Global Mentoring Program
Mentor
Meet Our Sapphire Mentors
We thank our mentors for graciously donating their time to support women's development.
Adriana Herrera
Managing Director, RBC Capital Markets
She is a Latina global leader who has risen to be a top female executive with her unique and entrepreneurial approach to business, innovation, and technology, working at Fortune 500 and FinTech companies. Most recently, Adriana has performed as a Chief of staff to the CEO at Riskified, leading scale and cross-organizational integration at this recently IPOed digital payment fraud solutions Fintech.
Ms. Herrera spent 20 years at Citigroup where she worked her way through the ranks to hold a range of regional and global leadership positions in the Institutional and Retail divisions such as Global Product Head, Chief of Staff for the CEO of Latin America and Chief Operating Officer for Citi’s International Franchises. Subsequently, she joined the Vanguard Group as COO to deliver reliable growth for the newly created Advice business. As the daughter of an entrepreneur, she is committed to mentoring entrepreneurs and has served as advisor to a range of startups and venture organizations, including World Lab Ventures.
Adriana is active in her community, she co-chairs Carnegie Hall Young Patron’s Board, raising money for Music Education programs. She established the Illūmināre scholarship, in partnership with EAFIT University, to support highly talented students pursuing undergraduate programs, and sponsors children’s basic education through Children International.
She is a graduate of Harvard Business School’s Advanced Management Program. She holds a B.S. in Systems Engineering and Management from EAFIT University in Colombia, an M.S. in Organizational Development and Consultancy from SheffieldHallam University in the United Kingdom, and a Master Certificate in Project Management from George Washington University.
Ana Queipo Rodríguez
Commercial Lead, The Helix Center at the Institute of Global Health Innovation - Imperial College London
There is an extraordinary breadth of experiences in Ana’s international executive career. She was China Country manager for a Spanish commercial airline and Asia Pacific Manager for a food additives company before being awarded a full tuition scholarship to complete her MBA at INSEAD. After graduation she worked for Avon Cosmetics where she was Country Manager in Vietnam and later moved to London to join the leadership team at onefinestay — a start-up that redefined the paradigm of hospitality and was successfully acquired by Accor hotels. She has also joined the team at the Institute of Global Health Innovation at Imperial College London.
Ana joins GWC at the start of her journey as leadership coach where she is partnering with companies willing to achieve outstanding results thorough measurable leadership growth. She believes there is plenty of know-how regarding the challenges of woman in leadership but not enough show-how and is therefore excited to join our community of mentors and create a positive impact in the lives of our mentees.
Anita Varshney
Vice President, Strategy and Innovation
SAP Next-Gen
Anita leads SAP Next-Gen program’s strategic pillars to engage with purpose led communities globally, supporting SAP’s strong leadership in the Intelligent Enterprise and Experience Management, across Global Citizen Agendas, UN Partnerships, and platforms linked to the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). She is also spearheading the strategy for Global Goals House, which is global movement that brings together thought leaders and influencers from industry, government, academia, the startup ecosystem, NGOs, social activism, etc in different settings to share strategic thinking and inspire action to make the SDGs a reality. Anita is passionate about the role of women leadership and sports in accelerating our progress to reach the Global Goals by 2030.
SAP Next-Gen is a purpose driven innovation university and community aligned with SAP’s commitment to the SDGs and supporting SAP’s customers across in 180+ countries. It aims to reimagine the future of industries, enterprise intelligence and the experience economy; seed in disruptive innovation with startups; build skills for digital futures; and use new mindsets through connecting companies and citizens around the world to diverse communities.
Beth Fitzsimmons
Director, Clients & Markets
Dentons
For over 20 years, Beth A. Fitzsimmons has regularly and successfully instituted change within law firms via strategic and competitive planning including targeted multi-year and cross-practice growth plans; peer, market and industry analyses; client-focused growth plans to increase profitability and market share; and cross-functional initiatives. Currently, Beth is a senior leader in the Clients & Markets Department at Dentons US LLP. She moved to New York to earn a graduate degree, magna cum laude, from New York University under the tutelage of the late, great Neil Postman. Originally from Pennsylvania, Beth has two Bachelor of Arts degrees, both magna cum laude, in Communications and English Studies from Wilkes University. Avid racquetball players, Beth and her spouse live in New Jersey with their two cats. During her personal time she loves to read, write fiction and spoil her three nephews.
Carrera Dionne
Manager of PwC SDC China
An old proverb says “If you think you know it all, you’re a fool for sure; real survivors learn wisdom from others.” Carrera Dionne can honestly say she has been on both sides of the coin, Fool and Survivor!! Her greatest passion is to share her experiences through mentorship so others can gather various perspectives to selecting their own paths. A seasoned professional and entrepreneur with over 15 years of experience, Carrera has an unique combination of organizational change management and strategic business development within the healthcare and life sciences industries. Her dedication and involvement in organizations such as Junior League, Emerging Leaders Program, Roots of Creativity, and Women in Technology has provided her the opportunity to develop into a servant leader. Originally from the U.S, Carrera’s educational background in Communication and Business has allowed her to work with global corporations in China, Russia, Japan, Israel, and the U.K. The values and objectives of Global Women Connect are in alignment with Carrera’s personal vision for how women of the future need to be supported and developed to make the most impact.
