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OPEN Silicon Valley’s Second Annual Women’s Leadership Forum 2010 Finding Your Power Saturday, February 20th Register Today and Save upto 20% over Onsite Registration 
Register for Babysitting
Come hear seasoned Entrepreneurs and Professionals at the annual OPEN Women’s Leadership Forum 2010. Building on the success of last year, OPEN is excited about 2010’s theme: "Finding Your Power: Creating Opportunities in Tumultuous Times." Prominent female leaders from the Silicon Valley will share insights on how to leverage personal strengths and effectively position oneself for advancement during challenging times. They will also discuss their approaches to balancing a successful professional and personal life. OPEN’s Annual Women’s Leadership Forum is a ground breaking networking opportunity for attendees who will have a chance to engage keynote and panel speakers with Q&A and meet with hundreds of attendees throughout the day. One of 160 of last year's Inaugural Conference Attendee had this to say: "I attended the event last year and I enjoyed it very much and made some great contacts." Margot Heiligman, SAP Global Marketing
MORNING KEYNOTE - The Game Changer 
| Nilofer Merchant founded and currently leads Rubicon, a company which creates business strategy to find and win markets. Having worked inside and outside major corporate brands like Adobe, Apple, Autodesk, and others, Merchant has honed her collaborative approach to solving tough problems as much through her failures as her successes. Her firm is hired by global brands such as Hewlett-Packard, Pinnacle, Logitech, Openwave, Symantec and others to create strategy that people will actually execute because they created it.
She’s often quoted or published in major business publications such as BusinessWeek, Entrepreneur, Fortune and The Wall Street Journal. Nilofer earned her MBA from Santa Clara University, a BS in Economics from University of San Francisco. In her book (published by O’Reilly), The New How, she shares the stories and ways to shift from traditional top-down approaches to flat, fast ways to invent the future.
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AFTERNOON KEYNOTE - Getting to 50/50: How Working Couples Can Have It All By Sharing It All
 | Sharon Meers is the co-author of Getting to 50/50, a book about how men and women find common ground and share power so that men can be full parents and women can have full careers. Launched on the Today show in 2009, Getting to 50/50 has been featured in The New York Times, Time magazine, Forbes, BusinessWeek and USA Today and lauded by leading academics and business executives for what the Huffington Post called it’s “Obama-like” approach with solutions to cut work/life stress, retain female talent and improve productivity. Of the thousands of employees and students who’ve attended Getting to 50/50 talks, half have been male.
Prior to writing Getting to 50/50, Sharon was a Managing Director at Goldman, Sachs & Co. In her 16-year career at Goldman, Sharon ran several businesses and worked on diversity efforts in two of the firm’s divisions. Sharon lives in the Bay Area with her husband Steve, a real-estate developer, and their 8-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter. With her husband, Sharon founded the Partnership for Parity at the Stanford Graduate School of Business School which supports Stanford's work on workplace parity and a similar effort at Harvard University called the Dual-Career Initiative. Sharon also serves on the board of the National Women's Law Center and on the advisory council of Stanford's Clayman Institute for Research on Gender and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. Sharon holds a B.A. in History from Harvard College and an M.A. in Economics from New York University.
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VENUE SUN Microsystems, Bldg. 10, 14 Network Circle, Menlo Park, CA 94025
CONFERENCE PRICING | Online Registration | $40 | | Onsite Registration | $55 |
AGENDA 9:00 AM | Onsite Registration, Breakfast & Networking | 10:00 | Welcome Remarks by Naeem Zafar, President, OPEN SV | 10:15 | Nilofer Merchant, Morning Keynote | 11:00 | Panel I - The Art of Intrapreneurship, Connection And Innovation Panelists: Nina Bhatti, Principal Scientist, HP Labs Wendy Beecham, CEO, Forum for Women Executives & Entrepreneurs Sakina Arsiwala, Founder Stealth | 12:15 PM | Mentorship Lunch | 1:45 | Panel II - Follow Your Calling, Live Your Passion Panelists: Deepika Bajaj, CEO, Invincibelle Sehba Ali, Chief Academic Officer, KIPP Bay Area Schools Linda Alepin, Founding Director, Global Women's Leadership Network Dian Alyan, President & Founder, Give Light Foundation | 3:00 | Sharon Meers, Afternoon Keynote |
PANELS The Art of Intrapreneurship, Connection And Innovation will cover how you can emerge as a top influence within your current role. The panel will offer insights on how w to be an Intrapreneur and succeed through forging meaningful alliances and connections through networking and collaboration. Panelists will help us learn to innovate our roles for growth and Success Follow Your Calling, Live Your Passion will cover how to discover your leadership style, leverage your strength and effectively position yourself for success in these challenging economic times. Learn from exceptional leaders who will share how they found their passion and used it for progress. Come and be inspired by women who have achieved success in their chosen fields through realizing their calling, and reaching their potential.
