Theme: Bridges

TEDxSMUWomen is returning this fall for our 3rd consecutive year. The day will include 2 sessions of speakers in Dallas, the stream of the live simulcast of TEDWomen as it happens in New Orleans, workshops and great conversations with new friends.
Who: Open to all men and women
What: A conference of networking, discussions, workshops and great speakers
Where: Hughes-Trigg Student Center, SMU main campus in Dallas, TX
When: Thursday, November 2nd, 8:30 am - 6:30 pm
Tickets: VIP tickets $56 and General $27 *VIP includes lunch & TEDxSMUWomen branded gift

SMU Hughes-Trigg Student Center
3140 Dyer Street
Dallas, Texas, 75205
United States

Becca Weigman

Owner/CEO

Becca is the Owner and CEO of TM Advertising, the first and only woman-owned full-service advertising agency in Dallas, Texas. She is passionate about mentoring parents in the workforce, specifically young working mothers and women just beginning their careers. Known for creating a culture of collaboration and creativity, Becca has spent the last seven years reinventing and revitalizing TM Advertising and its clients. She has been awarded with the 2017 "Changing the Game" award from AWNY, the AAF Dallas' "Shining Star" award, and the Dallas Business Journal "Women in Business" aware, all showing her commitment to taking bold and transformative moves for her company. Becca has been married to her husband, John, for 25 years, and has 4 teenagers. Becca supports her parents, who have lived with her family, full-time, for 15 years. She and her family have also rescued 3 dogs and 1 cat. Life for Becca, and working mothers everywhere, doesn't follow the straight and narrow course.

Catelyn Devlin

Grant Manager

Originally from the Ozark Mountains, Catelyn Devlin is a licensed social worker (LMSW) who currently works in funding development for CASA of Tarrant County, the court-appointed special advocacy program for Tarrant County foster children. She is also an adjunct professor at TCU in the Social Work Department. Prior to working with CASA, Catelyn worked with refugee resettlement, specifically unaccompanied refugee children who were placed in foster families in North Texas. These children lived through war, genocide, and the loss of their parents and families, and they were placed with wonderful foster families who were recovering from their own but different losses. Seeing people do the hard and messy work of healing taught Catelyn a lot about how people heal, and covered with the empirical literature on healing and current therapies used in treating trauma, she has learned how people truly recover from the pain in their lives where they are no longer surviving but thriving.

Frances Cudjoe-Waters

Chief Strategist

Frances Cudjoe-Waters is the mother of three incredible boys and the wife of an amazing husband - all of them on the endangered list in 2017 America. After focusing on civil rights issues as a Harvard Law student two decades ago, she never thought she would see the reemergence of situations like Charlottesville, VA and the spree of killings of black bodies with repeated acquittals by white juries - something she'd only studied about in the 90's as history from the 1960's, but now lived again in the late 2010's. She is passionate, loved and loving. And somehow seeks ways to facilitate discussions between all types of people from all different places. And didn't realize until preparing for this talk, how much of a toll this always "even-ness" and dispassionate intellectualism can actually take as we all seek to just be human. Her family was recently featured by the Dallas Morning News with a profile of her family on the front page of the Sunday paper 2017.

Leslie O'Hare

President, Transformational Speaker & Life Coach

Leslie is one of the leading authorities in helping to empower women and girls to overcome rejection & any and all obstacles holding them back from living a life filled with peace, hope, happiness, and joy. Leslie believes that every woman and girl deserves to live their BEST LIFE. Leslie's success as an entrepreneur, author, transformational speaker, life coach, publisher, philanthropist, television talk show host, radio personality, playwright, television/film/stage show creator, television producer and director spans over 20 years. Leslie spent 7 years in New York City hosting her own television talk show, modeling and working as an actress as well as appearing in Off-Broadway plays and on camera in New York Undercover and worked on the motion picture film Malcolm X with Denzel Washington. Leslie is best known for her long-running television talk shows in Dallas, Texas; two of which were The Leslie Taylor Hare Show and The Leslie O'Hare Show, reach over 4 million homes weekly.

Liz Navarro

Adjunct Instructor, Communications Professional, Mom

Liz Navarro is an educator, writer, and proud Millennial side-hustler. In her quest to have it all, she juggles her roles as Adjunct Instructor of Public Speaking at SMU, freelance writer, communications consultant, and mom.

Mercedes Fulbright

Special Assistant

Mercedes Fulbright is the Special Assistant to the President at Paul Quinn College, where she has assisted in launching the African American Leadership Institute in 2016, a Dallas-based think tank for the study and advancement of public policy, economic & leadership development, civic engagement and education. Before relocating to Dallas, she previously worked for Young People For (YP4), in Washington, DC, developing curriculum for youth leadership training and oversaw their national civic engagement and voter mobilization campaigns. Most recently she co-created R.E.A.L. City, a racial equity fellowship program designed to prepare young leaders from locally-based impact organizations with the tools to address racial disparities in the city of Dallas. She is a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc. Mercedes received her Master’s in Public Administration from the University of Texas at Arlington and a Bachelors of Arts & Political Science from the University of North Texas.

Ruan Meintjes

Chief Operating Officer

Ruan Meintjes serves as the Chief Operating Officer at the Frisco Institute for Reproductive Medicine. Spearheading the Institute’s growth and expansion, Ruan is responsible for all operational, legal, and marketing aspects at the Institute. Prior to joining the Institute's Executive Team, Ruan worked with a top-tier Washington, D.C. law firm and acted as a consultant with several legal and political firms based in Texas. Ruan is a graduate of Patrick Henry College in Purcellville, VA , where he served as the Student Body President. He also competed with distinction at the national and global level on their Moot Court and Model United Nations teams. Outside of the office, Ruan enjoys putting his pilot’s license to good use, reading, spending time with family, traveling, and long-distance running.

Sharyn Wilding

Executive Director

Sharyn Wilding currently lives in Dallas, Texas and is the Executive Director of Humpty Dumpty Day School in Arlington, and also until recently the owner of Highpointe Children's Academy Private School in Arlington. She started out her education in the UK, but began Early Childhood Education studies in the United States. Besides her passion for educating children, she acts as a mentor for venture capitalists, an NLP coach, and an NLP Practitioner. She is an Entrepreneur, Art Collector, Wife, Mother and the founder of the "The Beautiful Human Way" Program. She brings her unique and extraordinary experience of being with her son as he took his last breathe, and takes from it the belief that she can make a difference in the world in spite of this.

Stephanie Bernal

Vice President of Leadership Giving

Tara Jaye Frank

Author, President & CEO

Tara Jaye Frank, sought-after thinker and speaker on leadership and culture, began her professional journey as a greeting card writer at none other than Hallmark. Her executive leadership expertise includes creative product development, business innovation, and multicultural marketing, and in 2014, Tara added author to the list with her first leadership book, Say Yes: A Woman’s Guide to Advancing Her Professional Purpose. After 21 years in corporate, Tara took the entrepreneurial leap and became President and CEO of P3TGroup, Inc, a culture firm created to help companies maximize employee potential. When she's not with clients or speaking, Tara can be found happily hiding at home with her husband, five of their six children, and their two dogs.