Visionary Headliners, Rockstars
and Fab Facilitators

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Rockstar Insights

Ishraf Ahmad

Ishraf Ahmad

Head of Clinical Product
Virta Health

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

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.

Christina Baune

Christina Baune

Director of Digital Product
Sleep Number Corporation

Christina’s work focuses on Digital Product Management and strategic communication-and everything in between as it relates to solving customer problems. When she isn’t building PowerPoint slides in her head, she can be found enjoying the sunshine with her daughter Alyssa (17), son Niklas (14), and husband Dan, and their dog Kody.

Freddie Berberena

Freddie Berberena

Senior Director, Service Center Strategy and Operations
Empyrean Benefit Solutions, Inc.
Customer Engagement Leadership Council Member

Recognized as an expert in the area of Operational Process Improvement, Freddie has spent his career focusing on the customer experience by improving how internal teams function and interact with each other. This has led to a diverse career working in areas from Product Development to IT and Operations at companies large and small from UnitedHealth Group to Bloom Health ultimately landing at Empyrean Benefit Solutions.

John Bord

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

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).

Wendy Cutting

Wendy Cutting

Vice President, Optum Digital
Optum

Stacey Dove

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.

Patrick Forsland

Patrick Forsland

Senior Director, Guest Experience
Minnesota Twins Baseball Club

Patrick has worked in Customer Service for the Minnesota Twins for 24 years. For the first 11 years of his career, he worked as part of the Ticket Operations department, managing the Twins Call Center and developing and supervising an Inside Sales program. Patrick’s current role as head of the Twins Guest Services department was created with the opening of Target Field in 2010.

Erin Ghere

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.

Waseem Kawaf

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

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

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

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

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.

Lee Rubin

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.

Tara Townsend

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.

Vinod Varma

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

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

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

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.

Sean Wisdom

Sean Wisdom

Senior Vice President of Global Marketing
Arise Virtual Solutions

Sean has been a driving force in bringing cutting-edge technologies to businesses worldwide for over 20 years. With extensive experience in sales, sales management, and all facets of marketing, he has started successful global business solutions programs for Verizon and Dell. In his current role, Sean transformed the GTM strategy for Office Depot including segmentation, strategic messaging, and digital demand generation strategies.

Ryan Smith

Ryan Smith

Senior Manager, Sales Consulting
Zendesk

A data, and process-driven leader, Ryan has spent 20 years implementing and designing solutions for Fortune 100 companies striving to provide the best possible service to their customers with ROI-driven outcomes. In his current role leading Enterprise Solutions for the Central US, he is focused on digital-first initiatives driving richer engagement and new revenue opportunities for his clients.

Master of Ceremonies

Brian Fitzpatrick

Brian Fitzpatrick

Partner, Events
Frost & Sullivan

Brian Fitzpatrick is the Global Lead for Frost & Sullivan’s Events Division, responsible for the Best Practice creation and execution of Frost & Sullivan events globally. He has over 28 years of management and leadership position experience and understands strategic, tactical business planning and financial management.

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