The 2nd annual Women’s Leadership Symposium will focus on economic empowerment. Natalie Moore, WBEZ Reporter on Race, Class and Communities, will moderate a panel discussion at Roosevelt University’s Chicago campus. The symposium will address economic topics like barriers to accessing capital, juggling multiple identities such as primary household earner and caregiving, building wealth and generational wealth, entrepreneurship, and the Illinois pay transparency law. Panel participants include:
- Moderator Natalie Moore, WBEZ Reporter, Race Class and Communities
- Collete English Dixon, Executive Director of the Marshall Bennett Institute of Real Estate
- Maria Chavez, Managing Director, Payments Head, Midwest Region at J.P. Morgan
- Sharmili Majmudar, Executive Vice President of Policy, Programs, and Research at Women Employed
Symposium moderator Natalie Moore has been a professional journalist for Chicago’s WBEZ since 2007 covering segregation and inequality. Her enterprise reporting has tackled race, housing, economic development, food injustice and violence. Natalie’s work has been broadcast on the BBC, Marketplace and NPR’s Morning Edition, All Things Considered and Weekend Edition. Natalie is the author of The South Side: A Portrait of Chicago and American Segregation, winner of the 2016 Chicago Review of Books award for nonfiction and a Buzzfeed best nonfiction book of 2016.
Natalie writes a monthly column for the Chicago Sun-Times. Her work has been published in Essence, Ebony, the Chicago Reporter, Bitch, In These Times, the Chicago Tribune, the New York Times, the Washington Post and the Guardian. She is the 2017 recipient of Chicago Library Foundation’s 21st Century Award. In 2010, she received the Studs Terkel Community Media Award for reporting on Chicago’s diverse neighborhoods. In 2009, she was a fellow at Columbia College’s Ellen Stone Belic Institute for the Study of Women and Gender in the Arts and Media, which allowed her to take a reporting trip to Libya. Natalie has won several journalism awards, including a Casey Medal for Meritorious Journalism. Other honors are from the Radio Television Digital News Association (Edward R. Murrow), Public Radio News Directors Incorporated, National Association of Black Journalists, Illinois Associated Press and Chicago Headline Club. The Chicago Reader named her best journalist in 2017. In 2018, she received an honorary doctorate from Adler University. In These Times gave her the 2017 Voice of Progressive Journalism Award.
Collete English Dixon has more than 30 years in investment management with a focus on commercial real estate investing. Prior to her current role at Roosevelt University, she was Executive Director - Transactions for PGIM Real Estate (formerly known as PREI), a business unit of Prudential Financial, and co-leader of PREI’s national investment dispositions program. In that role, she oversaw the sale of more than 200 investment properties located throughout the US, with a total value of more than $8.7 Billion, on behalf of PREI’s investment funds. Prior to her role in dispositions, English Dixon was responsible for sourcing more than $2.75B of wholly-owned and joint venture real estate investment opportunities in the Midwest markets covering all property types, including office, rental and for-sale multi-family, hotel, industrial and retail properties. Collete’s experience also includes commercial property development and asset management.
In her current role, English Dixon is the Executive Director of the Marshall Bennett Institute of Real Estate at Roosevelt University where she is oversees all aspects of the undergraduate real estate major and the MSRE/MBA-RE degree programs. She is the first African American woman leader of a higher-education real estate program in the US and a member of the administrative team for the Heller College of Business.
Maria Chavez is a Payments executive with 33 years of extensive leadership, sales, and client service experience. Maria leads the Midwest & Canada Treasury Services teams for Corporate Client Banking & Specialized Industries where she is responsible for delivering working capital and cash management solutions to corporate clients. Prior to her current role, Maria oversaw the buildout of the Corporate Actions and Treasury Consulting teams, providing focused knowledge of treasury operations, industry trends, corporate action integration and best practices for our complex and high value relationships.
Maria also held leadership positions throughout Payments, including Client Service, Client Delivery and has oversight of the Payments Global Sales Associate program. Maria is a senior member of the Chicago Senior Leaders, Chicago Inclusion Action Committee, CCBSI DEI Council, Hispanic Executive Forum and the Hispanic Leadership Forum. She is also an active member of Adelante, Next Gen and Pride and is Co-Executive Sponsor of Women on the Move – Illinois Chapter.
Sharmili Majmudar serves as the Executive Vice President of Policy, Programs, and Research at Women Employed. Since 1973, WE has been opening doors, breaking barriers, and creating fairer workplaces for women – and the organization is widely recognized for its innovative and relentless work to improve women’s economic status and remove barriers to economic equity in Chicago, in Illinois, and at a national level. Sharmili oversees Women Employed’s policy, programs, and research work on growing women’s economic power to close the wealth gap at the intersection of race and gender. That work includes advancing gender equity in the workplace; strengthening sustainable career pathways; ensuring job quality; and increasing access, affordability and equity in post-secondary education. An ardent advocate for gender equity, Majmudar engages forward-thinking employers, employee resource groups, community organizations, civic leaders, and everyday advocates to make progress on the issues facing working women.
Majmudar has been committed to advancing gender equity through an intersectional lens for over 25 years. Majmudar’s writing has appeared in several online and print publications, and she has been a frequent radio and television guest, providing insight on issues of gender equity and gender-based violence. Prior to joining WE in 2017, Majmudar served for almost a decade as the Executive Director of Rape Victim Advocates (now Resilience). Majmudar worked in the gender-based violence movement for two decades, helping thousands of survivors of domestic and sexual violence heal and rebuild their lives, building allies and alliances to prevent violence, and advocating for institutions like universities, schools, government, hospitals, courts, and businesses to treat survivors with dignity and compassion by developing inclusive prevention policies and response protocols.
Please join us at Roosevelt University in Fainman Lounge on Thursday, February 29, 2024 from 4-6pm for this exciting event.
Hosted by Roosevelt University’s Women’s Leadership Council and the Office of Career Services.