Velocity Women's Summit

Fran Benjamin (‘14)

Fran has guided people and organizations through strategic transformation for over 15 years. Based in the San Francisco Bay Area, his work has concentrated in the Technology and Life Science industries, as well as with artist and activist communities. Fran served as the Vice President and Head of People for GRAIL, Inc. one of the world's fastest growing Life Sciences Technology startups dedicated to detecting cancer early when it can be cured. Between 2017 and 2021, Fran guided the unicorn company through nearly 4x employee growth, financing of over $1.5B, an initial public offering, and the eventual acquisition by Illumina for $8B.

At GRAIL, Fran coached the c-suite on amplifying sound leadership throughout the organization, and designed a progressive organizational and human resources strategy to address the needs of a rapidly changing talent landscape. He guides teams to build cohesion and efficacy through trust, connection, and communication.

Fran has navigated the executive ranks as a non-binary queer person and utilizes this unique experience, combined with leading-edge research and practical industry expertise, to advise clients to successfully traverse the complexities of equity, diversity, inclusion and belonging throughout their organizations. As a white person, Fran is committed to the work of antiracism while challenging and troubling his own position of power and privilege.

Fran built a career at the three-point intersection of human capital strategy, leadership, and diversity. Prior to joining GRAIL, while leading Diversity Strategy at Airbnb, Fran guided executives through systemic change, personal transformation, and mindset shifts to build high performing teams anchored in diversity. Fran consulted to Fortune 100 and entrepreneurial executives alike on building leadership ecosystems and inclusive cultures while serving as the Chief of Staff for Deloitte's Leadership Center for Inclusion. His experience leading teams of 30+ across global geographies informs how Fran guides clients. Fran has advised companies such as NIKE, Genentech, Airbnb, Cargill, and Bayer.

In the midst of his corporate career, Fran also spent time in the Middle East working in conflict resolution, peace, and reconciliation-an experience that still informs his approach to inclusive leadership and human interaction. Fran was an Organizational Behavior Fellow at the UCLA Anderson School of Management where he received his MBA. While completing his BA, Fran was fortunate to be a Norman Topping Scholar at the University of Southern California, a cohort of first generation and minority college students. Fran received a Professional Coaching Certification from New Ventures West and is an Integral Coach focusing on executive development.

When not advising and consulting, Fran spends time exploring the Bay Area with his husband and daughter, or by bringing beauty to the world as a performer, vocalist, and visual artist. Fran is a RYT 200 certified Hatha Yoga Instructor and is a student of somatics in leadership development.

Juanita Caldwell

By bringing her East Coast talents out to the West Coast, Juanita is a living testament that you can accomplish anything you put your mind to. She has dedicated her life to following her passion and living in her purpose. Born in New Jersey, Juanita Caldwell is happily living in her passion by never being afraid to follow her calling to pursue the Health & Fitness Field. Juanita is no stranger to Health & Fitness as she was an athlete her entire life. She gained a passion for fitness and athletics at a young age that continued to lead her through an opportunity to compete at the Division 1 Track & Field level in the North East Conference for Fairleigh Dickinson University. Due to many injuries suffered throughout her career she knew competing after her college career was not her main priority. After completing her Bachelors and Master’s degrees in Sports Administration, Sports Business & Sports Media she decided to get involved with the business side of sports. She began her career in College Athletics and then made the transition to professional sports working in the NBA. After a couple years in professional sports she decided that it was time for a shift in her life. She took a leap of faith and moved across the country to Los Angeles, CA and followed her journey into a lifestyle of fitness which led to the creation of Nït Fit.

Nït Fit is a fitness company created to cultivate & inspire healthier lifestyles by connecting people through our communities to make fitness a priority. Through Nït Fit, Juanita offers training plans uniquely created for each individual client through both personal and group training classes. She is using her diversified skillset to strive to reach her community through her connections and knowledge into the health and fitness world, and her main goal is to help clients feel completely comfortable and empowered in their bodies and minds through fitness.

Heather Caruso

Heather Caruso joined UCLA Anderson in 2018 as assistant dean for equity, diversity and inclusion. A scholar and researcher of organizational behavior, she teaches in the Management and Organizations and Behavioral Decision Making areas.

