What is the iRelaunch Return to Work Conference?

Carol Fishman Cohen is the CEO and Co-founder of iRelaunch, a full-service career reentry company focused on bringing professionals back into the workforce after extended leave. iRelaunch works with employers worldwide to build and expand in-house career reentry programs, produces the iRelaunch Return to Work Conferences, and leads a community of more than 120,000 relaunchers looking to return to work. Cohen, a relauncher herself, hosts the 3,2,1 iRelaunch podcast and writes regularly for Harvard Business Review. Her TED talk, "How to get back to work after a career break," has over 3.7 million views. 

Rachel Barden is a Documentation Engineering Manager at Meta for the AI and Open Source documentation teams. She also leads the Women@ Meta employee resource group. Prior to her 9 years at Meta, she spent 7 years as a forecasting analyst in the telecommunications industry.

Rachel is passionate about improving engineering efficiency through documentation, solving difficult problems, and her work with the women’s group. In her spare time, she runs marathons or reads biographies. Rachel holds a BScH in Mathematics, a BSc in Statistics, and a BA in Political Studies from Queen’s University.

Carol Fishman Cohen is the CEO and Co-founder of iRelaunch, a full-service career reentry company focused on bringing professionals back into the workforce after extended leave. iRelaunch works with employers worldwide to build and expand in-house career reentry programs, produces the iRelaunch Return to Work Conferences, and leads a community of more than 120,000 relaunchers looking to return to work. Cohen, a relauncher herself, hosts the 3,2,1 iRelaunch podcast and writes regularly for Harvard Business Review. Her TED talk, "How to get back to work after a career break," has over 3.7 million views. 

Janet is a strong advocate for Relaunchers interested in returning to the workplace. The Business Development team helps employers develop unique strategies to increase diversity and value all talent.

Prior to joining iRelaunch and a five year career break, Janet held leadership roles in sales, marketing, and training and advocacy at Johnson & Johnson and Xerox Corporation. She served as a five year Leadership Board Member for The American Diabetes Association and was a liaison for The National Urban League, NAACP and LaRaza. Janet also enjoys serving her community through Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority Inc. and Women’s Ministries. She lives in Alpharetta, GA with husband George, Toma (Mom) and is mother to Devin and Paige.

You’ve decided to return to work. While this is an exciting time, you likely have a few concerns. Are you worried that your skills are outdated? Do you wonder how you will manage your professional growth while keeping your personal life on track? Do you want to pursue a career that differs from the one you had prior to your career break? I dealt with each of these questions as I successfully relaunched my career after a five-year break.

I returned to the work force as a professional development and executive career coach at the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University. In that role, I leveraged my 20+ year career, a career that was been both fulfilling and challenging. Upon graduation from the University of Michigan, I started working in Accounting and Finance. I built a strong financial acumen by advising clients in a wide range of industries, ranging from banking to hospitality. Eventually, I used that experience to underwrite multi-million dollar commercial real estate deals.

Deciding to build upon my skills and grow my career, I returned to school and earned my MBA at the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. After business school, I started working in brand management at a variety of consumer packaged goods companies, including Colgate, Kraft and Heinz.

Due to my extensive corporate experience, I know what employers want in new hires and I understand the expectations they have for high-caliber career performance. I used this knowledge to launch Ascension Careers, a coaching consultancy that works with motivated clients to achieve their job search, career and career development goals. It is my privilege to coach my clients to manage and grow careers that ignite their passions, honor their values and provide continued growth.

As a relauncher myself, I am thrilled to partner with iRelaunch and work with clients embarking on a new career adventure.

I have coached and mentored ambitious professionals my entire career. I have also had the opportunity to recruit, hire and manage countless others. But it wasn’t until the boutique consulting firm, where I was a senior executive and worked for 20+ years, was sold, that I had an opportunity to discover my true calling ... as a career coach with a special focus on relaunchers.

I’ve worked with relaunchers who have taken short (1-3 years) and long (15-20 years) career breaks and have found them to be bright, energetic and highly accomplished. Too often they might lack confidence or have an uncertainty of focus that may derail their search. That’s where I can help. Each client is unique; so we will create a customized plan based entirely on your needs. Whether we’re creating a strategy for your search, preparing for an interview or keeping you accountable and focused, the goal is for you to present your best self in all aspects of the job search. While I won’t sugarcoat things, or let you be unrealistic, I will be your sounding board, advisor and biggest cheerleader.

