Anchor/Reporter, Bloomberg News
Janet Wu is a Boston-based anchor and reporter for Bloomberg Radio and Television. She interviews the entrepreneurs, investors, and business leaders of the innovation and finance hub primarily for “Bloomberg Baystate Business.” Prior to joining Bloomberg, she held various roles at 7News in Boston, including longtime weekend anchor and healthcare reporter. Her op-eds and essays have been published in The New York Times, The Boston Globe, Boston Magazine, and The Norton Sampler series of essay collections. She graduated from Yale with a dual major in philosophy and psychology and earned a master’s degree in journalism and international affairs at Columbia University. She serves on advisory boards for the New England Conservatory of Music and Franciscan Children’s Hospital. She was named the 2015 New England Girl Scouts Leading Woman of the Year and delivered a TEDxCambridge talk on exploration and resilience. She plays the piano and cello and has traveled to 88 countries, 39 of them alone.
Founder and CEO, PharmStars
Naomi Fried, PhD, is the founder and CEO of PharmStars. An internationally recognized thought leader in healthcare innovation, Naomi brings over two decades of expertise in digital health strategy and innovation, as well as an entrepreneurial spirit.
Naomi is also the co-founder and general partner of PharmStars Ventures Fund, a venture fund which invests in PharmStars alumni companies. Previously, she was a general partner at the venture fund, Ambit Health Ventures, which invested in early-stage digital health and medical device startups. Naomi has served on a variety of startup boards of directors and advisory boards. Before founding PharmStars and Ambit, Naomi led a boutique consulting firm, Health Innovation Strategies, which advised pharma on digital health strategy and innovation activities.
Previously, Naomi was Biogen’s first VP of Innovation and External Partnerships, where she developed their “innovation beyond the molecule” strategy to deliver non-pharmacological value to patients and providers. Before her time at Biogen, Naomi served as the first Chief Innovation Officer at Boston Children’s Hospital and also the first VP of Innovation and Advanced Technology at Kaiser Permanente.
Naomi has been a member of the Governor of Massachusetts’ Innovation Council and the Board of the American Telemedicine Association. Her awards include Healthcare IT News’ “Health Information Technology (H.I.T.) Men and Women of the Year Award, Innovators.” Naomi was named “The Emerging Executive of the Year” in 2014 by the Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council and one of Medical Marketing and Media’s 40 “Healthcare Transformers” in 2016.
Naomi received her PhD in Materials Science from MIT and her BS in Chemistry, summa cum laude, from the University of California, Berkeley. When not working, Naomi can be found dancing up a storm in Zumba classes or lifting weights.
Chief Executive Officer, Progress Software
A technologist at heart, Yogesh Gupta is passionate about how technology can improve lives — both for businesses and individuals. Since joining Progress in October 2016 as its President and Chief Executive Officer, he has accelerated innovation, launched new products, acquired six companies, strengthened the company’s market position and global customer relationships, and significantly improved operating margins and cash flow. Under Yogesh’s leadership, Progress launched its AI strategy in 2017, and today the company is powering AI experiences and infrastructure for 200,000+ organizations around the world that use its leading software products.
Prior to joining Progress, Yogesh was President and Chief Executive Officer at Kaseya, Inc., a private equity-backed software company providing IT management software solutions to managed service providers. Before Kaseya, he served as the President and Chief Executive Officer of FatWire Software, a VC-backed marketing automation software company. He led FatWire through the great recession and doubled its revenue over four years, leading to a successful exit to Oracle. A 30-year software industry veteran, Yogesh held several corporate officer roles at CA Technologies, including the role of Chief Technology Officer for five years and Chief Strategy Officer and head of M&A for two years.
A recognized expert in emerging technologies and industry trends as well as a published author, Yogesh holds a patent in the field of AI. He earned a Master’s Degree in Computer Science from the University of Wisconsin and a Bachelor’s Degree in Electronics Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. He also serves on the boards of Trustees of Beth Israel Lahey Health System (BILH) and Massachusetts Technology Leadership Council (MTLC). Yogesh was named an Entrepreneur Of The Year® winner by Ernst & Young LLP in 2025.
President and CEO, MEET BOSTON
Martha J. Sheridan brings more than 30 years of destination marketing experience to her role as President & CEO of Meet Boston, an organization that she rebranded from the Greater Boston Convention & Visitors Bureau in 2022. A seasoned tourism leader, she provides strategic direction for the 1,000-plus partnership organization in its mission to generate a robust and equitable visitor economy for the region. Since taking the reins at Meet Boston, Sheridan has quadrupled the organization’s operating budget. Sheridan holds and has held leadership positions with several local, regional and national industry organizations. She has been on the board of the U.S. Travel Association (USTA) and was recently appointed Chair of the Destinations International Foundation, which focuses on research, advocacy, workforce initiatives, and DEI. In doing so, Sheridan became the first woman to have Chaired both Destinations International and its Foundation.
