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<p>Amanda is a data storyteller and an award-winning marketer specializing in strategic marketing and media, cultural and brand research. With almost 15 years of experience in the media industry, Amanda is an innovative and transformational leader that is passionate about influencing consumer-centric business decisions and activating future leaders in research and media. As Senior Marketing Audience Insights Manager at Amazon, Amanda is responsible for surfacing tangible and inspiring insights that guide the creation of audience first marketing strategies for Prime Video’s brand and sports content that leads to increased relevancy and engagement. Prior to joining Amazon, Amanda held corporate and station leadership positions in marketing and research at TEGNA, Inc. for over 10 years. Amanda received her MBA degree from the University of Georgia’s Terry College of Business and holds a BA in Marketing from Georgia State University’s J. Mack Robinson College of Business. She is also an alumnus of United Way’s Volunteer Involvement Program and previously served on the board for Insights in Color.</p>

<p>Sandra co-founded Equitas Insight with Ana, who is a marketer by background, a change driver and a capability builder by design. She started her career in Brazil working in B2B marketing in blue chip industrial and manufacturing organizations. She then moved into academia and a career in marketing consultancy and lecturing undergraduate and graduate Strategic Marketing courses at her Alma Mater ESPM (Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing). Her international career started in the UK after being awarded an MBA at Warwick University, working in the Marketing and Operations practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers. In 2002 she joined Brand Learning, then a startup specializing in building marketing capabilities. As a partner, she moved to NYC to open Brand Learning’s first overseas practice.</p>

<p>In his current role, Anant is responsible for the service design of large-scale experiences affecting employees and customers of Cox. In his prior roles at Cox, Anant was responsible for the design and development of video user experiences such as Interactive Program Guide, DVR, and On Demand as well as remote controls.</p>

<p>Anna was raised in Charleston, SC, and is a graduate of the University of Georgia BBA, ABJ, and Master of Marketing Research programs. She began her career at dunnhumby USA working with the Kroger company. Anna was selected to launch a new sector of dunnhumby’s business around Brand Consulting. She led the development of an innovative suite of solutions delivering a new revenue stream to Kroger. After Kroger, Anna led Consumer Insights at Lowe’s Home Improvement where she drove change in the organization from hindsight to more strategic insight and foresight storytelling to support the Enterprise Strategic initiatives.</p>

<p dir="ltr">Described as a modern-day, consumer-focused Sherlock Holmes, Dr. Ari Zelmanow helps businesses uncover "clues" that enable businesses to:</p> <ul dir="ltr"> <li> <p dir="ltr">Experience predictable growth</p> </li> <li> <p dir="ltr">Adapt to unpredictable change</p> </li> <li> <p dir="ltr">Mitigate risk to minimize losses</p> </li> <li> <p>Move faster than the competition</p> </li> <li> <p dir="ltr"><increase and="" business="" customers="" for="" the="" value="">Increase value for the business and customers</increase></p> </li> </ul> <p dir="ltr"><he a="" cross-functional="" currently="" function="" insights="" leads="" team=""></he></p> <p dir="ltr"><twitter --="">Twitter --><a href="https://twitter.com/zelmanow">https://twitter.com/zelmanow</a></twitter></p> <p dir="ltr"><website-->Wesite --><a href="https://arizelmanow.com">https://arizelmanow.com</a></website--></p> <p dir="ltr">Linkedin --><a href="https://www.linkedin.com/in/zelmanow/"> https://www.linkedin.com/in/zelmanow/</a></p>

<p>Arnie loves telling stories and listening to them. He believes that all perception relies on narrative, and that our understanding of the world is directly dependent on our ability to pick out the appropriate threads of a story, and to reweave them in interesting and relevant ways.</p>

<p>Bill is a Senior Vice President, Evangelist at Medallia. With more than 25 years in financial services and a primary focus on driving customer and employee experience excellence, Bill is a globally recognized customer and employee experience advocate with proven expertise in envisioning and executing holistic customer-led strategies. He hosts an award-winning podcast, Be Customer Led, with listeners in nearly 100 countries, is the co-founder of Monday Mentor Meetup, a LinkedIn group dedicated to helping Customer and Employee Experience leaders and practitioners accelerate their careers, and a Startup Mentor at 76Forward, a network of startup incubators, offering flexible workspaces, growth resources and programming for entrepreneurs.</p>

<p>A design educator and TEDx speaker, Cassini was the founding director of the ATEC Usability Lab and director of design for the ArtSciLab, a research lab exploring the intersections of the arts, sciences, and technology.</p>

