Women's Emerging Leadership Forum 2018

Caretha Coleman

Human Resources Executive, Entrepreneur, Coach, Community Advocate, Volunteer

Getting her start at Hewlett Packard, Caretha has spent 40 years in the technology industry working with start-ups and early stage ventures in the areas of organizational strategy development; and executive coaching and effectiveness.

An advocate for women and minorities in business, Caretha demonstrates her commitment to mentoring young professionals and entrepreneurs across the country. Read her full bio.

Caretha Coleman

Human Resources Executive, Entrepreneur, Coach, Community Advocate, Volunteer

Getting her start at Hewlett Packard, Caretha has spent 40 years in the technology industry working with start-ups and early stage ventures in the areas of organizational strategy development; and executive coaching and effectiveness. Among her accomplishments is Software Publishing Corporation, where her leadership was instrumental in pioneering one of the first successful desktop computer software businesses.

Ms. Coleman serves as a director on the board of Dignity Health, a $16 billion healthcare system where she also served as chairman; and is a member of the board of Viridis Learning. She is an adviser to Illuminate, an early stage VC firm focused on enterprise, cloud and mobile computing; and was a founding member of The Angels Forum. She chairs The Leverage Network (TLN) and is an executive committee member of the Bay Area Black Corporate Directors. Caretha is national Board Member of Facing History and Ourselves, a member of the Board Emeriti of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation and the advisory board of the Ravenswood Health Clinic; and the Black Economic Alliance.

An advocate for women and minorities in business, Caretha demonstrates her commitment to mentoring young professionals and entrepreneurs across the country. She has been recognized as one of the Bay Area’s most Influential Women by the San Francisco Business Times; and Outstanding Director by the Silicon Valley Business Journal, and was named a Visionary Leader by the San Francisco Chronicle. An American Leadership Forum Fellow, Caretha is a recipient of the YMCA’s Red Triangle award, which recognizes the highest level of volunteer. She was also recognized with the Black Enterprise Trailblazer award in 2016; and nominated as a Visionary Leader in the Bay Area for her work towards creating a more diverse community inside and outside of the workplace.

Jennifer Summit, Ph.D.

Provost, Vice President of Academic Affairs, San Francisco State University

Jennifer Summit joined San Francisco State University as the dean of undergraduate studies in 2013. She led the creation of the new Division of Undergraduate Education and Academic Planning, which includes general education, writing in the disciplines and writing across the curriculum, student academic support and advising, curriculum development, student learning assessment, the Metro College Success Program, and the Institute for Civic and Community Engagement. Summit also co-chaired the campus wide Student Success and Graduation Initiative Task Force, which pulls together administrators, faculty, staff and students, to monitor and increase the university’s graduation rates.

She was previously at Stanford University from 1995 to 2013, where she was a professor of English and served in multiple administrative and leadership capacities. Summit was Stanford's director of integrated learning, the chair of the Committee for the Review of the Undergraduate Major and the chair of the University Writing and Oral Communication Requirements Revision. She also served for three years as the chair of the department of English at Stanford, and co-founded and directed the university's Center for Medieval and Early Modern Studies. In 2012, she served as an American Council on Education Fellow at San Jose State University, where she led the Provost's Task Force on Student Engagement.

A widely-published scholar of medieval and early modern English Literature, Dr. Summit has received major fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Modern Language Association. Summit's scholarly interests bridge the medieval and early modern periods and focus on the histories of reading, literature, and knowledge, with a special interest in literacy and the disciplines today. Her published work includes Action vs. Contemplation: Why an Ancient Debate Still Matters, co-authored with Blakey Vermeule (University of Chicago Press); Memory’s Library: Medieval Books in Early Modern England (Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 2008), which was awarded the Roland H. Bainton Book Prize by the Sixteenth Century Society and Conference (SCSC) and the John Ben Snow Foundation Book Prize from the North American Conference on British Studies (NCBS.) She has also published widely on issues of curriculum design, student learning and innovation in higher education. Summit received her B.A. in English from Vassar College that included a yearlong study abroad at University College, London. She completed both her M.A. and Ph.D. in English from Johns Hopkins University.

Denise Kleinrichert, Ph.D.

