Joel Alden is a Partner with the Consulting Firm  A.T. Kearney. Based in Toronto, he is a member of the global Retail Industry practice and is one of the leaders of the Firm’s Retail Center of Excellence.  He has more than 15 years of experience in consulting and industry with retailers and consumer products companies.  Much of his work has been with multi-nationals  throughout the United States and Canada.

Mr. Alden has worked with retailers and consumer goods companies on a variety of issues on the executive agenda, ranging from strategy, organizational transformation, store operations, category profitability, supply chain strategy and marketing effectiveness.  Customer care has been the focus of many engagements from contact center effectiveness through consumer insights capability building.

Mr. Alden received an MBA and a Bachelor of Science in Engineering from Queen’s University  at Kingston, Canada.

 

Neeraj Arora is Assistant VP of Customer Experience at Farmers Insurance. He has been instrumental in shaping the path of data-driven decisioning at Farmers and is helping transform the organization’s thinking on customer centricity.

Neeraj leads a team of actuaries, statisticians and business managers who act as internal consultants to a variety of business groups within Farmers, including Product Management, Underwriting, Claims, Customer Experience, and Marketing. One part of the team proactively and reactively identifies opportunities to leverage data to gain actionable insight on consumer behavior, and instigates change by influencing action. The other is focused on coming up with and implementing (creative) solutions and processes to deliver a better customer experience.

Neeraj loves to share his experiences in the analytics and customer centricity space. He has been a speaker at the CIO Summit in 2011, the Society of Insurance Research Conference in 2010, the Casualty Actuarial Society Seminar in 2009, the I&T Insurance Summit in 2008 and a SAS Webcast on Business Analytics in 2009. He has also been published in 2011/09 Insurance and Technology, 2010/03 Tech Decisions and 2008/06 Insurance Networking News.

Prior to joining Farmers in September 2007, Neeraj was a Business Manager at Capital One, responsible for creating and implementing strategies for maximizing value from current customers.  Neeraj holds a Bachelor of Architecture from School of Planning and Architecture, India; and a MBA from Indian Institute of Management, Lucknow.

 

Christophe Bodin is an Executive with 20 years experience in Fortune 50 (Oracle, IBM), mid-size (BEA Systems, Gupta Technology), and start-up (Commit, NSI) companies covering a broad range of software businesses including database, middleware, application servers, messaging, security and storage management. All the positions he held over the past 20 years were in Customer Services, leading alternatively Customer Support, Field Support, Professional Services and Consulting organization. His international experience is extensive with operational responsibilities based in the United States, France, United Kingdom, Australia, and Singapore. His key areas of expertise are in executive team leadership, business planning, business transformation, customer services operation and P&L management.

Currently Vice President and General Manager at BMC Software, he is leading a 500+ people Customer Support organization, covering Support Delivery, Premium Support, and Maintenance Contract Renewal for the ESM Division at BMC Software, managing a P&L worth $610M revenue to the Company.

Prior to BMC, he was Vice President at Oracle for 3 years where he led the Middleware Support Delivery Organization (2,000 people), after being the leader of a cross Line of Business team in charge of transforming fundamentally how Oracle delivers Product Support, across all products and solutions sold by the Company.

Prior its acquisition by Oracle, he was Vice President at BEA Systems for 4 years, where he led Customer Support divisions in the United States and in Europe, in charge of the Support P&L to the extent of returning $400M to the company top line with record breaking margin. These positions included maintenance renewal, advanced customer support as well as standard product support operation.

Previously, he spent 7 years at IBM, in the Software Group Division, leading initially customer support groups for the Lotus brand in Europe, and quickly moving to Professional Services and Consulting, leading sales and delivery teams to success, with diverse territory responsibility, in Western Europe, South East Asia, Australia and New Zealand.

Prior to IBM, he led the Southern Europe Professional Services team at Gupta Technology for 2 years. He joined Gupta after a very successful experience as CEO and founder of his own services business in France.

Christophe Bodin received his Master degree with honors from MMIAGE Aix en Provence in France, and held various executive education degrees from Stanford and Berkeley.

 

Nick Capener joined Fisher & Paykel Appliances in 1996. He worked in the IT team supporting and writing applications for the global business. Capener moved into Logistics in 1999, looking after the NZ Logistics operations. In 2001 he moved to Sydney, Australia to run the Logistics operations. Capener moved back to NZ in 2005, spending a short period in the UK setting up the Logistics operation there before running the Customer Service operations for NZ. This was broadened to include Logistics operations and then the Global Customer Care center. Capener moved to the U.S. in early 2010 taking on the responsibility of Customer Service and Logistics for the U.S. and Canada.

 

Mr. Carty is the chief experience officer and chief learning officer for Vanguard Health Systems. Vanguard Health Systems owns & operates 26 hospitals, 2 health plans and a nursing school across San Antonio, Phoenix, Chicago, Detroit and New England, with over 37,000 employees committed to driving both health and health care.

As chief experience officer, Mr. Carty’s responsibilities include building an emotionally engaging, innovative, and collaborative culture for Vanguard’s employees and physicians, while creating a high reliability patient & guest experience that emotionally engages & creates life-long relationships, focused on both health and health care. He drives organizational growth and consumer loyalty through patient satisfaction, consumer relationship management (CRM) & human factors engineering. As chief learning officer, Mr. Carty’s responsibilities include leading Vanguard’s organizational development, organizational effectiveness, learning, succession planning, performance management, talent-based hiring, and leadership development, including founding Vanguard’s multidisciplinary corporate university.

