Tara Alemany/The Character Based Leader
Tara Alemany is the Owner and Founder of Aleweb Social Marketing, a consulting company that helps creative types (authors, speakers, performers, musicians, and entrepreneurs) build a comprehensive online platform.
Tara has more than 20 years of experience writing, training, and providing application support and process analysis to businesses. She uses these skills to educate technophobes and trendsetters alike, while helping her clients create the visibility they need for successful launches of new books, talks, music, performances, and services.
The Character Based Leader explores character-based leadership, leading from who you are, not from your position of power. By doing so, you accentuate all that is good about human beings. Character-based leaders recognize when it is their duty to guide and direct and when they need to allow others the freedom and responsibility to grow into leaders themselves.
Mary Fran Bontempo/Not Ready For Granny Panties-The 11 Commandments for Avoiding Granny Panties
Mary Fran Bontempo is an author, teacher and speaker who writes with humor and insight about the lives of women as they journey through life’s various phases. A former newspaper columnist, her first book, Everyday Adventures or, As My Husband Says, “Lies, Lies and More Lies,” was published in 2007. Her work has received notable mention by the Erma Bombeck Writer’s Workshop, Pearl Buck International and Humor Press, among others. She currently writes for her blog, Not Ready For Granny Panties, and Technorati Media.
Not Ready For Granny Panties—The 11 Commandments for Avoiding Granny Panties is the new “Bible” especially for women in life’s “middle ground.” The women who take care of everyone else before themselves. The women for whom FUN is has become a dirty word. The women who are stuck in a middle-aged rut and headed towards a life trapped in a giant pair of literal and figurative bloomers. But a few simple “tongue-in-cheek” commandments, along with delightful illustrations and some exercises to get the gals motivated will lead women back to life in the lite lane, and back to finding some fun in each and every day. Aging is inevitable, but looking, and acting, like your grandma is not. Join Mary Fran Bontempo and learn a new set of commandments that will help you avoid the Granny Panties and love life in the middle years. You’ll laugh, learn a few things and bid a permanent goodbye to GRANNY PANTIES!
Melda Beaty/LIME
Author, playwright, English lecturer, and writing consultant, Melda Beaty is the “one to watch.” Melda resides in Chicago, Illinois with her three gifted and beautiful daughters.
Her debut novel, Lime (2012), is being hailed as America’s Next Top Model meets Burning Bed. It is the first book to explore notions of beauty against the horrors of domestic violence. Melda is also the author/editor of a diverse and cathartic compilation of non-fiction writings by black women from across the United States. My Soul to His Spirit: Soulful Expressions from Black Daughters to Their Fathers won the 2006 National Fresh Voices Award. She published articles on minority student recruitment and retention in Black Issues in Higher Education, Illinois Committee on Black Concerns in Higher Education, In Search of Fatherhood Forum and Proud Parent Journal. Melda’s prolific writing style led to an invitation to pen several short stories and poems for the Educational Testing Service for the California Achievement Test. Her current play, Front Porch Society, delves into the complex lives of four elderly black women in rural Mississippi Delta on the eve of the 2008 presidential election.
Melda earned a B.A. in Broadcast Journalism at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and a M.A. in Writing at Illinois State University. She currently teaches college Composition at South University. She is also a college writing specialist for Chicago Public Schools through her consultingbusiness, College Bound Consulting.
