Member Conference: Betting on Change: Seramount’s Bold DEI Predictions for 2025

Subha V. Barry is a C-suite leader and an advisor who brings a unique perspective on the alignment of corporate culture to talent strategy and business results. As a transformational change agent, she has a proven record of identifying and accelerating new business creation, driving sales, and increasing profitability.

Subha is president of Seramount where she drives the firm’s vision, strategy, and business development. Subha joined Working Mother Media (WMM) in 2015 and during her tenure she dramatically improved margins, expanded its portfolio through growth in high-value consulting and learning and development, exponentially grew their client roster, and recruited talented executive leaders to amplify subject matter and functional expertise. In 2021, Subha oversaw the brand’s transformation from WMM to Seramount, a leading strategic professional services and research firm dedicated to building high-performing, inclusive workplaces. Today, Seramount works with 450+ organizations globally, including half of the Fortune 500, to help our partners navigate today’s talent and DEI landscape.

Previously, Subha was senior vice president and chief diversity officer at Freddie Mac, where she served on the firm’s management committee and led their foundation. Prior to her time at Freddie Mac, Subha spent 20+ years at Merrill Lynch as managing director and their first global head of diversity & inclusion where she built their D&I strategy, infrastructure and execution plans from the ground up. She also created a highly successful Multicultural Business Development Group to focus their wealth management business on diverse and multicultural communities bringing in over $8 billion in new assets and $50+ million in annual revenues in just three years. She began her career at the firm as a financial advisor where she was a top 100 advisor among 16,000 in the firm.

Subha is a former adjunct professor at Columbia University’s SIPA, and currently serves on the Boards of SHRM Foundation, Rice 360, Rutgers Cancer Center and the Rutgers Institute of Women’s Leadership. She is also a Board Advisor at PE-owned Snowden Lane Partners. In the past, Subha has served on a variety of Boards as Board Chair, Head of Nominating & Governance, Finance, and HR and DEI Committees.
A native of India, Subha holds a BA from Bombay University and an MBA and MS in Accounting from Rice University. She enjoys golfing, reading poetry and rallying for social change. She has two grown children and lives in Naples, Florida and New Hope, PA with her husband.

Nancy J. Di Dia is a celebrated leadership advisor, executive coach, and certified DEI practitioner. As the former Chief Diversity Officer at Boehringer Ingelheim USA, she reimagined diversity and inclusion strategies that shaped the company’s culture and elevated diverse talent representation at all levels. A PCC-certified executive coach with more than two decades of experience, Nancy has developed and facilitated leadership programs that empower leaders to connect authentically, foster innovation, and build resilient teams. 

Nancy’s career spans global organizations in pharmaceuticals, financial services, and technology, where she has been instrumental in crafting leadership pipelines and advancing inclusion initiatives. Among her accomplishments, she designed the Women in Leadership Pipeline and multicultural integration frameworks that have been adopted as best practices. Her efforts have garnered national recognition, including honors from the Human Rights Campaign and DiversityInc. Magazine. 

As founder and CEO of Di Dia Executive Coaching Group, Nancy continues to champion inclusive leadership, partnering with executives to create cultures of belonging and achieve measurable impact in global organizations.  She is currently a global advisor for Seramount. 

Meredith McNeill is the Senior Director of Insights at Seramount. In this role, she develops stakeholder education and provides decision and implementation support to Chief Diversity Officers on their most pressing issues.

Prior to joining Seramount, Meredith led the K-12 research design and discovery team at EAB. She has extensive experience in education policy and execution at the federal, state, and local levels. Meredith has served as a policy advisor in the U.S. Senate, an advisor to large urban public school districts, and a management consultant. She began her career as a middle school teacher in Philadelphia.

Meredith holds degrees from Syracuse University and the University of Pennsylvania. She lives in Washington, D.C. with her family.

Joan Sheridan LaBarge is the Managing Director, Relationships at Seramount. Since joining in 2005, Joan has been a leader in expanding the company’s scope on initiatives that focus on diversity, equity and inclusion, the advancement of women, and work/life integration. She leads the Sales and Relationships team and is responsible for all revenue generation across Seramount. With over 30 years of sales and marketing experience, Joan is a strategic thinker, customer focused and a consultative seller.

Joan is a core member of the executive leadership team and brings a revenue producing mindset to our work. She identifies market opportunities and helps shape new services. In her early years at Seramount, Joan took the lead in expanding the company’s multicultural women’s initiative and helped to bring its advancement of women work around the globe. Most recently, she was instrumental in developing and executing the company’s successful selling strategy during the 2020 pandemic. Prior to joining the company, Joan was a highly regarded Publisher at Gruner & Jahr, Weider Publications and Hachette Filipacchi Magazines leading national titles Shape and Men’s Fitness among others. Joan received her B.S. in Communication Arts from St. John’s University and was honored as an outstanding alumni in 2008 and a Woman of Distinction in 2012.

