The Equal Voice Team: The initial team for Equal Voice is a president (Dr. Betty Spence), a 2-person events staff, a communications associate, a website expert, and a grant writer.

Betty Spence, Ph.D.
Founder & President, Equal Voice

Betty Spence, Ph.D., is an author, speaker, and advocate for women. She founded Equal Voice in April, 2006, as a nonprofit 501(c)(3) educational organization committed to challenging stereotypes about women leaders.

Dr. Spence has served as President of The National Association for Female Executives (NAFE) since 2001, with 60,000 members nationwide, where she advocates for women's business success. She created the list of the NAFE Top 30 Companies for Executive Women and often appears as an expert on women's business issues on television news and in the print media, including ABC Nightly News, CBS Evening News, CNN, Bloomberg TV, the New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, BusinessWeek, Fortune, and Forbes.

Prior to NAFE, Dr. Spence served as Vice President, Communications and Publications at Catalyst, where she initiated the first count of women in positions with profit-and-loss responsibility in corporate America. With women in less than ten percent of these critical jobs, she has made this a focus of the NAFE Top 30 Companies list. For Catalyst, Dr. Spence wrote Be Your Own Mentor, a book on propelling your own advancement published by Random House in 2001; and she oversaw the editing and publication of two Catalyst books for Jossey-Bass, Advancing Women in Business: Best Practices from the Corporate Leaders (1998) and Creating Women's Networks (1999).

Her public relations experience started at Hill and Knowlton, where she worked in the crisis department with corporate, university, and nation clients. Her background also includes time as a contributing writer to the Los Angeles Times and other publications, speechwriting, and teaching at college and high school levels. She holds a Ph.D. in English literature.

Cynthia Mitchell, M.Ed.
Vice President, Public Affairs

Cynthia Mitchell, M.Ed., serves as Vice President, Public Affairs of Equal Voice. A therapist, speaker, and entrepreneur, she currently owns two businesses, Time for What Matters, a business mentoring and consumer education company, and A Beautiful Florida Wedding, a destination wedding management company. She is the former owner of two counseling and wellness centers. For two years, she served as President of the Women's Network of Collier County, Florida, a not-for-profit organization designed to help member businesses promote and refer business to one another. In 2007, the National Association of Female Executives (NAFE) awarded her with the Entrepreneurial Women of Excellence Award in recognition for her contribution to women in businsess.