<p>Chris leads the Human Factors and Usability division of the Schlesinger Clinical Research team. He also provides insight on both US and OUS regulatory requirements in the area of human factors and usability. Chris has over 15 years of experience in the research and development of medical devices. During this time, Chris has contributed to the regulatory process of over 300 different medical devices and currently teaches at the Perelman School of Medicine (University of Pennsylvania) and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital in best research practices for medical device development. Additionally, Chris is a member of the AAMI HF faculty who actively contributes to the drafting of international guidance documents in the area of human factors and usability. Chris has a Medical Degree from the University of Pennsylvania and received his Bachelor’s Degree from the University of Pennsylvania as well.</p>

<p><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Claudia is a deeply-experienced marketing and communications executive. She has brought desirable household name brands to life for domestic and global companies, in industries like travel/hospitality (Norwegian Cruise Line), consumer products (Newell Brands), retail (The Sports Authority), transportation and logistics industries (Ryder System and DHL). For the past several years, she has worked with numerous start-ups and small businesses alike to create brands with the same focus and passion.</span></span></p>

<p><span style="font-size:11pt"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Colleen is Executive Director of the International Avaya User Group (IAUG). Prior to assuming this position, Colleen has supported IAUG in various capacities over the past several years, including as Director of Operations and Membership. She has worked with associations and user groups for over fifteen years in building, launching, and scaling global customer communities for large technology brands. She lives in Nashville, TN.</span></span></p>

<p>Cory has been a user experience research consultant for over 25 years. He is the Principal and Owner of Lebsontech LLC where he is focused on user research and evaluation, training, and mentoring. Cory also speaks frequently, has been featured on the radio and in addition to his recent book, The UX Careers Handbook, has published a number of articles in a variety of publications. Cory has an MBA in marketing and technology management, as well as an MA in sociology and a BS in psychology. He is a past president of the User Experience Professionals Association (UXPA) International and is also a past president of the UXPA DC Chapter.</p>

<p><span style="font-size:12pt"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Hi there, I’m Dameon Pope. I’m a published expert in digital transformation and have spent the last 20 years defining, designing, and delivering digital experiences that have transformed how some of the world’s most iconic brands engage digitally with their customers. My area of focus is finding the intersection between humans and technology. I push the boundaries of both – making the two connect in new and innovative ways.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:12pt"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">As an Executive Partner with IBM Consulting, I lead a 120-person digital experience design and development studio in Atlanta. I work with brands such as Delta Air Lines, State Farm, and The Coca-Cola Company. My passion for improving the human experience means that I am always uncovering new ways for technology to create faster and more satisfying ways to work.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:12pt"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">Before IBM, I was VP of Client Services at HUGE, a digital experience design agency, where I led experience transformation initiatives for AMC Theatres, Dun & Bradstreet, and Microsoft. And before that, I was a VP / Global Account Director at Ogilvy, where I developed a loyalty marketing practice that supported blue chip brands like IHG and The Coca-Cola Company. Other roles included leading a loyalty marketing team at a global fintech company, and building consumer engagement programs for brands like BMW, Publix Super Markets and Citi. I’ve been around the block and learned a lot, but my passion for using technology to design better human experiences has remained a constant.</span></span></p> <p><span style="font-size:12pt"><span style="font-family:Calibri,sans-serif">I graduated from Morehouse College in Atlanta, GA with a BA in English, and received my MA from Leeds University Business School in the UK. I enjoy traveling and currently, live just outside Atlanta, Georgia with my wife Latrina and my 7-year-old son Mason – an aspiring Pokémon master trainer.</span></span></p>

<p>Eleanor F. Small, Ph.D. is an R&amp;D Manager, Product Development with Johnson &amp; Johnson Consumer Health Self-Care Pain Franchise, which focuses on meeting consumer needs for OTC pain relief with iconic brands such as TYLENOL&reg; and MotrinIB&reg;. She leads global cross functional teams responsible for product design/development, scale up, and life cycle management of new products, both internally and externally developed. She started her career at Johnson &amp; Johnson Consumer Health in 2013 supporting new product development for Listerine&reg;. She served the brand for five years, before moving to support Wound Care Product Development supporting J&amp;J&rsquo;s historic Band-Aid&reg; and Neosporin&reg; brands. Eleanor joined the Self-Care franchise in July and lead the team that launched the SmartCheckTM Digital Ear Scope from Children&rsquo;s TYLENOL&reg;.</p><p>Eleanor received her BSE in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering from Johns Hopkins University in 2006. She received her PhD in Chemical and Biological Engineering from Drexel University in June, 2012. Eleanor is passionate about S.T.E.M education. She is an avid participant in the Women In Science and Engineering (WISE) and WLI employee groups. Eleanor stays on the cutting edge of the Pharm industry, with her active involvement with the International Society of Pharmaceutical Engineers Delaware Valley Chapter (ISPE-DVC). Eleanor joined ISPE-DVC in 2013, served as President for 2019-2021, and currently serves in a regional co-chair position in North America/South America Affiliate Council. Eleanor also supports her fellow Kappa Kappa Gamma alumnae peers serving as President of the Philadelphia Alumnae Association Foundation 501(c)3 from 2016-2019 and is currently the Membership chair for the Association.</p><p>In February of 2019, Eleanor was awarded the Delaware Valley Young Engineer of the Year by the DV Engineers&rsquo; Week committee and in 2020 she joined the Engineers Club of Philadelphia as part of the Board of Directors.</p>

