Women's Emerging Leadership Forum (WELF) 2026

Gulnur Tumbat, Ph.D.

Professor of Marketing and Lam-Larsen Community Engagement Initiative Director, Lam Family College of Business, San Francisco State University

Gulnur Tumbat has used her extraordinary experiences on the highest mountains in the world in her academic research and in her speaking engagements on topics such as risk taking, making decisions in dynamic contexts, managing uncertainty, and achieving ambitious goals through strategy, leadership, persistence, entrepreneurship, and passion. She has published in prestigious academic outlets such as Journal of Marketing, Journal of Consumer Research, Marketing Theory, Consumption, Markets and Culture, Journal of Consumer Behavior, Advances in Consumer Research, European Advances in Consumer Research, and Handbook of Research on Digital Media and Advertising: User Generated Content Consumption. Her favorite area of teaching is consumer behavior. In addition to being a business behavioral scientist, she is an elite endurance athlete who climbed the Seven Summits, the highest mountains on each geographic continent and is the first  Turkish woman to do so. She recently (August 2025) reached the summit of K2 (again, as the  first Turkish woman). As the Director of the Lam-Larsen Community Engagement Initiative , she spearheads its highly regarded flagship event, the Women’s Emerging Leadership Forum, which empowers women and fosters a vibrant learning community for both personal and professional growth.

Megan Schoettmer

Regional President, PNC Bank, Northern California

Megan Schoettmer is regional president of PNC Bank, Northern California. In this role, she has direct oversight for business development initiatives, partnerships, and fostering strong client relationships across Northern California’s fast-paced industries including technology, healthcare, real estate, non-profit, small business and more. She also spearheads impactful philanthropic initiatives across Northern California communities.

Schoettmer brings over two decades of experience to PNC Bank. Prior to joining PNC in 2022, she served as managing director and Commercial Banking leader of middle market banking for Wells Fargo focusing on various industries including technology, commercial and industrial, and commercial real estate in Silicon Valley and the greater San Francisco Bay Area. In addition, she also served in various roles with two Silicon Valley-founded banks; Bridge Bank and Silicon Valley Bank.

Schoettmer takes an active role in the community and serves on the boards of the Bay Area Host Committee Advisory Board, How Women Lead Silicon Valley Executive Board, Children’s Discovery Museum of San Jose and California Bankers Association. Through these organizations she is helping to shape and provide resources for the educational foundation of Northern California’s youth and their families, the economic landscape of the region, entrepreneurs and women leaders looking to advocate for each other and take the next step in their career journey. For all her professional and community efforts, Schoettmer has been recognized as Silicon Valley Business Journal’s 40 under 40, a Silicon Valley Business Journal Women of Influence, one of San Francisco Business Times Most Influential Women in Bay Area Business and a 2025 Newsmaker 100.

She earned her Bachelor of Science in business administration from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo and her Master of Business Administration from Santa Clara University.

Rehana Abbas

Chief Philanthropy Officer, San Francisco Foundation

Rehana Abbas leads fundraising strategy and donor engagement in service to the foundation's commitment to creating an equitable and thriving Bay Area. Before joining SFF, she enjoyed a career in fundraising for the arts, where she served as the Chief Philanthropy Officer at the Oakland Museum of California, leading a successful $85 million campaign, and at SFMOMA, where she was a key member of the team during the museum's $650M campaign and reopening in 2016. Rehana holds a BA from Wake Forest University and an MBA from the Yale School of Management. She is the chair of the board of Children’s Council of San Francisco, and enjoys living in the Glen Park neighborhood of San Francisco with her family.

Taylor Deaton

Strategic Customer Success Manager at Birdeye

Taylor Deaton at her current role partners with Birdeye’s largest and most strategic enterprise accounts, guiding complex, multi-stakeholder SaaS and AI platform implementations from adoption to long-term growth. With over 10 years in customer success, she has built a reputation for turning high-stakes client relationships into lasting partnerships - including owning and growing her previous company's single largest customer account. Beyond her client work, Taylor has a strong track record of building community at scale, having led Women's Employee Resource Groups across multiple companies throughout her career. Taylor's commitment to leadership extends deeply into the nonprofit space. She currently serves as Board Chair of The Gratitude Network, a nonprofit supporting global social impact leaders, after joining as a founding member of its Corporate Leadership Board. She's also a Senior Advisor at SuitUp, where she spent nearly a decade on its Corporate Leadership Board before stepping into her advisory role. A Bay Area native, Taylor played volleyball in college and is a certified professional ski instructor. She has driven across the country twice, visiting 44 of 50 states along the way, and can reliably be found on a dance floor at any live music show.