Listen to Her

Dana Commandatore is a full-time working wife, mother, advocate, and baker. She grew up in New Jersey and moved across the river to New York City to start her advertising career in the late 1990s. She and her husband, actor Michael Broderick, decided to move their family to Los Angeles in 2004 where their son was diagnosed with autism. She and Michael began RethinkingAutism.com in 2009 to change the autism conversation from causation and cure to acceptance and understanding. Dana and her family still reside in Los Angeles where she is an Executive Vice President at Deutsch Advertising Agency, Autism Acceptance Advocate and avid baker.

Toya Webb is a national award-winning CMO, transformational life coach and motivational speaker. She inspires her clients to live a life with purpose on purpose. Born and raised on the south side of Chicago, this former news reporter has a knack for good story-telling and a passion for people. She is a recipient of the YWCA leadership award in Communications and Technology, was named one of the Best Under 40 by the Kane County Chronicle and was recognized as a mover and a shaker as a 40 under 40 honoree by the American Association for Women in Community Colleges.

An executive and influential leader in higher education, Toya believes in the power of lifelong learning and is currently pursuing a doctorate in Higher Education and Organizational Change at Benedictine University in Illinois. She is married to her high school sweetheart and has three sons.

Louise Mbella “Sinai” also called (Frenchy) is a Native of the City of Créteil in France born and raised. She is a proud immigrant of Los Angeles where she advocates for Homeless Rights, Human Rights, Social Projects fostering Equality, Diversity, Inclusion, Empowerment and more. With a French Degree in Economics and Social Sciences, and a Certificate in The Humanities from a U.S academic institution, her advocacy work on behalf of the homeless in Downtown Los Angeles, particularly Skidrow, is significant.

Having overcome trauma homelessness and oppression herself, she highlights the importance of listening to the voices of survivors particularly those experiencing homelessness, scarcity, violence. She feels that making them part of the conversation and solutions of our social issues directly impacting them is important.

Her message suggests the necessity to go beyond just providing shelters and low income permanent supportive housing as an answer to the homeless crisis. She stresses the importance of creating social curriculum platforms while transforming the minds of men and women, as a fundamental element for helping end homelessness.

Sonali Fiske is a Sri Lankan-American women's leadership coach and founder of Pick Your Platform & Raise Your Voice. As a mentor to underrepresented & woman-identifying voices of color, she centers the often suppressed and sidelined stories of those still considered on the margins of society. Her recent online masterclass on "Dismantling White Dominance in Women's Entrepreneurship" went viral, and centered the stories of black, indigenous women of color countering the current narrative in leadership and influence.

She also leads storytelling workshops and self-care retreats locally and internationally, and conducts a monthly tele-call entitled "Call to Sacred Activism for women leaders" confronting uneasy issues such as cultural appropriation, tokenism, and white supremacy. And in her leisure time, she works on her first anthology of poetry for brown women. Sonali is also currently a council member of the International Council of Interfaith & Indigenous Women. You can find our more about her work at: www.sonalifiske.com.

Aja McClanahan is a best-selling author, blogger, and writer who covers personal finance and entrepreneurship. Her family's personal story of getting out of over $120,000 in debt has been featured in places like Yahoo! Finance, Kiplinger's, MarketWatch, U.S. News and World Report while her writing has appeared in places such as Inc., Business Insider, MSN Money and dozens of other web outlets. She also manages her daughters' acting careers while living on the South Side of Chicago with her husband.