Rory Gerberg trains and consults on workplace sexual harassment prevention and diversity, equity, and inclusion. She leverages sexual harassment compliance training mandates in New York and California to catalyze meaningful behavior and culture change. 

Rory is a behavioral scientist who combines a data-based understanding of workplace realities with the law and policy to generate change. Rory doesn't see workplace MeToo as suprising–she sees it as a logical result of the systems that have brought us here today. Her analysis brings eleven years addressing sexual violence as a trainer, consultant, policy analyst, and researcher across contexts. She approaches the topic with nuance and compassion for all of employees' complex lived experiences. You can get a flavor of her approach in a ten minute talk at the ideas42 Behavioral Summit (2018) below. 

Rory's work on sexual harassment and assault at Harvard University was recognized with Harvard's Holly Taylor Sargent Award for Women’s Advancement (2015). She submitted written comments on campus sexual assault policies and programs to the White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault and to the U.S. Department of Education for rulemaking on the Violence Against Women Act. She published Op-Eds in the Boston Globe and Harvard Kennedy School Review, and was featured in the New York Times, Associated Press, NPR, and CBS This Morning. As an Adrienne Hall Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School Women in Public Policy Program, Rory developed an interactive training module on sexual harassment and assault and manual to guide facilitators. 

Prior to Harvard, Rory worked on post-conflict reconstruction in Colombia, Peru and Guatemala. She consulted on the development and implementation of policies, programs, and practices that address sexual violence after conflict and promote gender equity. 

Rashad Beal has a B.A. in Psychology from California State University, Northridge. He is currently the Schools over Violence Program Manager at Peace Over Violence. Rashad’s life purpose is to give back to the community and help people fulfill their dreams as free people. He is a husband, father of two children and currently lives in Palmdale, CA.

Jackson Katz, Ph.D., is an educator, author, and social theorist who is internationally renowned for his pioneering scholarship and activism on issues of gender, race and violence. He has long been a major figure and thought leader in the growing global movement of men working to promote gender equality and prevent gender violence.  He is co-founder of Mentors in Violence Prevention (MVP), one of the longest-running and most widely influential gender violence prevention programs in North America, and the first major program of its kind in the sports culture and the military. MVP introduced the “bystander” approach to the sexual assault and relationship abuse fields; Katz is a key architect of this now broadly popular strategy.

Since 1997 he has run MVP Strategies, a multiracial education and training organization that provides sexual harassment and gender violence prevention/leadership training to institutions in the public and private sectors in U.S. and around the world. He is the author of two critically acclaimed books, The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How all Men Can Help, and Man Enough? Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton and the Politics of Presidential Masculinity. Jackson is creator, lead writer, and narrator of the award-winning Tough Guise videos. His gender violence prevention work is featured in the 2018 film The Bystander Moment: Transforming Rape Culture at its Roots. He is the creator of the 2020 film The Man Card: White Male Identity Politics from Nixon to Trump.

Katz lectures and trains widely in the U.S. and around the world on the imperative of men’s leadership in the promotion of gender equity and the prevention of gender violence, and the many intersections in this work among gender, sexual orientation, race, ethnicity and religion. His TEDx talk, Violence Against Women: It’s a Men’s Issue, is available with sub-titles in 27 languages and has a total of more than 4.8 million views.

Sumayyah Emeh-Edu is the Founder and Principal Strategist of Embedded Consulting and Sr. Strategist for the Inclusionary Leadership Group. She has over 15 years professional experience leading various initiatives within higher education and corporate sectors, focused primarily on diversity and professional development. In that time, Sumayyah has successfully organized Tech Inclusion and The Better Man Conference, as well as managed engagement programs with clients such as Kaiser Permanente, PG&E, Asana and Oracle.

Hailing from organizations such as Change Catalyst, Keller Center for Corporate Learning and Laureate Education, Sumayyah understands systemic inequities throughout the education-workforce pipeline. This insight was an impetus to commit her career to challenge the status quo for inclusion.

Sumayyah founded The Ally Movement in November 2016 to provide a tools for those with privilege to take action. She is also a Board Member for Techtonica, an apprenticeship program for women to gain programming skills. Professional affiliations include the following: ATD Golden Gate Chapter, National Diversity Council, and Women’s Global Leadership Initiative.

Eliot J. Rushovich is the Managing Partner at Rise Law Firm. Mr. Rushovich exclusively represents employees in employment law cases. Over the past decade, he has represented numerous employees at all levels of seniority, from minimum wage hourly employees to senior level executives at Fortune 500 companies. He is particularly skilled in litigation matters related to discrimination, harassment and retaliation, and wage and hour matters (including both individual and class action cases). He also has extensive experience representing senior-level executives in confidential out-of-court settlement negotiations and mediations.

In recent years, Mr. Rushovich has become a leader in the community. Besides being a regular member of the major plaintiff’s employment associations in Southern California, Mr. Rushovich serves on multiple legal committees based in Los Angeles and as an expert panelist at various employment law related seminars and functions. Prior to founding Rise Law Firm, Mr. Rushovich was a name Partner at Rushovich Mehtani LLP for five years, and before that spent several years working as an attorney at O’Melveny & Myers LLP, one of the oldest and largest law firms in Los Angeles. While at O’Melveny & Myers, Mr. Rushovich handled a number of senior level executive employment agreements and severance agreements, including negotiating the agreements of multiple high-profile executives at the major movie studios. He attended Harvard, both for undergrad and law school.

One of the nation’s most sought after experts on the topics of interpersonal communication, assertiveness, harassment prevention and self-defense, is the founder and President of Esteem, a communication consulting firm. Lauren’s expertise includes personal coaching, group trainings, and motivational public speaking. With 27 years of experience leading well over 1,000 trainings, Lauren is proud to have developed a series of leadership trainings that equip participants with skills they can put to use immediately.

After volunteering as a counselor on the Los Angeles Rape and Battering Hotline, supporting survivors who shared their assault stories, Lauren was highly motivated to begin working to reach women before they were in need of counseling. She moved from intervention to prevention, becoming a certified self-defense instructor and founding Esteem in 1991. Her company soon expanded to include trainings for companies and schools to prevent sexual harassment and bullying.

Lauren holds a Master’s Degree in Interpersonal Communication and has provided programs to a diverse array of corporations, organizations, colleges, middle and high schools, and individuals reaching over 30,000 participants with her lively and enthusiastic teaching style. Lauren’s mission is to empower those around her to communicate confidently and with Esteem.

Most recently, she is also a founding partner at SpotTheLine, a company that creates mobile apps for organizations and individuals to assess levels of sexual harassment in the workplace, providing customized action steps and empowerment tools to move forward with confidence.