MENTORING OVER LUNCH OPEN Women’s Forum Mentorship Lunch will offer a unique opportunity for participants to identify panel members and other women leaders that they would like to chat with in a more intimate setting while enjoying a delicious lunch. Network with top professionals and enjoy a great meal.
FORUM PANELISTS
Chair of the OPEN SV Women's Forum 2010
Saadia Ahmed runs her financial planning practice in affiliation with Waddell and Reed. A seasoned professional in the financial services industry with over 11 years of experience, she has an MBA in Finance, is a Chartered Mutual Fund Counselor, a Registered Representative and an Investment Advisor Representative. Prior to starting on her entrepreneurial career, Saadia worked at Bank of America in Silicon Valley as a financial relationship manager, responsible for managing a portfolio of high net worth clients and deepening relationships by helping her clients achieve their financial goals through complete financial solutions. Saadia started her career with Citibank Pakistan, where she setup and managed the credit card operations for the region. She is the Chair for OPEN Silicon Valley Women Forum, dedicated to the promotion of entrepreneurship and leadership in the women of South Asian-American business community. |
| Wendy Beecham has spent her career building connections through strategic networking and teaching other women how to do the same. She landed her current position as CEO of the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs and Executives through network connections, and in her over two year tenure has filled panels with prominent women executives and booked famous authors and well-known politicians as speakers by relying on her extensive network. Prior to FWE&E, Wendy held a variety of senior leadership roles in the electronic publishing industry, including senior vice president of a division at LexisNexis Group and managing director of London-based Sweet & Maxwell Group (a legal division of the Thomson Corporation). Most recently, she was president and founder of Flawless Leadership, a boutique consulting firm that coached C-level business leaders on executive performance and strategic networking, and chaired two CEO Peer Groups with Vistage International, the world's largest CEO membership organization.
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| Shazia Makhdumi has spent most of her career in the technology industry, as an investor, entrepreneur and intrapreneur. Most recently, she co-founded and was the CEO of ColorfulStories, a startup allowing users to share content and quickly and easily create personalized books using a social media platform. Previously Shazia was a principal at Outlook Ventures, an early stage venture capital firm, where she sourced, evaluated and negotiated consumer and enterprise software deals, and analyzed promising market sectors / startups for investment. Her industry experience includes Netscape Communications / AOL where she was in charge of business development efforts for technology acquisition, licensing and partnerships, as well as product and partner marketing for the company’s e-commerce solutions. Shazia is also an advisor to a number of early stage startups, helping them formulate product strategy, execute on marketing plans and negotiate partnerships. Shazia started her career as an equity analyst at Goldman Sachs, making investment recommendations on companies in the semiconductor industry. Additionally, she spent time as a circuit design engineer at IBM’s T.J. Watson Research Center, where she completed her Master's thesis. Shazia holds BS and MS degrees in Electrical Engineering from MIT, and an MBA from Stanford. |
| Dr. Zakia Rahman is a board certified dermatologist practicing in California. She is currently a Clinical Instructor of Dermatology at Stanford University and Assistant Chief of Dermatology at the Palo Alto Veterans Hospital-Livermore Division. In addition to teaching dermatology and dermatologic surgery, she serves as a consultant and scientific advisory board member on a number of aesthetic companies. Ms. Rahman lectures nationally and internationally on laser surgery with an emphasis on fractional laser science, home use lasers and ethnic skin. She has served as the principle investigator for twenty studies on fractional lasers. In addition to numerous publications, Ms. Rahman has also been awarded various grants for her research endeavors from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute and the Women’s Dermatologic Society. Outside of her academic endeavors, Ms. Rahman has been involved with a number of non-profit organizations including Developments in Literacy (DIL) where she serves as a board member. As a native New Englander turned Californian, she enjoys a variety of outdoor activities including hiking, skiing and golfing. |
 | Rosie Kuhn, Ph.D. is a graduate of the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology (ITP) in Palo Alto, California, a personal and corporate coach and the author of the book Self-Empowerment 101, which is a culmination of her work as a life coach, marriage and family therapist, spiritual guide and creator and facilitator of the Transformational Coaching Training at ITP. She has worked in the field of human development for over 30 years. She is a keynote speaker and a guest on radio shows around the country and she writes for Connections for Women. Rosie also facilitates The Wonderful Women Retreats now held in Colorado and Washington.
