Jennifer Sikes and Sonia Gill, two very successful women, both trailing spouses have followed their husbands to Brazil.
Jennifer Sikes is an American and has experience encompassing strategy, operations, marketing, and communications in the for-profit and non-profit sectors. Most recently, she spent several years with the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation in Seattle, USA. Her roles included chief of staff to the Chief Communications Officer and interim director of operations for the 80-person communications team. Prior to that, she served as manager of leadership information, overseeing the team that created and distributed information to support a wide range of external activities for the foundation¹s executives, and as a program officer on the foundation¹s U.S. Program Advocacy and Education teams.
Jennifer began her career as a strategy consultant helping companies improve their marketing, sales, and online strategies. She has also managed internal and external communications in the consulting and software industries.
She holds an MBA from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth and a BA in History from Yale University. She has lived in Belo Horizonte, Brazil, since 2011, and has traveled extensively in her personal and professional life across Europe, Asia, Africa, North America, and South America.
Sonia Gill, Indian National, Marketing and Advertising Professional with 15 years of work experience in the marketing and communication field.
Before going on a sabbatical Sonia was with Infosys Ltd, an Indian Multi National - Information Technology firm. She has successfully spearheaded large marketing projects in her role as marketing lead for the BPO unit of Infosys. Having grown within the company, she has enjoyed working with very learned people, from across the world.
Before Infosys, Sonia was with Visa Cards as Marketing Manager for South Asia ( India, Pakistan, Srilanka, Nepal and Bangladesh). It was by far one of her most favorite stints, as a non Banking professional, coming from a hard core advertising back ground. This role opened her horizons and made her look beyond vanilla advertising and account management. She has also worked with J.Walter Thompson and Ogilvy and Mather, some of the leading advertising firms across the globe.
