The WISE Conference 2026 Guest Speakers
EMCEE
MELISSA WILSON
News Anchor and Full-time Reporter
FOX 26’s Medical Correspondent
MELISSA WILSON
Multiple Emmy Award-winning Melissa Wilson is an anchor for FOX 26 Morning News weekdays. She is also FOX 26’s Medical Correspondent. She spends most afternoons in the Texas Medical Center and surrounding areas, including The Woodlands Medical Center, covering health stories that most affect our community. She also hosts a weekly podcast called ‘Lunch For the Soul’ that is dedicated to medical miracles.
Melissa received her Bachelor of Arts in Telecommunications from Baylor University. She began her career as the evening anchor at KAUZ-TV in Wichita Falls and then went on to anchor at the 24-hour network, Florida’s News Channel. Houston Woman Magazine named Melissa one of the ‘Top 50 Most Influential Women in Houston’. American Women in Radio and Television nominated Melissa for ‘Personality of the Year’. She has been honored with the prestigious ‘Gracie Award’ and Lone Star Emmy Awards. The Fair Care Center of Houston named Melissa a ‘Living Legend’. The Houston Press named Melissa one of Houston’s ‘Most Beautiful Reporters’ and Health Fitness Revolution named Melissa one of the ‘Most Fit’ reporters in Houston. She is a member of the Association of Health Care Journalists and The Society of Professional Journalists.
Melissa loves giving back to our community. She has served on the following Boards of Directors: Children at Risk, Susan G Komen, Lazarus House, March of Dimes, United Way, Harris County Community College Nurse’s Association, ‘Gifts with Heart’, Baylor Business Network, Baylor Fine Arts Department, and the Journalism Advisory Board at Baylor. This year, she hosted her 25th Annual golf tournament for Children at Risk. Melissa is a member of Baylor University Women’s Association and Sigma Kappa’s Alumnae Association. She has been a “Friend” of Escape Family Resource Center, and has volunteered for the Christian Community Service Center and Abandoned Animal Rescue.
Melissa is a huge advocate for childhood cancer awareness, after her son, Caleb, survived leukemia and started treatments in Kindergarten. He’s now a teenager and a true sign of resilience, after recently completing The Woodlands Marathon! Melissa is also getting to re-live the start of her career through her son, Zach, who is now studying Journalism at The University of Texas at Austin.
In her spare time, Melissa adores spending quality time with her family. She’s writing a book and enjoys scrapbooking, Pilates, and traveling. She and her husband, David, made sure their boys got to travel to all 50 states in the U.S. and now they’re exploring other countries with their children.
KEYNOTE SPEAKER
ROULA CHRISTIE
Host, Weekends with Roula, Westwood One
I was born and raised in Houston, Texas! My family is Greek and it is BIG! I am the fourth of five kids to my immigrant parents who moved to Houston from Tripoli, Greece in the ’50s. I am a fluent Greek girl who can fast-talk my way through a lot!
My family owns the longest-running restaurant in Houston, (Christie’s Seafood & Steaks— 103 years strong). As I was working my way through school, waiting tables, and generally managing Christie’s with my family, fate dropped an opportunity to discover radio right in my lap! I delivered food to a radio station and was invited into the studio to watch the night DJ work his shift. His name was Paul “Cubby” Bryant and he single-handedly turned the fire for radio on in my heart!
After that night, I knew that radio was the career path I wanted to take.I ended up switching my major from Restaurant hospitality to radio-television and got a job at KRBE. There I began my radio career. Two years into being “the phone girl”, I had the chance to get on the air and I never looked back. After five amazing years at KRBE, I was offered a job at Q102 Radio in Philadelphia for the morning position. I spent three successful years in radio with Q102’s morning show. Living in Philly was quite an experience and I had a great time while it lasted.
As luck would have it, Houston came calling for this girl to come back home so I accepted the offer and never looked back. I launched “The Roula and Ryan Show” in 2003. I have lived out most all my adult life on the radio. I met my husband Tasos on a blind date in 2008. We married in 2009. I had three babies basically on the air. We have lived our highs (getting married and babies) and lows (losing my Dad and surviving natural disasters) on the broadcast airwaves. The city has embraced me with open hearts and I have fallen in love with them for it. I really do love what I do every morning.
I absolutely relate to the struggle of life through the listeners eyes. Knowing that I help wake people up and get them through their day with smiles on their faces is such a humbling and rewarding feeling. I am all about Family and helping people feel like a part of one. It seems like every day on the radio I meet someone new who moves me, surprises me, and challenges me. I can’t wait to see what’s next! Thank you for listening to Weekends with ROULA!
