Leslie Vickrey

Leslie Vickrey is co-founder of ARA Mentors, an organization that promotes women in IT through mentoring, and chief executive officer at ClearEdge Marketing. ARA expanded from Chicago to New York, Seattle, Houston and Silicon Valley, and pulled men into the mix as mentors in 2015.

Vickrey said there are not enough women mentors in the field, while there are men who want to be involved in increasing opportunities for women in the industry.

“Men want to learn, and they want to champion this,” she said.

Prior to ClearEdge, Vickrey co-founded marketing and design agency Visient Partner in 2004. She spent time in the IT industry when she directed marketing initiatives for Spherion Technology, and served as director of marketing for RiverPoint.

Vickrey earned a bachelor’s degree in journalism with an emphasis in public relations at Central Michigan University. She is a Chicago Innovation Awards board member and founding partner of the Chicago Executive Women’s Networking Group. She was recently named to Techweek Chicago’s Techweek100 list along with fellow ARA co-founders Megan McCann and Jane Gilligan Hamner.

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