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| Sehba Ali is the Chief Academic Officer for KIPP Bay Area Schools. She is founder and former Principal of KIPP Heartwood Academy in San Jose, CA. Mrs. Ali is also the co-founder of KIPP San Jose Collegiate, a new charter high school in Ease San Jose.
Prior to starting KIPP Heartwood Academy, Mrs. Ali earned a MS from Stanford University's School of Education and received training from the KIPP school of leadership program, including study at the Haas School of Business. She began her career as a Middle School English teacher in Houston, TX. Mrs. Ali earned her BA in English and Psychology from U of C at Berkeley. She currently resides on the KIPP Foundation Board of Directors, CA Charter School Association Member Council and Rocketship Education's Board of Directors.
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| Deepika Bajaj is the founder and president of Invincibelle, a company empowering diverse, multi-generational workforce and women to thrive in a multi-culutural world. Prior to starting her company, Deepika earned more than eight years of experience in telecommunications consulting and corporate marketing. She has served on the board of various professional organizations including the National Society of Hispanic MBAs and Women in Intel.B Deepika is working on her second book which (yet to be named) speaks to her experiences of being a global citizen and what is shaping the new voice of diversity. She is the author of the book "DiversityTweet: Embracing Diversity in the world." She speaks and consults on diversity, blogs at http://www.deepikabajaj.com/ and writes a column on social media for ActiveGarage. She is in the process to launch a new blog Diverseconomy.com. Deepika can be followed at http://twitter.com/invincibelle. She holds a degree in Engineering from Bangalore University, India and has an MBA from Fordham University, New York. She is an honorary member of Phi Kappa Phi and Beta Gamma Sigma.
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 | Bhatti is a technologist by training, an innovator by practice leading first-of-a-kind innovation projects for some of HP’s largest customers. She has a track record of discovering and driving breakthrough business opportunities for new products, new markets, new consumer experiences. She also leads the transformation of these technologies into commercial offerings. She was recently named as one of the top 50 women in technology by Corporate Board Magazine. A thought leader, Bhatti has worked as in Intrepreneur within HP since 1996, delivering the design and creation of consumer and lifestyle mobile technologies for some of HP’s largest customers. Bhatti has also done extensive research in consumer connection technologies, web, and networking performance. She holds a Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in Computer Science from the University of Arizona and a BA. from the University of California, Berkeley. She has published 30 papers and has 25 patents filed. |
| Sakina Arsiwala is the founder of a stealth technology startup Campfire Labs. Previously she led International for YouTube. She was responsible for YouTube's product, operations and business everywhere outside of the US. Before YouTube, she led Google's Search Quality efforts internationally and was the Lead PM for Google Search (Ranking). She has also held technical leadership positions at Yahoo and AltaVista. She has Masters in Computer Science from San Francisco State University and an under graduate degree in engineering from the University of Bombay, India. LinkedIn Profile:http://www.linkedin.com/in/sakina |
 | Linda Aleping is a senior executive with both turnaround and growth experience. She produced outstanding results in a variety of positions including general management, strategy, finance, marketing, and business development. She is currently a professor of entrepreneurship at Santa Clara University and Founding Director of the Global Women's Leadership Network. She is a graduate of Stanford University with a BA in Economics, 1967. |
| Dian Alyan was born and raised in Indonesia. She holds a degree in engineering and came to the US to pursue a career in Marketing with Proctor & Gamble where she handled many of its global brands. The tsunami of 2004 changed her life forever as that tragedy and her personal loss compelled her to create GiveLight Foundation (http://www.givelight.org/). The focus of her work has now turned into her life's passion: helping orphaned children around the world.
GiveLight's first orphanage opened in Dec 2005 in Aceh for the orphans of the tsunami. The second one was inaugurated in Nov' 2008 for the 2005 earthquake orphans in Pakistan. Today, GiveLight supports over 300 orphans in six countries (Indonesia, Pakistan, Sudan, Sierra Leone, Bangladesh and Afghanistan). This year GiveLight is looking to expand to Haiti and our long term goal is to reach out to 1,000 orphans in at least 10 countries around the world. Dian lives in Sunnyvale with her husband and their two young boys. |
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