Visionary Headliners, Rockstars
and Fab Facilitators
Interested in Becoming or Nominating a Speaker?
Rockstar Insights
Ishraf Ahmad
Senior Director Product and Experience
OptumRx
Ishraf has spent more than a decade in leading product and experience teams across Healthcare and Retail industries to enable growth and deliver valuable, delightful, and impactful customer experiences. Currently, he is leading a team of designers to identify opportunities and implement experience improvement initiatives.
Cal Austin
Innovative Customer Experience Lead – Emerging Markets
Pfizer
The common thread throughout Cal’s career has been a focus on creative problem solving. Using Design Thinking, Agile, Open Space Technology, Gallup StrengthsFinder, and other tools, he has helped teams find solutions to their most challenging business pursuits while improving the Customer Experience.
John Bord
Manager, Customer Experience
Tucson Electric Power (TEP)
John is an accomplished subject matter expert with an extensive career spearheading creation and execution of marketing, research and customer experience strategies across multiple industries. Focused on creating actionable research to maximize CX initiatives and brand management, he is passionate about driving customer value while achieving strategic business objectives and growth.
Eric Caron
Senior Director of Digital Experience
Caribou Coffee
Eric’s work focuses on meeting the customer’s digital needs through streamlining the app and online order experience while expanding the brand nationwide. When he isn’t talking about product management, agile methods, websites, apps or APIs, you’ll find him with his family in Eden Prairie (attempting to teach his children the difference between a French press, Aeropress & ChemEx).
Stacey Dove
Senior Vice President of Customer Experience
UnitedHealth Group
Stacey has a relentless passion to improve customer experience across the largest health care enterprise in the U.S. She believes that we all need to do better and be better in the healthcare space; customers are demanding it, begging for it. In her free time, Stacey hosts the Optum podcast, “Until It’s Fixed”, focusing on pressing health care topics in the U.S. She’s also a mom of four teenagers and a basketball coach.
Derek Franks
Senior Director of Insights
Worldwide Customer Experience
Electronic Arts
Erin Ghere
Director of Consumer Experience Management
HealthPartners
Bringing nearly two decades of health care experience, Erin leads HealthPartners’ consumer engagement strategies designed to make health care simple and more affordable. They create outreach and experiences that delight health plan members and care group patients by successfully guiding them to their next best action with relevant and relatable content.
Colleen Hilderman Clayton
Former Vice President, Client Engagement,
Gucci Americas
A transformational & results driven Client Experience leader with emphasis on establishing a “client at the center” mindset across all business channels. A positive influencer of company culture, Colleen is recognized as exemplifying intuitive vision, unique perspective, and a spirit of innovation in leading strategic growth leveraging a diverse 30+ year experience portfolio in luxury apparel, sporting goods, contemporary art, and aviation blending brick & mortar with tech innovation in elevating CX, EX, UI, UX and more.
Waseem Kawaf
Global Vice President of Digital Experience
STANLEY Security
Waseem has spent his career thinking about how the marketing tech stack can bring businesses closer to their customers. Over the last 2+ years as VP of Global Digital Experience at STANLEY Security, he has ideated and built a structured CX process that has delivered tangible business results and fostered positive, customer-focused change across the organization.
Peter Leppik
Assistant Vice President, Voice of the Customer
U.S. Bank
As a Customer Experience leader with over 20 years experience, Peter brings a scientific approach to solving business problems, and helps people, process, and technology work together. In his current role at U.S. Bank, he leads the Contact Center Voice of the Customer program and the Customer Value Tracking initiative.
Marilyn McDonald
Senior Vice President, Customer Interoperability
Mastercard
In her role Marilyn, leads the product, design, and engineering teams responsible for delivering experience improvements through Connect – the interface that customers use to manage and grow their business with Mastercard, bringing one view of Mastercard to our customers. In her spare time, she is the leader of the Product Management – Technical Guild for Mastercard globally.
