Community Forum: Leading with Inclusion

Wednesday, February 24th 2021

In October’s Leadership Month, we gathered a panel of thought leaders from Facebook, LinkedIn, Gilead and Medallia to talk about what’s working as they strive to create more inclusive company cultures. It was a great conversation – and it was just a beginning. In our most recent forum we invited the Watermark community to continue the conversation by sharing what’s working within their organizations. Join the conversation for our third forum and learn how to embed inclusion into your companies.

Lori Nishiura Mackenzie, Lead Strategist, Diversity, Equity & Inclusion, Stanford University Graduate School of Business and Melynnie Rizvi, Head of Employment Law and Litigation, SurveyMonkey will moderate the discussion.

Lori Nishiura Mackenzie

Lori Nishiura Mackenzie is Lead Strategist, Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and the co-founder of the new Stanford VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab. She advises the diversity and inclusion efforts at the Stanford Graduate School of Business and teaches executive education. She is the former Executive Director of Stanford University's Clayman Institute for Gender Research. Lori speaks globally at organizations such as the European Central Bank, the Watermark Conference for Women and the World Banking Group. Her work has been published in the Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, BBC, San Francisco Chronicle, and Brand Eins. Lori was one of the BBC’s 100 Women in 2017 and was interviewed for the 2018 documentary, Bias. Lori brings 20 years of business management experience from companies including Procter & Gamble, Apple, eBay and PayPal and is on the board of the Alliance for Girls. She has an MBA from the Wharton School of Business and a BA in Economics from the University of California, Berkeley.

Melynnie Rizvi

Melynnie Rizvi is the Deputy General Counsel, Employment, Litigation, Compliance, Business Practices and IP at Shutterfly. Prior to Shutterfly, she was the director of employment, inclusion, and impact at SurveyMonkey where she provided strategic guidance to the People team, oversaw global employment law, and led SurveyMonkey for Good, the company’s diversity, equity and inclusion, and social impact initiative. Prior to SurveyMonkey, she was the senior director of global employment, litigation, chief sustainability and diversity officer, and chief compliance officer at Veritas, a global technology company. Prior to Veritas, she was a director of global employment law at Symantec. Prior to Symantec, she was a partner at Lewis Brisbois Bisgaard & Smith and an associate at Baker & McKenzie. Rizvi is a board member of Fresh Lifelines for Youth and former board member of Success Through Education Program. Rizvi is a recent graduate of Northern California Grantmaker’s Racial Equity Action Institute and The Leadership Consortium, Harvard Business School’s Executive Leadership Acceleration Program, and was named 2016 Employment Counsel of the Year. She received her JD and Bachelors of Commerce degree from the University of Alberta, In Edmonton, Alberta, Canada.