In addition to decades of “on the job” training, I also have an MBA in Finance from DePaul University, a BA in Business Administration from Augustana College (IL), am a Certified Administrator of Myers-Briggs Type Indicator and Strong Interest Inventory assessments, a Mock Interview Consultant for Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and a Volunteer Advisor at the Career Resource Center, as well as a frequent speaker on today’s job search and reentering the Workforce.

Learn more about Mary Beth and 2nd Career Consulting

Welcome, everyone, and I’m so excited to meet you! I’m Sara Dickison Taylor, President and Founder of Celebrate Life by Design, LLC. As a certified Executive and Leadership Coach, I have helped countless individuals maximize their life potential and turn their wildest dreams into reality. Whether it be transitioning to a new job after being out of the workforce for years, building your brand, accentuating your leadership team, or rediscovering that missing piece in your soul, get ready for your next adventure.

As a Certified Career and Executive Life Coach with the International Coaching Federation, I hold a Bachelor of Arts degree from Colby College and am a certified graduate of Coach University. Always the consummate student, I also choose to delve further into my coaching craft with Dr. Martha Beck, renowned New York Times bestselling author and Oprah’s favorite life coach.

I formally served as Co-Chair of the Pediatric Patient Family Advisory Council (PPFAC) at Boston Children’s Hospital/Dana Farber Cancer Institute and have spoken internationally as an advocate of patient and family-centered care for families, caregivers, and patients. Before my exciting coaching career, I spent almost 20 years as a top recruiter and Vice President for a Boston-based staffing agency helping individuals find the jobs of their dreams.

When I’m not coaching, you can find me laughing and dancing with my forever patient husband, trying to slow down the growth of my two amazing teenagers and enjoying walks with our ever-active golden retrievers. Come and join the ride - I promise you’ll be happy you did!

Learn more about Sara.

Matthew Temple is the Senior Director of Alumni Career & Professional Development for the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where he manages a team of 11 people who deliver career and executive coaching to 65,000 alumni globally. He has coached clients on a range of career issues including self-assessment, networking, resumes, interviewing, negotiating, and starting/buying a business. Matthew has presented hundreds of career workshops in Brazil, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States. He has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, and the Chicago Tribune. Matthew has worked as a Career Coach with Harvard Business School and the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Matthew has coached senior executives as well as emerging leaders in high potential and leadership development programs. His areas of focus include leadership, building and managing high performing teams, onboarding, communications, and executive presence. He earned an Organizational and Leadership Coaching Certification from Northwestern University. He is certified in the Designing Your Life, DISC, Gallup Strengths, Hogan Assessment, Voices 360, Korn Ferry Leadership Architect, and MBTI. Matthew has coached executives on leadership, communications, and management at companies including Amazon, Bain, Boston Consulting Group, Facebook, GE, Goldman Sachs, Google, JP Morgan Chase, McKinsey, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever.

Previously, Matthew served as the Director of International Business Development for Ask.com, where he helped establish, manage, and staff joint ventures worth over US$200 million in Asia, Europe and Latin America. He worked in private equity, M&A and corporate finance for Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank. He has lived and worked in Asia and Europe. Matthew holds a BA from Harvard University, an MBA in Finance, Marketing and Organizational Behavior from Kellogg School of Management, and an MS in Learning and Organizational Change from Northwestern University.

Learn more about Matthew.

I’m delighted to be part of the IRelaunch community. Over the last decade, I’ve had the privilege of coaching dozens of relaunchers and I’m always thrilled to see them step back into the workplace with renewed confidence.

I believe we are all works in progress and that each one of us is meant to continue growing and stretching ourselves, personally and professionally. I founded Bright Evolution Leadership Coaching, LLC with the goal of helping my clients evolve into the next, better version of themselves. In my work with relaunchers, I have guided my clients to be intentional about their return-to-work strategy and to be authentic to who they are – coaching them to own their professional path and their career break.

For the last 20 years, I’ve worked with MBA students and business leaders from all industries and sectors, from startups to Fortune 500 companies. I’ve worked at three graduate schools of business and spent the last 15 years at the MIT Sloan School of Management, most recently serving as the Director of Alumni Career Services. In this role, I coached over 2,000 business students and executives (including relaunchers), helping them successfully navigate leadership challenges and critical transition points in their careers.

In addition to my private coaching practice, I am honored to teach as a Fellow with the Simmons University Institute for Inclusive Leadership and coach on career platforms The Muse and Landit. I am a recommended Executive Coach at MIT, Columbia Business School and Stanford GSB.

