2020speaker

Dr. Heather Cichanowski is a primary care sports medicine physician at TRIA Woodbury. For the past decade she has traveled Internationally to World Cup Events as a team physician for the US Cross-Country Ski Team; since spring 2022, she has been their head physician and proudly provided medical care at the 2022 Beijing Winter Olympics. She is the medical director of Women’s Sports Medicine at TRIA, which includes a multidisciplinary team of sports medicine experts providing a collaborative approach to care of active females. Dr.

Pam Baker is the founder and CEO of Journeous, committed to making the most of what each of us brings to the world. Pam’s mission is to create connection and community to the work we do and those we do it with.

Cindy has spent her career partnering to facilitate change through corporate leadership training and in public and private education. As a Division 1 soccer player, community coach and mother of two female collegiate athletes, Cindy understands the challenges and barriers that many female athletes and coaches encounter today and the importance of the growing network of women coaches.

Emily manages the groundbreaking Project Play 2020 initiative, a cross-sector collective impact initiative dedicated to raising youth sport participation rates, including management of key initiative workstreams, communications, as well as managing the Project Play Champions program.

Valorie Kondos Field is the retired head coach of the seven-time NCAA Champion, 22-time Regional and 18-time Pac 12 Champion UCLA Women’s Gymnastics team. Inducted into the UCLA Athletic Hall of Fame in 2010, the four-time “National Coach of the Year” was also named “West Region Coach” of the Year and Pac 12 “Coach of the Century” for her solid track record as a preeminent coach.

Maria Stuber founded the Women Ski Coaches Association (WSCA) in 2019, a grassroots organization that gives women ski coaches a voice.  The WSCA works to develop, retain and advance women in ski coaching leadership.  Just three months into this project, the WSCA has over 90 members and has unanimous support from women head coaches and program directors in US cross-country skiing.  The WSCA was recognized internationally at the Norwegian Ski Federation’s Ski Leaders of Tomorrow event in September 2019 and has begun collaborating with the skiing National Governing Body to change skiing sport

J. Roxanne Prichard, PhD (University of Wisconsin-Madison, Neuroscience, 2004) is a Professor of Neuroscience and Psychology at the University of St. Thomas in Minnesota. An award-winning researcher, speaker, and author, Dr. Prichard has spent the last fifteen years studying how college students sleep.

Alicia Pelton has spent the past 30 years actively involved in sports as an athlete, wife, mother, manager, teacher, business owner, coach, mentor, board member, marketing director, and high school athletic director. Her range of experiences have weaved through many diverse segments of the population in various parts of the world and have helped her understand the perspectives of players, coaches, owners, and parents. In 2015, Alicia founded Athletic Leadership Alliance.

As a parent, sports broadcaster and former collegiate athlete, Lea B. Olsen has experienced sports culture from every angle.

Since playing basketball for the University of Minnesota, where she studied journalism and mass communication, Lea has worked for NBCSN, ESPN’s national WNBA coverage, currently she is a game analyst for the Minnesota Lynx, and a sideline reporter for the Minnesota Timberwolves, on Fox Sports North. Lea also broadcast both the boys and girls Minnesota State high school basketball tournaments.

Dr. Robin Martin leads the strategy, planning and management efforts of the Postsecondary Success team at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. She brings more than 20 years of higher education experience and a doctoral degree in Urban Education Leadership to her role, where she focuses on: operational excellence, development and execution of key elements of the team's work—including an intentional focus on integrating equity as an essential element of all systems’ success.