Caruso’s passion for facilitating collaborative success runs deep in her life and work. “My formal interests in organizational and social psychology developed when I was an undergraduate at Stanford doing cross-cultural negotiation research with Jared Curhan and Lee Ross,” she says. These interests deepened during her years as an engineer and executive in a multinational Silicon Valley startup. “I was fascinated with the real-world experiences stemming from differences in cultural identity. Interpersonal problems could derail even the most talented individual performers, and effective collaboration skills could not only prevent such problems, but raise individual contributions to new heights.”

Layering rigorous academic training on top of practical experience, Caruso grounds her interests in the areas of: effective collaboration (especially for cross-functional and multicultural teams); skilled improvisation in leadership; management of identity, power and influence; and strategies for optimal choice, judgment and decision making. She focused on these topics in over a decade of teaching, research administration and scholarship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business, and has moved to UCLA Anderson to enrich and expand her work.

“Propelled by our outstanding research in these areas, we are connecting to pioneers and pathbreakers, building bridges between research and practice to best accelerate innovation in the digital age.”

Caruso stays connected to the everyday priorities and challenges of the workplace by consulting for private- and public-sector organization leaders across the globe, as well as by teaching classes in leadership, team dynamics and power and influence. In addition, Caruso partnered with Chicago’s Second City to co-found the Second Science Project, which offers skill-building leadership workshops at the intersection of robust behavioral research and professional improvisational practice.

Caruso is a strong proponent of lifelong learning for management excellence, and encourages students to make the most of their professors’ knowledge, not only while they are pursuing their degrees, but also throughout their careers. “As a preeminent public university, UCLA has a a distinctive opportunity to advance equity, diversity and inclusion,” she says. “It is an honor to help UCLA Anderson seize that opportunity by creating the kind of challenging and rewarding educational climate that can benefit leaders from every walk of life.”

Julie Ann Crommett

Julie Ann Crommett has been working in the Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) space for over a decade leading disruptive, systemic change across media and tech. She was most recently Vice President of Multicultural Audience Engagement at The Walt Disney Studios spearheading efforts to diversify talent in front of and behind the camera, connect creative projects more closely to the communities they touch, and build a more inclusive culture within the Studios. Her team contributed to many projects including SOUL, COCO, BLACK PANTHER, RAYA AND THE LAST DRAGON, and ALADDIN as well as launching the Disney Launchpad: Shorts Incubator, an industry-leading program guaranteeing up to six directors from underrepresented backgrounds the opportunity to produce a short film for Disney+. Julie Ann was also instrumental in Disney's library review process leading to a revised content advisory and proactive resources for families to discuss negative stereotypes in media. In partnership with Disney's Executive Chairman Bob Iger, she launched and co-chaired the company's first-ever Creative Inclusion Council dedicated to increasing inclusion and accountability in Disney's creative endeavors. Previously she was Google’s Entertainment Industry Educator in Chief leading their efforts to shift and diversify on-screen perceptions of computer science through storytelling (a position she created) as well as having led Google’s DEI efforts in Latin America. Before that she worked at NBCUniversal managing behind-the-camera diversity programs including Writers on the Verge and the Directing Fellowship. Julie Ann has been recognized by The Hollywood Reporter’s 35 under 35, the IMAGEN Foundation’s Influential Latinos in Entertainment list and as an ADCOLOR Innovator. She serves on the boards for Hispanic Federation, NALIP (National Association of Latino Independent Producers), and Women in Animation. A proud Puerto Rican and Cuban American, Julie Ann was raised in Atlanta, GA and earned her BA in English at Harvard University.

Aida Davis

Aida is a highly experienced and results driven leader committed to solving the adaptive challenges of our time. Her breadth and depth of experience spans community & labor organizing, campaign management, design thinking methods and policy consulting. Inspired by her ancestors, elders and colleagues she created the Belonging, Dignity and Justice (BDJ) Framework as an alternative to the superficial and harmful Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) approach. She is leading a movement to create a just and fair society in which all are thriving. She holds a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science and African American studies from University California, Berkeley in addition to a Master’s Degree from University of Southern California in Public Policy and Public Administration.

Susan Jin Davis

Susan Jin Davis, Chief Sustainability Officer, has over 25 years of experience in the communications, media, and technology industry. In her current position, Ms. Jin Davis is responsible for identifying sustainable strategies and priorities and for implementing the Company’s Sustainability Program across all of Comcast business units and functions.

