Eller’s 2020 Annual Women’s Tea Honors Ordinary Women Doing Extraordinary Things

Dec. 16, 2020
Sunset over McClelland Hall

On December 11, the undergraduate department in the Eller College of Management held its annual Women’s Tea virtually.

This year’s honorees were six ordinary women who have done extraordinary things—among them are a project manager at Vanguard, the northwest regional manager for Nothing Bundt Cakes and an operations analyst at Cisco IT.

The honorees were:

  • Jessica DeNise ’09 BSBA (Management). DeNise is vice president of recruitment marketing at Fisher Investments, where she has worked for more than a decade. Throughout her professional life she has been a project manager, people manager and is now a department manager.
  • Alexandra Gomez ’17 BSBA (MIS). From the small town of Nogales, Arizona, Gomez is a proud Latina who grew up with cultural influences from both the Mexican and American border and has been recognized for her passion for being involved in and supporting Latinos in the community. She is currently a business operations analyst at Cisco IT, where her responsibilities include analyzing and managing workforce data, and helping IT leadership create strategic, data-drive decisions surrounding workforce strategy, planning and skillset transformation.
  • Waverly Kenny ’16 BSBA (Marketing). Adopted from Vietnam at only four months old, Kenny worked as community relations and events manager for the retail brand Kendra Scott after graduating from Eller. In 2019, she became the northwest regional manager for Nothing Bundt Cakes based out of Dallas, Texas, where she managed more than 30 locations in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Nevada and Northern California.
  • Yewande Olabumuyi ’12 BBA (Marketing). Currently serving as project manager at Vanguard, Olabumuyi. uses her passion for problem solving, relationship management and leadership to give clients their best shot for investment success. She is also founder of YOFitness and health, a health and wellness company, and serves as a fitness instructor at the Damion Gosa Memorial Foundation, an after school program for youths.
  • Melissa Rose ’15 BSBA (Finance). On the day of the Women’s Tea, Rose was promoted to vice president from associate in Goldman Sachs’ Global Markets division, where she specializes in equity derivatives. She has been at Goldman Sachs for more than five years on a multi-asset team in New York City, where she focuses on different products within equities. As an Eller alumna, Rose is active in mentoring current Eller students and working closely with those that are interested in working on Wall Street to support them in their aspiration toward a career path in finance. In September, Rose became a member of Eller’s National Board of Advisors.
  • Sungano Siyavora ’14 BSBA (Accounting), ’15 MSA. In her current tole as finance manager within the Global Film Marketing group at NBC Universal in Los Angeles, Siyavora is responsible for forecasting box office revenues and manages the budgets for the marketing team and their campaigns. Siyavora is a world traveler, having visited six out of the seven continents. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she tried something new—roller skating.

Following the honoree’s, a group of more than 30 women who are current Eller undergraduate students were highlighted as Eller’s Top Collegiate Women for their inspiration and desire to learn.

“Although this year’s modality for the annual Women’s Tea was different, the outcome was as inspirational as ever,” says Aubrey Anglemyer, director of undergraduate leadership, marketing and events. “Hearing the honoree’s words of wisdom and advice for everyone attending made for a great event that brought together so many extraordinary women in such a turbulent time.”