2018 Speakers
Carissa Ganelli
Carissa Ganelli is the Chief Digital Officer for Subway® restaurants. In her role, she is responsible for the company’s global digital strategy and leads Subway Digital, a team dedicated to transforming the guest experience through the integration of digital tools and an omni-channel strategy.
With more than 20 years of digital experience, Carissa manages all aspects of Subway Digital, including product innovation and management, and digital marketing.
Carissa joined Subway as Vice President of Marketing Technology in 2016. Prior to this, Carissa was CEO and founder of LightningBuy, a mobile commerce platform that converts mobile traffic to revenue, and held several digital marketing and strategy positions with top companies such as Digitas, enews.com and Coopers & Lybrand Consulting.
Carissa has a Bachelor of Arts from Bryn Mawr College and an MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.
Kristen Engelhardt
Kristen Engelhardt is the Vice President, Voice of the Customer, responsible for Salesforce's collaboration with its 2M-member customer community for business impact and customer success. Kristen and her team listen to and engage with 30,000 customers every year through focus groups, survey research, live listening events and community enablement programs. Their mission is to infuse these voices into the company's product, pricing, marketing, sales and adoption strategies.
Kristen began her technology career at Gartner Group and has held leadership roles in Product Management, Product Marketing and Customer Advocacy for almost 20 years. She is inspired every day by the innovation and transformation salesforce customers bring to their organizations, industries and each other.
Nick Allen
Nick began his career in 2005 as the founder and CEO of a network appliance startup company based out of Illinois Institute of Technology’s incubator program. Most recently, he served as the Director of Technology for GE Healthcare’s US Service division from 2012-15, and currently leads Design and User Experience for GE Healthcare’s $6B/yr Global Service business. Nick has over 15 years of Lean, Six Sigma and Design Thinking experience, with influences from Stanford D School, IDEO, Menlo, and ShingiJutsu.
Nick is a collector and restorer of Vintage Computers (Apple1, Xerox Alto, etc), some of his works are in the Deutsches Museum, Xerox Museum, MOMA and the Computer Museum of America. Nick is the founder , which is bringing world-class education to K-12 students in Haiti. Nick loves spending time going on dates with his wife Becki, having family weekends with his 3 kids, and building new creations in his home laboratory (current project is a nuclear fusor).
Sarah Townes
Sarah Townes is the Vice President of Marketing at Mall of America with almost 20-years of marketing and advertising leadership experience working on a range of consumer retail brands including Aveda, Caribou Coffee, Gander Mountain, Marshall Field’s/Target Corporation, Sears Holdings Corporation, Tresemmé Hair Care, Walt Disney Parks and Resorts, Leo Burnett and many more.
Throughout Sarah's career she has spearheaded brand and re-brand strategies, AOR relationship management, creative development, production, omni-channel media strategy, digital/social media, strategic partnerships and public relations to exceed business trajectories.
As a graduate from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign with a degree in Advertising, Sarah has received numerous key industry accolades and local achievements and was most recently a SGB 40 Under 40 honoree.
Laura Messerschmitt
Laura Messerschmitt is the Vice President of Global Customer Experience for GoDaddy, where she leads customer insights and experience strategy for GoDaddy's seventeen million small business customers. She has also held roles leading social media and customer marketing at GoDaddy. Prior to GoDaddy, Laura led marketing for a startup, Outright, which was acquired by GoDaddy in 2012. Earlier in her career, Laura was at Intuit, leading product management for QuickBooks and establishing Intuit's small business presence in social media. She also worked at Deloitte Consulting as a strategy consultant. Laura has her MBA from Stanford University and graduated Summa Cum Laude from UCLA with a degree in Mathematics.
Lauren LeRoy
Lauren LeRoy is the Director of Customer Marketing at Kespry, with experience building customer marketing programs at large, medium, and startup companies.
Lauren knows how to work with customers to tell compelling stories that promote success and increase customer advocacy. Working with product development, marketing, sales, customers, and business partners, Lauren builds relationships and scalable marketing programs for business impact.