Christine Wang
Vice President, Human Resources
Greater China & Mongolia, Hilton
Christine Wang joined Hilton in 2016, and currently serves as Vice President of Human Resources for Greater China and Mongolia. In this role, Ms. Wang acts as a strategic business partner, providing thought leadership on strategic and tactical business imperatives, in order to drive short and long term goals for Hilton through effective human resource practices.
As a seasoned HR professional of more than 20 years, Ms. Wang has extensive experience working at multinational companies. Her previous experience includes serving as Vice President of Human Resources at DeNA China, Head of Human Resources for the China Technology Centre of Excellence at eBay, and Head of Employee Banking at Standard Chartered Bank (China) Ltd. Throughout her career, Ms. Wang has established and implemented quality and sustainability strategies, policies, systems, and programs at the companies she has served.
Ms. Wang received her Master’s of Commerce with a major in Human Resource Management from the University of New South Wales, and a Bachelor of Arts with a major in Teaching Chinese as a Foreign Language from East China Normal University.
Clare Chen
Regional Head of TD CCM- North Asia
Clare Chen, holds master degree in MBA of North Virginia University. Has been worked with Alcatel-Lucent, PhilipsChina, Roche Pharm. BlueScope China and currently AkzoNobel North Asia Regional Head for Talent Development, Culture and Change Managment. Strong experience in Organization Development, Learning Development, Talent Management and Career Counselingas an seasoned TM/OD practitioner. Specialized in Culture transformation, Organizational management, Talent & Leadership development and Project Management.
Grace Lin Xu
CEO for vivaNUTRITION
Founder of VIVA global academy
Grace is a seasoned business executive and experienced business connector between China, USA and Europe with studying, working and living experiences in variable countries. She has more than 21 years operation and management experiences in complicated matrix organizations such as Roche Vitamin and Nestle as senior executive. She also has entrepreneurship experiences to build up an organization in China from scratch to its full operation in 4 years time. Her experiences also extend to humanitarian activities, working with key stakeholders in USA and China. Her career path is from feet on the ground position to a senior management role in a large global corporation.
In Grace's own words, “Mentoring is about helping others grow but also self-grow to be a better person, with more love, compassion for all. GWC is a platform to put it into practice with all the great experience and resources we have!”
Jane Sum
Leadership & Life Coach, Jane Sum Coaching
Jane Sum has more than 20 years business experience and has held technical and commercial leadership roles mainly in the chemical industry. She has lived and worked in different countries including The Netherlands, China, Thailand, Japan and Germany. She is passionate about bringing out the full potential of people. ‘One of the most rewarding things as a leader is to see how people develop and grow´. She believes that GWC is a great platform where mentors and mentees can share experiences, learn from and inspire each other and make a difference. She is honored to be part of this network.
Jane is a Dutch national with Chinese background, born, raised and educated in The Netherlands. She has a PhD degree in Organic Photochemistry from the University of Leiden. Currently, she is working as a certified Leadership and Life Coach following her passion to help people to become the best version of themselves and live a conscious and fulfilled life.
Junita Fernandez
Head of Finance Controlling - SAIC - Volkswagen
Junita is a qualified Chartered Accountant with many years of experience in leadership roles in Finance, HR and Compliance. She is highly skilled in transforming teams through coaching, mentoring and empowerment. Her most rewarding experience is to see her team members grow in confidence, take on new challenges and explore different career opportunities.
It was through the support of mentors that Junita's career progressed to senior roles while bringing up her three children. Her children have now grown up and she decided that this is the right time to join GWC as a mentor as she passionately believes in the vision of GWC to support women to develop professionally and achieve their aspirations.
Junita has volunteered as mentor for a young student at secondary school to guide her through different options available to her on leaving school and currently mentors a young professional from the Women in Banking & Finance Group (UK).
Laurence Anjoras
Senior Consultant, TNO
Laurence Anjoras is the founder and director of ANN EVA. She strongly believes in women economic empowerment as a social stability factor and enjoys sharing the journey with women willing to discover and unleash their potential. ANN EVA is named after her two daughters as for “heritage and continuity”, and specializes in advising commercial organizations with science-based sustainability metrics to shift their products and operations towards sustainable solutions, while returning profits.
Laurence has 3 decades’ experience of leading remote multi-cultural and functional teams in the Chemical industry. She has worked as a Corporate Sustainability advisor and fulfilled also global functions mainly in Sales and Marketing of ingredients intended for use in Life Sciences.
Laurence currently lives in The Netherlands, holds a Global Executive MBA from the Rotterdam School of Management/Erasmus University in The Netherlands.
Queenie Wong
Director Customer Advisory, SAS Institute
Queenie currently heads up for Customer Advisory for SAS Institute for ASEAN. Her current role, involves overseeing the go to market strategy and adoption of analytics in ASEAN. She advises business on how best to monetize their data by leveraging on data analytics for more business insights and decisions. She has more than 20 years of experience in IT and Management, a leader who is able to develop and motivate others to achieve targets and goals.