<p>At Escalent, Liz leads complex research programs for the nation’s largest insurers, PBMs and healthcare systems. Her decade of research experience, academic training, and deep knowledge of the industry come to together to help Liz craft and execute innovative brand, CX, product, and communications research projects, always with an eye toward outcomes and driving positive change. Liz also has the pleasure of overseeing the health insurance sector—a dynamic, dedicated team of 15 analysts and research managers. She graduated with her PhD in Health Communication from the University of Missouri. She is the author of numerous peer-reviewed publications and her co-authored book, Because You Asked: Questions Shaping Interpersonal Communication is currently in press with Top Hat publications.<br /> </p>

<p>Gareth is passionate about ensuring that a customer-centered mindset is driving key business decisions and organizational growth. Drawing upon 20 years of leading global digital teams across multiple industries, he prioritises data-driven voice of the customer gained through user and customer experience testing, real-time feedback and digital insights to influence leadership decisions.<br /> <br /> Gareth has recently located to Toronto, Canada from London, UK in his role as Director, Digital Experience & Localisation for London Stock Exchange Group. He brings all his expertise and strategic leadership to serving as the business lead defining the vision for a customer-focused, connected, personalized digital ecosystem.<br /> <br /> Gareth’s career has spanned the spectrum from driving brand awareness, revenue and sales leads for SME B2C | B2B retail brands through to directing multi-year Digital Transformations for globally dispersed multi-billion dollar businesses.<br /> <br /> Throughout his career Gareth has championed the need for customer interactions, whether in real life or digitally, to be simple, easy and consistently high quality to ensure sustainable business growth.</p>

<p>Born and raised in Atlanta, Jose comes from a background of artists and creators. This has had a profound influence on his vision as a designer. He has been an active designer for 9 years working in UX/UI, print, marketing, advertising and branding. Having worked with small-to-large sized clients has given him great insight into the functionality and real-world applications of design. Jose is currently a UX Design Manager at Stable Kernel.</p>

<p>As Director of Market Intelligence for Rocket Central—ranked the country’s #1 mortgage lender – Krista is responsible for ensuring business decisions are made with knowledge of the market, competitors, and most importantly, consumers. This requires managing a growing team of strong researchers – skilled in primary and secondary research and competitive intelligence – working together to tell holistic stories. She also partners cross functionally to provide a strategic point of view as new markets and product offerings emerge. From Marketing to Data Intelligence to Operations, Krista ensures insights from consumer and client feedback is well understood, tied with other pieces of data, and leveraged to help clients navigate life’s most complex moments.<br /> </p>

<p>Dr. Lou Marciani is the Director and Co-Founder of the Innovation Institute for Fan Experience (IIFX), an Institute innovating new ways to address critical health, safety, security, and service challenges, and enhance the sports &amp; entertainment industry’s fan experience. Marciani previously served as director of the National Center for Spectator Spots Safety and Security (NCS4) at the University of Southern Mississippi (USM). Under Dr. Marciani’s leadership, NCS4 became a highly respected an international academic leader in sports, entertainment, and school safety and security. He expanded NCS4’s global reach to INTERPOL, creating police capacity building programs in sports safety and security for its Project STADIA program. An international lecturer, Dr. Marciani is a coauthor of the Security Management for Sports and Special Events: An Interagency Approach to Creating Safe Facilities textbook. He also managed several intercollegiate athletic programs and serving the United States Olympic Committee.</p>

<p>Michaela is a mixed-method, qual-quant researcher, who has been working at the intersection of market research/insights, CX, and UX to support business decisions related to product development, customer experience, marketing, and advertising through a multicultural lens, for more than 20 years.</p>