Lauren has more than 15 years of experience in strategy and marketing at IBM, Alteryx and Kespry. Lauren holds a BA in Economics from Tufts University and an MBA from The University of Texas at Austin.
Fred Ehle
Fred was recently appointed Vice President of Marketing for redbox. There Fred is responsible for all aspects of redbox brand management, integrated and channel marketing, content marketing, strategic planning, marcom, partnerships and promotional calendars and for all aspects of product marketing and marketing communication across the enterprise, including new product launches, PR, social media, content marketing, retail marketing, field marketing, partnership marketing, title marketing, media and national campaigns.
Prior to redbox, Fred was Vice President of Customer Strategy for McDonald’s USA, Fred was responsible for driving customer focused, insights driven initiatives. Fred led the customer insights and customer experience teams. He also led the development and implementation of the CRM function.
Fred has extensive experience in marketing, strategy, brand management, brand activation, new product development and launch, and retail strategy.
Fred was the Vice President of Brand Management for Pulte Group, the nation’s largest new homebuilder from 2010-2014. There, he was responsible for Pulte’s three brands: Centex, Pulte and Del Webb leading the development of brand strategy and strategy activation.
Fred has spent almost 20 years in marketing strategy consulting at the Zyman Group and VSA Partners as well as at several major ad agencies leading national and global brands such as Campbell Soup Company, Betty Crocker, Raid Insecticide, and State Farm Insurance as well as a number of high tech and financial services companies.
Fred has a BA from the University of Wisconsin and a Masters in International Management from Thunderbird. He lives in Chicago with his wife and daughter.
John Allwein
John Allwein, digital transformation strategist, specializes in helping large B2B companies evolve their traditional business models into those centered on client experience and digital engagement.
In order to enact digital transformation, John encourages stakeholders to reimagine the entire customer lifecycle from prospecting for new customers through supporting long-time users. Large established companies must challenge themselves to quickly adopt new processes and organizational structures to gain the velocity necessary to satisfy customer’s immediate needs, achieve near-term business goals and support long-term relevance.
Last year, John joined PNC Bank, one of the largest diversified financial services institutions in the United States, where he is leading PNC’s Corporate & Institutional Banking digital strategy and user experience teams, relentlessly driving client-focused digital experiences.
Prior to joining PNC, John led the digital customer experience and engagement team at a large global manufacturing and engineering company where he planned and executed a fast-paced digital transformation in support of the entire customer lifecycle.
John currently lives in Pittsburgh, PA where he enjoys his two children, mountain biking and all this great city has to offer.
Bridget McDermid
Story teller, change advocate and a teacher through personal experience, Bridget McDermid is a trailblazer of positive change with TD Bank Group, currently holding the role of Senior Manager, Customer Experience & Digital Fluency strategy, North American Phone Channel. She is a leader who drives innovation and acts as a catalyst for improved processes to implement programs and solutions that promote her company’s cultural values, operational goals and always advocates from the customers perception.
Throughout the years, she has had had the opportunity to work, develop new skills and quickly progress through many top Canadian organizations including Cara Operations, Loblaw Companies Limited and now TD Bank. She has had the opportunity to influence and evolve in a variety of Customer & Digital User Experience roles. Bridget has a forward thinking approach to our evolving digital world and is an advocate for her Customers and her Colleagues to migrate into the new technology norm through Adoption and Engagement.
By promoting a mix of emotional intelligence and industry best standards, Bridget is able to help guide and influence Digital Transformation across one of Canada's top 5 Financial Institution. She is thrilled to be a part of such a rapidly growing and accelerated part of TD in the midst of a time when digital communications and technologies have never been more relevant to banking.
Danielle Sauvé
Danielle Sauvé is a marketing technologist, writer and strategist for a collection of global companies owned by Danaher, including Pantone, MediaBeacon, Esko, X-Rite, AVT, Laetus and Videojet. Throughout her 16-year career, Danielle has held positions in many parts of the consumer packaging ecosystem: consumer goods manufacturer, promotional agency, brand strategy and package design firm, premedia firm and packaging management software start-up, giving her a uniquely broad perspective on simplifying the packaging value chain. Her packaging technology insights have been featured in The Dieline, FoodDive, MediaPost and Chief MarTec. Danielle earned her B.A. in English and Theater from Messiah College and now lives outside Chicago with her husband, four children, dog, fish, tortoise and bevy of musical instruments.