My Education and Certifications include:

• B.A. in Journalism & Communication from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

• Ed.M from Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education

• Executive Coach (CPCC) through the Co-Active Training Institute

• PCC with the International Coaching Federation

• Assessments: Certification in Gallup Clifton Strengths, MBTI, and Positive Intelligence

You can find out more about me at nextevolutioncoach.com

Sarah Scaturro is a Diversity, Equity & Inclusion (DE&I) Talent Program Leader overseeing the strategy and execution of Glide – Relaunch, Wells Fargo’s professional return-to-work program, or “returnship”, while supporting the team’s mission to identify and develop outstanding talent for the organization with a lens on diversity and retention. Glide – Relaunch is a paid returnship-to-full-time program for U.S.-based professionals looking to return to the workforce after taking a career break of at least two years. Glide – Relaunch offers the support and resources needed to relaunch careers at Wells Fargo and hires 100+ professional participants annually. In addition to providing oversight for Glide – Relaunch, Sarah engages and consults with partners across the company on DE&I talent programming and strategy and helps promote DE&I learning at Wells Fargo. 

Sarah joined Wells Fargo’s brokerage division in 2008. During her 14+ years in financial services, she has held roles in communications compliance, retention and recognition initiatives, event planning and management of large national programs and conferences, and diversity and inclusion talent programming. 

Sarah graduated from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with her Bachelor of Arts in International Studies, a core concentration in Communications, and a Minor in Spanish. A St. Louis native, she now lives in Charlotte, NC and in her spare time she enjoys traveling, embracing new experiences, and live music.

Ambica spent 15 fulfilling years in startups and large companies as an engineer, manager and executive spanning across development, strategy, product management and solution delivery. Ambica was a recognized expert in IBM, where she led large, global development teams and brought new products and solutions to market. Prior to her break, Ambica’s last role was leading an IBM-wide-cross organization initiative to deliver key business analytics solutions for mainframe customers. Her various management roles in male-dominated environments have always inspired Ambica to help women advance their careers.

In 2015, Ambica decided to take a short break to focus on her family. Little did she know that her short break would turn into a 5 year hiatus, stuck in the middle of a messy divorce. While on break, Ambica continued to pursue her passion for enabling women to become financially independent. She started the non-profit business ‘GrowTies’ whose mission is to promote eco-friendly fashion within the South Asian community and provide a platform for women to become financially independent.

Despite this small avenue of success, as a single mom of two teenage girls and a large gap in her tech career, Ambica was struggling to get back on her feet. That’s when she found out about Meta’s Return To Work program. Though hesitant due to a lack of confidence, Ambica decided to pursue this opportunity. And the rest is history. Not only was she able to get back to her tech career, the extremely supportive, open, and ‘merit-focused environment of Meta enabled her to bring impact to various initiatives quickly. Now, as Sr. Technical program manager, she drives company-wide AI programs focused on helping Meta connect and serve our communities better. Along with her day job, she continues to pursue her passion for advancing women’s careers through women-focused initiatives, including the RTW program

A fierce basketball mom knocking down barriers and creating opportunities for her son to prosper in a world strategically designed to deny success.

In her spare time, Jo is a collaborative business professional proven in enhancing organizational effectiveness and accelerating revenue growth within demanding corporate environments. Diverse experience in finance, accounting, project, and customer experience management. Entrepreneurial change-maker skilled in leading global cross-functional teams in the execution of highly critical initiatives and driving process improvements. Engaging communicator focused on building consensus with leadership and stakeholders to drive strategic initiatives that implement positive business change.

Sharing and caring is Jo’s pledge, as she is passionate and dedicated in all that she does. She takes pride in being authentically herself and motivates others to find their inner self-gratification. Her leadership by example pushes others to always do well. Jo is mesmerized by the power of integrating diversity & inclusion into the workplace to achieve limitless innovation. Currently, Jo is working to contribute her professional skills as a Change Initiator, Relationship Architect, and Rain Maker who creates opportunities for others.

Shay Baker is the Program Manager of Return Utah, the only state career reentry program in the nation. In this role, Shay oversees the entire return-to-work experience for state returnees as well as the collaborative training, orientation, and career development efforts between dozens of state agencies, iRelaunch, and non-profit organizations. Shay, is also responsible for marketing campaigns utilized to increase visibility of Return Utah and its success. As a returner, Shay is new to the public sector, having returned from an 8-year career break as a Communications Specialist at the Utah Department of Commerce as part of the Return Utah Pilot program. Prior, she worked as a television news producer and reporter in the Salt Lake City Market. Shay holds a bachelor's degree in Communication from Weber State University and lives in Layton, Utah with her husband and three daughters.

