Speaker

Bonita C. Stewart

Vice President, Global Partnerships at Google

Bonita C. Stewart brings extensive consumer technology and operational experience as her career spans over two decades of digital transformation across multiple industries. Since joining Google in 2006, she has risen to lead multi-billion dollar operations and driven adoption of digital technologies within the US and Americas. Currently, she oversees the company’s Global Partnerships team for the largest US publishers across Search, Mobile Apps, Commerce, News, Broadcast, Telecommunications and Domains.

Ms. Stewart was recruited by Google to build the US Automotive vertical into an industry thought leader across 42 automotive brands and became the first African American woman vice president to lead sales and operations for the Automotive, Finance, Media/Entertainment and Travel sector. Over the past several years she has been recognized externally for her leadership as a Woman to Watch (Advertising Age, 2011), Power 100 (Ebony, 2012), Woman to Watch in Tech (Crain’s NY, 2014) and Most Powerful Women (Crain’s NYC, 2016). In 2016 she created the concept for Howard West, a technology immersion program for historically black colleges and universities (HBCU), powered by Google.

In 2014 Ms. Stewart was nominated to the Deckers Brands board [NYSE:DECK] and serves on the corporate governance and compensation committees. In 2018 she joined the Pluralsight board [NASDAQ:PS] and their compensation committee.

Prior to Google she served as Director, Chrysler Group Interactive Communications for DaimlerChrysler AG and spearheaded all digital efforts for Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep During the Dot Com era she was recruited back to DaimlerChrysler to lead Chrysler brand’s $400 million advertising and marketing operation. During her leadership tenure Advertising Age named the Chrysler Group the 2005 Interactive Marketer of the Year and she co-authored “The Fifth P of Marketing,” an article for CRM Magazine. During the first stint of her automotive career Ms. Stewart led the brand development for future and existing Dodge passenger cars and minivans representing an $8+ billion annual revenue target.

In 2012 and 2013 she received award recognition from the Harvard Business School and Howard University respectively for alumni achievement. She has served on the following non-profit boards – Detroit Music Hall, Cranbrook Art Academy, Harvard Business School African American Alumni Association, Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts and Harvard Business School of New York City. Currently, she serves on the American Ballet Theatre Advisory Council for Project Plié.

Ms. Stewart spent her formative years in Denver, CO and graduated magna cum laude with a Bachelor of Arts from Howard University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She resides in Englewood, NJ with her husband, Kevin Stewart (HBS 1979).

Moderator

Jacqueline Adams

President at J Adams: Strategic Communications, LLC

Jacqueline Adams launched a second career as a communications strategist after more than two decades as an Emmy Award winning CBS News correspondent. A natural “connector,” she has the unique ability to hear clients’ strategic concerns and find creative solutions, drawing upon her wealth of contacts and experiences in media, business, academic and civic circles.

Through her boutique consulting firm, J Adams: Strategic Communications, LLC, she counsels a variety of corporate and non-profit clients.

Ms. Adams covered the groundbreaking campaigns of Jesse Jackson for President and Geraldine Ferraro for Vice President before spending five years as a White House correspondent during the Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush administrations. In the 1990s, she was a prolific contributor to the CBS Evening News with Dan Rather and CBS News Sunday Morning. She won a News and Documentary Emmy Award for the 48 Hours broadcast, “The Search for Matthew.”

A graduate of Harvard Business School, Ms. Adams deliberately saves time for a number of non-profit activities. She serves on the Board of Directors of the Harvard Business School Club of New York and was among the alumnae profiled during the school’s 50th anniversary celebrations of women and African-American students (http://hbsaaa.net/jacqueline-adams.php).

She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the International Advisory Board of the United States Institute of Peace. She is a patron of the Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater and is in the fourth year of a planned decade long study of composers of the Romantic and Classical periods at the Juilliard School of Music’s Evening Division.