

Kavitha has a master’s in computer science from University of Oklahoma. She lives in Austin, is married and has a 10-year-old daughter who keeps her on her toes. She loves to travel and is always planning for the next adventure with her family. She enjoys dancing and likes to stay fit through intense daily workouts with Camp Gladiator.

Jen Petersen

Vice President, Human Resources, Air Power, Raytheon Technologies

Jennifer Petersen is the vice president of Human Resources for the Air Power strategic business unit of Raytheon Missiles & Defense, a Raytheon Technologies business. In this role she is responsible for leading human resources strategies, including talent recruitment, retention, and development.

Raytheon Technologies Corporation is an aerospace and defense company that provides advanced systems and services for commercial, military and government customers worldwide. With four industry-leading businesses ― Collins Aerospace, Pratt & Whitney, Raytheon Intelligence & Space and Raytheon Missiles & Defense ― the company delivers solutions that push the boundaries in avionics, cybersecurity, directed energy, electric propulsion, hyper sonics and quantum physics. The company, formed in 2020 through the combination of Raytheon Company and the United Technologies Corporation aerospace businesses, is headquartered in Arlington, Virginia.

In her current role — and throughout her career – Petersen has led HR teams within
organizations experiencing large-scale transformation and change. She served as vice
president of Human Resources for the corporate team at Raytheon Technologies
immediately following one of the largest mergers in aerospace and defense history.
Prior to joining Raytheon in 2016, Petersen served as senior vice president and Human Resources executive at Bank of America. In this role she led Human Resources for organizations, including Technology, Operations, Marketing and Communications, and provided HR leadership during complex mergers and restructuring. She’s previously held positions managing Human Resources at Nortel Networks and Randstad Corporations.

Petersen earned a Master of Business Administration from Simmons University and a Bachelor of Arts degree in Sociology from the University of New Hampshire.
She is a mother to three children and is an active volunteer in her community.

Ann Stanberry

Executive Vice President, Chief Strategy Officer, Liberty Mutual Insurance

Ann Stanberry is Executive Vice President and Chief Strategy Officer of Liberty Mutual Insurance. In her role, she is responsible for helping the organization understand trends and disruption, set the overall strategy, drive cross-business unit engagement, execute key strategic priorities across the enterprise, and innovate new products and services that position Liberty for success in the future. She oversees teams including Liberty Mutual’s internal consulting organization, the Liberty Mutual Group Alignment team, Liberty Mutual’s Strategic Venture fund, and Solaria Labs, the enterprise innovation incubator. 

Prior to this, Ann held the position of Vice President, Strategy and Planning for Liberty Mutual’s Global Retail Markets (GRM) business. In this role she managed a global organization accountable for setting global, regional and market strategies; monitoring competitive dynamics and disruptive trends; optimizing GRM’s portfolio and strategic deployment of capital; assessing and delivering on GRM’s acquisition and divestiture opportunities; driving the annual planning process; reporting financial results; and running the strategic venture fund.

Before joining Liberty Mutual in 2015, Ann spent over 10 years working as a management consultant at A.T. Kearney in the financial services space and with General Electric Financial as part of their Leadership Development Program and Internal Audit team.

A member of the WE@Liberty employee resource group, Ann serves as National Committee Co-Lead of its Culture and Experience group, which focuses on creating a supportive, engaging and empowering culture that enables women to be an integral part of Liberty Mutual’s success. Externally, she is on the board of Visible Hands, a company that supports underrepresented founders by providing the initial capital, education and network necessary to launch their startups; and Nurtury, a nonprofit organization that gives Boston’s youngest children in need the opportunity to reach their full potential by investing in school readiness, promoting healthy development and strengthening families. 

Ann earned her B.S. and M.B.A. from Duke University.

Joanne Stephane

Principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP and Executive Director, DEI Institute

For over 25 years, Joanne has worked with C-suite executives to define, design, and operationalize their workforce experience vision. She helps clients transform their Talent and HR organizations, from strategy through implementation and beyond, to achieve sustainable results. 

Joanne is eminent on the evolving role of HR, and of the CHRO, in shaping the way enterprises compete for & access talent, curate workforce experiences, and impact the communities where they operate. She brings this perspective in examining how organizations can and should drive towards racial equity. 

Joanne co-authored “The Equity Imperative: The need for business to take Bold Action Now,” is the CDEIO for the Human Capital practice, and is the Executive Director of Deloitte’s DEI Institute™, focused on data-driven research, challenging orthodoxies, and recommending impactful actions to help business and community leaders lead inclusive change. 

Joanne serves clients in the Consumer Products, Healthcare, and Life Sciences sectors.

Joyce Kulhawik

Emmy Award-Winning Journalist

Joyce Kulhawik, best known as the Emmy Award-winning Arts & Entertainment Critic for CBS-Boston (WBZ-TV 1981-2008), has covered local and national events from Boston and Broadway to Hollywood and has co-hosted nationally-syndicated movie-review programs with Roger Ebert and Leonard Maltin. As the first arts reporter/critic in the U.S. to appear every weeknight as part of a local TV news team, Kulhawik gave journalistic stature to arts reporting and greatly enhanced her station’s commitment to community service. She is currently President of The Boston Theater Critics Association and a member of the Boston Society of Film Critics. Find her reviews online at JoycesChoices.com.

A 3x cancer survivor, Kulhawik testified before Congress on the 20th anniversary of The National Cancer Act and helped launch the American Cancer Society’s first HOPE LODGE in Boston, which provides free lodging for cancer patients. The ACS honored Kulhawik with its National Bronze Medal for her work. In 2010 Kulhawik received the New England Emmys Governor’s Award for her distinguished career, which includes Emmys for the WBZ series/campaign “You Gotta Have Arts!” and team coverage of the World Trade Center attacks, being among the first on the scene. The recipient of countless awards for her career and advocacy, Kulhawik has an endowed scholarship in her name at the Berklee College of Music, and is not only a graduate of Simmons College class of ’74 but also holds an Honorary Doctorate in Communications from her alma mater.

Kristen Palson

COO, Simmons University Institute for Inclusive Leadership & Executive Producer, Simmons Leadership Conference

Kristen Palson is the COO of the Simmons University Institute for Inclusive Leadership and the Executive Producer of the Simmons Leadership Conference. She brings an innovative mind-set and fresh perspective leading with strategic, operational vision to ensure success. As a member of the Institute’s leadership team, Kristen offers a unique talent for scalable, creative solutions that mobilize resources and achieve breakthrough results. She shares a passion for this work as an authentic executive leader with expertise in cultivating individuals and teams to achieve their full potential while fostering a culture of allyship and inclusion.

Kristen brings over 15 years of experience in strategic development, operational planning, and high-performance talent management to the Institute’s Senior Leadership team.  Kristen also serves as the Institute’s lead of Marketing and Product Development where she helps clients across a wide range of industries and fields create customized experiences and learning journeys that meet their unique organizational goals. She is an expert in the creation of state-of-the-art programming in a choice of modalities: in-person, on-site, online – or blend of all three. She is passionate about learner-centered content delivery with actionable outcomes, appropriate assessments, and accessibility. Her unique background in theater infuses the design and delivery of every program with a high degree of creativity, energy, and hands-on engagement.

Kristen loves the stage and is especially passionate about children’s theater and all the incredible lifelong lessons that can be taught through the arts. She resides in the Boston area and is a proud single mother by choice raising her incredible daughter with the help of her amazing village of family and friends.