<p>Nicole is currently the head of CX at ENGINE Insights, where she focuses on modernizing her client’s CX programs and providing consultative insights designed to achieve business objectives and improve overall customer experience. Nicole’s 20 years of market research and consulting experience spans many industries including health care, health insurance, luxury retail, financial services, automotive and construction. As a market research client, Nicole spent six years with Blue Cross and Blue Shield of MN, and three years with Optum Insights and Optum Corporate in various roles. Nicole holds a MS in Experimental Psychology from Central Michigan University and BA degrees in Psychology and Sociology from the University of St. Thomas.</p>

<p>Sandra is an Insights, Marketing and Diversity & Inclusion professional with proven success in growing brands and customers, and in building diverse, high performing teams. She has a Masters degree in Marketing from Lancaster University UK, and over 20 years of client-side Insights and Marketing experience gained in Leadership roles at global organizations including GSK, Walt Disney, Virgin Media, Vodafone and American Express. In recent years Sandra has been applying her Insights and Marketing expertise to help champion Diversity, Equity and Inclusion within the marketing industry. She has recently co-founded a diversity, equity & inclusion consultancy Equitas Insight, which focuses on helping businesses, brands and people to fully benefit from the powerful perspectives that come from a diverse workforce.</p> <p>Sandra co-founded Equitas Insight with Ana, who is a marketer by background, a change driver and a capability builder by design. She started her career in Brazil working in B2B marketing in blue chip industrial and manufacturing organizations. She then moved into academia and a career in marketing consultancy and lecturing undergraduate and graduate Strategic Marketing courses at her Alma Mater ESPM (Escola Superior de Propaganda e Marketing). Her international career started in the UK after being awarded an MBA at Warwick University, working in the Marketing and Operations practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers. In 2002 she joined Brand Learning, then a startup specializing in building marketing capabilities. As a partner, she moved to NYC to open Brand Learning’s first overseas practice. </p>

<p>Sarah is a solutions-driven customer insights and analytics leader with a track record of driving top-ranking Fortune 500 companies to move beyond transactional ways of thinking. Her consultative oversight spans product, marketing, and customer experience development, as well as ways to leverage customer insights to drive decision-making, innovation, and growth initiatives. With strong roots in market research, Sarah oversees both large-scale and ad hoc initiatives for client teams across insights, marketing, and strategy, while supporting global market-driven insights that guide product development, marketing optimization, and portfolio strategies. In her role, she directs a team of researchers and strategists at Gongos, as well as InSites Consulting’s New York office. She has also been both an academic instructor at Michigan State University and has presented at numerous industry events, including the ESOMAR Congress.<br /> </p>

<p>Sequoyah is a data-driven marketer in Atlanta and graduate of Jacksonville University and Brenau University. Sequoyah is a budding serial entrepreneur, founding 924 CoOperative, HappyResignationDay.com, and the Black Marketers Coalition. Sequoyah enjoys volunteering with the Multicultural Insights Collective, Women in Research (WiRE); she’s an advisor at USF’s Muma College of Business and proud member of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.</p>

<p>Shanna is a seasoned market researcher who specializes in analysis and program design. She began working at Nielsen in Rochester, NY where she designed, implemented, and analyzed research strategies for several Fortune 500 companies across a variety of industries. After years of working in the industry, Shanna knows that an engaged audience is critical to collecting valuable insights that can best educate business decisions. Shanna now runs CX strategy for Innovatis Group as their Market Research Manager in Nashville, TN. She partners with executives and community leaders to elicit customer opinions through customized engagement campaigns. Her goal is to utilize comprehensive engagement strategies that not only captivate audiences, but also provide valuable insights back to key stakeholders.</p>

<p>Tricia Houston is travel-worn experiential marketer, classically trained market researcher, and challenger of the status-quo. She founded MMR LIVE Experience Design to help organizations create experiences worth repeating. Under Tricia's leadership, the team at MMR LIVE helps organizations imagine new solutions, improve current ones, and implement programs to close experience gaps (B2B &amp; B2C). This next-gen approach is transforming innovation and organizational change to create ExperienceBuilt businesses.</p>

<p>Vaqar is Data and Insights Director at LexisNexis who has led multi-disciplinary teams in designing and implementing innovative and effective practices leading to significant impact and surpassing of business goals. Prior to joining LexisNexis, he has had twelve years of eventful career at Microsoft in multiple roles covering different geographies. Vaqar also writes regularly on technology topics and a few of his articles and best practices have been published in The Economist, Fast Company, Harvard Business Review, as well as acknowledged through multiple industry awards. Vaqar obtained an undergraduate as well as a Master’s degree in Computer Science specializing in Artificial Intelligence from the University of Michigan.</p>