In 1978, Ms. Buford received her Bachelor of Science Degree in Health Information Management, summa cum laude, from the University of Louisiana, Lafayette where she was a member of the Alpha Lambda Delta Freshman Women’s Honor Society and Phi Kappa Phi Honor Society. Ms. Buford maintains her credentialing as a Registered Health Information Administrator (RHIA). She was subsequently commissioned to serve in the U.S. Public Health Service as Lieutenant Junior Grade, stationed at the U.S. Public Health Service Hospital in New Orleans, Louisiana. There, she served as Assistant Director of Medical Records from 1978 to 1980.
She later attended Tulane Law School where she served as Justice on the Moot Court Board and was awarded the Patrick D. DeRouen Award as “Outstanding Senior Writer” in 1991. She also served on the Senior Appellate Intraschool Competitions Committee as brief writer for the Georgetown 1990 Bioethics Competition. Ms. Buford has conducted seminars on various topics including healthcare law, health information management, and medical malpractice litigation. She has also authored several articles on healthcare, Medicare, and medical malpractice topics, including an article entitled, “ERISA Preemption of Claims against Managed Care Organizations based on State Law,” Certworthy, The Newsletter of the DRI Appellate Advocacy Committee, Winter, 2003. In 2009, Ms. Buford completed the Medicare RAC Certificate Program of the Second National Medicare RAC Summit held on September 14 – 15, 2009 in Washington, D.C., and has subsequently participated in multiple RAC/MAC Summits, as well as the Health Care Compliance Association’s Compliance Institutes. Ms. Buford is licensed to practice law in all federal and state courts in Louisiana.
The Worldwide Women’s Association Member, Michelle Buford, JD, RHIA, can be found on the Association Directory, where she is looking forward to networking with you.
Category Archives: Press Releases
Vanessa Kromer is a prolific entrepreneur and Success + Life Coach based out of the Jacksonville, Florida area. With over 4 years at the helm of her company, she teaches her clients to say “yes!” to building their business, and empowers them with the tools and strategy to cultivate real growth and results. Helping others set and meet their goals, Vanessa imparts key time management strategy and works with each individual client to help manifest and play to their strengths, while building a solid base to offset challenges and empower them with the clarity and knowledge to embrace risk.
Offering coaching services that specialize in Christian life and mentoring, as well as services for “mommy moguls,” Vanessa lives the methodology she teaches and finds great rewards in helping arm equip others with the tools for success. She is certified in Christian Life Coaching, Christian Life Coaching and Mentoring-Breakthrough from the Life Coaching Academy, and holds a Bachelor of Applied Science in Radiology from Ferris State University.
In addition to being the founder and CEO of her private practice, Vanessa serves as a Divisional Merchandise Manager for Chloe + Isabel NYC, a top fashion jewelry and lifestyle brand. For Chloe + Isabel, she manages and trains hundreds of women in sales, development, follow-up and marketing.
Vanessa credits much of her success to a willingness to think outside the box and implement innovative new ideas and strategy. An excellent public speaker, she is always seeking new and innovative ways to build her brand and ways to help encourage other leaders and entrepreneurs. Outside of her professional endeavors, she enjoys traveling, cooking and dance.
Worldwide Women’s Association Member Vanessa Kromer can be found on the Association Directory, where she is looking forward to networking with you.
Annemiek Gouwens is the HR Director of Danone Trading BV in the Netherlands, which serves as Headquarter for two of Danone’s four global business lines: Early Life Nutrition and Medical Nutrition. Danone is a French food-products corporation, present in over 130 markets and generated sales of €22.4 billion in 2015. Danone is dedicated to bring health through food to as many people as possible. To achieve this it has an extensive portfolio of brands, corresponding to the specific needs of each generation and to the various countries where the group is present.
After earning a Master’s degree in Human Resource Management at the University of Tilburg (Netherlands) followed by a Master’s in European Social Policy at the University of Tilburg (NL)/Bath (UK)/Ljubljana (Slovenia) & St Patrick’s College (Ireland), Annemiek launched her career in the Health Sector where she established herself strongly as HR business partner & HR team lead and also had the opportunity to take on responsibility as head a.i. of the Cytogenetic department.
She then joined Shell where she worked as HR manager for the downstream part of the business (European Commercial organization for Chemicals and Global Technology Services) and developed her career further via (internal) consultancy, employee engagement & policy into the upstream business of Shell (New Business Development globally).
