Register here for the 2025 Women in Business Conference!
IMU ALUMNI HALL, 900 E 7th St, Bloomington, IN; 10am–4pm, January 25th
Join us to hear from three inspirational keynote speakers, participate in breakout sessions of your choice, complimentary catered lunch & refreshments, corporate roundtables with WiB corporate partners, and networking opportunities with peers and professionals!
More about our speakers below:
Cassandra De Pecol
Cassandra De Pecol is an Award-Winning Traveler, Author, the founder and CEO of the women’s lifestyle company, DELCÂ and brand agency, Elevatxd. She was born in Connecticut but resides in Los Angeles, California. De Pecol began to build her life and legacy by drawing inspiration from the theory of the Hero’s Journey as her guide, and or the first chapter of her professional career, De Pecol was focused on introspective travel. In 2014 she began planning her travels to every country in the world, in an effort to make history, break records, and build a career for herself. In 2015, she departed on her world record attempt and in 2017, she achieved that goal, having visited countries like North Korea, Syria, and Afghanistan as a solo female traveler. She was nominated for, and received many accolades, recognition, and awards over the course of her travel career, including two Guinness World Records, recognition in the National Women’s History Museum, TIME’s Female Firsts, and the Pioneering Amelia Earhart Achievement Award, among many others. Cassandra became the first documented woman to travel to every country in the world in record time.
Melissa Hanna
Melissa Hanna is co-founder and CEO of Mahmee, a comprehensive prenatal and postpartum care coordination platform that increases positive health outcomes for moms and babies, backed by Serena Williams and Mark Cuban. By using its proprietary HIPAA-secure technology, Mahmee's staff of certified and trained maternity support professionals are able to deliver proactive, ongoing education and guidance to new families everywhere at a fraction of the cost. An activist-entrepreneur, Melissa received her Masters of Business Administration from the Peter F. Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University, and her Juris Doctor from Southwestern Law School where she now teaches as an adjunct professor of corporate and technology law. She has worked in operations and strategy at startups in healthcare, education, digital media and consumer goods.
Dawn Myers
Founder and CEO in the hardware, CPG, and retail space and a DC/Baltimore region ecosystem builder, having held several leadership positions in nonprofits in the tech and startup sphere. Dawn launched Richualist to make tech tools to meet the nuanced needs of women of color through physical product innovation, but engineering and manufacturing tech-enabled hardware takes an incredible amount of capital and training. Dawn had to get creative to raise funds to surmount the heightened barriers to entry in this space and quickly found herself advising and coaching other underestimated founders on how to do the same. Named one of Washington, D.C.'s Tech Titans by the Washingtonian, selected as Innovation of the Year by Technical.ly Baltimore, and chosen as one of Washington's top 21 Startups to watch by The Washington Business Journal, Dawn is ecstatic at the prospect of building in her region. Dawn has negotiated partnerships with and secured funding from the world's top manufacturers including Dow, Proctor and Gamble, Sephora, and Glossier for her patented technologies in the personal care and beauty space.
