2023 iRelaunch Virtual Employer Summit

Elizabeth is a career relauncher with over 15 years of experience designing, implementing and managing programs that drive impact at the intersection of diversity and inclusion, talent acquisition, corporate social responsibility, and employee engagement. She is recognized for her strategic planning and execution, project and stakeholder management, and recruiting and training skills. As Managing Director at iRelaunch, Elizabeth plays a key role in the company’s pioneering work, advising progressive and innovative employers on career reentry program options to leverage diverse talent pools.

Elizabeth brings a wealth of personal and professional experience in the career reentry space to iRelaunch. After a 15-year career gap, she relaunched at Oracle without the support of a formal career reentry program. With a focus on the Company’s diversity and inclusion goals, she drew on her personal relaunch experience to define, pilot and expand Oracle’s Career Relaunch Program. Elizabeth was also the architect and manager of Oracle’s global, community-based Corporate Social Responsibility program. She expanded the program to over 25 countries, recruiting and training community leaders around the world.

Elizabeth earned an MBA in Finance from Denver University and a BA in History from Trinity College in Hartford, CT. She was trained in Design Thinking techniques by Stanford’s dSchool, and has served as an advisor for ReBoot Accel, a recruiting firm that helps companies hire, advance and empower women. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her husband, Carl, and loves spending time with her two boys, being active outdoors, entertaining friends, and taking road trips.

Brett is a Vice President in the Moody’s People Team where he is responsible for Early Careers and Programs Talent Acquisition. In this role, he leads the strategic direction and oversees the delivery of programs to attract and recruit students and recent graduates into the global organization. Brett also manages targeted recruitment programs at the mid-career level including RE-IGNITE, Moody’s initiative to hire and support individuals returning from a career break.

Prior to his current role, Brett led Campus Recruitment at Moody’s in both the US and EMEA. Before joining Talent Acquisition, Brett was a manager in the Events & Outreach Team at Moody’s Analytics where he was responsible for the events programming for credit rating research clients in the US.

Brett is a Steering Committee member of the EMEA Pride Business Resource Group (BRG) and previously served as a Co-Chair of the US Pride BRG, as well as represented Moody’s on the Board of Directors of OPEN Finance, a non-profit business league of over 40 US-headquartered financial institutions’ LGBTQ+ employee resource groups.

He earned his BFA from the Conservatory of Fine Arts at Webster University in St. Louis, Missouri.

Cedric Layton is the Global ReEntry Program Co-Ordinator at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co. and is part of the Asset & Wealth Management Talent Institution organization. He works with Senior Leaders, DE&I Partners, SWAT Recruiting Team, Talent & Learning ReEntry Program Team, Communication & Website Teams and external partners to project end to end the ReEntry program, to include creating project plans, timelines, budget plans, data analytics on hiring, retention, promotions, communications, coordinating websites changes and creating presentations materials. As Program Co-Ordinator for the Global ReEntry Program, he also partners with communications, marketing, and media teams to organize, structure and manage the communication strategy for the program including internal communications, external communications, branding, website, testimonials and articles. Cedric joined J.P. Morgan in 2008. Prior to joining the Asset & Wealth Management line of business in March of 2020, he partnered with supervisors, managers, and Executive Level Management in different organizations within the Consumer & Community Banking line of business to monitor workflow movement, confirm established controls, ensure SLA compliance, and report on employee performance. Cedric’s passion for helping people led to his current role with the firm. His ability to work with and mentor young adults was channeled into his role as Year Up Program Sponsor for the Home Lending division of the Consumer & Community Banking line of business. While serving in the role, Cedric was presented with the Urban Empowerment Award by the Year Up Program Team in recognition of his dedication to their mission to close the opportunity divide. He also led a team composed of members from the Dallas/Fort Worth Location Leadership Team at J.P. Morgan Chase & Co to being recognized by Year Up with the Corporate Champion Award. Cedric attributes much of his career success to his professionalism, work ethic, and the support received from leaders and colleagues within the firm. Cedric holds a Bachelor's degree in Applied Arts & Science from Texas A&M University-Commerce. Hobbies & Interests: Cedric enjoys working out, reading fiction novels, biking, spending time with family.

Anjali Sinha is a Senior Manager in the Talent Acquisition team at Deloitte and serves as the National Leader for Hire to Train programs. She has 20+ years of experience in various talent leadership positions including Talent Acquisition, Talent Advisory, Innovation and Learning. She has experience in supporting global clients across business verticals and geographies. Anjali is passionate about building deep client relationships, translating business strategy into equitable people initiatives and implementing solutions to support critical business imperatives. In her role as the National Acquisition Leader for Hire-to-Train programs, Anjali focuses on creating equity in opportunity through programs like Encore, that focus on bringing professionals back to the workforce.

