The Association of Women Entrepreneurs and Executives Hosts The 2012 AWE Awards and National Conference

NEW YORK, Nov. 6, 2012 /PRNewswire/ -- The Association of Women Entrepreneurs and Executives is pleased to announce The AWE Awards and National Conference to be held at Morgan Stanley's Fifth Avenue offices in New York City on November 7, 2012. AWE is a national women's leadership organization that provides its senior level executive women and entrepreneur members with a proprietary, paradigm-shifting platform for personal and professional advancement.

The AWE Awards and National Conference will feature female speakers who are leaders in their varied fields including venture capital, fashion and technology. AWE Founder, Elise Lelon, expressed gratitude to Morgan Stanley and Diane Finnerty for co-hosting this event. Lelon said, "With the recent devastation from Hurricane Sandy and with the nail biting Presidential election looming, we are all in need of a day for inspiration. November 7^th will be such a day, when AWE honors some of the world's most incredible female leaders and gathers an audience of accomplished professionals and entrepreneurs to celebrate the extraordinary leadership which AWE espouses and cultivates in its members."

The 2012 AWE Awards will be presented to honorees, Theresia Gouw and Irshad Manji. Honored for Leadership in Technology, Investment and Entrepreneurship, Gouw is a Partner at Accel Partners, is on Forbes' Midas List of the world's top 100 investors and was named by Forbes as one of The Five Most Powerful Women in Venture Capital. Manji will be presented with The 2012 AWE Award for Independent Thinking. She is an Emmy-nominated and international bestselling author and Director of the Moral Courage Project at New York University. Her book The Trouble with Islam Today was published in 26 countries and more than 30 languages.

Speakers will include Veronica Kelly, Cindy Padnos, Managing Partner of Illuminate Ventures, Ellen Levy, MD, Silicon Valley Connect and former VP Strategic Initatives at LinkedIn, Dana Buchman, Founder, Dana Buchman and Promise Project, Fran Drescher, actress and activist, Tiffany Dufu, President, The White House Project, Alexandra Posen, Co-Founder and former Creative Director, Zac Posen, Deborah Jackson, Founder and CEO of Plum Alley and JumpThru, Dr. Pam Peeke, NY Times Bestselling author and #1 WebMD blogger, Dr. Logan Levkoff, author and sexuality expert, Cindy McLaughlin, Chairman and CEO, Style for Hire, Laurie Meadoff, CEO, CancerSchmancer, Diahann Billings-Burford, Chief Service Officer, The City of New York, Jenny Nordberg, award winning journalist, and Dr. Laura Jana, award winning author and Owner, Practical Parenting. Hosts, Elise Lelon and Diane Finnerty, will be keynote speakers as well.

About AWE

AWE, The Association of Women Entrepreneurs & Executives, is a highly selective women's leadership organization with members who are committed to inspiring success in their businesses, in their lives and in one another.  With chapters in New York, Boston, Washington, D.C., Chicago, Los Angeles and San Francisco, AWE delivers to hand picked entrepreneur and senior executive members a transformational platform for personal and professional success.  AWE's mission is to expand members' networks, skill sets and self-expectations by enabling them to execute bigger and better than they thought possible. To that end, AWE curates intimate, high end, group retreats with customized curriculums, best-in-class tools and interactive group experiences while providing one-on-one executive coaching and in-house consulting services to each member, as appropriate.  For women in business, it can be lonely at the top. AWE keeps the women who lead companies in the best company of all: the company of other extraordinary women.

For more information about AWE and the Conference, please visit: http://myaweonline.com/conference.php.

SOURCE Association of Women Entrepreneurs and Executives