Deidre M. Henderson became Utah’s ninth lieutenant governor on Jan. 4, 2021. Prior to her election as lieutenant governor, she served in the Utah Senate for eight years.

As a vocal champion of the underdog, Lt. Gov. Henderson has used her time in public office to increase opportunities for small business owners, women, families, and underserved communities by identifying and removing barriers to success.

Lt. Gov. Henderson and her husband, Gabe, are longtime residents of Spanish Fork, Utah. They have five adult children, three sons-in-law and two grandsons. She graduated from BYU in December 2021 with her Bachelor of Arts in history, inspiring other nontraditional students across the state to finish their degrees.

Carol Fishman Cohen is the CEO and Co-founder of iRelaunch, a full-service career reentry company focused on bringing professionals back into the workforce after extended leave. iRelaunch works with employers worldwide to build and expand in-house career reentry programs, produces the iRelaunch Return to Work Conferences, and leads a community of more than 120,000 relaunchers looking to return to work. Cohen, a relauncher herself, hosts the 3,2,1 iRelaunch podcast and writes regularly for Harvard Business Review. Her TED talk, "How to get back to work after a career break," has over 3.7 million views. 

Shay Baker is the Program Manager of Return Utah, the only state career reentry program in the nation. In this role, Shay oversees the entire return-to-work experience for state returnees as well as the collaborative training, orientation, and career development efforts between dozens of state agencies, iRelaunch, and non-profit organizations. Shay, is also responsible for marketing campaigns utilized to increase visibility of Return Utah and its success. As a returner, Shay is new to the public sector, having returned from an 8-year career break as a Communications Specialist at the Utah Department of Commerce as part of the Return Utah Pilot program. Prior, she worked as a television news producer and reporter in the Salt Lake City Market. Shay holds a bachelor's degree in Communication from Weber State University and lives in Layton, Utah with her husband and three daughters.

Matthew Temple is the Senior Director of Alumni Career & Professional Development for the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University, where he manages a team of 11 people who deliver career and executive coaching to 65,000 alumni globally. He has coached clients on a range of career issues including self-assessment, networking, resumes, interviewing, negotiating, and starting/buying a business. Matthew has presented hundreds of career workshops in Brazil, France, Germany, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, the United Kingdom and the United States. He has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, The Times of London, and the Chicago Tribune. Matthew has worked as a Career Coach with Harvard Business School and the UCLA Anderson School of Management.

Matthew has coached senior executives as well as emerging leaders in high potential and leadership development programs. His areas of focus include leadership, building and managing high performing teams, onboarding, communications, and executive presence. He earned an Organizational and Leadership Coaching Certification from Northwestern University. He is certified in the Designing Your Life, DISC, Gallup Strengths, Hogan Assessment, Voices 360, Korn Ferry Leadership Architect, and MBTI. Matthew has coached executives on leadership, communications, and management at companies including Amazon, Bain, Boston Consulting Group, Facebook, GE, Goldman Sachs, Google, JP Morgan Chase, McKinsey, Microsoft, Procter & Gamble, and Unilever.

Previously, Matthew served as the Director of International Business Development for Ask.com, where he helped establish, manage, and staff joint ventures worth over US$200 million in Asia, Europe and Latin America. He worked in private equity, M&A and corporate finance for Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank. He has lived and worked in Asia and Europe. Matthew holds a BA from Harvard University, an MBA in Finance, Marketing and Organizational Behavior from Kellogg School of Management, and an MS in Learning and Organizational Change from Northwestern University.

Learn more about Matthew.

Teresa joined Workday in 2018, as the HR Partner Leader for Customer Experience and the Office of the COO. With more than 20 years of Human Resources experience in the discipline of People Partner Leadership, Leadership & Org Effectiveness and Talent Acquisitions, her cross-functional achievements include several major business transformations, reengineering talent management practices and leading enterprise wide diversity initiatives. She has also taken a leadership role in driving elements of the Future of Work Model and Strategic Workforce Planning.

Before Workday, Teresa was based in San Francisco as the Head of HR Business Partners for SONY PlayStation from 2015-2018. Directly aligned to the Software Engineering functions, she was also responsible for building and aligning the HR Business Partner team and practice across PlayStation and PlayStation Network post-merger.