Anne helps companies develop unique strategies to increase their diversity and bring returning professionals back to the workforce. Prior to iRelaunch, Anne worked for 20+ years in sales and sales leadership positions for Johnson & Johnson, Proctor & Gamble, and Kimberly Clark and more. Her most recent corporate position was Regional Vice President of Sales at ADVO Inc. While on her eight-year career break, Anne pursued a lifelong passion as a freelance writer. She has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Pittsburgh Business Times, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, Our Region’s Business and Pittsburgh Magazine. (Yes, she lives in Pittsburgh.) In her spare time Anne volunteers with local nonprofits, and (although devoid of musical talent) is an enthusiastic musical theater fan. For Spotify 2021, her #1 genre was “Broadway,” #1 artist was Lin Manuel Miranda, and #1 podcast was 3, 2, 1 iRelaunch.

Carol Fishman Cohen, the pioneering career reentry expert, is the CEO and Co-founder of iRelaunch. iRelaunch works with employers worldwide to build and expand career reentry programs to hire professionals returning to work after extended leave. iRelaunch identifies talent for and trains hundreds of managers, recruiters and relauncher participants in these programs. iRelaunch's flagship event, the iRelaunch Return to Work Conference, brings together thousands of "relaunchers" with the world's leading employers that want to hire them. It has been running for 14 years.

iRelaunch supports a community of 100,000 relaunchers looking to return to work after career breaks from one to over 20 years for a wide range of reasons unrelated to their work performance. That's why this pool is consistently high caliber. iRelaunch's innovative #calloutyourbreak campaign encourages relaunchers to use LinkedIn's new "career break" profile building category to literally call out their breaks so employers with career reentry programs will know they are eligible.

Cohen is a relauncher herself, having returned to Bain Capital after 11 years out of the full time workforce. Her relaunch is documented in a Harvard Business School case study. iRelaunch is the subject of a Stanford Graduate School of Business case study. Carol hosts the 3,2,1 iRelaunch podcast and writes regularly for Harvard Business Review. Her TED/TEDx talk, "How to get back to work after a career break," has nearly 3.7 million views and has been translated into 30 languages. A graduate of Harvard Business School and Pomona College, she resides in greater Miami.

Elizabeth is a career relauncher with over 15 years of experience designing, implementing and managing programs that drive impact at the intersection of diversity and inclusion, talent acquisition, corporate social responsibility, and employee engagement. She is recognized for her strategic planning and execution, project and stakeholder management, and recruiting and training skills. As Managing Director at iRelaunch, Elizabeth plays a key role in the company’s pioneering work, advising progressive and innovative employers on career reentry program options to leverage diverse talent pools.

Elizabeth brings a wealth of personal and professional experience in the career reentry space to iRelaunch. After a 15-year career gap, she relaunched at Oracle without the support of a formal career reentry program. With a focus on the Company’s diversity and inclusion goals, she drew on her personal relaunch experience to define, pilot and expand Oracle’s Career Relaunch Program. Elizabeth was also the architect and manager of Oracle’s global, community-based Corporate Social Responsibility program. She expanded the program to over 25 countries, recruiting and training community leaders around the world.

Elizabeth earned an MBA in Finance from Denver University and a BA in History from Trinity College in Hartford, CT. She was trained in Design Thinking techniques by Stanford’s dSchool, and has served as an advisor for ReBoot Accel, a recruiting firm that helps companies hire, advance and empower women. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her husband, Carl, and loves spending time with her two boys, being active outdoors, entertaining friends, and taking road trips.

Nivedita Joshi Naithani is an accomplished global HR leader with over 25 years of experience in strategizing and implementing global human capital initiatives that impact business results, drive client-centricity, and enhance employee engagement. Recognized by C-suite executives as a courageous advocate and trusted advisor, Nivedita is a preferred partner on talent strategies owing to her unique ability to provide thought leadership to complex talent challenges while ensuring execution excellence.

Nivedita brings a breadth of experience across HR and Diversity & Inclusion programs. In her prior role as Global Lead at Cognizant, a Fortune 200 organization with 300,000 employees, she successfully led global cross-functional teams to design and deploy talent strategies across talent management, performance management, talent acquisition, learning and development, succession planning, strategic workforce planning, and talent transformation. Nivedita conceptualized, designed and launched Cognizant’s flagship Return to Work Program globally. Her deep insights and experience are valuable to firms seeking to establish or further enhance Corporate Returnship Programs globally.