Tom Staley
Tom joined Toll Brothers in 2016 and he focuses on initiatives to make Toll Brothers more effective and efficient. He spends most of his time on projects related to customer experience, sales, marketing, and business technology applications. He recently led a companywide project to develop a digital customer experience strategy and roadmap.
Prior to joining Toll Brothers, Tom was a consultant at McKinsey & Company, where he advised some of the world’s leading organizations on business strategy, operations, organizational design, and change management. He was a U.S. Air Force pilot and officer for nearly 14-years, and led operating units around the world, including as part of operations in Afghanistan and Iraq. He earned a Master’s in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School and is a distinguished graduate of the U.S. Air Force Academy. He lives in Philadelphia with his wife, Reynelle, and their two young sons, Robinson and Ellis.
Carina Edwards
As Imprivata's SVP of Customer Experience, Carina is responsible for all customer facing operations that fuel customer success including: world-wide professional services, world-wide customer support & advocacy, business development, and corporate IT. Carina brings 22 years of experience in the Healthcare Technology Industry. With a focus on speed to transformation, Carina brings a strong track record of helping companies realize their next stages of growth and creating customers for life by transforming customer insights into easy to experience solutions that fuel customer success. In January 2017, Carina was appointed to the board of directors of the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) Foundation to advance the roles of CIOs and senior healthcare IT leaders through education, collaboration and advocacy in support of improved health and healthcare in various communities.
Prior to joining Imprivata, Carina served as the Vice President of Solutions Marketing for Nuance Healthcare, a division of Nuance Communications. Prior to Nuance Healthcare Carina held executive roles at Zynx Health (a subsidiary of Hearst Corporation), Philips Healthcare, Sapient, and Impact Innovations Group. Carina received her MBA from Boston College and her BS in Management Information Systems and Decision Sciences from George Mason University.
Matt Arevalo
Jason Conley
Jason has almost 20 years of digital and direct marketing experience with tenure on both the client and agency sides. He currently leads the Strategic Consulting practice at RRD Marketing Solutions, with a focus on delivering maximum ROMI by leveraging strategy, information, insights, and hyper-relevant interactions. Jason has also led teams in client services, driving both marketing strategy and execution for companies in retail, healthcare, hospitality, and financial services. On the client side, Jason managed interactive and direct marketing teams, developing winning strategies and execution for new customer acquisition, relationship optimization, customer cross-sell/up-sell, and retention.
Dan LaCivita
Dan LaCivita brings over a dozen years of experience to his role as CEO of Firstborn, an award-winning design and innovation company headquartered in New York City since 1997.
Swiftly rising through the Firstborn ranks since joining in 2003, Dan has the hands-on experience of a former creative developer, sharp strategic instincts honed from leading long-term client relationships and innate leadership abilities that drive Firstborn to be one of the most forward-thinking agencies in the world. His unique perspectives of being both a thinker and a maker drive this same culture within the company, leading to the development of powerful digital experiences for a client roster that includes PepsiCo, L’Oréal, Adidas, S&P Global, Supercell, and Mountain Dew.
Under his guidance, Firstborn’s work has been recognized with numerous awards including Clios, Cannes Lions and One Show Pencils; the agency, itself, has been placed on prestigious rosters such as Fast Company’s Most Innovative Companies, Advertising Age’s Agency A-List and Crain’s Best Places to Work in New York City. A thoughtful commentator thanks to his diverse roles within the industry, Dan has penned his point of view for Fast Company, Forbes, Advertising Age and Adweek and has spoken at the Financial Times, Ad Age Digital, 99U and FITC conferences, to name a few. Dan was also named to the 4A’s “100 People Who Make Advertising Great” list, Direct Marketing News' 2016 '40 Under 40' list and sits on the Digital Board of Directors of the 4A's.