Interim Associate Dean, College of Business; Director of the Center for Ethical and Sustainable Business (CESB), San Francisco State University

Denise Kleinrichert is the director of the CESB and an associate professor of management/ethics. She teaches business undergraduate and graduate courses on the ethical, social and environmental aspects of business. She is the chair of San Francisco State’s annual Business Ethics Week and she is a founding faculty member of the CESB High School Summer Sustainability Workshop. Her academic career focuses on teaching and publication in the areas of business ethics, corporate social responsibility, sustainable business practices, gender and social entrepreneurship, board director risk and transparency, and business education. She also has extensive corporate executive experience in the banking, hospital, and insurance industries. She has a Ph.D. and M.A. in philosophy, M.L.A. in social & political thought, and M.B.A. course work from the University of South Florida. She has a B.A. in economics from Indiana University.

Yim-Yu, Ph.D.

Interim Dean, San Francisco State University Lam Family College of Business

Yim-Yu Wong joined the College of Business as an Associate Professor in 1995 and became chair of the Department of International Business from 2000 to 2003 and from 2008 to 2016. She is an active member of the San Francisco State University community. She served as a member of the Strategic Plan Coordinating Committee and co-chair of the College of Business Strategic Planning Task Force in 2015. Yim-Yu is positioned to realize the college’s vision and implement the strategic plan. She earned her bachelor’s in business and her MBA from Western Illinois University, and her PhD in strategic management from the University of Nebraska.

Sara Radcliffe, M.P.H.

President and CEO, California Life Sciences Association

Sara Radcliffe joined the California Life Sciences Association (CLSA) in December 2014 and serves as president and chief executive officer. She formerly served as the executive vice president for health at the Biotechnology Industry Organization (BIO). Previously, Sara served as senior director, biologics & biotechnology at the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America (PhRMA). She also served in the Alliance and Technology Group at SmithKline Beecham Pharmaceuticals as a research and development policy analyst, working on evaluation and communication of the promise, ethics, and impact of rapidly-developing technologies in DNA Research. In addition she worked for the Core Services Committee of the New Zealand Ministry of Health. Sara holds a master of public health and a master of arts in philosophy from the Johns Hopkins University, and a bachelor of arts from Wellesley College.

Amy Gershkoff, Ph.D.

Former Chief Data Officer for Ancestry

Amy Gershkoff is a consultant and advisor for companies around the globe, helping them create integrated data, technology, and analytics solutions. She is the former chief data officer for Ancestry, the world's leading consumer genomics company. Prior to joining Ancestry, she was chief data officer at Zynga. Previously, Amy built and led the Customer Analytics & Insights team and led the Global Data Science team at eBay. She has also served as the chief data scientist for WPP, Data Alliance, where she worked across WPP’s more than 350 operating companies worldwide. She was also the Head of Media Planning at Obama for America 2012, where she was the architect of Obama’s advertising strategy and designed the campaign's analytics systems. A successful entrepreneur, Gershkoff co-founded Changing Targets Media, an advertising analytics company. Gershkoff has been named one of the nation’s 40 under 40 leading entrepreneurs and was featured in the Washington Post as one of the nation’s most prominent innovators. She was also named one of the Top 50 Women to Watch in Tech and one of San Francisco's Most Influential Women in Business. Most recently, she was named one of North America's Top 50 Analytics Professionals. Her articles have appeared in publications such as the Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, TechCrunch, and Business Insider, and she has been a commentator on NPR, Bloomberg News, ABC, CSPAN, and for various print media outlets including the New York Times. She holds a Ph.D. from Princeton University.

Chia-Lin Simmons

CEO and Co-Founder of LookyLoo, Former Google and Amazon Executive

Chia-Lin Simmons is the CEO of LookyLoo, a Retail Tech/AI platform company that focuses on increasing sales conversion, customer confidence in fit and driving down return rates for apparel and online retailers. She is active in the AI, automotive, transportation, digital media and e-commerce technology space as a consultant and advisory board member for a number of companies in the space. Prior to co-founding her company, Chia-Lin was an executive at a number of high visibility technology companies. She was the former Head of Global Partner Marketing for Google's digital business Google Play Music and the Google Play Store; former VP of marketing & content for Harman International’s Connected Car business; former VP of marketing and general manager of Playphone North America; a senior business development executive at Time Warner/AOL, as well as the VP of strategic alliances at Audible. Chia-Lin currently serves on the Board of Directors for Servco Pacific, a $1.4B global automotive/goods company, and recently gave presentations on Autonomous Vehicles and legal concerns to more than 400-plus autonomous car experts in Silicon Valley. In her free time, Chia-Lin founded the #bindersproject, which helps connect women tech-founders with global funders looking to accelerate female-founded startups. Chia-Lin graduated magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from U.C. San Diego and received her M.B.A. from Cornell University, where she was a Park Leadership Fellow. Chia-Lin is a licensed New York State attorney and earned her J.D. from George Mason University School of Law.