Prior to her current role, Ms. Jin Davis was Senior Vice President of Operations Compliance and was responsible for implementing product policies, operationalizing regulatory and legal requirements, reducing costs to the cable business, and managing business compliance.

In 2011, Ms. Jin Davis negotiated a historic Memorandum of Understanding between Comcast and the Asian American community as part of the Company’s merger with NBC Universal that creates ground-breaking commitments in the areas of programming, supplier and employment diversity, and community investment. She serves on Comcast’s Internal Diversity Council and is a Company liaison to the Comcast and NBCUniversal Joint Diversity Council. She is an executive sponsor of Asian Pacific Americans at Comcast, a Company affinity group.

Ms. Jin Davis was also responsible for launching Comcast’s Internet Essentials Program in 2011. Internet Essentials offers affordable high-speed Internet for low-income households. Internet Essentials is Comcast’s largest, most successful community investment initiative, having connected more than 8 million low-income Americans to all the opportunities of a digital world through low-cost, high-speed Internet at home.

Ms. Jin Davis has been recognized by Forbes as one of “Five Women of Color Who Should Be On Your Radar Screen.” She has completed the Women in Cable Telecommunications Senior Executive Summit at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business, the Women’s Executive Leadership Program at the Wharton School of Business, and CTAM’s Executive Management Program at the Harvard Business School. She received the 2010 Paragon Award of the National Association of Multi-Ethnicity in Cable and was a fellow in the Betsy Magness Leadership Institute of the Women in Cable Telecommunications. She has been named one of the “Most Powerful Women in Cable” by CableFAX and one of the “Top 50 Most Influential Minorities in Cable” by CableWorld for many years. Ms. Jin Davis is actively involved in Comcast’s diversity efforts, particularly as it relates to the Company’s relationship with the Asian American community. She serves as the Chair of the Board of the Asian Pacific American Institute for Congressional Studies and is a director on the Boards of the Asian/Pacific Islander American Chamber of Commerce & Entrepreneurship, and the Juvenile Law Center. Ms. Jin Davis also serves on the Board of Trustees of her alma mater, Bryn Mawr College. She lives in Kennett Square, PA with her daughter, Sophia and her father, Bok.

Michelle Enjoli

Michelle Enjoli is a bilingual international speaker and career coach who motivates and teaches strategies on how to successfully connect to career and business opportunities. She was a first-generation college student who was able to get her dream job before she graduated as a television producer. Since then, she has worked for global brands in television broadcasting and marketing like Univision, Telemundo, ABC, NBC and CBS, Mercedes-Benz USA and Delta Air Lines.

In 2016, she created the first all-inclusive business resource group at Mercedes-Benz USA to connect leaders and professionals with each other for growth and development. She continued to expand on this work and created her second dream job with the launch of Connect with Michelle Enjoli.

Michelle has an idea worth sharing and will become a speaker at Southampton, England's inaugural TEDx event this year. Her work and insights have been featured on glassdoor, Telemundo, Thrive Global and legalzoom. She is featured in a new book called “Hispanic Stars Rising. The New Face of Power” and is currently working on her first book.

Melanie Ho is the author of  Beyond Leaning In: Gender Equity & What Organizations are Up Against, a unique business book written as a novel (forthcoming March 2021). She is also the founder of Strategic Imagination, a firm focused on leveraging the power of the imaginative arts to drive organizational transformation. 

Melanie previously served as Senior Vice President of Research at EAB Global, an education advisory, technology, and services firm headquartered in Washington, DC. She led a team of over a hundred researchers that provided strategic, operational, and change management advice to more than 1500 educational institutions worldwide, including at 90% of the U.S. News Top 100 Universities.  Prior to her twelve years at EAB, Melanie received her Ph.D. in English, M.A. in English, and B.A. in Policy and Media Studies (self-designed major) from UCLA.  She can be reached at  www.melanieho.com 

