2025 WORKSHOPS
2025 WORKSHOPS
Emily Blair
Emily Blair has been navigating the cutthroat entertainment industry since she was in high school, following a chance encounter with a reporter at Us Weekly magazine. By the time she was a senior at Chapman University, majoring in Strategic and Corporate Communication, Emily simultaneously worked as a full-time journalist at Us Weekly, balancing a schedule of final exams and Oscars red carpets. Following graduation, on the brink of the pandemic, Emily noticed a huge shift in the world of celebrity, and understood that a new wave of digitally-native talent was rapidly emerging - and unfortunately, so many of her colleagues were uninterested in covering them, and publicists she’d come to work with didn’t understand how to represent them. With her veteran understanding of the evolving editorial landscape, matched with her growing enthusiasm in the creator economy, Emily reverse-engineered the journalist-publicist relationship and launched Emily Blair Media.
EBM's roster includes global top-charting podcasters, reality television stars, athletes, musicians, fashion bloggers, below-the-line artists, and D2C brands across beauty, lifestyle, wellness, fashion, and tech. Within the past six years, Emily has won multiple accolades and awards, expanded internationally, become one of the youngest editorial producers for Vogue, and employs a team of 25 women. As a PR professional with extensive experience in crisis management, media relations, and brand development, Emily has been pivotal in guiding her clients through crises — from digital backlash to public relations pitfalls. Her tenure as a journalist uniquely enables her to forecast media response and to halt and strategically mitigate a crisis in its tracks. Her insights into navigating high-stakes situations and successfully acting amidst unexpected challenges have made her an invaluable asset to her clients’ communication teams, and have saved many of them who boast several million online followers from “cancel culture,” negative press, and severed partnerships. Her savvy approach to thinking critically and creatively, and her ability to handle each client’s publicity with a unique and authentic outlook, have positioned her as an industry leader across many competitors and colleagues with decades of experience under their belts.
Sedge Beswick
Sedge Beswick has built her career by doing what most won’t: taking risks, breaking the rules, and doing it all over again. From pioneering social and influencer marketing at ASOS to founding and scaling SEEN Connects into a £24M global agency, she’s proof of what happens when bold ideas meet relentless drive. Her expertise has shaped campaigns for brands including Nike, eBay, LVMH and Red Bull, connecting them to culture in ways that deliver real, bottom-line results.
Now a consultant, advisor, and speaker, Sedge helps brands, teams, and entrepreneurs achieve sustainable growth. As both an exited founder and a working mum, she’s equally passionate about redefining what success looks like. She speaks candidly about juggling business and babies, challenging the outdated idea that women must choose one or settle for less in both.
Whether she’s advising a founder, mentoring a marketer, or delivering a keynote on reinvention, Sedge brings clarity, energy, and the conviction that success isn’t linear - it’s yours to define.
Instagram 11K | Substack | LinkedIn 24.4K
Alisha Gupta
Alisha Gupta is a keynote speaker, creator, professional dancer, and founder of Beauty in Balance, a community for multi-hyphenates to align passion with profession. A strategy consultant by day and artist by night, Alisha is no stranger to balancing dual identities. Her platform helps others embrace the “and” — the in-between stage before quitting a 9-to-5 or raising a first round — where creativity and career can meaningfully coexist.
Alisha’s journey began in youth empowerment and social impact. While working with Ashoka, she spoke at Arizona State University to help shape a nationwide changemaking curriculum. As a podcast host with Humanity Rising, she created What Cause Inspires You, spotlighting student and professional changemakers and reaching over 100K listeners — earning recognition from NBC and an interview with actor Rainn Wilson. She’s since spoken on topics ranging from identity to mental health at Peace Day Chicago, on WGN TV, and at Google’s Leadership Symposium, where she addressed hundreds of students about imposter syndrome and non-traditional career paths.
Through Beauty in Balance, Alisha curates newsletters, toolkits, and live events to help multi-hyphenates build clarity and confidence. In just 8 months, she’s grown a 32K+ engagement community, launched a bi-weekly newsletter, partnered with 16+ brands, and hosted three sold-out creator events. Whether she’s moderating a film premiere or performing on tour, Alisha leads with the belief that passion and profession aren’t mutually exclusive—they’re meant to fuel each other.
Nicole Shlomof
Nicole Shlomof is the Director of PR and Strategy at Emily Blair Media, where she leads the agency’s Brands, Talent, and UK divisions and oversees its New York office, growing the team from one to ten members in under two years.
A public relations executive and entrepreneur with a passion for creating impactful brand moments, Nicole is known for developing strategies that drive cultural relevance and deliver measurable results. With experience across talent, beauty, fashion, lifestyle, and tech, she has worked with brands such as Nuby, Venus et Fleur, Peta Jane Beauty, Dripology, Dolce Glow, JNCO, Aureum Collective, among others.
In addition to her work with leading brands, Nicole works with high-profile talent, building personal brands through strategic partnerships, thought leadership, and media placements that expand their influence beyond digital platforms.
Her focus is on elevating female-led brands through creative strategy, standout storytelling, and viral campaigns that break through the noise. From directing Emma Chamberlain’s Forbes France cover shoot to securing press in outlets including Vogue, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, and Glamour, Nicole specializes in building narratives that not only capture attention but have a lasting impact.
In 2024, Nicole co-founded Pawp Water, the first functional hydration beverage for dogs, combining her expertise in brand building with her passion for pets. As Co-Founder, she leads the brand’s go-to-market strategy, creative direction, and launch campaigns with the goal of disrupting the pet wellness industry through an innovative, vet-formulated product.
Jen Saarbach
Jen has spent over a decade working and teaching on Wall Street. After graduating from Princeton University with a degree in English Literature, Jen leveraged her summer internship in Fixed Income Sales & Trading to land a full-time job as an Interest Rates Derivatives specialist at Lehman Brothers. Jen spent the remainder of her career at Barclays Capital and Morgan Stanley, where she covered some of the world’s largest hedge funds, asset managers, bank portfolios, mortgage servicers, pension funds, and insurance companies.
As someone who entered the financial services industry without a background in finance, Jen is passionate about democratizing access to Wall Street for EVERYONE. Co-founding The Wall Street Skinny with her best friend, Kristen, has enabled her to share her knowledge and expertise with the next generation. Jen brings her creativity, wit, and passion for storytelling to high finance in ways that have never been done before.
Kristen Kelly
Kristen has spent over 15 years working and teaching on Wall Street. After graduating from Brown University with a Bachelor’s Degree in Biomedical & Mechanical Engineering and a Master’s Degree in Innovation, Management and Entrepreneurship (PRIME), she started her career at Morgan Stanley in New York City. Kristen worked in the Fixed Income Sales & Trading Division on the CDO Structuring desk, on the Equity Linked Products and Project Finance desks in Global Capital Markets, and in the Financial Sponsors Group within the Investment Banking Division.
Because her passion has always been teaching, Kristen brought her talents to a financial education firm. She spent over a decade at Training The Street, a leading global financial training firm, before exiting to start The Wall Street Skinny with her best friend, Jen. She has spent over 10,000 hours training incoming analysts and associates at top-tier investment banks, private equity mega funds, Fortune 500 companies, universities, and business schools all over the world. Kristen is obsessed with breaking down complex financial concepts and teaching them in the most fun and effective ways.