Christena Pyle is the first Chief Equity Officer at dentsu Americas and joined the network in 2020. Christena has spent her entire career working in and advocating for the advertising industry, having worked for agencies, holding companies, and non-profits. Christena has received countless honors but most recently recognized by Ad Age’s 40 under 40 list and inducted into the America Advertising Federation’s Advertising Hall of Achievement. In addition to being inducted into the 2021 AAF Advertising Hall of Achievement, Christena also received the Jack Avrett Volunteer Spirit Award for industry service.

Christena serves on committees, councils, and boards supporting the advertising industry including the GLAAD Advertising Council which launched the GLAAD Advertising Visibility Index helping to ensuring fair, accurate, inclusive and diverse visibility for LGBTQ people in marketing and advertising campaigns. Christena believes in the power of Media to be a force for good in the world. She believes Media can introduce new narratives, challenge legacy thinking, accurately portray people, and combat harmful stereotypes.

Christena is recently married to Rosemary and call NYC their home. In 2019 they ran all 26.2 miles of the New York City Marathon together! If you want to hear more from Christena, you can check out the Adweek Podcast “Home / Work” on iTunes or where ever you get your podcasts.

Ripa Rashid (she/her) is the Managing Director of Seramount’s Chief Diversity Officer Collaborative and a member of Seramount’s leadership team.  In this role, she oversees the CDOC research agenda, driving innovation, and collaborates with Seramount’s partners to foster inclusive cultures and systems where all talent can thrive and business outcomes are maximized. Ripa is a senior executive with over 20 years of experience in diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) and has held C-suite roles across talent, DEI, and culture, with deep expertise in the media and financial services sectors. Most recently, she served as Chief Diversity and Inclusion Officer (CDIO) at Consumer Reports and previously held leadership roles at Cowen (a Wall Street investment bank acquired by TD Bank), Time Warner, and MetLife.

In 2018, Ripa co-founded and co-led Seramount’s consulting division, advising Fortune 500 companies and professional services firms on innovative DEI practices to shape inclusive, high-performing cultures. Earlier, she served as Co-President of the Center for Talent Innovation (CTI, now CoQual), a renowned think tank in the DEI space, and founded Hewlett Consulting Partners, CTI’s advisory arm. Her early career includes global consulting roles at Booz & Company (now Strategy&), PwC, and Mitchell Madison Group, where she advised financial services and media clients on strategic growth, risk management, and operational excellence.

Ripa is an adjunct professor of management at NYU Stern School of Business, where she teaches an MBA course on inclusive leadership. She is the author of three books on DEI: Winning the War for Talent in Emerging Markets: Why Women are the Solution (Harvard Business Review, 2011), Growing Global Executives (Rarebird, 2015), and Disrupt Bias, Drive Value (Rarebird, 2017). Her thought leadership also extends to over two dozen articles and insights papers featured in publications like Harvard Business Review and Strategy & Business.

A sought-after speaker and panelist, Ripa has addressed audiences at the UN, OECD, International Women’s Forum, Diversity Woman, ADCOLOR, ASCEND, and the National Diversity Council, among others. She has been invited by companies such as Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, Aetna, Infosys, and Standard Chartered Bank to share her expertise on DEI.

Ripa holds an AB cum laude in Astronomy and Astrophysics from Harvard University, an MA in Cultural Anthropology from NYU, and an MBA in Finance and Management from INSEAD. She has been named one of the “Outstanding 50 Asian Americans in Business” by the Asian American Business Development Council Ripa is an active member of the Harvard and INSEAD alumni communities, the INSEAD Global Women in Business Club, and the South Asian Executive Women’s Network. She serves on the Board of One To World, a nonprofit dedicated to global education, and advises Monumental Me, a professional development platform. Ripa has lived and worked in over a dozen countries and currently resides in New York City with her husband and their two sons.

Bridgette Scales is Managing Director on Seramount’s Advisory team. She is a diversity, equity, and inclusion expert with experience in sales and human resources. Bridgette joined Seramount from American Airlines in 2020, where she was the human resources business partner for customer experience. There, Bridgette was responsible for collaborating on people policies, talent management, career development, succession planning, departmental training initiatives, and aligning employee strategies with American Airline business goals.

