Suzi Berget White

Personal Branding

Your product or service isn’t the only thing you need to be promoting. Whether you are a business owner or professional, one of the most powerful exposure and revenue-building tools your company has is you. People want an emotional connection to the businesses they invest in so it’s important for those brands to have a face! In this session you will learn tips and tricks in personal branding.

Director of Business Development, Prospera Business Network

Suzi Berget White is the Director of Business Development for Prospera Business Network. She was formally the Director of the Montana Womens Business Center (MTWBC) and under her leadership, the Montana Women’s Business Center won the SBA’s National Award for “Women’s Business Center” of the Year. She won the “20 under 40 years old” award in Southwest Montana in 2018. White serves on the Montana Ambassadors board, Representative Gianforte’s Business Advisory Council, the Bozeman Job Service Board and is actively involved with the Montana Economic Developers Association, Longfellow Elementary, and Bozeman Connect. She has counseled more than 600 business owners throughout Montana and has been instrumental at creating content for trainings that offer clients transforming questions and tips that help achieve breakthroughs, add value, and get results.

Smai Fullerton

Bullet Journaling for Productivity, Purpose, and Peace

A “bullet journal” is a life, work, project, home, and hobby organizational system invented by Ryder Carroll. It went viral in 2013 and created a worldwide phenomenon of people inventing and sharing additions to the system to take meaningful charge of their time and energy. 

This workshop will explore the basic tenets of the bullet journaling system found in Ryder Carroll’s book, The Bullet Journal Method. Paper, rulers, and pens/markers will be provided for attendees to dive into creating some “spreads” of their own so they get a sense of how bullet journaling may work in their lives. 

Groups will split off to discuss goal setting, values, productivity, motivation, and consistency. If you already bullet journal, or have other effective systems for getting stuff done, you are encouraged to bring materials to share with others in the group. But mostly this part will be about connecting with others over how challenging achieving the things we feel are right for our lives can be.

Feel free to bring your own bullet journal and get it started for real during this workshop. If you’d like to purchase one in advance, my affordable recommendation is the BookFactory Ghost Grid Dot Journal/Bullet Notebook. A very popular and more expensive alternative is the Leuchtturm1917, but I believe that spiral notebooks so you can always keep it open next to you is where it’s at.

Senior Software Engineer, Workiva

Smai Fullerton is a Senior Software Engineer at Workiva in Missoula, MT. She is the founder of Code for Montana — a group of civic and nonprofit tech creators — and Deciding To Fail Better — Missoula’s warm and welcoming compassionate self-acceptance, goal-setting, perfectionism-busting, and habit-forming discussion and motivation group.

John Paxton

Recruiting and Retaining Female CS Majors

This short presentation will provide an overview of various initiatives that the Gianforte School of Computing has undertaken in recent years to make computing more attractive to women. Initiatives include improved introductory courses, remodeled physical spaces that are aesthetically pleasing and promote collaboration, strategies to diversify the faculty, enabling students to attend professionally relevant, community building conferences such as the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing Conference, and more.

Professor and Director, Gianforte School of Computing, MSU

John earned a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Michigan and is the Founding Director of the Gianforte School of Computing at Montana State University. For the past decade, he has undertaken several initiatives to make computing more attractive to women and other underrepresented minorities.

Callie Schieffer

Communication Tools for Steering Team Members to the Same Goal

Moving from individual contributor to a leadership role requires skills in steering members in a common direction. Regardless of whether the responsibility is formally assigned by role designation or comes out of self-motivated desire, the ability to communicate common direction is paramount. Communication tools are all around us, but all too often overlooked. Walk away with communication devices that demonstrate leadership and an awareness of the value they bring to the group.

Technical Project Manager

Product development (PD) professional with 10 plus years experience with a Fortune 500 company delivering capital equipment to major technology companies world wide. PD contributions are bolstered by expertise in product life cycle , strong technical skills, project management practices, leadership of diverse cross-functional teams and stakeholder management. Advanced studies in chemistry, mathematics and statistics. Professional experience in technical marketing, product management, product design and development, manufacturing, and process development.

Deborah Hines

Technological Advances in Development Assistance – Colombia Experiences

Experiences from Colombia and Ecuador will be shared, showing how biometrics have been introduced to document identity as part of transfer programs. Combined with impact evaluation for example a randomized control experimental designed study we examined what types of transfers in the form of cash, food or vouchers benefited women and families with respect to food security and nutrition and contributed to or decreased family violence.

Specialist in natural resource management and adaptation to climate change (MF; PhD level work, Natural Resource Economics, Duke University) with over thirty years of experience in policy and strategy development as well as project design, implementation, and evaluation. She has had the opportunity to work with the WFP, World Bank (Adaptation Fund and the Global Environment Facility), Canadian Government, USAID, and assignments with FAO and other bilateral and nongovernmental institutions in Africa, Latin American, the Middle East, and Asia. Working with civil society, host governments and the United Nations she has highlighted the importance of addressing climate change, sharing technical expertise on climate risks, and calling attention to those whose food security and livelihoods are increasingly being undermined by extreme weather events. Deborah has worked extensively to promote climate-smart agriculture solutions, combining sustainable resource management with gender empowerment and social justice and is the co-founder and co-executive director of South North Nexus.