Inside and outside the office, Dan can often be found shuffling a deck of cards—a nod to his expertise in the art of close-up magic. He lives in Manhattan with his wife, Jen, and their two sons.
Maria Gagos
Maria Gagos is the Head of Digital at S&P Global. In her role, Maria leads the vision, strategy and execution for transforming the digital footprint of the company. In that vein, Maria is responsible for the online properties of S&P Global, as well as for the company’s digital advertising and social efforts.
Prior to S&P Global, Maria spent 5 years at American Express, where she owned all digital aspects of one of their products, in conjunction with the product management aspects for that same product. Before American Express, Maria spent 7 years at Microsoft, where, after a couple of years as a web developer, she moved to the client-facing teams of the Online Division. During her tenure at Microsoft, Maria led multiple teams in roles as various as Digital Operations, Technical Account Management, Product Management and Business Management.
Maria has proven herself to be an innovator and creative thinker who can easily move between industries, while leading efforts spanning development, advertising, social and product management. Maria holds a BA in Business Administration from University of Washington, and an MBA from Columbia Business School.
Shani Sandy
Shani Sandy is a creative leader who cultivates the power of design to impact business. With over fifteen years of experience, including a decade in the Financial Technology and Information industry, she is the Executive Creative Director at S&P Global.
In her role, Shani leads the global creative strategy, design, and ux practice to articulate the brand, develop products, and launch marketing initiatives. Noted accomplishments include integrated brand advertising campaigns, website experiences, multichannel worldwide rebrands, and building creative teams from the ground up.
Shani holds a BA in Art History and BFA in Painting and Computer Art from Tufts University along with an MBA from the Berlin School of Creative Leadership.
An active member of the design community, Shani has been honored by GDUSA’s People to Watch and served on How’s Judging jury. Shani serves on the Arts Board of the Bronx Charter School for the Arts and the Rutgers Advisory Board for Design Thinking.
Shani is a native New Yorker, residing in Brooklyn.
Kevin Grubb
Kevin Grubb is Engagement Manager at Prophet, where he focuses on helping brands grow better through digital.
As a member of Prophet’s digital team, Kevin is responsible for working with clients to define and execute a process for leveraging emerging opportunities from data and technology strategically and through the lenses of customer obsession and business impact. Kevin specializes in customer experience strategy--from researching customer needs and pain points to architecting transformational experience solutions.
Prior to joining Prophet, Kevin worked in Hong Kong for digital agency Razorfish as a Strategist. He helped his clients define compelling content and experience strategies and deploy them through evergreen and campaign-based activities.
Kevin lives in New York City with his wife and two dogs. He spends most of his free time immersed in science fiction.
Anna Wright
Anna Wright leads Customer Experience for Twitter Service. She guides and empowers her team to deliver thoughtful support solutions for the Company's diverse global user base through Twitter’s education, engagement, and support channels. After a decade developing and driving direct marketing strategies for performing arts organizations, Anna joined Twitter’s support team five years ago and has since led numerous efforts to create, improve, and streamline self-service customer support programs while refining one-to-one support strategies for a user base facing a host of unpredictable and ever-changing issues.
A passionate advocate for the consumer experience, Anna is a driving force behind her team’s embodiment of a service-driven culture, one that places the customer’s needs at the very center and heart of Twitter’s business.
Eric Rhodes
Eric is a customer experience program manager at Twitter and a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP). Before joining Twitter, he was a founding member of Google's hardware customer experience team who brought CX design and service design to the newly-formed hardware organization. Eric came to the hardware division from the Advanced Technologies and Products (ATAP) group, where he was an experience design lead on several projects including omnichannel customer care, retail experience design, and on-device support experience. Before Google, he was a marketing lead at Major League Baseball and HarperCollins. Originally from North Jersey, Eric lives in the South Bay with his wife, Jenn, and his dog, Ralphie. He studied visual arts at Rutgers University and computer science at Seton Hall University.
