Board of Directors
Crystal Arredondo is a seasoned Retirement Planning Specialist and Wealth Advisor. She focuses on helping women “not feel powerless”. She works closely with her clients to design strategies that simplify their life, protect their business and give them peace of mind.
She helps women business owners create customized strategies to reach their goals for financial success. These strategies include identifying and managing risks in their business and personal lives,creating and preserving wealth, asset protection, transferring wealth, business succession planning, building a sizable retirement nest egg, providing lifetime income, and minimizing and deferring taxes.
She has a MBA in Finance from the University of North Texas and earned a specialized designation as a Retirement Planning Specialist from the Wharton Business School at the University of Pennsylvania. She also serves as the President for the National Association of Women Business Owners (NAWBO) Dallas/Fort Worth Chapter. Her office is in Plano, TX and she is married and a mother to a 3 year old daughter, Arabella.
Leslie S. Gunawan is an International Financial Advisor with Merrill Lynch Global Wealth Management in Dallas. Her financial practice specializes in assisting women-owned businesses and high net-worth families with growing and protecting their wealth. Prior to joining Merrill Lynch, Leslie served in a strategic planning role for a Fortune500 company. With a dedication to ongoing education and a personal enthusiasm for financial planning, Leslie and her team specialize in developing highly customized investment strategies to respond to the dynamic needs and challenges of the clients that they serve. Leslie's financial practice services clients who have the desire to establish long-term financial and investment relationships based on planning, communication, and trust. Leslie is also a Certified Special Needs Advisor which is a designation awarded to financial advisors with expertise in planning solutions for any disability that requires lifetime care.
Leslie earned a degree in Finance with a minor in Management Information Systems from the McCombs School of Business at the University of Texas as well as a degree in French Language from the University of Texas. Leslie currently serves on the Dallas/ Fort Worth board of the National Association of Women's Business Owners. She is active in many non-profit organizations including the Junior League of Dallas, the Presbyterian Phorum Society, and the SPCA of Dallas.
Over the years Darla Beggs’ career has taken her from Texas to one coast then over to the other side of the country with a stop for a time in America’s Heartland. Thankfully, she and her husband have found their way back to the Dallas/Ft Worth area and our Chapter is honored to have her as our new Director of Corporate Partners.
After spending many years working in sales, marketing and management in Corporate America for companies such as SWBT, AT&T, The Travelers and Principal Insurance Beggs and her husband returned to the DFW area in search of business opportunities. She purchased Abba Staffing in 2006 and joined NAWBO in 2008.
Abba Staffing provides staffing services (staff augmentation, contract-to-hire, and direct placement) and small business consulting for clients throughout the United States. Their core competencies include Administrative/Clerical, Finance/ Accounting, IT, Project Mangers, Contract Administrators, Health Care providers and their office staff for clients of all sizes for a multitude of diverse entities such as Government (Federal, State, Local), Hospitals, Transportation/Shipping, Real Estate and Christian Ministries.
Abba Staffing is a GSA approved vendor and certified by WBE, NCTRCA and State of TX HUB.
If this didn’t keep Beggs busy enough, she also owns Tierra Resources–a mineral leasing company–and Beggs’ husband, Gary, and his son own AED Group–a Land Man and mineral acquisition company.
Gary and Darla have been married for 26 years. She has two grown step-children, Valerie and Matthew, and two crazy Yorkies named Allie and Roxy.
In her “free” time, Beggs enjoys visiting museums and galleries of all types, and she says interior design is her inner calling. She loves to read, enjoys music, walking, cooking, the Dallas Cowboys and spending time with her family.
Cindy is part owner of OMM Productions (Original Moving Media) - a concept-to-completion moving media company. For over 25 years OMM Productions has specialized in creating powerful human connections through the use of original moving media. OMM creates marketing, branding, training, fundraising, training, educating and entertaining programming for every need within the non-profit and for-profit world.
A small bit part in a Metropolitan Life Insurance commercial when Cindy was 12 years old gave her the desire to pursue a career in film/video production. She attended both Western Michigan University and the University of North Texas receiving a BA in Radio/TV/Film and started at OMM Productions as a college intern. Now, 25 years later, she owns the company and is a Writer/Producer as well as COO. Over the years, her favorite projects have been traveling to over 18 countries producing third world and developing world documentaries, interviewing countless drug & alcohol addicts in recovery and producing the Oklahoma City bombing and 911 disaster relief documentaries for The Salvation Army.
