Simone Stewart

WLC President

Simone Stewart is the Marketing Manager for the Oregon Center for the Arts at SOU. She is the President of the Talent Chamber of Commerce and serves on the City of Medford Arts Commission, Film Southern Oregon and Oregon Women in Higher Education boards. Simone holds a Bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley.

Moneeka Settles

Past WLC President

Moneeka Settles is the Program Coordinator for the Innovation and Leadership degree at Southern Oregon University.  She teaches both Intercultural Communication and Organizational Communication at S.O.U.  She holds a Master’s Degree in Organizational Leadership from Columbia University. She has been involved with the Women’s Leadership Conference as a speaker, Content Committee Chair as President.

Deborah Jones

Finance Chair

Deborah Jones is Fiscal Coordinator-2 for Business Services Department at Southern Oregon University.   Her job role focus is to support the mission of all campus divisions/departments through financial reporting, verifying data integrity, and re-aligning process flows on all levels for finance and administration.  She provides fiscal administrative support to the Controller for the university’s comprehensive financial programs and oversight of special projects, facilitating finance system module conversions, training others, and web-site editing.

As a community volunteer, Debbie has chaired or participated on many committees over the years.  Her education focus is Business Administration and she has B.S. in Innovation and Leadership (SOU-2016), which focuses on organizational structure, business and administrative operations, digital media, leadership and all facets of communication.

Karen Allen

Logistics Chair

Karen Allen is a certified public accountant and has practiced public accounting for over 14 years with Moss Adams LLP. She works primarily on auditing, accounting, and consulting engagements for clients in the manufacturing and consumer products industry as well as with employee benefit plans. Karen also has private sector experience in the wood products, manufacturing, and waste management industries.

Karen has a Bachelor of Science, concentrating in accounting, from Southern Oregon University.

She believes in volunteering and giving back to the community. Karen has volunteered, beginning with the first year of the Women’s Leadership Conference back in 2013 as a finance committee member. She followed up on the logistics committee and is presently the logistics committee chair. Additionally, she has been a member of Bear Creek Rotary Club since 2008 and is now their Foundation Chair.

In her free time, Karen enjoys traveling, wine tasting with friends and spending time with her husband and two sons.

Kelly Taylor

Secretary

Kelly Taylor is the Marketing Executive Assistant (EA) at Harry & David and a virtual EA for the Enterprise Growth Officer at 1-800-Flowers.com, the parent company to Harry & David. Her role focuses on supporting the Chief Marketing Officer and marketing managers on projects directed at maximizing company profits and developing sales strategies and campaigns.

Previously, Kelly held the Executive Assistant position in the IT department by fostering communication and collaboration between the Infrastructure, Help Desk, and Engineering departments. But love for marketing landed her current role. She continues to thrive and apply her IT experiences in her day-to-day operation. Kelly is also celebrating 15 years with Harry & David.

She is always striving for new opportunities, continuing education, and development, which led her to the Women’s Leadership Conference. She began volunteering two years ago on the Logistics team, and she has not looked back.

Kelly is full of life and is passionate about supporting all those around her, both personally and professionally. When she’s not working or volunteering, she spends time with the loves of her life; husband Patrick, grandchildren, and their two dogs.

Corrie Phillips

Marketing Chair

Corrie Phillips holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing from Portland State University. After graduation, she moved to Southern Oregon and joined the team at Massif as the Executive Assistant to the Vice President. Within two years, Corrie was promoted to Customer Experience Coordinator and now supports Small Contract sales, building brand awareness, and ensuring customer satisfaction.

She enjoys building relationships, sharing ideas, empowering potential and leading by example — while always remaining flexible and maintaining a sense of humor.

In her spare time, she enjoys reading theology, biking and volunteering as a Court Appointed Special Advocate (CASA).

Heather Stafford

Content Chair

Heather comes to the Women’s Leadership Conference with a vast volunteer and professional background. She served as a Community Council member for Built Oregon and Community Lead for Slow Money.  Heather has an MBA as well as a Masters in Management from Southern Oregon University and also a Certificate of Nonprofit Management and BA in Music Business from SOU. She has served as adjunct faculty at SOU and College of the Siskiyous in their Business Communications and Entrepreneurship programs. In Southern Oregon, Heather has been a champion of local entrepreneurship and workforce initiatives while Executive Director of Sustainable Valley Technology Group and as Director of Sector Strategies at Rogue Workforce Partnership. Most recently, Heather was in Portland at Oregon’s Economic Development Agency, Business Oregon building/leading their Office for Innovation & Entrepreneurship. She now works as a Strategic Consultant with Southern Oregon small businesses as a Business Partner at BBSI.

Peggy Blair

Micro-Events Chair

Peggy Blair leads the dynamic Executive Services Team at Rogue. In her role as Senior Executive Services Assistant, she directly supports both the President/CEO and Chief Operating Officer/EVP, while leading a team that supports the entire leadership team and board of directors.

Peggy has over 30 years of experience in the financial industry and customer/client service. Her background includes marketing, community outreach and financial education, strategic planning and administration.

Passionate about personal/professional development and empowerment, she has mentored on both a formal and informal level. She was instrumental in the development and evolution of Rogue Credit Union’s long-established Student Branch Program.

Peggy has volunteered her time on the Women’s Leadership Conference Micro-Events Committee for the past 2 years before stepping into serve as Chair.

On her personal time, you will find Peggy running/hiking the trails (she can claim the title of an ultra-runner, having completed her first 50k in 2019), is a borderline gourmand, and has a personal tradition of tackling one, new and scary thing each year, for the past 17 years.

Stephanie La Pierre

Community Development

Stephanie La Pierre is an Associate Program Officer at Oregon Community Foundation (OCF) and works with nonprofit organizations, as well as their donors and board members, to support, strengthen and sustain their missions through OCF’s Endowment Partners Program.

Stephanie has a background in development, account management, publishing and library services, is a Southern Oregon University alumna and has won two awards for poetry. She has served the Rogue Valley community by volunteering for SMART (Start Making a Reader Today) and Ashland Emergency Food Bank as well as serving on the marketing committee for the Women’s Leadership Conference of Southern Oregon before joining the board in 2020.

In her free time, Stephanie enjoys reading, baking, learning French, organizing and/or making an Excel spreadsheet for everything and exploring the great outdoors with her husband and two dogs.