Sheridan is a leading member of the Boston Soccer 2026 committee that worked to successfully secure seven FIFA World Cup 2026 matches in Massachusetts. She sits on
the FIFA Boston 26 Board and has created the Greater Boston Sports Commission to secure future national and global sporting events in the region. Sheridan was also
instrumental in bringing the MICHELIN Guide to Greater Boston for the first time in 2025. In 2015, Sheridan was named one of the Top 25 Women in the Meetings Industry by Meetings and Conventions Magazine, and in 2022 she received Destination International’s Destination Organization Leadership Award. In 2022, 2023 and 2025, she
was listed on the Boston Business Journal’s Power 50, and she has appeared on Boston magazine’s 150 Most Influential Bostonians list every year since 2022. In 2025, Sheridan was inducted into the Smart Women in Meetings Hall of Fame, and Meet Boston was named a Top Women-Led Business in Massachusetts by Boston Globe Magazine and The Women’s Edge.
COLUMNIST & ASSOCIATE EDITOR, THE BOSTON GLOBE
Shirley Leung is an award-winning columnist at The Boston Globe, where she examines the intersection of business, politics, and diversity. She also hosts the Globe Opinion podcast “Say More” and is a regular contributor to GBH’s Boston Public Radio. She previously served as the Globe’s business editor and interim editorial page editor, and has been recognized as one of Boston Magazine’s “100 Most Influential People.” Before joining the Globe, she was a reporter for The Wall Street Journal. A graduate of Princeton University, Shirley began her journalism career at her hometown paper, The Baltimore Sun.
PRESIDENT, SIMMONS UNIVERSITY
Lynn Perry Wooten, a seasoned academic and an expert on organizational development and transformation, became the ninth president of Simmons University on July 1, 2020. She is the first African American to lead the university.
Specializing in crisis leadership, diversity and inclusion, and positive leadership—organizational behavior that reveals and nurtures the highest level of human potential—Dr. Wooten is an innovative leader and prolific author and presenter whose research has informed her work in the classroom and as an administrator. She first joined a university faculty in 1994 and has served in administrative roles since 2008. Dr. Wooten came to Simmons from Cornell University, where she was the David J. Nolan Dean and Professor of Management and Organizations at the Dyson School of Applied Economics and Management.
Dr. Wooten also has had a robust clinical practice, providing leadership development, education, and training for a wide variety of companies and institutions, from the Kellogg Foundation to Harvard University’s Kennedy School to Google.
With leadership at the core of her work, Dr. Wooten’s research has ranged from an NIH-funded investigation of how leadership can positively alleviate health disparities to leading in a crisis and managing workforce diversity. She is co-author of the Wall Street Journal best-selling book Arrive and Thrive: 7 Impactful Practices for Women Navigating Leadership and the upcoming book The Prepared Leader, along with two previous books, Positive Organizing in a Global Society: Understanding and Engaging Differences for Capacity Building and Inclusion (2016) and Leading Under Pressure: From Surviving to Thriving Before, During, and After a Crisis (2010). Sharing her work at nearly 60 symposia and conferences, she also is the author of nearly 30 journal articles and more than 15 book chapters, as well as managerial monographs and numerous teaching cases.
Dr. Wooten grew up in Philadelphia, where she attended an all-girls high school. She earned a BS in accounting in 1988 from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, a Historically Black College, where she graduated as valedictorian; an MBA from the Duke University Fuqua School of Business in 1990; and a PhD in business administration from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business in 1995. She received a Certificate in Advanced Educational Leadership from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education in 2018.
Starting her career as assistant professor of management at the University of Florida Warrington College of Business, Dr. Wooten returned in 1998 to the University of Michigan, where she served on the faculty of the Ross School of Business for nearly 20 years. There she taught undergraduate, graduate, and executive education courses and served as Co-Faculty Director of the Center for Positive Organizations as well as Co-Faculty Director of the Executive Leadership Institute. She became engaged in student life as an associate dean, ultimately serving as Senior Associate Dean for Student and Academic Excellence. She left Michigan in 2017 for the deanship at Cornell.
Dr. Wooten is an active member of several national volunteer leadership organizations, including Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Jack & Jill of America, Junior League, and The Links Inc. She is an advisory board member for the Aspen Institute’s Business and Society Program and on the boards of the Center for Effective Philanthropy and the University of Michigan Alumni Association. In addition, Dr. Wooten is actively involved in the Boston philanthropic and civic community. She currently serves on the Greater Boston Chamber of Commerce Board of Directors, the Association for Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts (AICUM) Board of Directors, the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center Trustee Advisory Board, the JFK Library Foundation Board of Advisors, the Fenway Alliance Board of Directors, The George School Board of Trustees, the MASCO Board of Directors, and the WBGH Board of Trustees. In addition, Dr. Wooten serves on the Alumni Association of the University of Michigan Board of Directors and the North Carolina A&T University Board of Trustees.
She is a past recipient of the University of Michigan Ross School of Business’s BBA Student Award for Teaching Excellence as well as the school’s Andy Andrews Distinguished Service Award. She also was chosen as a “Next Generation Business Thinker” by the Financial Times.
Dr. Wooten is married to David Wooten, a chaired marketing professor at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, and they have two children, Justin and Jada.
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Celebrating 10 years of The Women’s Edge annual Town Hall conversation! For ten years, our Annual Town Hall has served as the launchpad for critical business dialogue. To mark this […]
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