Cindy has won the prestigious Association for Women in Communications Clarion Award twice, the Silver Telly and several other industry awards. She is passionate about her girlfriends and has established for them the G3 Summit (God, Girlfriends & Grace), an annual spiritual retreat. She has been married for 21 years to her college sweetheart and videographer husband, David. Together they have three 4-legged children: Rascal, Azul and Ruby.
Jeanne Baker, co-owner of BenefiTree, a certified woman owned business, has twenty-five years successful experience working with major companies on benefit design, pricing and communication to employees. Author of the 401K Operations Manuals and recipient of the Working Woman Entrepreneurial Excellence 2000 award, she is a frequent speaker to industry related organizations on employer issues. Her company received the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce Small Business of the Year Award 2000-Technology Oriented Business.
Jeanne, an active member of Women in Transportation, is a Texas Founding Partner of Women Impacting Public Policy. She was named NAWBO D/FW 2005 Public Policy Advocate of the Year and currently serves as NAWBO D/FW's National Representative in Washington, D.C. She has served on the Board of Directors of the Multiple Schlerosis Association, is a Charter Board Member of Clear Creek University in Pineville, Kentucky, Charter Member of the National Women's Chamber of Commerce, an active volunteer for Life Gift Organ Donation Foundation of America, and of Women in Transportation.
Sherry Green, president of Technology Team, LLC, personifies small business success. However, her business is anything but small. Technology Team is an industry expert in relocating mission critical equipment. In just six years, Technology Team has successfully relocated over $100 million dollars of technology equipment for Fortune 500 companies and government agencies.
Sherry is a member of the Fort Worth Economic Development Business Advisory Council and a board member of the National Association of Women Business Owners. Sherry has been recognized with numerous awards based on her business acumen and service to her community. These include: 2005 Fort Worth Star Telegram Entrepreneur of the Year, 2006 Fort Worth Mayor's Entrepreneurial Award, and 2007 Downtown Rotary Employer of the Year..
In addition to her professional leadership, Sherry has also helped make her community a better place through her involvement with Boy Scouts of America and the Camp Fire Program where she was awarded for her leadership exemplified in training all North Texas Camp Fire Leaders and in helping to create their fundraising program, An Artists' Christmas. Sherry's firm belief is to support future leaders through organizations dedicated to encouraging youth to become confident people and community leaders. It is this mindset that earned her the title of State of Texas Volunteer of the Year.
Lyndel Anne Mason, Esq. has practiced law for more than 25 years and as a licensed attorney in five states. Presently she holds active licenses in Texas and Florida and represents numerous businesses and individuals in both states. Although she has always counseled business owners and negotiated agreements on their behalf, her primary practice in the US Bankruptcy Courts.
She is Senior Counsel with Cavazos, Hendricks, Poirot & Smitham, PC representing creditors, trustee’s and businesses in reorganizations, work-outs and bankruptcy proceedings. She joined NAWBO originally in Florida and has been an active member of our DFW Chapter for 2 years.
Hana is the founder and Operations Director of Teneo Linguistics Company, LLC, a unique foreign language translation business based in Ft. Worth. TLC helps businesses communicate with their partners and clients in over 60 different languages, with emphasis on time and cost effectiveness. With a strong local project management team and a network of hundreds of linguists located in many countries around the world, TLC satisfies even the most demanding project requirements, while achieving high quality results and delivering culturally sensitive products.
TLC has won several business awards, including Small Business of the Year and Mayor’s Global Business Award for excellence in global communication services.
Hana has a master’s degree in translation studies from Charles University, Prague, and prior to moving to Texas in 1999, she was the co-owner of a successful European translation business and a certified provider to the European Union in Brussels and the European Court of Justice in the Hague. Hana is involved with several community organizations, including serving as a CASA (Court Appointed Special Advocate) working with and representing abused children.
Billie Day has been helping organizations more effectively accomplish their goals for the past 20 years. She has experience in improving performance in both large and small organizations located in the United States and in multiple international locations. She specializes in improving the performance of companies through application of "whole systems design" principles and methodologies.
Prior to forming OnSite Solutions in 1988, she was the Director of Compensation and Organization for Sun Exploration and Production Company. Her responsibilities included organization design/ development, the design and administration of reward systems, performance management systems, strategic human resource policy, executive succession planning and executive compensation.
She is a regular speaker on management topics. Conferences include the North Texas Compensation Conference, International Conference(s) on Self-Managing Teams, AMA, the Conference on Self-Managed Teams in Healthcare, and the International Quality and Productivity Center, China Productivity Center.