As iRelaunch’s India-based Managing Director, Nivedita advances the global footprint of our pioneering work and thought leadership, working with progressive corporations on advisory services to leverage diverse talent pools.

Nivedita is a University Gold Medalist postgraduate in Human Resource Management from JMI, New Delhi and earned a Bachelors in Sociology with Honors from Miranda House, New Delhi, India.

Simran joined iRelaunch as Director, Global Growth Markets in September 2022. Based in London - UK, Simran’s addition to the team has further expanded our international presence and fortified our position as truly global pioneers in the career re-entry space.

As a global HR leader, Simran brings diverse industry experience having held various leadership roles with multi-national organisations across the United Kingdom, Continental Europe and India. With her experience spanning across the HR spectrum within Talent Acquisition, Diversity and Inclusion, Leadership Development and Talent Management, she has a deep appreciation for the diverse talent challenges faced by large global organisations. In addition, Simran’s client-centricity and passion to impact business results, make her a strategic business partner and trusted advisor to C-suite executives.

In her prior role at Cognizant, a Fortune 200 organization with 300,000 employees, Simran was instrumental in conceptualising and designing their global flagship Return to Work program, thus making her a trusted partner for firms seeking to establish or further enhance a global corporate return to work program.

Jen Cartland is a Sr. Talent Acquisition Partner with Trane Technologies, focused on achieving a diverse workforce that is reflective of our communities. She started her career in Criminal Justice & Investigations, but has been a recruiter for about 15 years. Jen has a passion for innovative talent attraction strategies – including STEM re-entry programs like Trane Technologies’ ReLaunch Program – which showcases the power of inclusion to provide opportunity for all.

Bika Carter is the Director of External R&D, GF LABS at GlobalFoundries (GF) leading a global team and overseeing worldwide R&D partnerships. In this role she owns several key corporate R&D partnerships, the university partnership programs, and oversight for corporate-wide external R&D program management. She also participates on many external advisory boards including NSF, universities, NSTC taskforces, etc. Her prior positions at GF include roles in the CTO office and business development.  Bika’s past experience includes engineering and business roles at IMEC, Intersil, Harris Semiconductor and Texas Instruments. She holds a M.S. in Materials Science and Engineering and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering, both from North Carolina State University.

Bika has been an active advocate of developing women engineers for many years.  She is an active leader in developing women at GF, a participant in external advisory committees, an ambassador for both Universities and K- 12 programs, and mentors/coaches many early career women.  Most recently, Bika championed and drove the launch of Global Journey, the first career re-entry program at GF with a focus on growing mid-career engineering women. 

Ashley Miller has recently made a career pivot from Goldman Sachs Private Wealth Management where she managed client portfolios and investment strategies to Diversity Recruiting. As a diversity recruiting program manager she is able to connect with the brightest and the best diverse talent through the Returnship Program; Ashley is a 2021 Returnship participant.

Prior to Goldman, Ashley helped teams and athletes find success both on and off the court. After spending almost two decades working for both the WNBA and the NBA, she understands the importance of sport- and it is not simply winning or losing – it is the power to unite people no matter the age, gender, or skin color to connect for a common passion.

Over the past 20 years Ashley has played on, coached officiated, and worked for many teams achieving success along the way. In addition to her mentoring locally with Girls in the Game North Texas and nationally with USA Basketball’s Women in the Game, the pinnacle of success came in 2012 following a WNBA Championship and invite to the White House under then President Barack Obama.

Ashley is passionate about representation in the workplace and showing younger generations the opportunities to work in areas not commonly inhabited by women and people of color.

Ashley hold a BS in Movement and Sports Science from Purdue University.

