Lisa Leslie
Lisa Leslie is the most recognized player of both the WNBA and Team USA. She carried the gold-winning Team USA in 1996, 2000, 2004, and 2008. With the 2008 gold medal, Lisa became the first team sport athlete to win four consecutive Olympic medals. Throughout her legendary athletic career, she has been the most dominant player in women’s basketball history.
Her accolades in the WNBA include being the first player to receive the regular season MVP, the All-Star Game MVP, and the playoff MVP in the same season. In 2001, the same year, she led the Los Angeles Sparks to their first WNBA championship. The following year, she stunned the world when she became the first woman to slam dunk in a professional game. She retired from basketball in 2009 after scoring more than 6,200 points during her 12 years with the WNBA. In 2015, both the Naismith Memorial Basketball Hall of Fame and the Women’s Basketball Hall of Fame inducted Lisa for her exceptional performance and notable achievements in the sport.
Lisa is a published author and entrepreneur, most recently co-founding the luxury real estate firm Aston Rose. She is a commentator for ESPN, an in-studio sports analyst, and the co-host of CBS Sports’ “We Need To Talk.” In 2010, she became the first WNBA player turned co-owner, of the Los Angeles Sparks.
Susan Packard
Throughout Susan Packard’s career, she has helped to build powerful media brands like HBO, CNBC, and HGTV. A co-founder of HGTV, she was the chief officer and helped lead its transition to Scripps Networks Interactive, guiding the creation of new brands and platforms. Under her leadership, these businesses had a market value of more than $15 billion.
Susan left corporate media to become a writer, mentor, and leadership speaker. Her books “New Rules of the Game: 10 Strategies for Women in the Workplace” and “Fully Human: Three Steps to Grow Your Emotional Fitness in Work, Leadership, and Life” explore how practices of good emotional health can help us create better lives and careers. Emotional fitness, a practice she teaches today to leaders, was the core of her success at HGTV.
Susan has done many things in her career that others might consider brave, but she asserts that the most courageous thing she has ever done was to ask for help for an ongoing substance use disorder. In 2019, she shared her recovery journey in a Commencement address at Michigan State University, her alma mater.
In 2020, Susan was named one of the top 40 women keynote speakers by RealLeaders, and she continues to be an active speaker at organizations and universities like Stanford Business School, Carnegie Mellon, UCLA, and the University of Alabama. She was also the first woman elected to serve on the board of directors of Churchill Downs, Inc., the owner and manager of the Kentucky Derby.
Meridith Webster
Meridith Webster’s notable leadership experience spans business, government, media, and philanthropy. Since 2021, she has led communications and public affairs strategies for The Estée Lauder Companies as its executive vice president of global communications and public affairs. In this role, she is a strategic advisor to the company’s senior leadership, advancing and protecting its business interests and corporate reputation globally while strengthening relationships that drive value for key stakeholders.
Before ELC, Meridith served in the Biden White House as a special assistant to the president and chief of staff to the Domestic Policy Council. During the Obama Administration, she served as the senior advisor to the White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel and the deputy chief of staff to Susan Rice, then the U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations.
In addition, Meridith has held various positions in the media and was Vox Media’s first-ever chief communications officer. While in this position, she led communications for the company’s merger with New York Media. She has held several roles at Bloomberg L.P. and Bloomberg Philanthropies, including as the global head of public affairs, where she oversaw climate and public health communications, public affairs campaigns, and strategic communications initiatives for the company.