Valerie Wagner

Pragmatic Testing Ideas

Testing doesn’t need to be holy. I’ll cover a variety of very different testing techniques that produce the biggest wins for the smallest effort.

Principal Software Engineer, Figure

Principal Software Engineer at Figure. Montana native. Advocate for women in tech.

Karen Lum

How to Be a Badass Boss

People management is some of the hardest work we will do in our careers. It is so much more nebulous than almost any other role or function in an organization. Here’s the good news – there are a set of best practices that can be learned, that can transform your experience as a people manager and the impact you can make on others. This interactive workshop shares some of the key paradigm shifts and practices managers can adopt to be more effective at growing and developing their teams.

Owner / Business Coach & Trainer, K. Lum Consulting

Karen Lum is the owner of K. Lum Consulting – as a “Business Co-Pilot”, Karen supports leaders who are growing or elevating their businesses and teams. Her services include one-on-one business coaching, facilitated planning sessions, employee training and program development & implementation.

With 20 years of facilitation experience, her training clients include non-profit organizations, small and large businesses and several luxury service and high-end brands. As a business coach, Karen supports clients to prioritize working ON their business, rather than just working IN it; they gain perspective, heightened awareness and actionable steps to improve, scale and succeed.

Present her with a project and mission that reflects a strong foundation and untapped potential, and Karen will be a stand-out partner in your team’s success.

Julie Ripley

Fitting Your Career into Your Life Path

It is easy to get caught up in the momentum of career and lose sight of the bigger picture in life. Life has a way of changing at an undetectable rate and there are subtle and not so subtle ways we, ourselves, change over time. Learn some key ideas that keep you connected to yourself and your life path, while having the career you desire.

President/CEO, Ripple Affect, Inc.

Julie Ripley is a transformational life coach, intuitive guide, energy healer and stands for the optimal well-being of the people around her. Her passion is teaching people to cultivate a healthy relationship with themselves and supports them in their sacred process of healing, transforming and creating a life that is important to them. After leaving a 10 year career in accounting and a CFO position, she dove into the healing arts and the sacred sciences. She now uses a blend of personal experience, training and intuition to teach, guide, and coach you on your transformational journey. She believes that life is a creation and you can create what you want out of it. She is a student of the process and a facilitator of the journey.

Rollie Goodman & Camille Morell

Approaching Feedback With Confidence

Receiving critical feedback can be a daunting prospect for almost anyone in any career. For women in a traditionally male-dominated industry, imposter syndrome and other factors can magnify the negative feelings associated with constructive criticism or impede the feedback cycle altogether. This workshop is intended to introduce attendees to, and let them practice, a variety of tools to help feedback become a growth opportunity rather than something to dread.

Data Scientist & Software Engineer, Workiva

Rollie Goodman is recovering economist and a Data Scientist at Workiva. Originally from Bozeman, she now lives in Philadelphia and misses the mountains (though she’s also starting to develop strong opinions on cheesesteaks). Camille Morell is Texan turned Coloradoan with an early start in account management and bootcamp-bred Software Engineer. Though loving the busy life in the mountains, she always finds time to complain about the lack of adequate breakfast tacos in Denver.

Lori Addicks

Sorry, Not Sorry – Communicating with Confidence

Are you guilty of apologizing unnecessarily, using filler words that weaken or sabotage your message? Or what about hesitant or uncertainty in your tone of voice, or body language that telegraphs a lack of confidence?
Weak language hinders us, drains our confidence, and blocks our success.
Attendees will learn about frequently used words and phrases that keep us small, and undermine our credibility, confidence and effectiveness when communicating with others.

With increased self-awareness of our filler words and phrases, we can break bad speech habits and increase our credibility, confidence and career success.

President, Larkspur Group

Lori Addicks, President of Larkspur Group, is a performance consultant, master facilitator, and executive coach specializing in leadership, organization and team development, as well as multi-generational diversity.

She has more than 25 years of experience partnering with senior executives in North America, and 65 countries across Africa, Europe, Mid-East, Asia and Latin America to translate business goals into value-added people strategies across the spectrum of talent management. With expertise in selection, assessment, performance management, diversity and inclusion, team development and leadership development, she specializes in getting the right people in the right job at the right time. She knows how to inspire people to get the desired results, especially during times of transition.

Lori has worked across multiple industries including retail, technology, consumer products, real estate, manufacturing, media, automotive, health care and the nonprofit sector. She also serves as a TEDx Speaker Coach in Big Sky, and has performed as a keynote speaker locally for the MSU Women’s Circle of Excellence, 406 Creatives and BPW.