Kuae Kelch is National President of Mocha Moms, Inc. and an Emmy-nominated journalist with more than 20 years of experience in the print, broadcast and online media. Currently she is an editorial producer booking high profile newsmakers for CNN's morning show 'New Day" with Chris Cuomo and Alisyn Camerota. She has written for a wide range of newspapers, magazines and websites and has contributed to The Huffington Post. She was a contributing editor for Plum Magazine and is the former editor in chief of the national magazine Black Family Today. Kuae is a former producer for the award-winning newsmagazine Dateline NBC, as well as Headliners and Legends with Matt Lauer on MSNBC. Since 2010 Kuae has been National President of Mocha Moms, Inc., a non-profit organization with 100 chapters in 29 states and a fast growing online presence of 100,000+ dedicated to supporting mothers of color. Over the past decade, she has increased the visibility of Mocha Moms and highlighted the stories of numerous mothers of color. Mocha Moms has been profiled in The New York Times, The Washington Post and Essence Magazine, and television segments have appeared on NBC Nightly News, The Oprah Winfrey Show, Good Morning America and ABC’s Nightline. Mocha Moms was a stakeholder organization during the Obama administration that partnered with the White House on various initiatives, as well as the EPA, U.S. Department of Education and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. In August 2013, she was on the cover of the New York Times Magazine as part of “The Opt-Out Generation Wants Back In” story by Judith Warner on moms returning to work after taking a career break. Kuae holds a B.A. in Print Journalism from Howard University and an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.

Phillip Anderson leads the Diversity & Inclusion team at DTCC which focuses on making the process of attracting, hiring and retaining talent at all levels, more inclusive. His remit also incorporates Corporate Social Responsibility which supports efforts of employee driven causes and to build a sustainable society, helping to improve equality, opportunity and a better place to live for all. Phil is tasked with defining and executing DTCC’s strategic D&I and CSR agenda which fosters and maintains an inclusive environment at DTCC, encouraging our employees to understand and create awareness of different backgrounds, behaviors and experiences by sponsoring dialogues and learning opportunities covering topics such as Intersectionality, Intercultural Competence and Unconscious Bias.

Prior to working at DTCC Phil led the D&I talent acquisition team at Moody’s, developing relationships with key business leaders to understand their human capital needs and gain sponsorship for strategic initiatives. Phil also worked as the lead resource for Morgan Stanley Wealth Management Field Diversity and Inclusion initiatives.

Phil has over twenty years of diversity program management and recruiting experience across the full employee lifecycle and is known for introducing “first ever” D&I programs that have increased employer-of-choice rankings, employee engagement and retention, which ultimately helped to drive revenue and profitability.

He has attained a Masters’ of Science degree in Human Resource Management & Organization Effectiveness from Manhattanville College and a Bachelor of Arts in History from the University of Pennsylvania and is committed to and a firm believer in helping people attain the best version of themselves. His mantra, “practice perpetuates ability”, speaks to the life long process of learning that is required to enabling people to obtain their dreams.

Margot is an experienced professional with a background in Diversity & Inclusion, finance/accounting, process improvement and project management across various industries. Now having her passion as her profession, her goal is to Make D&I our DNA at SAP! As VP, Head of North America Diversity & Inclusion, Margot leads SAP North America in embracing and leveraging employee’s unique diversity dimensions and corporate practices to support the achievement of organizational goals, outperform competitors, and exceed customer/employee expectations. Margot is responsible for identifying, planning, executing, and monitoring diversity activities related to the regional Diversity & Inclusion strategy across three pillars: Workforce Diversification, Workplace Culture & Marketplace Leadership. Margot ensures that D&I is seen as a business imperative by leaders and that embedding inclusion into SAP’s operational practices and procedures remain a priority.

Carol Fishman Cohen, the pioneering career reentry expert, is the CEO and Co-founder of iRelaunch. iRelaunch works with employers worldwide to build and expand career reentry programs to hire professionals returning to work after extended leave. iRelaunch identifies talent for and trains hundreds of managers, recruiters and relauncher participants in these programs. iRelaunch's flagship event, the iRelaunch Return to Work Conference, brings together thousands of "relaunchers" with the world's leading employers that want to hire them. It has been running for 14 years.

iRelaunch supports a community of 100,000 relaunchers looking to return to work after career breaks from one to over 20 years for a wide range of reasons unrelated to their work performance. That's why this pool is consistently high caliber. iRelaunch's innovative #calloutyourbreak campaign encourages relaunchers to use LinkedIn's new "career break" profile building category to literally call out their breaks so employers with career reentry programs will know they are eligible.

Cohen is a relauncher herself, having returned to Bain Capital after 11 years out of the full time workforce. Her relaunch is documented in a Harvard Business School case study. iRelaunch is the subject of a Stanford Graduate School of Business case study. Carol hosts the 3,2,1 iRelaunch podcast and writes regularly for Harvard Business Review. Her TED/TEDx talk, "How to get back to work after a career break," has nearly 3.7 million views and has been translated into 30 languages. A graduate of Harvard Business School and Pomona College, she resides in greater Miami.