Previously, Teresa held several HR leadership positions at Cisco between 1999-2015, including Director of HR Business Partners for the Services Organization, Marketing & Corporate Communication functions. Other major roles include Executive Recruitment and Organizational Effectiveness, where she led program design and implementation in the areas of Career Development, Leadership Development and Performance Management.

Before joining Cisco, Teresa’s experience includes five years as a Professional Recruiter specializing in the technology sector. She holds a Bachelors of Science Degree in Human Resources with a specialization in Leadership Development. On a personal side, Teresa and her husband Brian have two children, Brianna who is 17 and Christopher who is 13. Her hobbies include cycling, hiking, audiobooks and weekend trips to Napa Valley, Big Sur and Yosemite as much as possible!

Alex Ledin has spent his entire career improving technology companies by working at the boundary of engineering, finance, and people. Originally from California, Alex graduated from UC Davis in 1999 with degrees in Electrical Engineering and Political Science. Alex held a variety of engineering and management roles during his studies, co-founded a software company after college, and was later hired by the former Stanford Research Institute as a business consultant to assist global firms in the electronics, semiconductors, and telecommunications industries. Alex earned an MBA from INSEAD in 2008 after studying at the school’s campuses in Singapore and France. After his graduate studies, he returned to the US and helped lead the turnaround of a contract manufacturer of injection pharmaceuticals. In 2015, Alex began consulting with Sikorsky Aircraft. Shortly thereafter, Alex was hired to stand up Independent Cost Evaluation at Sikorsky. Alex is now the Senior Manager for Technical Cost within RMS E&T Productivity, and leads a team of multi-functional engineers and analysts who provide should cost, design-to-cost, and affordability tool development services for programs throughout Lockheed. Alex is an active CPA and a private pilot.

Adrianne Kadzinski is Group Head of Innovation for Credit Suisse and is a senior transformation executive who coaches leaders and teams to design and connect purpose, vision, strategy, innovation, risk management and culture to action and practice. She is a proud alumna of the Credit Suisse Real Returns 2016 class, which eased her re-entry into finance (following a ten-year interlude as a senior executive consultant to the US government and US military).

Her team, Group Innovation (GI), helps senior leaders and bank teams develop and align strategy, innovation and technology advancement to solve the bank’s “greatest” challenges – problems worth solving. She and her team custom-designed the Fresh Perspectives! Lifecycle for Credit Suisse, as a powerful practice that can help everyone at the bank better understand the challenges we face, generate novel ideas against those challenges, and rapidly test, learn and adapt our solutions for the best outcomes.

Adrianne is a curious person, problem-solving geek and proud autistic professional. Her chief passion is to help people and organizations design and operationalize strategy to deliver human goals. For nearly three decades, she has pursued intensively the things that have interested her:

• Investment banking: built multiple new successful bank business lines and managed important client relationships
• US government consulting: executive management and technology advancement for Dept. of State, Special Operations Command, Dept. of the Navy, Naval Research Laboratory
• E-commerce startup co-founder; tech startup consulting
• Military service: 24 years as a US Army officer; served global special operations and interagency needs at every echelon (small unit to support of Cabinet-level decision-making)

Adrianne likes to garden, read and ask everyone lots of questions all the time. She and her husband try to train Jimmy, their adopted Jack Russell Terrier, with limited success. Jimmy has enjoyed greater success in training them.

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.

Uma Bruegman is currently Assistant General Manager, Strategic Assessments and Studies Division within Aerospace’s Civil Systems Group. This Division is responsible for independent programmatic and capabilities assessments, and special studies which inform senior leadership at multiple agencies. Ms. Bruegman joined The Aerospace Corporation as a Senior Project Engineer in the Civil Systems Group in 2011.

Ms. Bruegman started her career at Amtrak, as the Manager of Operations Research and Acting Director of Revenue Management, where she led the implementation of rigorous mathematical modeling systems such as the revenue management and fleet allocation systems, becoming adept at leading large technical teams, and program management. In 1993, Ms. Bruegman founded International Technology Management, Inc., (ITMI) with a task at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) to support a program to increase innovation at GSFC. Under Ms. Bruegman’s leadership, ITMI grew to over 25 people, providing mission & ground systems development support, systems engineering and technical support for various programs at NASA GSFC, the US Army and commercial companies such as Via Rail of Canada. Ms. Bruegman completed her Master’s in Business Administration from the Farmer School of Business at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, specializing in Operations Research, while conducting research in the Physics department. She also holds both Masters of Science and Bachelors of Science degrees in Physics from the University of Mumbai.

