Patty DeDominic
Founder, DeDominic & Associates

Capitalizing on over two decades of successful experiences as an entrepreneur and Board member, Patty currently operates a specialized business consulting group called DeDominic & Associates (www.dedominic.com) where professional services, such as coaching, are offered to enterprise builders and other high achievers. 

Patty was named Chief Executive Officer of the Year by the LA Business Journal and has received over 20 distinguished awards including: being named “one of America’s finest employers”; The Bank One Top Customer Service Award; The Artemis Award presented in Greece; and, The President’s Award from Women Impacting Public Policy (WIPP) presented in Washington, DC. She was inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame over ten years ago.

As a leading community volunteer, Patty has chaired the Board of the LA Area Chamber of Commerce as well as the Foundation for SCORE (Counselors to America’s Small Business) and was the National President of The National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO). She currently serves as a Director of the Jane Goodall Institute and sits on the Board of Governors for the Hugh O’Brian Youth Leadership Foundation (HOBY). In addition, she has served as an advisor to The Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University and is a case study of successful entrepreneurship and succession planning at Stanford University.

In 2006, she sold the firm she founded in 1979, PDQ Personnel Services, Inc. and CT Engineering, to Select Staffing, which is now the nation’s largest privately-held staffing firm.

Patty and her husband, Gene Sinser, currently reside in Montecito, CA. Having raised five children, their family has expanded to include five grandchildren, cats, dogs, chickens, and horses on their small ranch.

Mary Schnack
President, Communication Bridges

A specialist in communications for almost 30 years, Mary Schnack owns a variety of businesses focusing on communications and is an award-winning writer, reporter, public relations professional and advocate.  She was the recipient of the 2004 U.S. Small Business Administration’s Women in Business Advocate award for the Arizona District and Region IX.
Mary is the Chair of the National Association of Women Business Owners’ (NAWBO) International Forum, She has focused her business(es) over the past three years on international work.

Mary started out as a journalist, working for daily newspapers in Iowa and West Virginia, and has written for major national magazines and newspapers, including Newsweek, McCall’s and the Los Angeles Times.  She also was a television field producer and director for Newsweek Video.

Mary moved into public relations at two private, non-profit medical centers in the Los Angeles area.  She established a strong public and community relations program, producing all collateral materials, advertising and media outreach.  She effectively handled the hospitals’ crisis communications during the 1992 Civic Unrest in Los Angeles and the 1991 U. S. Air crash at Los Angeles International Airport.

She assisted and counseled the Seventh-day Adventist Church during the Waco cult standoff and, subsequently, helped the world church establish a crisis communications plan.  She went to Africa for ADRA, a humanitarian aid agency, to help with communications during the Rwanda Civil War.  After her original experience with ADRA, Mary conducted extensive communication seminars for ADRA’s field offices in Russia, Azerbaijan, Ghana, Guinea, Brazil, Bolivia and Peru.

She also wrote a crisis communications plan for Reno Air and was interviewed as a crisis communications specialist on CNN after the American Airlines crash in Queens, New York.
Mary also has been giving speeches and presentations worldwide for more than 25 years. Mary is articulate, witty and knowledgeable about communications for both business and personal relevance. Her topics are interesting and thought provoking and offer communication and entrepreneurial tips that can be put to immediate use. By peppering her presentations with examples from her personal experiences in such places as Waco, Rwanda, Russia and Los Angeles, Mary offers real world perspective and not just textbook examples from other people’s work. Through her public relations work, she conducts public relations, crisis communications and media training seminars throughout the United States and has conducted workshops at conferences  in Kenya, Ghana, South Africa, Switzerland, Egypt, Greece, Brussels, London, and Mexico City.

Mary is a public relations consultant and represents associations, corporations, entrepreneurs, government entities, small businesses, and non-profit organizations. Her agency is well known for association public relations, women-owned and small business representation.  They have placed client’s stories in national publications, regional and local newspapers, radio shows and programs, television news programs and internet-based media.  She also works extensively on public involvement projects for transportation and transit projects throughout the state of Arizona.

During her 15 years as an entrepreneur she has branched out into other projects and businesses, as well. She recently created a partnership with Color Creations Communications in Nairobi, Kenya, to do communications training in Africa, and formed Asia Business Connect, Inc. with two Chinese-American businesswomen in Shanghai and Beijing, China, to help businesses who want to do business between the U.S. and Asia.
Mary also started “Up from the Dust: Supporting the global growth of women microenterprises.” She exhibits at various women’s conferences throughout the country, selling items made by women microenterprises in developing countries, including China, Afghanistan, Egypt, Guatemala, Kenya, South Africa and Ghana. She is expanding the business into website and home party sales, to help the women secure U.S. retail outlets for the sale of their items.

She also has spearheaded a project in Kenya where she brought in a consultant to set up a special education program at a private school in Nairobi. It is the only school in Kenya that offers special education services in a regular classroom setting. She is currently setting up a business to continue this work world-wide.

Mary’s community involvement has been extensive. She is the founder of the NAWBO-Sedona chapter, and served on NAWBO’s national board of directors as the Southwest Regional Director. She is a National Founding Partner and on the executive advisory board for Women Impacting Public Policy. She also is a Lifetime Charter Member of Boardroom Bound, a corporate governance and director candidate program, and graduate of their Pipeline seminar. She is the Arizona representative for the Women’s Leadership Exchange and  is certified as a woman-owned business by the National Women Business Owners Corporation.

She was chair of the Great American Smokeout for the American Cancer Society, Los Angeles, for more than 10 years, and consultant and instructor for the SBA’s Small Business Development Center in West Los Angeles. She was a board member of the Sedona-Oak Creek and Marina del Rey Chambers of Commerce, Sedona Boys and Girls Club, Los Angeles Police Department Pacific Division Community Advisory Board, Los Angeles Commission on Assaults Against Women, head coach for the girl’s basketball team at Sedona Red Rock High School, and moderator of the Church of Red Rocks.