Stacy McGranor
Customer Experience Program Director
San Jose Sharks
Part artist, part scientist, Stacy continues to fuel her passion for sports, entertainment, and their consumers by serving as the voice of the customer and overseeing all qualitative and quantitative research efforts for the Sharks Sports & Entertainment properties, including the San Jose Sharks, San Jose Barracuda, SAP Center at San Jose, and the Sharks Ice Family of Rinks.
Erin McMillan
Associate Vice President Client Operations
Cox Automotive
Erin leads a diverse team with equally diverse functions spanning order fulfillment, customer care, even graphic design. Since joining the organization in 2002 as a Customer Support Rep, Erin has been focused on developing strong leaders and engaged employees that can deliver the ultimate customer experience.
Tricia Price
Senior Vice President Customer Experience Operations
GM Financial
In this role, Tricia is responsible for influencing strategic projects and initiatives to support a best-in-class customer experience with a focus on operationalizing digitization efforts to enhance operational efficiencies and effectiveness. During her 20+ year career in auto finance, she has held progressive positions within GM Financial Consumer Services and Corporate Servicing areas. In 2021, Tricia was recognized by Auto Finance Journal and Cherokee Media as a Top Female Leader in Auto Finance.
Lee Rubin
Former Captain of the Penn State Football team and
Corporate Human Resources Professional
For 30 years, Lee has been building high performance teams in both corporate America and the collegiate sports world, setting the foundational cornerstone for a leadership and culture-building mindset focusing on the key components that create extraordinary teams.
Katherine Shin
Vice President of Customer Experience
Trane Technologies
Katherine is responsible for designing holistic customer experiences for B2B and B2C channels, and her scope of responsibilities include customer insights and research, advanced analytics and data science, e-commerce, innovation, loyalty programs, digital transformation, connected home strategy, and strategy and business development.
Tara Townsend
Director of Customer Experience
AARP
Guess who has the easiest job in the room… the person who doesn’t need to have all the answers. Tara has made a career of delivering excellent CX by simply letting consumers tell her what they want. Leveraging consumer research, voice of the customer, and an M.S. in Behavioral Economics, Tara susses out consumer needs and helps organizations deliver on them.
Bradley Utter
Associate Vice President, Provider Call Center and Vendor Management
Humana
Brad has been a leader in the Contact Center industry for over 15 years and has led Vendor Management, Workforce Management and Operational teams across multiple industries throughout his tenure. He has a passion for delivering exceptional customer service across multiple channels and works tirelessly to ensure team culture stays at the forefront of decision making.
Vinod Varma
Senior Vice President, Patient Experience and Service Operations
Oak Street Health
Vin is a customer experience and operations leader with a track record of driving transformational results across industries. He is passionate about integrating human centered design with technology and operations to create world class customer experiences. His current responsibilities include leading patient experience and service operations across channels for Oak St. Health.
Erik Wakefield
Vice President Customer Experience
Flagstar Bank
With expertise in multiple industries and disciplines, Erik isn’t thriving unless he is tackling thorny, ambiguous challenges and supporting the development of his fellow team members in the process. He believes in a humanized, data-driven approach to drive profitability through customer loyalty and that innovation is only successful with robust change management.
David Weisman, PhD, CPXP
Chief Experience Officer
NYC Health + Hospitals
David has spent the majority of his 20 year career in customer/care experience. He has a unique set of skills that have allowed him to create a culture of empathy focused on customer experience and exceed the expectations of all his customers, including patients and their loved ones, employees and the community.
Fab Facilitators
Ginger Conlon
Thought Leadership Director
Genesys
An award winning editorial leader, Ginger is currently thought leadership director at Genesys, where she co-creates expansive research led reports on customer experience. In her prior roles as chief editor of Direct Marketing News, 1to1, and CRM magazines, she set the editorial vision and strategy, which led to increased readership, reader engagement, and revenue.