Leadership Beyond Titles: Harnessing Influence and Inspiration was one of the final seminars at the 2023 Women of Color STEM Conference. Michelle Gardner-Ince moderated the one-hour session.
Currently, Gardner-Ince is the director of the Women Veteran-Owned Small Business Initiative in the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Office of Small and Disadvantaged Business Utilization. The seminar had two panelists, 2023 Technology Rising Star Smruti Jaitpal and U.S. Army Major Erika Zimmermann.
Gardner-Ince's responsibilities involve ensuring that programs, services, and support resources reach the Veteran small business community.
As a director, she leads the department's efforts to develop programs that connect and enable Women Veteran entrepreneurs within the VA, federal, and commercial marketplace.
She is a retired Colonel and an Air Force Veteran with over 20 years of experience supporting Veterans, military troops, and their families.
Gardner-Ince has held numerous executive-level positions before creating her own small business, G-I Strategic Solutions LLC. Her experience includes customer-centric business operations, training, consulting, strategic collaboration, and directing award-winning complex global operations.
She has also served as the commander of the Army and Air Force Exchange Service Pacific Region, where she led a $1.8 billion-dollar retail, food, and services business, with full profit-loss responsibility.
During her tenure, her leadership led to the highest-grossing military exchanges in the world two years in a row. Gardner-Ince holds a bachelor's degree from Tuskegee University and a master's degree from Troy State University.
Additionally, she is a Tuck School of Business graduate at Dartmouth Executive Program and a Dale Carnegie and John Maxwell leadership coach/trainer.
Jaitpal is currently a senior manager in the global server and machine learning infrastructure product operations at Google.
She previously worked as a manufacturing operations manager and a supply chain and operations manager at Google.
Before joining Google, she worked at Theranos Graphic as a supply chain and planning manager and as a senior staff engineer in industrial engineering at Western Digital Graphic.
Jaitpal also worked for IM Flash Technologies Graphic and Micron Technology. She holds a bachelor's degree from the Indian School Bahrain and a bachelor's degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology.
Recently, she attended the Stanford University Graduate School of Business LEAD Program, a year-long program designed to build the innovation mindset needed to accelerate and disrupt organizations, industries, and the world.
Zimmermann is the chief of research development and innovation at the Army Enterprise Marketing Office.
She applies 17+ years of military experience and credentials in business administration, Lean Six Sigma, product strategy, and digital marketing analytics to lead strategic and impactful innovative marketing initiatives for the Army.
Her role involves overseeing six product portfolios' research, development, and innovation, ensuring they are aligned with the Army's national advertising strategy and target audiences.
She leverages her skills in multicultural storytelling, big data decoding, and consumer focus to create and deliver compelling and relevant content that showcases the Army's values, opportunities, and benefits.
She also uses data-driven insights and best practices to measure and optimize the marketing campaigns and products' performance and return on investment.
