Betsy and Maggie are the founders of Mulberry Tree Consulting, an organization development practice in North Carolina that specializes in the design and facilitation of strategic planning, leadership coaching and team development for community-focused organizations. They are currently writing The Partnership Solution: Success and Sanity for Entrepreneurial Women, a guide to creating and leading business partnerships based on stories shared by 45 successful women entrepreneurial partners across the country.

Before starting Mulberry Tree Consulting, an organization development practice that works with organizations that are striving to make a positive difference for their employees and their communities, Betsy Polk was a consultant in the Washington, DC area.  She received a B.A. degree from the University of Massachusetts – Amherst and an M.S. in Organization Development from the American University/NTL Graduate Program. She lives in Chapel Hill, NC with her husband Marc and children, Michael and Annie.   

Prior to creating Mulberry Tree Consulting, Maggie Ellis Chotas was a teacher, administrator and consultant to public and independent schools in Philadelphia, New York City, Charlotte and Durham, NC.    She earned a B.A. from Swarthmore College and an M.A. from St. John’s College in Annapolis, MD.   Maggie lives in Durham, NC with her husband Harrell and children, Georgia and Nicholas.

Gitika Ahuja is currently a producer for ABC News, Good Morning America in New York.  Gitika began her career at ABC News in 1999 in the Los Angeles bureau. Since then she has been based in 3 more news bureaus (Atlanta, Boston, New York) and produced stories for all ABC News platforms, including World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, Nightline, Good Morning America, ABCNEWS.com, and This Week with George Stephanopoulos. 

Major stories she has covered range from the Florida Election Recount and Enron Scandal, to post-9/11 troop deployment, anthrax cases in South Florida, the execution of Timothy McVeigh,  Shuttle Columbia disaster, capture of Eric Robert Rudolph and more hurricanes and natural disasters than she cares to recall.

In 2003, Gitika went to Kuwait and Iraq to cover the Iraq invasion as a unilateral journalist and in 2004 to Port-au-Prince, Haiti to report on the coup to overthrow then President Jean Betrand Aristide. Then, in 2004, she became the sole producer of the Boston Bureau for ABC News, where she covered the legalization of Gay Marriage and spearheaded the network's local planning of the 2004 Democratic National Convention in Boston.

Gitika is the winner of an Emmy Award for Outstanding Instant Coverage of a Breaking News Story for World News Tonight Weekend coverage of "Elian Gonzalez" (2001) and an Excellence in Media Silver Angel Award for "Humanitarian Crisis in Haiti" (2005).

Gitika graduated with a B.S. in Broadcast Journalism and a minor in Spanish from Boston University in 1998.  She was born in New Delhi, India, raised in the suburbs of Los Angeles and currently lives in Midtown Manhattan.

Elizabeth Lee Beck is co-managing partner at her own business litigation boutique law firm in Miami, Florida (www.beckandlee.com) and is embroiled in numerous lawsuits on behalf of her clients.  Prior to her career as a lawyer, Elizabeth held many jobs, including department store salesperson, pizza maker, and public high school math teacher in Los Angeles.
 
Elizabeth was born in Seoul, South Korea, and grew up in the Koreatown/Pico-Union district of Los Angeles.  She is fluent in Korean. Elizabeth credits her mother as her biggest influence and inspiration: a single parent who raised her only child while struggling on welfare. Elizabeth first stepped inside a courtroom at the age of nine when she cycled through the California foster care and juvenile court system when her mother lost custody of her, and ever since then, Elizabeth has always felt at home in the courts.
 
Elizabeth attended UCLA for college, majoring in mathematics, and graduated from Yale Law School.  Additional information can also be found at the law firm blog at http://beckandlee.wordpress.com.

Ashley Brewer is a lawyer turned life coach, turned lawyer again. She graduated from Emory University School of law in 2001. Her earlier practice included litigation, public agency governance, technology licensing, and commercial real estate. Ashley has navigated the tumultuous waters of a small, medium, and national law firm. At different times, she found herself at the top and somewhere near the bottom of associate superstardom, and always lacking the time and energy to be a whole person.

After a short sabbatical and a few months as a life coach, Ashley learned that she likes being her own boss, but she is a lawyer at heart. So, she started a law firm, joining the ranks of young lawyers doing the same. She still keeps her coaching blog in the hope of helping other lawyers cope with the pressures of practice. Ashley lives in Orlando, Florida, with her husband and two dogs, awaiting their adoption of a baby girl from China.

Renee Chow, the Founder and President of a high-end NYC neighborhood department store and pharmacy (new name coming soon!) formerly known as Boyd’s Madison Avenue, has made a career of focusing her creative passions, highly attuned sense of style, and international retail business expertise to create successes for established luxury and start-up companies alike.

Prior to Boyd’s, as General Manager for Hermes Paris in the Greater China region,  Renee was responsible for launching the first Hermes boutique in China (Beijing) and was responsible for five more stores in the region, earning her a special title as “Ambassador of Hermes Greater China” by Hermes, Paris. Leading to her future position in Hermes, Renee was Brand Manager of a popular ready-to-wear fashion brand in Asia and was responsible for 15 stores.  In Hong Kong, continuing to show her flare for style and what’s current, Renee hosted a local prime time television program “Pearl Watch”, and on another show “City Life,” she helped cover the hip, happening events in the city.

Renee’s entrepreneurial endeavors began when she started designing jewelry for fun.  Through popular demand, this hobby soon developed into a wholesale business to major department stores across Asia and Europe.

Renee holds a BA in History from Mount Holyoke College and enjoys travel, chocolate, and of course, shopping!

Dr. Debra Condren authored amBITCHous (Broadway Books), a book The New York Times called “…a corrective manifesto urging women to pry apart the bars of common self-imposed traps…and reclaim ambition as a virtue”.&n