By Amber Peckio Garrett

Mark your calendars, ladies, and yes, even gentlemen! “Celebrating Diversity, Challenging Adversity, Celebrating Life,” is the theme of the 2006 OBA Women in Law Conference, which will be held on Sept. 28 at the Renaissance Hotel in Tulsa. Building on this year’s theme, the OBA Women in Law Committee has announced that Gail Evans will be one of the guest speakers.

Ms. Evans is the best-selling author of Play Like a Man, Win Like a Woman, an informative business guide to the secrets men know about success that women need to learn. The book was listed for several months on the New York Times, Business Week and Wall Street Journal’s bestseller lists. Her book has been translated into 18 languages and has been a bestseller around the world. She has appeared in recent years on outlets such as NBC’s Today Show, USA Today, the Larry King Live Show and the New York Times, to name a few. Her latest book, She Wins, You Win, was published in May 2003.

When it comes to the success of women in the workplace, Ms. Evans is a leading source. Her myriad honors include an appointment by President Bill Clinton to the Commission on White House Fellows, an election to the Council on Foreign Relations and an election to the YWCA’s Academy of Women Achievers. Her weekly syndicated radio segment, It’s Not Just A Man’s World, is syndicated to 1,900 CNN radio affiliates throughout the United States.

Ms. Evans’s career is vast, beginning in government in the early 1960s working on a number of congressional staffs and culminating as the executive vice president of CNN. Early in her career, Ms. Evans worked at the White House in the Office of the Special Counsel to the President during the Lyndon B. Johnson administration and was instrumental in the creation of the president’s Committee on Equal Employment Opportunity and the 1966 Civil Rights Act.

Where did Ms. Evans learn the business game? In the male-dominated world of television journalism. She began working at CNN at its inception in 1980. By the time she retired in 2001, she was its executive vice president. During that time, she was responsible for program and talent development at all of CNN’s domestic networks overseeing national and international talk shows and the network guest bookings department, which schedules about 25,000 guests each year. She is currently a visiting professor at the Dupree School of Management at Georgia Tech where she specializes in cultural diversity in the workplace. Her business advice columns appear in Worthwhile and PINK magazines.

Ms. Evans has spoken and given lectures to many of the world’s leading companies including GE, JP Morgan Chase, Morgan Stanley, Wells Fargo, KPMG, BellSouth, the Southern Company and Scana Energy.

Don’t miss your opportunity to hear an enlightening talk from a distinguished guest speaker with many tales from the trenches. More information on registration for this year’s Women in Law Conference will be available in the upcoming months. If you can’t wait or would like more information, e-mail OBA Women in Law Committee Chairperson Elizabeth Joyner at Elizabeth.Joyner@Williams.com.