Prior to her time at American Airlines, Bridgette spent 27 years at Proctor & Gamble. During her tenure at P&G, she was instrumental in developing and implementing strategies, programs, and processes across a complex and matrix organization. As a DEI practice leader for North America, Bridgette guided and counseled senior leaders on the integration of strategies that included awareness, cultural competency, leadership development, accountability and employee engagement. This led to better processes in the identification of high-potential employees, reduction in attrition rates of minorities, and increased DEI scores on the corporate employee survey.

Bridgette currently serves on the Global Advisory Board for the Women’s Leadership Forum within the P&G alumni network. She also sits on the She Runs It Foundation board’s Diversity, Equity & Inclusion Advisory Council and is a member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc.

She has a BA from the University of Oklahoma, an MBA from the University of Phoenix, and a Senior HR Professional certification from HRCI.

Laura Sherbin is Managing Director of Consulting at Seramount. She is an economist who specializes in the creation of advantage through inclusion and diversity. Most recently, Laura was co-president at the Center for Talent Innovation (CTI) in New York City, a premier think tank and content provider that studies global workplace diversity.

Laura has co-authored several Harvard Business Review articles, including “How Diversity Can Drive Innovation,” “How Gen Y and Boomers Will Reshape Your Agenda,” and “Off-Ramps and On-Ramps Revisited,” as well as the Harvard Business Review research report titled “The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology.” She has also taught a Women and Globalization course at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

Laura built the rigorous data analytics machine and team that have been core to innovative approaches to measuring and tracking employee experiences. She is known as a leading expert in applying diversity and inclusion data to human behavior in organizations and using such data to quantify how workforce sentiments and satisfaction affect company bottom lines.

Laura holds a BS in math and economics from the University of Delaware and earned her PhD in economics from American University. She currently resides in Irvington, New York, with her husband, their four children, and their dog, Gus. Laura has always loved math and numbers, but when not working, she also enjoys baking, traveling, and meditating.

Adrienne Trimble is the Senior Vice President and Chief Inclusion Officer for Visa. She is a known thought leader for advancing corporate diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives. She has led DEI and Social Impact initiatives for large, global organizations. Additionally, she has served as the leader of a non-profit national organization, with global affiliates, providing certification, advocacy and development for minority owned businesses.

Trimble began her work in inclusion at Toyota Motor North America, and during her tenure, she aligned diversity, equity and inclusion with the business strategy to help position Toyota as the #1 sales leader in the African American, Hispanic American and Asian American markets.

She oversaw Toyota’s Supplier Diversity initiative and grew the company’s diverse supplier spend that exceeded a 300 percent increase, topping nearly $3B in spend with diverse suppliers. Toyota received numerous accolades under Trimble’s direction, including Corporation of the Year by the National Minority Supplier Development Council (NMSDC) as well as Corporation of the Year honors from several of the organization’s affiliates.

Ms. Trimble served as an Executive on Loan as the President & CEO for the National Minority Supplier Development Council from August 2018 – February 2021. Within 18 months, she reversed the organization’s decline in corporate members and certified minority business enterprises. In the spring of 2019, Trimble testified before the U.S. House of Representatives’ Financial Services Subcommittee on Diversity and Inclusion, to further underscore the economic benefits of supply chain inclusion.

Ms. Trimble served as the first Vice President and Chief Diversity & Culture Officer for Sysco Corporation, the world’s largest food distributor, from 2021 – 2023. Under her leadership, the company saw a dramatic increase in representation of women and people of color in leadership roles, with the Executive Leadership Team having more than 40% representation from under-represented demographics. The company also topped more than $1B in spend with certified diverse suppliers, an increase of more than 50%.

A graduate of Wilberforce University, Ms. Trimble holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Organization Management. In 2014, she was appointed to the Board of Trustees of her alma mater.  Additionally, Ms. Trimble is a graduate of The Herndon Institute Corporate Board Director Development Cohort and a member of the Executive Leadership Council (ELC).

Celeste Warren is Vice President, Global Diversity and Inclusion Center of Excellence.  As the leader for Merck’s Global Diversity and Inclusion Center of Excellence, she is responsible for working with Merck’s global leaders to advance and embed diversity and inclusion throughout the organization to enhance the employee experience and maximize business performance.

She has been recognized for her work in diversity, equity and inclusion.

She serves on the boards of RWJBarnabas Health Systems and Paradigm for Parity.  She is also a member of CNBC’s Workforce Executive Council and World 50’s Inclusion and Diversity Impact Community.

Celeste is a published author and her articles on diversity, equity and inclusion have been featured in numerous national and global publications and she has had the opportunity to speak at various events across the world.

She is the wife of John Warren and the mother of two children, Christina-Celeste and John Steven, Jr.