Speaker

Sarah McGuire (Director of synerG Young Professionals, Action Greensboro)

Sarah McGuire is the Director of synerG Young Professionals at Action Greensboro where she works with a passionate group of volunteers and young leaders to provide valuable professional and leadership development opportunities to young professionals in Greensboro. She holds a BA in Public Policy from UNC-Chapel Hill and an MPA from UNC-Greensboro. She enjoys community building, collaborative approaches to urban problem solving and working to make Greensboro a vibrant city for all to enjoy.

Lizzy Tahsuda (Director of Campus Greensboro, Action Greensboro)

Lizzy Tahsuda is the Director of Campus Greensboro at Action Greensboro. She has worked in career development with college students for the last 5 years, both in the Bryan School of Business at UNC Greensboro and at the University of Oklahoma. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology from the University of Oklahoma, and a Master of Science in Counseling Psychology from the University of Kentucky.

She serves as the Leadership Development Chair for the Junior League of Greensboro, and serves on the Corporate Advisory Board for Bennett College and the Office of Leadership and Civic Engagement Advisory Committee at UNC Greensboro. She also presents continuing education courses on recruiting and retaining millennial employees to corporate and community partners in Greensboro.

Steve Rendle (Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer, VF Corporation)

Steve Rendle is Chairman, President & Chief Executive Officer of VF Corporation. He has more than 30 years of experience in the specialty outdoor and action sports industry, 16 of which have been with VF.

Rendle was appointed CEO in January 2017 and then Chairman of VF’s Board of Directors in October 2017. Prior to being named CEO, he was President & Chief Operating Officer, overseeing all of VF’s business coalitions worldwide: Outdoor & Action Sports, Jeanswear, Imagewear and Sportswear. He was also responsible for VF’s global Supply Chain and Direct-to-Consumer platforms.

Prior to becoming President & COO, he was Senior Vice President, Americas, with responsibility for driving the strategies to support VF’s continued growth in its Americas-based businesses. Previously, Rendle spent three years as Vice President, VF Corporation and Group President, Outdoor & Action Sports Americas, leading VF’s Outdoor and Action Sports Americas businesses in North and South America.

Rendle also served as President of VF’s Outdoor Americas coalition, where he oversaw The North Face^®, JanSport^®, Eagle Creek^® and lucy^® brands, as well as business development for the coalition. From 2004 to 2011, he served as President of The North Face^®.

Rendle began his VF career with The North Face^® in 1999 and shortly afterward was promoted to Vice President of Sales, where he worked to reshape the business’ sales organization, product and marketing strategies, and go-to-market model. Before joining The North Face^®, Rendle held leading sales management roles at Youngone Corporation and at W.L. Gore and Associates.

Rendle serves on the Board of Directors of the Retail Industry Leaders Association (RILA) as well as the Board of Directors of Advanced Functional Fabrics of America, Inc. (AFFOA), an organization working to enable a manufacturing-based approach to transforming traditional fibers, yarns, and fabrics into highly sophisticated, integrated, and networked devices and systems. He is a founding board member of the Outdoor Industry’s Outdoor Foundation. He has also served in an advisory capacity to Bainbridge Graduate Institute and provided insight into its creation of an M.B.A. program concentration focused on sustainability. Rendle was honored with The Mountain Institute’s annual Exemplary Corporate Stewardship of Mountains award in 2007.

He earned a B.S. degree in Kinesiology from the University of Washington.

Kathleen Dawson (Chief Innovation Officer, Guilford County Schools) Dawson was the executive director of school support and improvement in Metro Nashville Public Schools, where she helped design and implement two early colleges. In that role, she also monitored school performance, developed leadership and facilitated professional learning to foster change. Dawson has served as an executive lead principal, principal, and adjunct professor. She holds degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, Harvard University, and the University of Wisconsin. She began her education career as a first-grade teacher.

Her current position is a new position responsible for creating and redesigning instructional school models to best-fit students’ academic and social-emotional needs and the desires of the community.

ANDREA CONNER (Athena President)
Andrea Conner is a change agent and strategic relationship builder. Through her success in global leadership roles spanning four countries, she promotes corporate social responsibility, leadership development, and gender equity.

As President of ATHENA International, Andrea leads the organization in its mission to support, develop and honor women leaders. In doing so, she brings an international approach and global awareness of the challenges facing women’s educational and equal opportunity advancement.

A servant to the global community, Andrea serves on the Board of the Sias International University Foundation that supports a private post-secondary school in rural China, and is a Governing Body Board Member for the Raleigh Chapter of the US National Committee for UN Women. She is a consultant for the World Academy for the Future of Women and previously worked on assignment for United Nations Women-Beijing.

Andrea holds a master’s degree in Global Leadership from Duquesne University and a bachelor’s degree in economics and business from Edinboro University. Currently residing in North Carolina, Andrea advocates fiercely for issues important to the advancement of the world’s women and global citizenship.

MARTHA MERTZ (Athena Founder)
From childhood through motherhood and into a successful career, Martha Mayhood Mertz saw women she considered skilled and inspiring denied recognition for and access to leadership. If women’s strengths as leaders were publicly acknowledged, she reasoned, they no longer could be dismissed.

“Women lead.” Said Mertz, “we may not always get credit for it, or paid for it, or thanked for it—but in more ways and places than any other time in human history, women lead.”

So in 1982 Mertz launched a new leadership award program, the ATHENA Award, named for the strong, enlightened goddess. The award would recognize individuals who excelled in their professions, gave back to their communities, and helped raise up other leaders, especially women.

What Mertz conceived more than a quarter-century ago is now a global movement that has created recognition, mentoring, and training programs.

Martha has served as President of ATHENA International from its beginnings in Lansing, Michigan in 1982 to May of 1999. Now, a global board leads ATHENA International and Mertz serves as a board member and ambassador, traveling the globe to share the message that women bring a distinctive, transforming approach to leadership; an approach that goes beyond gender to speak to all who would lead in the 21st century.