BREAKOUT SPEAKER
tina bernard
Business Owner, Speaker, Coach
Tina Bernard is the founder of The Badass Arts™, a transformational platform devoted to helping high-capacity women move beyond performance and into true energetic alignment, creating lives that feel deeply nourishing and relationships that are consciously chosen rather than unconsciously repeated. Blending neuroscience, somatic rewiring, and bold spiritual truth-telling, she challenges the cultural myths that keep accomplished women over-functioning, over-giving, and quietly under-receiving.
After rebuilding her life through divorce, reinvention, relocation, and remarriage, Tina began articulating what she now teaches: that appreciation is more powerful than gratitude because it expands rather than compensates, that boundaries are not walls but clarity in action, and that chemistry is not the same as desire. Her proprietary frameworks, including Love Like a Badass™, Doubt Goblins™, and Badassfirmations™, offer practical tools that help women rewire limiting patterns, shift their energetic set point, and reclaim their big, unapologetic desires.
Tina is known for her signature blend of sass and soul. She speaks with emotional intelligence, depth, and disarming honesty, guiding audiences to examine where they are still performing for approval and inviting them into lives that feel aligned, embodied, and internally coherent.
When it comes to life, Tina teaches that everything is energy. The thoughts you rehearse, the stories you defend, the standards you tolerate, and the emotions you suppress are shaping your reality whether you are conscious of it or not. Shift your energy and you shift your perception. Shift your perception and your life reorganizes around a new frequency. When it comes to love, she disrupts the fairy tale. Love is not voltage or chemistry or the spike of intensity that hijacks your nervous system and calls itself “destiny.” It is not even primarily a feeling. Love is a practice and a choice. It is how you show up when the spark settles and real life begins. When women live as if love is a verb, they stop chasing butterflies and begin cultivating devotion, depth, and emotional safety. And when it comes to leadership, Tina insists that power without integration is fragile. True leadership moves beyond hardened ambition and soft sentimentality into the integration of heart and head, intuition and strategy, fire and grounded wisdom. This embodied authority has the capacity to move a room not through force, but through coherence and presence. Based in The Woodlands, Texas, Tina is a speaker, author, and facilitator leading salons, intensives, and group programs for women who are externally successful yet internally ready for transformation, women who sense there is more and are prepared to live it.
BREAKOUT SPEAKER
Monica Daigneault
Speaker, Writer, Guide
Monica Daigneault is the Founder of MY BEST and the President & CEO of The Power of Us Network, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to strengthening communities through connection and resource awareness. A strategic leader with a background in operations and cross-sector collaboration, she builds initiatives that bridge business, nonprofit, and civic spaces to create lasting impact.
But her most transformative work began in her own life.
After navigating divorce and rebuilding financial stability as a mother determined to create security and independence for her children, Monica realized she didn’t need reinvention; she needed return. From that realization, she developed the MY BEST framework, a powerful philosophy centered on coming back to self after seasons of survival, burnout, or loss.
Committed to building wealth on her own terms, Monica challenges women to stop performing strength and start building from alignment. She speaks to entrepreneurs and leaders who are ready to reclaim their voice, their confidence, and their economic power—while modeling resilience, ownership, and courage for the next generation watching them.
Monica is also the co-host of The Power of Us Podcast, where she amplifies stories that inspire courage, connection, and growth.
monica.daigneault@gmail.com
https://thepowerofusnetwork.org/the-power-of-us-podcast/
https://www.woodlandsonline.com/vmps/vdocat.cfm?catid=138
https://thepowerofusnetwork.org
BREAKOUT SPEAKER
DR. TAMARA WHITE
Life Coach, LPC, Speaker
Dr. Tamara White, The Divine Disruptor™, empowers high-achieving professionals especially women to live courageously. With 25+ years as a counselor and coach, she’s guided thousands to fulfillment. Through her programs, she helps accomplished professionals conquer stress, heal emotional wounds, and thrive in their careers and relationships.
She is the author of “7 Strategies for Courageous Living” and “Courageous Women Rise,” in addition to being the creator of the “Courageous Woman Network.” As a Burnout & Resilience Strategist for Women Entrepreneurs, Licensed Counselor and Speaker, she addresses fear, doubt, and overwhelm, helping to foster purpose-driven lives. Dr. White holds a Doctor of Divinity and a Master’s in Educational Psychology.
She enjoys dancing in the kitchen and eating chocolate.