Prior to SAS Queenie was a Director with Deloitte Risk Division Malaysia serving the ASEAN market, Managing Director for Computer Associates in Malaysia. She also had experience is setting up an IT startup in Malaysia. She holds a MBA in International Marketing from Hull University UK.
According to Queenie, “During the course of my career, I have great mentors and I have benefited from being a mentee. GWC is a great program that allows me to contribute and share our experience and knowledge. In return its also a learning experience for me.”
Rim Jarbouai
Founder, Rim Studio
Rim is a French and Tunisian designer and artist, with a multicultural living and working experience. Along her career, she has taken on varied projects, from founding a sustainable fashion brand to designing large scale textile artworks for interiors and concocting creativity trainings.
Rim loves helping people connect with their inner inventiveness and getting empowered by inspired action. She believes everyone has a special creative gift!
Passionate about continuous learning, she believes that challenges are great opportunities for growth. Those rich and colourful experiences lead her now to mentor and support new generations of women to weave together a more beautiful future.
Tjaddy Benner
Strategic advisor at Waterschap Zuiderzeeland
Tjaddy has over 20 years experience as a government senior strategic advisor. Her key areas of expertise are public safety crisis management, organizational development, change management and “human factor” in a politically complex environment. Her focus is on creating an inclusive culture where people can flourish. She is the founder of InnerpieceZ and her passion is to engage with people and create transformation from inside out.
Tjaddy lives in the Netherlands with her partner and their four children who they are bringing up to be independent, strong and self-conscious human beings, chasing their dreams. Her motivation to wholeheartedly support GWC as mentor is to contribute to unleashing the potential of people who dream to bring positive impact to a better world. Tjaddy believes in making a difference by approaching change step by step and creating mutual benefits for both mentor and mentee though the exchange in inspiring encounters.
Veronica Zhou
Senior Leadership Development consultant, Leadership/Executive coach
Veronica is a senior leadership development consultant and leadership/executive coach working with various multinational and local clients. Her focus areas include Organization and Talent, Leadership Development and Coaching, Organization Transformation and Capability Development. She has been working with Corporate and BU level leadership teams on Personal Leadership Effectiveness, Team Performance, Stakeholder Management and Change Management. Veronica also acts as a mentor to China-Europe International Business School (CEIBS) MBA program.
Prior to her consulting career, Veronica worked with a few Fortune 500 companies as Head of Human Resources and other senior HR roles both in China and overseas. Veronica is one of the pioneers in the Organization/Talent & Leadership Development areas focus in China. She has a well balance of high level conceptual thinking and practical on-the-ground experiences to drive sustainable business results.
Veronica is passionate about developing young female leaders to reach their full potential with learning, sharing and growing together.
Wendy Wu
Leadership Coach and Trainer, Hangling
Wendy is an inside-out leadership coach & consultant, who focuses on supporting individuals and teams to be who they are inside out and make impacts to others. Her areas of expertise include Executive Coaching, Business Conscious Coaching, Mindfulness Leadership, Female Leadership, Personal Resilience.
She had 20 years’ Human Resources management experience focus in talent and leadership development in multi-national companies, includes leading world-class leadership programs by partnering with MIT and Harvard Universities for senior management leadership development, and 7 years’ experience of corporate internal coach.
She love what Ralph Waldo Emerson said “What lies behind you and what lies in front of you pales in comparison to what lies within you.” She believe once people live into their dreams with clarified purpose and passion, their life will be remarkable.
Wendy Liu
APAC Director,
Regional category & strategic project management
As a senior executive, insightful and result driven, Wendy has demonstrated that female with engineering background can also play vital leading role in global manufacturing industries. Her achievement covering significant business growth and profitability improvement in variety of application markets such as Auto, Aerospace, Oil, Hydraulic and Water application industries globally.
The two unique strengths from Wendy: always quick to identify strategic opportunities through complex & challenging situations and turn into good results quickly, she is special talented in cross-continental negotiations. Through her success in global leadership roles such as Grundfos, ITT, etc. Wendy also coached dozens cross functional leaders spanning variety of countries/regions in past 15 years, by inspiring them to find their unleashed potential and turn those into unique strengths & talents with pleasant career journeys.
Xing Han
Director, Head of Jinan Branch
With 17 years of working experience, Stella Han is highly accomplished in international trade, M&A management, strategic alliance extablishment, technology import and localization, etc.. Stella has held management positions in both SoE (state-owned enterprise) and MNCs (multinational corporation). Dedicated in the strategic design & biz negotiations of 0-to-1 projects, implementation and optimization of 1-to-100 scale-up projects, Stella has well demostrated expertise in multinational business, proven skills in cross-cultural communication, excellent teamwork & great leadership.
With footprints made on >50 cities of 23 countries, Stella has developed a broad international perspective and an inclusive mindset. Stella is passionate to join GWC mentoring program, to exchange, explore, and excel, jointly with the great talents over the world.