Simone Stewart

WLC President

Simone Stewart is the Marketing and Box Office Manager of the Oregon Center for the Arts at Southern Oregon University.

A Marketing Technologist since 2009, Simone also worked in the adult beverage industry as a Wine Buyer and in wine/beer sales for an international importer/distributor from 2006-2009. Simone was a small business owner of an antiques and consignment store in Ashland, OR from 1999-2002; and was a Computer Repair Technician at the Geek Squad and Technology Operations Manager of a computer tech company prior to being hired in her ‘dream career’ of Arts Marketing.

Simone has served as a City of Medford Arts Commissioner since 2014; and served as the Chair of the Arts Commission from 2016-2019. She is the current Board Secretary for the Talent, Oregon Chamber of Commerce DBA the Talent Business Alliance. She has held a position on the board of directors of Film Southern Oregon since 2015, and has served as a Medford/Jackson County Chamber of Commerce Ambassador since 1996; and served as the Ambassadors Committee Chair from 1998-2000. Simone was the Chair of the Ashland Chamber Ambassadors from 200-2002. Simone serves as a Union Steward for the SEIU Local 503 chapter at SOU. She is the current Southern Oregon University Representative on the board of Oregon Women in Higher Education.

Simone holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Art History from the University of California at Berkeley and is an MBA candidate at SOU.

In addition to her career as an Arts Marketer and currently serving on several non-profit boards and city commissions, Simone is a professional theatre/television/film Actor with over 70 roles performed; and more performances to come.

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

Bio coming soon.

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.

Were you ever able to find those outdoor images that we taken last year of board members?

I’d love to see if there are any better ones in there that we can use for my headshot.

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.