Chris Watt
For 15 years Tigerspike has been changing the way businesses engage with their customers and employees by putting them at the center of their decision making process. As a digital services company, Tigerspike designs and builds experiences that users love to use, not just need to.
Chris has been with Tigerspike for nearly 10 years and has held senior sales, strategy and communications roles across APAC and AMER as well as at Group level. As SVP - Global Corporate Strategy, based in San Francisco, Chris is now responsible for the execution of Tigerspike's global partnerships strategy as well as Group market development and communications initiatives.
Katrina Schiedemeyer
Katrina Schiedemeyer is an innovative Voice of Customer leader at a Fortune 500 Company where she leverages VOC and Continuous Improvement (CI) to improve the manufacturing process and customer experience. Katrina has a published research work detailing the application of continuous improvement techniques by leveraging VOC in the education system. Her work is currently used by many organizations around the world to improve the education system on multiple continents. Katrina also serves on the Board of Directors for a Mali, Africa based foundation where she uses her VOC research experience to improve the quality of education children in Mali are receiving.
Mark Lesiw
Mark Lesiw is the Chief Revenue Officer at Retreaver, a call-tracking and routing service that helps companies do more with their inbound call data. He and the team work closely with customers to identify, capture and engage inbound call data to deliver the analytics and insights required to optimize marketing spend and to deliver leading customer experiences over the phone. Prior to Retreaver Mark has held roles at Bundle Manager, Careerleaf, Blackberry, Viigo, SAP Business Objects, Cartesis, INEA and Deloitte Canada. Mark is a graduate of the Queen’s School of Business.
Jessica Cryer
Jessica Cryer is a sharp and experienced Customer Experience consultant who has a passion for helping businesses create, design, build, and execute strategies that will make a tangible difference. Now as the VP, Business and Customer Strategyl Jessica is responsible for managing a Customer P&L and leading a team in identifying, developing, and executing customer and category growth opportunities through the use of relevant and personalized marketing and sales strategies. Jessica also plays an integral role in leading consulting initiatives that reshape customer-centric thinking and management across organizations.
Prior to joining CSPN, Jessica worked at Monitor Deloitte leading strategy projects for major Canadian financial institutions. Her passion for customer experience led her to Idea Couture, where she focused on customer experience innovation and transformation. Jessica is driven by the opportunity to conceive and build memorable customer and employee experiences, linking disciplines from Strategy, Human Resources, and Service Design to produce desired business outcomes.
Shawn Ashley
Shawn is an MBA and Lean Six Sigma accredited, internationally
experienced management consultant. He has 7+ years exposure
to diverse business sectors including; financial services,
investment operations, publishing and public.
He has successfully implemented impactful strategic initiatives by
focusing on the root cause and removing complexity. Committed
to helping clients succeed, he is capable of advising leaders’ at all
organizational levels to align overall business goals with project
deliverables. Shawn is relentless in his drive to achieve defendable
results while building authentic relationships with clients.
Shawn now specializes now in leading CX transformations for
organizations – looking the at the intersection of the digital and
physical world on customer experiences. Having worked across
multiple industries, helping small businesses and global brands
bring their strategy to life through people, Shawn specializes in
purpose creation, journey mapping, and persona authoring.
Through transformation blueprints and activation plans, Shawn
has found success by winning with the truth, and connecting the
dots between experiences design and KPIs.
Vanessa Hannay
Vanessa Hannay is a Senior Customer Success Strategist at Muck Rack, working to change the way professionals approach public relations and encourage better relationships with the media through a unique mix of technology and partnership.
Vanessa works with brands and agencies to ensure they are working smarter to surpass goals, reinvigorate strategies, and streamline workflows. She often refers to herself as an extension of her customers’ teams. Vanessa joined Muck Rack as a Customer Success Strategist in 2016. Prior to this, she worked in customer experience at Capital One and digital marketing at TITLE Boxing Club.
Phil Hamburg
Phil is responsible for the development and delivery of strategy execution solutions with a focus on outcomes that drive higher levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty through a better customer experience.