Julianne Hough

Julianne Hough is an actress, dancer, singer, producer and Emmy Award-winning choreographer. She is a two-time professional champion and has appeared as a judge on ABC’s “Dancing with the Stars” and has starred in such films as “Footloose,” “Rock of Ages” and “Safe Haven.” She earned rave reviews in the Emmy-winning live broadcast, “Grease: Live” and starred recently in the title role of Jolene in Netflix’s original anthology series, “Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings,” in addition to appearing as a judge on season 14 of “America’s Got Talent.” She and her brother Derek have headlined three MOVE Live on Tour productions and produced and hosted NBC’s “Holidays with the Houghs” in December 2019. Prior to that, Julianne hosted and produced two Miss USA broadcasts and various Disney holiday specials for ABC, as recently co-hosted “NBC’s New Year’s Eve 2020” with Carson Daily. She recently released a new single, “Transform,” and has been featured in numerous high-profile campaigns, in addition to a wide range of philanthropic endeavors, charities and humanitarian efforts. She recently launched KINRGY, a movement experience inspired by the elements, which she led in sold-out engagements across with country as part of Oprah’s 2020 Vision tour. Through dance, breath work, and strength training, KINRGY focuses your mind, sculpts your body and ignites your life.

Caroline W. Nahas (B.A. ’70)

Caroline Nahas is a Senior Advisor to Korn Ferry. She has served as Vice Chairman, Managing Partner of the Los Angeles Headquarters office, and North America Leader of the Consumer Practice during her career with Korn Ferry.

Her primary focus primary is consulting and advising boards on governance, succession, effectiveness and recruiting. She has been involved in a number of CEO and Board building engagements. Her clients range from private to mid-cap to the Fortune 100 in a wide range of industries.

Caroline currently serves on the board of directors of DineEquity, Inc. (NYSE: DIN). She served as lead director during a CEO transition, is Chair of the Nominating and Corporate Governance Committee, and sits on the Compensation Committee.

Active in many civic groups, she is Chair of the UCLA Anderson School Board of Advisors and served as the Corporate Board Chair for the United Way of Greater Los Angeles.

Among her many honors, Caroline was recognized nationally by her peers, receiving the Eleanor H. Raynolds Award from the Association of Executive Search Consultants (AESC), based on a career of excellence in executive search, as well as an ongoing dedication to volunteerism.

Other recognitions include one of the Los Angeles Business Journal’s Top 500 Influencers for five years and the Girl Scouts of Greater Los Angeles Visionary Award which honors an exceptional individual who provides significant resources or immeasurable opportunities to build girls of courage, confidence and character.

Ms. Nahas received a bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Los Angeles.

Lauryn Nwankpa

Lauryn Nwankpa is the Head of Social Impact at Dave. With a Masters degree in Social Entrepreneurship from USC Marshall and over a decade of experience, she marries Dave’s financial goals with social impact strategies that span public policy, strategic partnerships and industry best practices.

Lauryn embeds sustainable, scalable impact practices across Dave that drive stakeholder value while empowering marginalized communities by increasing their access to key resources. She is also on the board of the Santa Monica Tech Council, an early stage start-up advisor through the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, and a mentor for the Jackie Robinson Foundation.

Bailey Richardson

Four years ago, I started  People & Company with my partners Kevin and Kai. We remove the ambiguity around community building in a digital world. We've also published  a book with Stripe Press on how to build communities today and interview inspiring communities the world should know about on  our podcast. 

In the past, I grew the early community around Instagram, where I was one of the first employees. I've also worked at IDEO, StoryCorps, Pop-Up Magazine and  The California Sunday Magazine.

People & Company: 

People & Company helps organizations like Nike, Porsche, Substack and Surfrider make smart bets with their community-building investments. We’ve also published a community-building handbook called  Get Together: How to build a community with your people, and share stories from our team's ongoing research into exceptional communities on our podcast  “Get Together.”

Wendy Spinner (‘89)

As a former electrical engineer and lifelong volunteer, Wendy has developed strong problem-solving and goal-setting expertise for mission-drivien organizations. In addition to providing strategic investment consulting advice, she has chaired investment, governance and development committees for a variety of nonprofit organizations. Having walked in their shoes, Wendy offers clients real insight into helping them achieve their mission and funding goals.

Wendy has that same empathy and compassionate approach working with private clients and their families. She has a unique warmth and ability to explore and share with clients, which helps her understand their vision, needs and hopes for the future. That’s how she truly makes a difference—providing advice, direction, collaboration and, of course, problem-solving. In doing so, Wendy focuses primarily on using her planning and analytical skills, her philanthropic advisory expertise and her in-depth work with family dynamics, family governance and the challenges facing successful women.