Symposiums on Gender in Media

Media Impact on Global Issues Concerning Women and Girls

Global Symposium Panelists • Los Angeles
October 6, 2014

Nanette Braun, Moderator
Chief, Communications and Advocacy, UN Women

Fernaz Azmoodeh

Staff Software Engineer, Google

Farnaz Azmoodeh is a Software Engineering lead at Google Inc, where she manages a team working on content classification. She obtained her bachelor’s degree in Computer Engineering from Sharif University, in Iran before coming to the US to pursue a PhD degree in Computer Science at USC (University of Southern California). During her graduate studies, she focused on Geospatial and Multidimensional Data Management. Farnaz is particularly interested in improving women involvement in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) through engaging students from early childhood

Nanette Braun

Chief, Communications and Advocacy, UN Women

Nanette Braun is Chief, Communications and Advocacy at UN Women, the organization that serves as a global champion for women and girls and newest member of the UN family. She has worked on women’s rights for the past 12 years. Before joining the UN, she worked as a journalist, mainly for print media in her native Germany and abroad, with a focus on humanitarian and development issues.

Nikkole Denson-Randolph

Vice President, Specialty & Alternative Content , AMC Theatres

Nikkole Denson-Randolph oversees strategic development and implementation of AMC’s specialty programming efforts and initiatives, as well as alternative content programming, which includes overseeing AMC’s relationship with Fathom Events and settling film rentals with independent distributors. Previously, Denson-Randolph orchestrated the launch of AMC Independent and led exhibitor negotiations in the release of Kevin Hart’s hit stand-up comedy film Kevin Hart: Laugh At My Pain. The film’s theatrically-exclusive distribution model was one of the biggest independent film success stories of 2011.

She also led negotiations for other AMC-exclusive releases including: Mindless Behavior: All Around The World and Moozlum starring Nia Long. Previously Denson-Randolph served as the Director of Business Development for the Starbucks Coffee Company, and as President of Magic Johnson Entertainment and President of Magic Hallway Pictures.

Elissa Murphy

CTO and Executive Vice President, GoDaddy

As CTO, Elissa is leading GoDaddy’s evolution toward a powerful and unified platform for small business. Elissa came to GoDaddy in 2013 from Yahoo!, where as Vice President of Engineering she oversaw the world’s largest private Hadoop cluster, a technology essential to massive-scale computing that is literally the basis of the definition of big data today.

Prior to her time at Yahoo!, Elissa spent 13 years at Microsoft in various engineering positions including High Performance Computing. She began her technology career designing and building many of the best-selling computer security and system utilities with 5th Generation Systems, Quarterdeck and the Norton Group, a division at Symantec responsible for Norton Antivirus and other Norton products.

Elissa brings expertise in global-scale platforms, big data and predictive analytics. She currently has 15 patents issued and more than 19 patents pending in the areas of distributed systems, cloud, machine learning and security.

Stewart Till

Director, Sonar Entertainment

Stewart Till is currently a Director of Sonar Entertainment (previously known as RHI and before that, Hallmark Entertainment), the LA and New York-based television production and worldwide distribution company who specialize in scripted television drama. From March 2012 to May 2014, he was Chief Executive, bringing the company into profit. Despite inheriting a very thin development slate, he was responsible for greenlighting Tom Hardy’s Taboo, South of Hell (with Jason Blum, Jim Manos and Eli Roth) and Shannara with MTV (with Al Gough and Miles Millar attached as showrunners). Other of his projects which will go into production in 2014 include Fix It Men (Mark Gordon and Joe Carnahan) with TNT, and The Son (based on Philipp Meyer’s award-winning novel) with AMC. 

He is Chair of Skillset, the Sector Skills Council for the UK’s Audio-Visual Industries. Until August 2009 he was Chairman of the UK Film Council, the body established by the Government to manage the lottery monies and grants they allocated to the UK film industry.

Lareina Yee

Partner, McKinsey & Company

Lareina Yee is a Partner in McKinsey & Company’s San Francisco Office. Over her 13 years with McKinsey she has been a part of the Greater China and West Coast Offices. She is a leader of McKinsey’s Sales & Marketing Practice, specializing in commercial sales and marketing transformation. She primarily works with leading technology companies on sales growth acceleration, data analytics, new product commercialization, and key account management.

Lareina also leads McKinsey’s “Women in the Economy” initiative which provides insights on how companies can unlock the full potential of women’s talent in their organizations.  Lareina and her team work with companies to improve gender balance and surface leading practices of companies who see better results. This initiative has included collaborations with organizations ranging from the Wall Street Journal to the Clinton Global Initiative.  Lareina is a frequent speaker on the topic including the Makers Conference, Fortune’s Most Powerful Women, and Women’s Forum for Economy & Society in France . Lareina is also a champion of McKinsey’s own Lean-In circles and a host of McKinsey’s Annual Women’s Leadership Summit.

Lareina graduated magna cum laude from Barnard College and received her Masters from Columbia University where she was Javitz Fellow and a Henry Luce Scholar.  She lives in San Francisco with her husband and two boys.

IF SHE CAN SEE IT, SHE CAN BE IT®