In previous positions at Root, Phil worked with retail and hospitality clients including InterContinental Hotels Group, Lowe’s, McDonald’s, Nordstrom, Petco, and Starbucks. Phil’s expertise is in helping executive teams engage their organizations in strategy deployment, change management, leadership development, and onboarding. He has worked extensively with senior leaders in many Fortune 500 organizations in the retail, hospitality, and transportation industries. Phil has more than 25 years of sales and marketing experience, including work at Procter & Gamble and sales and marketing in manufacturing and distribution. He holds a BA in history from Indiana University.
Phil lives in Chicago with his wife, Holly, and two sons, Jake and Adam. Phil is a passionate supporter of LOGAN, an organization that supports people with disabilities to help them pursue their dreams.
Melissa Douros
With almost 20 years in the product and marketing space, Melissa leads the Digital Product team at Great Wolf Resorts, she is leading a digital transformation including leading an aesthetics website redesign, launching a mobile app, and moving into chatbot and voice. In parallel, Melissa is a Human Computer Interaction Masters’s Candidate at Iowa State University, founded the Brett Robert Jostes Scholarship for Girls Going Into STEM, is a three year running WebAward Judge and named Top 50 UX Experts to follow on Twitter.
Ray Gerber
Armed with a smile, not to mention a mean lefty serve, Ray (AKA “Stats”) delivers innovative, leading solutions in our current markets and beyond to maintain and develop Thunderhead’s reputation as a pioneering tech company.
As a strong leader with over 30 years of experience, Ray has built strategies that allow organisations to deploy new and innovative technologies. And after 30 years he’s still smiling.
A man used to wearing many hats, Ray has extensive expertise in customer relationship management, customer decisioning and self-learning, business process management, customer journey management and enterprise resource planning.
We think of Ray as a tech innovation and engineering ‘deity’ – it’s no surprise to us that he and Thunderhead are a match made in heaven. In 2014 he led a team of over 200 engineers to launch our cloud based ONE Engagement Hub and he was also responsible for growing the Thunderhead tech team by more than 400% since 2012.
Before polishing his teeth at Thunderhead, he cut them as Chief Technology Officer of Chordiant Software where he led the smooth transition of technology resources and software solutions after the acquisition by PegaSystems. He subsequently became VP of Customer Experience until joining Thunderhead in 2011.
Tracy Antol
Tracy is currently responsible for helping Precision Dialogue’s clients develop best-in-class marketing and customer experience strategies via data-driven research solutions. She has a solid track record as an award-winning sales & marketing professional with over 20 years hands-on leadership experience building cross-functional integrated sales & brand marketing teams. She has created, launched and executed local, national and global sales & marketing campaign strategies via traditional print and web channels for B2B/B2C clients. Tracy has served on the Board of Directors for the South Florida Interactive Marketing Association for the past five years.
Prior to joining Precision Dialogue, she led strategic solutions for a boutique user experience research firm where she drove client UX strategies for Fortune 100 brands. She also built an industry-first cross-platform media planning service, SimmonsConnect, from Experian Marketing Services that linked reach, time spent and activity usage measures for traditional, digital and mobile media platforms to over 60,000 consumer elements. She grew up in agency world developing successful marketing programs for a variety of clients. She holds a Bachelor’s degree from Miami University in Oxford, Ohio.
Nicholas Michel
Nicholas Michel is a Research & Customer Experience Manager at RRD-MS. In this role he is responsible for the execution of research and user experience projects that create unique UX plans for clients to address their goals and advocate for their customers.
At RRD-MS, Nicholas has led over 150 projects for global brands such as Este Lauder, GM, Four Seasons and more, across industries including retail, financial services, healthcare and utilities. In this role Nick has facilitated hundreds of usability testing sessions, led interaction design projects for Fortune 100 companies and led all research activities for major site redesigns for multiple Fortune 1000 companies. These efforts have led to online conversion increases of greater than 25% and ROI increases up to 185% for specific engagements. He is also the foremost expert at PD in eye tracking and emotional testing (using EEG technology). Nicholas is certified in User Experience by the Nielsen Norman Group.