Over the 20 years of her career Annemiek has successfully led complex change, effectively contributed to development of senior leaders through (executive) coaching and talent management interventions with a strong focus on diversity & inclusion, staff engagement & empowerment and has delivered on a number of key topics in compensation & benefits. Given her focus on business success, Annemiek enjoys working with other functions like marketing, operations and finance and has shown to be effective in bringing together a variety of key stakeholders on business challenges. She is a strategic thinker with a pragmatic approach when it comes to implementation. Annemiek has a strong presence among the leadership teams is part of, taking clear stands and walk the talk not only on HR matters but also on other business topics like safety, quality and operational excellence. Corporate communication has always been a topic of interest and she is currently strengthening her knowledge and skills in this area.
Annemiek resides in Leiden, Netherlands and speaks fluent English and Dutch. Outside of her work endeavors she enjoys sports in particular hiking and cycling, reading (member of an international bookclub), going to the theater and spending time with family and friends over a good dinner.
Worldwide Women’s Association Member Annemiek Gouwens can be found on the Association Directory, where she is looking forward to networking with you.
Maritza Ramirez is an accomplished professional and MBA graduate currently searching for opportunities in the areas of Packaging areas or New Business Development, for Worldwide companies in Food, Pharmaceutical or Consumer Good Products. In her last position as Packaging Manager at ALSEA, she was responsible for the implementation of packaging strategies and new development of all packages used at the manufacturing sites and at their clients, including Starbucks, Dominos, and other top food and beverage franchises. Her focus was on innovation, optimization, sustainability, and social responsibility.
Her daily responsibilities include the design of development and strategy initiatives, overseeing vendor relations, architecture of process improvement, and holding strategic meetings. As an esteemed international business expert and a scholarship student at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana in which she graduated with the honor of Summa Cum Laude, as a Food Engineer, Maritza worked her way up from technical analyst in package development for Procter & Gamble to Manager of Packaging for Alsea. During her journey up the corporate ladder of success through hard work, determination, and focus, Maritza honored her expert work skills.
Starting out as a technical analyst in the product development division of Procter & Gamble, she quickly shined and stood out as an employee. Three times, Maritza repetitively captured the distinguished award for the successful establishment of an employee cost savings initiative program.
Maritza went on to spend 8 years with Coca Cola starting first as a local employee in Mexico and quickly moving to Atlanta Headquarters in USA to work in key Global Projects and then as an integral liaison between the United States as a Development Manager for Latin America. With her forward thinking, she developed packaging systems and recycling technologies for this region. Her strategic and innovative development for product packaging attained market share catapulting sales profits of $1.2M in this area. She spear headed the architecture of key packaging initiatives for global shelf life expansion, cost savings attainment, progressive package recycling protocols and strategies, facilitated expedited testing processes, and designed technical and marketing tools to advance communication and create efficiencies.
Moving forward, Maritza brought success and sales growth as a new business manager, as well as, new product development manager for global companies in the consumer goods industry (McCormick, Huhtamaki, and Grupo Phoenix). She was also Packaging Manager for the internationally known company of Kraft Foods. It’s in this role that she developed innovative packaging and accomplished the award for the Mexican Association of Packaging, Innovative Package for Easy Open and Package integrity. She gained the Managerial Courage Award for Kraft, and the Management Award to Contributions to Organizational Excellence. , then was welcomed by Alsea, Latin America’s leading restaurant and fast food chain franchisee’s owner with such international star accounts as Dominos, Burger King, and Starbucks. She brought value and increased profits for over 200 key projects annually. Her business experience includes such market places as Europe, Mexico, and Latin American.
Bi-national American and Mexican, proficient in the languages of English, Spanish, and French, she has studied and worked in Mexico, Europe and the USA. Her portfolio of successful business experience encompasses international acclaim and defines her as a chief forerunner in new business and packaging development.
She has been a valuable asset in each company that has been privileged to have her aboard. In her spare time she enjoys traveling, dancing, and volunteering. She resides in Mexico City, Mexico.
The Worldwide Women’s Association Member, Maritza Ramirez, MBA, can be found on the Association Directory, where she is looking forward to networking with you.
Birthe Juul has 23 years of experience as a finance professional. She has been with Arla Foods for 19 years and for the last 7 years has been the Senior Director of Finance for Arla Foods, the largest producer of dairy products in Scandinavia. The company is currently in the midst of extending their global operations and as a result Birthe’s responsibilities have extended in a global manner as well. As Senior Director of Finance, Birthe now drives continuous improvement through recommending and implementing process and tool changes and the development of Finance Functions across Arla Foods. Birthe is fluent in Danish, English, Swedish, Norwegian and German. A frequent presenter at international conferences, Birthe has presented on topics such as How to Drive Efficiency and Continuous Improvement in Finance Processes as well as How to improve Working Capipal. Birthe has also taught classes at the University level in Finance and Accounting Birthe decided on this career because numbers have always clicked something for her. She has always been fascinated by numbers and how numbers drives behaviour in an organisation, and this combined with an innate understanding of business model has throughout the years driven her focus as well as area of expertise.
