Panelist Biographies

PANELISTS

Jessica Ferguson | 97.1 ZHT

Jess Ferguson has been on air with Frankie at 97.1 ZHT for over 14 years. After graduating Arizona State University with her broadcasting degree, she worked for a radio network where she made some awesome contacts that led her to Salt Lake City. While she thought she would only be in Utah for a few years, she fell in love with the people of the state and she is passionate about her career. She is best known for her laugh and for being a strong female voice in the Salt Lake Valley.

Selma Mlikota | O.C. Tanner

Selma Mlikota is the Manager of Recruiting and Onboarding for O.C. Tanner Company. Over the 20+ years of her career, she has served in various leadership roles in client success, sales, and people teams. Selma works to source diverse talent and place candidates in positions across a range of functional areas and compensation levels. Between 2017 and 2019, Selma served as the Executive Director of Careers and Corporate Partnerships at One Refugee, a Utah-based non-profit aimed at improving refugee prosperity. She worked closely with 200+ refugee students and young professionals in Utah and Idaho on their professional development.

Neelam Chand | Zions Bank

Neelam Chand is an accomplished diversity, equity, and inclusion expert with a decade of experience embedding multiculturalism into business strategy and facilitating critical dialogue on systemic change within a workplace environment. She works at Zions Bank as a Senior Vice President of Diversity and Inclusion, where she provides workshops on topics including social justice, tokenism, microaggressions, implicit bias, intersectionality, and women of color in the workplace. When it comes to inclusion work, her philosophy is to “keep it real” and to skip the etiquette of making people feel comfortable. She believes that through discomfort, we can begin the process of actual change.

Rebecca Johnson | University of Utah

Rebecca Johnson is the Director of Research & Academic Affairs for University of Utah’s Department of Orthopaedics. While raising four children, she has built bridges and led change for over 20 years. An expert in program management in clinical research and biology, she professionally educates on issues of global health and international research, domestically and in developing countries. During her Masters of Public Health program, she managed the development of a clinical research unit in Tanzania and multiple industrysponsored HIV ART clinical trials for the University of Utah Infectious Diseases Division.