Mindi Marisa currently co-leads the High Net Worth segment of Vanguard’s Personal Advisor Services. Prior to this role, she held two different roles in Advice Leadership at Vanguard; Head of Vanguard’s Digital Advisor, a new advice offer whose mission is “To make investing accessible to everyone, simplify their financial lives, and reach their financial goals,” and a Senior Manager for Vanguard’s Enterprise Advice division, leading the effort in partnership with Vanguard’s Financial Advisory Services business (FAS) to deliver Vanguard’s advice methodology and technology to our external financial advisor partners.

Mrs. Marisa joined Vanguard in 2015 as the Head of Investment Product Management. She led a team responsible for overseeing the health of our existing range of mutual funds and ETFs, by monitoring their positioning and performance in the markets, communicating product insights to internal and external audiences, and driving product improvements.

Before joining Vanguard, Mrs. Marisa led Product Management for the global prime brokerage financing business at Barclays Capital. Mrs. Marisa began her career in fixed income sales at Lehman Brothers.

Mindi received a B.S. in Mathematics from Penn State University and an M.B.A. from New York University Stern School of Business.

Alex Mooney is a Sr. Manager of DEI Talent Acquisition Programs and holds over 12 years of tenure with Amazon. In his role, Alex leads innovative recruitment programs designed to provide more equitable employment access to often overlooked and underserved communities. Alex is also the founder of the Amazon Returnship Program. Recognizing the increasing need to support those who have left the workforce for a variety of reasons, including during the pandemic, Amazon’s paid Returnship program offers a clear path to employment, helping professionals who have been away from their careers for at least one year restart their careers at Amazon. His program has committed to hiring 1,000 returners over the next few years.

Alex’s team of dedicated talent agents help candidates refresh their interviewing skills and translate their competencies into Amazon’s leadership principles, and also coaches hiring teams to interview and assess candidates based on their potential rather than on their resume or current skills. Once hired, each returner is paired with a dedicated mentor who, in addition to their manager and onboarding buddy, help the returner work through their project plan and also provide coaching and feedback to get familiar with Amazon’s peculiar culture. At the end of the returnship period, subject to performance and feedback, returners are eligible for an offer for full-time employment and relocation assistance to a hiring location.

Alex’s prior experience includes a variety of human resources and program management-related positions across Amazon, Samsung, and Sprint.

Carol Fishman Cohen is the CEO and Co-founder of iRelaunch, a full-service career reentry company focused on bringing professionals back into the workforce after extended leave. iRelaunch works with employers worldwide to build and expand in-house career reentry programs, produces the iRelaunch Return to Work Conferences, and leads a community of more than 120,000 relaunchers looking to return to work. Cohen, a relauncher herself, hosts the 3,2,1 iRelaunch podcast and writes regularly for Harvard Business Review. Her TED talk, "How to get back to work after a career break," has over 3.7 million views. 

Zibby Owens is an author, podcaster, publisher, CEO, and mother of four. Zibby founded Zibby Owens Media, a privately-held media company designed to help busy people live their best lives by connecting to books and each other. One division is Moms Don’t Have Time To, the home for Zibby’s podcasts, publications (including two anthologies), and communities. The other is Zibby Books, a publishing home for fiction and memoir which she co-founded with Leigh Newman. Her award-winning podcast, Moms Don’t Have Time to Read Books, has been downloaded millions of times. She is a regular columnist for Good Morning America, Katie Couric Media, and Moms Don’t Have Time to Write on Medium. Her upcoming memoir, Bookends: A Memoir of Love, Loss, and Literature, comes out July 1, 2022 (Little A). Her first children’s book Princess Charming (Flamingo/Penguin Random House) debuted April 19, 2022, and will be followed by a second. She lives in New York with her husband and four children. For more information, visit zibbyowens.com and follow her on Instagram @zibbyowens.

Carol Fishman Cohen is the CEO and Co-founder of iRelaunch, a full-service career reentry company focused on bringing professionals back into the workforce after extended leave. iRelaunch works with employers worldwide to build and expand in-house career reentry programs, produces the iRelaunch Return to Work Conferences, and leads a community of more than 120,000 relaunchers looking to return to work. Cohen, a relauncher herself, hosts the 3,2,1 iRelaunch podcast and writes regularly for Harvard Business Review. Her TED talk, "How to get back to work after a career break," has over 3.7 million views.