Our Own Worst Enemies

Lori Nishiura Mackenzie

Lori Nishiura Mackenzie is Associate Director of Stanford’s Clayman Institute for Gender Research, founded in 1974 to create and promote research for Gender Equality. In her role, she spearheads the Institute’s efforts to translate gender research for a broad audience and increase the impact of the research findings. She has more than 20 years of marketing experience at companies including Procter & Gamble, Apple Computer and eBay. Lori has an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and a BA in Economics from the University of California at Berkeley. She is currently on the Working Group of City of San Francisco’s Gender Equity Principles Initiative.

Barbara Mark

Barbara Mark, Ph.D. is a consulting psychologist, consultant and executive coach. She works with ambitious and high-achieving female executives, and women business owners on career trajectory, professional and personal development and work/life integration.

Dr. Mark has been brought into the confidence of thousands of professional women seeking to maintain inner balance while facing diverse external demands, personal ambition, and the desire to feel satisfied and fulfilled personally and professionally. She has been working with women in business for over 25 years across all industries from micro-business to Fortune 100 companies and has supported their success in the constantly changing landscape for female executives.

Dr. Lauren Tucker

Dr. Lauren Tucker is a Senior Vice President and Director of Consumer Forensics at The Martin Agency, where she leads a team of consumer intelligence experts focused on uncovering data-driven insights that fuel actionable business ideas. Educated at the Universities of Virginia, Texas-Austin and Wisconsin-Madison, Dr. Tucker has accrued more than twenty years of providing creative, disciplined thought leadership to colleagues and clients, including BFGoodrich Tires, Bacardi Rum, DaimlerChrysler and Kellogg.

Her innovative approach to brand marketing, diversity management and consumer intelligence has resulted in fundamental changes in the way The Martin Agency thinks about the industry and executes its world renowned creative product. A former tenured professor at University of South Carolina, Lauren continues to take her passion for marketing and communication education beyond The Martin Agency’s doors to inspire and encourage today’s professionals, educators and young thought leaders on whom the future of marketing depends.

Carol H. Williams

Carol H. Williams founded Carol H. Williams Advertising (CHWA) more than two decades ago after recognizing the need for advertising that speaks to the sophisticated and influential African-American and urban markets.

Started in 1986 in Carol’s living room, CHWA now has offices in Emeryville, Calif., and Chicago, and a satellite office in New York. A highly diverse and skilled staff produces award-winning advertising and marketing campaigns for Fortune 500 companies—including General Motors (Cadillac), General Mills, Kraft, Gilead Sciences, HP, Nationwide Insurance, Procter & Gamble, the U.S. Army, The Walt Disney Company, Marriott and several others. CHWA’s annual billings have exceeded $100 million for more than a decade.

Before establishing CHWA, Carol already had more than a decade of pioneering advertising work behind her. Top marketing executives recognized her creative spirit in college and competed to hire her. Carol started her career at Leo Burnett Company in Chicago and quickly earned a position as the first female and first African-American Creative Director and Vice President. After 13 years at Leo Burnett, she served two years as Senior Vice President, Creative Director at Foote, Cone & Belding in San Francisco.

Early in her career, Carol created some of the most memorable advertising campaigns in history, including:

• The timeless Secret Antiperspirant campaign “Strong Enough for a Man, But Made for a Woman”
• The highly successful Pillsbury frosting campaign “Paper Knife”
• The entertaining Pillsbury campaign “Say Hello to Poppin’ Fresh Dough”

Now, as the leader of her own team of marketing experts at CHWA, Carol continues to develop captivating advertising for dozens of clients by asking the question: “Whose eyes are you looking through when you view the world?”™ Successful campaigns in recent years include:

• The highly successful “Pass Those Cookies” campaign for Lactaid
• The Effie award–winning “Our Stand” TV ad for Allstate Insurance Company
• The captivating “Poetry in Motion” campaign for General Motors
• The groundbreaking “Imagination” for The Walt Disney Company
• The No. 1 general consumer-rated TV ad for 2007, “Signs,” for The Walt Disney Company

Carol has received numerous professional honors and community awards during her career. She also is passionate about community service. She has used her talent and resources to help dozens of philanthropic endeavors, including the Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, the Congressional Black Caucus, the NAACP, U.S. Dream Academy, the National Newspaper Publishers Association and several local community organizations in Oakland and Chicago. A native of Chicago, Carol has a daughter, Carol Hood, a creative writing graduate fellow who is on a teaching assignment in London.