Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno talked to a packed house of students, entrepreneurs and business leaders at the WEW Conference.

WEW 2015 at Montclair State

Montclair State held three events during the second annual Women Entrepreneurship Week in October 2015:

In Style: Women Entrepreneurs in the Fashion and Beauty Industries
Bobbi Brown, founder and chief creative officer at Bobbi Brown Cosmetics, was the keynote for this evening event. Brown and a panel of women entrepreneurs talked about their journeys from startup to success in the fashion and beauty industries. Panelists were: Samantha Myer, celebrity fashion stylist and designer (clients have included Alicia Keys and Lindsay Lohan); Alexandra Wilkis Wilson, co-founder and CEO of GLAMSQUAD; and Sara Wolf, co-founder and CEO of HydroChic. Moderator was Allison Dorst, founder and CEO, Pinks & Greens. The event also covered the latest trends in beauty and fashion, and how entrepreneurial companies are capitalizing on these opportunities.

WEW Conference
A day packed with content for women entrepreneurs, wherever they are on the spectrum of starting or growing a business, the conference was also useful for C-suite executive women who wanted to hear the latest on such topics as power, marketing, leadership, design, financial success. The keynote speaker was former Wall Street executive Sallie Krawcheck, now chair of Ellevate Network, plus lunchtime speaker Lt. Gov. Guadagno. Other speakers included: Michele Brown, Leecia Eve, Linda Bowden, Candy Straight, Janine Iannarelli, Neale Godfrey, Sally Glick, Kim Wales and more. This exciting conference was the signature event of Women Entrepreneurship Week.

The Future of Health Care
Edie Weiner, a renowned futurist, was the keynote for this evening event and moderated a panel of women leaders in the health care space. The panelists looked far into the future to predict what might be happening in exciting tech-related areas. Julie Bauer, president of Panasonic Consumer Corp. of North America, gave us the scoop about robot caretakers in Japan and beyond, and talked about how the company – a world leader in robotics – is developing medical robots to help with patient care. Looking ahead with regard to genomics, the average person will throw off 1.2 or 1.3 terabytes of data – how is any human going to be able to process all of that data and make it useful to clinicians at the point of care? Louisa Roberts, associate partner at IBM Watson Life Sciences, discussed how Watson – the computer that beat geniuses on Jeopardy! – will be able to democratize health care and help prevent disease before it materializes. How might sensory stimulation, including taste and smell, be impacted by health care in the future? Tina Garyantes, an expert in sensory science and VP of Innovation at Chromocell, filled us in. The event was a chance to travel forward in time – to 2020 and beyond – to have a peek at the future of health care.

See bios for the speakers.