NYU Stern Women In Business

2009 SWIB Conference Afternoon Spotlight on Entrepreneurs

Unveil Your Secret Power: Taking Control of Your Success

The opportunity to take control of the future has motivated many women to start their own businesses. Join us for an inspirational discussion with three female entrepreneurs who have found success as their own bosses. We will discuss their motivations, how they developed their business plans, and how they successfully created their businesses. The conversation will focus on obstacles specific to women business owners and emphasize the ways women can work together to reach their individual goals.

Panelists:

Kimberly Slicklein,
Founder and CEO Enclave Rising, LLC
Founder and President Enclave Rising Foundation
Founder and CEO Ethos Resorts & Spas

With more than a decade of directing development, project management and brand strategy for international brands, and her lifelong commitment to environmental and social issues, social entrepreneur Kim Slicklein founded Enclave Rising, LLC™ in 2005. Enclave Rising is an international portfolio of companies rooted in environmental and social consciousness, each dedicated to developing and pioneering best practices in net zero carbon development, alternative energy, conservation, and true sustainability.

Committed to environmental and cultural sustainability and responsible construction and resort management, Enclave Rising is redefining eco-conscious (or "green") hospitality and real estate development. Enclave Rising's ultimate mission is to bridge the gap between ultra-luxury and ultra-green. Through unique building principles that emphasize genuine collaboration with local communities and governments as well as resource efficiency and clean energy, Enclave Rising is introducing an innovative development model to work synergistically with select regions around the world that are particularly poised to benefit from the economic returns of tourism.

Enclave Rising's flagship venture, Ethos Resorts & Spas™, combines the highest tenets of sustainability with five star luxury to establish a new standard of thoughtful consumption that will, in turn, have profound social and economic impacts across the world.

For the past four years, Slicklein has identified and assembled a portfolio of diversified international development projects to be marketed under the company's five star Ethos brand. Breaking ground in 2009, Ethos Little Bay™Anguilla BWI, will be the World's First Net Zero Carbon Five Star Resort™ brand.

Slicklein is also pioneering corporate social responsibility through the Enclave Rising Foundatio™. Slicklein donates 10% of net profits from Enclave Rising developments to the Enclave Rising Foundation to carry out programs within the local communities in which it builds. The Foundation runs tailor-made programs focused on area-specific education, conservation, alternative energy, and sustainability initiatives.

Slicklein first entered into the real estate world in 1999, when she created a women's real estate investment portfolio called The Stiletto Group. The Stiletto Group gained tremendous momentum and eventually evolved into an international development company, which marked the beginnings of Enclave Rising.

Prior to Enclave Rising, and during her tenure as a senior level marketing and brand consultant, Ms. Slicklein partnered with CEO's and senior corporate management to help redirect companies, brands and products in distress. Her experience included work with some of the world's most recognizable global brands:

Apple Computer (launched iMac and iPod)
Evian
Coca-Cola
Reebok (launched RBK)
Davidoff
Pepsi-Cola
Daimler Chrysler
Infiniti / Nissan
Isuzu
M&M Mars
Hershey Chocolate US

Slicklein is a frequent presenter and panel participant at real estate development, hospitality, environmental, sustainability, corporate social responsibility, educational and women's leadership conferences. Slicklein received her BA from Princeton University and her Graduate Certificate from New York University in Real Estate Finance and Development.

Shabnam Rezaei,
Co-Founder of Big Bad Boo Animation Studios and Norooz Productions
Founder and Editor-In-Chief of PersianMirror.com

Shabnam is the co-founder of Big Bad Boo Animation Studios and Norooz Productions, aiming to teach children about culture through entertainment. In the past year, the company has created Mixed Nutz, the first multicultural series, featuring friends from Iran, Cuba, India and Korea. Norooz's first film "Babak & Friends - A First Norooz", highlighted the Persian New Year and was sponsored by Apple and screened worldwide at museums such as Washington's Smithsonian and The British Museum.

Shabnam is also the founder and Editor-In-Chief of PersianMirror.com, a magazine with the mission of bringing Iranian culture to the world. The website receives 4 million hits per month and lists 12,000 Iranian businesses.

With a BS in Computer Science, a BA in German Literature from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from New York University, she has spent most of her professional career developing and marketing financial software for Fortune 500 clients such as Bank of America, JP Morgan, and ING. Shabnam has held managerial positions at EXIS, Misys and Deloitte & Touche and is an expert in Capital Markets.

Through her outreach, Shabnam is regularly seen in local and international media outlets such as the National Geographic, the New York Times, CNN, VOA, BBC and NPR. She speaks English, German, Persian, French, and Spanish.

Jacki Zehner
Founding Partner of Circle Financial Group

In 1996 Ms. Zehner was the youngest woman, and first female trader, to be invited into the partnership of Goldman Sachs. After leaving the firm in 2002, she became a Founding Partner of Circle Financial Group, a private wealth management operation consisting of a small group of women committed to effectively managing their families' assets and philanthropic activities. She is an active member of Golden Seeds, an angel investing network that invests in women-led ventures. An impassioned philanthropic visionary committed to the economic empowerment of women, she serves on the boards of The Women's Funding Network, The Breast Cancer Research Foundation, The Center for Work Life Policy, her alma mater The University of British Columbia, and is President of The Jacquelyn and Gregory Zehner Foundation. She is a frequent media commentator on women's success in the workplace, investing, current market events, women and wealth, and high-impact philanthropy.

Throughout her fourteen-year career at Goldman Sachs, she remained one of very few senior women traders on Wall Street and actively participated in numerous recruiting and mentoring activities aimed at both attracting and retaining women professionals. In 1999 Ms. Zehner left her role as manager of the mortgage-backed trading desk for an executive office appointment in which she assumed a broad human capital management role. She assumed responsibilities in the areas of leadership development, diversity, performance evaluation, promotion, succession planning and recruitment. She served on multiple internal committees including the firm's Partnership Committee, Diversity Committee, Compliance and Control Committee, and Pine Street, Goldman's Leadership Development Initiative. Her vision of creating community among high-impact women led to the creation and launch of Goldman's ASCEND Initiative, a Leadership Exchange which connects, educates, and empowers the firm's most influential women clients.

Ms. Zehner has been recognized as a "Wall Street Trailblazer"; a "next-generation role model" for women navigating the complex constellation of work, family, and civic service; and is the recipient of multiple leadership awards. Her work continues to be informed by her own journey from humble beginnings to Wall Street success. She learned early on the power of the dollar working as a cashier in her father's grocery store. Twenty-five years later the journey continues at Circle Financial Group, where eighteen high net worth women work together to thoughtfully direct their time, treasure and talent to make a difference in the world. The group also serves as a think-tank, attracting diverse thought leaders on matters of investing, current affairs, and social responsibility.

Through multiple platforms, Ms. Zehner leverages her unique access and expertise by bridging knowledge and resources across the corporate, philanthropic, and nonprofit sectors. Her strong belief in women's need to individually and collectively assert their economic clout fuels her ongoing engagement across these realms.

She lives in Connecticut with her husband, Greg Zehner, and two young children. Greg - a retired Goldman Sachs Partner, recent Yale Divinity Graduate and now acting pastor - shares his wife's commitment to social activism.

She blogs at PursePundit. (www.pursepundit.blogspot.com)