Prior to joining Vanguard Health Systems, Mr. Carty was a partner with Gallup Consulting, where he was responsible for leading the health care & wellbeing consulting for the Midwest, Texas, and Pacific Northwest divisions. Mr. Carty has extensive consulting experience with clients in the health care & hospitality industry on issues such as culture improvement, human capital management, operations process improvement, succession planning, physician partnership, organizational restructuring, mergers & acquisitions, and the employee-patient encounter. His consulting insights have helped his health care & hospitality clients from around the globe improve their bottom-line profit through organic growth, by improving their culture & consumer experience, based on human factors engineering & behavioral economics.  

Prior to Gallup, Mr. Carty was part of the consulting & business development team for a leading PR and marketing firm. He was brought in to build & lead a service line focused on predictive modeling. The service line drove business development through advising around the effectiveness of company’s PR & marketing practices. He was also recruited by NASA to work on their space research team, where he determined different growth rates of E. coli in an oxygenated environment compared with a deoxygenated environment. Prior to joining NASA he founded a successful internet sales company selling goods for a top-branded retail organization. The company was purchased by one of the nation’s top internet companies four years after it was founded. Mr. Carty also serves as a medical missionary in Congo, Africa where he travels around the jungles giving medical attention to those who could not walk to a clinic to receive care.

Mr. Carty graduated top of his class in three years from Benedictine University, with duel bachelor degrees in biology and biochemistry. He then started to focus on medical school but decided to get his MBA in Global Executive Leadership from the University of Nebraska instead. He is also certified in Lean Process Improvement from Toyota University, Information Technology from SUNY-Binghamton School of Management, as a Strengths Coach from Gallup University and in Corporate Restructuring, Mergers and Acquisitions from Harvard Business School.

 

Brent’s professional background spans a variety of functional areas, including marketing and strategy consulting. For the past 8 years, however, he has led both B2B and B2C marketing efforts at a number of online and mobile technology startups with difficult to pronounce names, such as Xoom, inDplay and EQO. He is currently Senior Director, Industry Marketing at Kony where he focuses on the travel and entertainment verticals. Previously, he was Senior Director, Marketing at Rearden Commerce.

Brent has an MBA from The UCLA Anderson School of Management and a B.S. in Economics from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.

 

Susan DeLaney is UPS’s Vice President of Global Customer Experience responsible for incorporating strategies, technology and processes to engage every UPSer at every level of the business with the goal of delivering an exceptional customer experience. She is a leader in developing and implementing proactive solutions to enhance the customer experience and foster loyalty across the globe. 

In her current role, DeLaney leads the way in defining and executing the company’s vision for the ideal customer experience, acting as customer advocate to infuse the customer point of view in company decision-making in every business unit and geography. Through cross-organizational coordination and measurement, she and her team are providing tailored insights throughout the company and managing the customer experience through communications and training.

With the perpetual changes in customer expectations, DeLaney and her team help identify and implement new ways to empower UPSers to deliver a consistently positive customer experience in order to differentiate our company and our services from the competition.
For most of her 22-year career with UPS, she has held customer-facing positions. She was responsible for creating and managing the first Electronic Commerce Group in charge of deploying applications worldwide on the Internet. She also formalized UPS’s Fraud Prevention Program and created and managed UPS’s first Problem Resolution group responsible for identifying and addressing customer experience issues. Additionally, DeLaney was instrumental in positioning UPS as an industry leader in the use of social media interaction with customers, empowering UPS representatives to respond positively and immediately to customer needs.

A native of Roanoke Rapids, NC, DeLaney began her UPS career in 1989 as a systems engineer working with Optical Character Recognition. She and her team went on to create UPS’s first Barcode Information Technology group where tracking was deployed for 100 percent of UPS shipments. She has held various positions of increasing responsibility in information technology, training, strategy, and customer service.
DeLaney holds a Bachelors degree from Clemson University in Computer Science, a Masters of Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence from Boston University, and a Masters of Project Management from George Washington University. DeLaney is also a graduate of Emory University Goizueta Business School's Executive Development Consortium.

DeLaney is committed to engaging all UPS employees in providing customers with the flawless service and attention to detail they expect from UPS every day.

 

Over 20 years experience leading customer service and continual process improvement initiatives. Melissa's visionary leadership, strategic action planning, implementation, and measurement have resulted in higher customer satisfaction levels for the organizations she has represented. Her executive level CS leadership roles span various industries - but all focus on customer advocacy, continuous improvement, problem identification and creative solutions.

Current role is as the Director of the National Call Center (200+ EE) for Mercury Insurance Group, and one of the leading change agents in the corporate Service Excellence Initiative. Prior, Melissa was with the WorkCard Company (VMS Software Start-Up, acquired by Adecco) for seven years and her roles ranged from Director of Integration and Product Development to Director of Training, Communications, and CS. At the WorkCard Company, Melissa created the customer service strategy and team from inception.

 

Mr. Galvin has been a leader in managing customer interactions for over 20 years and was responsible for large organizations handling billions of customer interactions during his career. Prior to joining ClickFox, he was President of J Galvin and Associates, a consulting firm focused on delivering customer service strategies and technology to improve the customer service experience, including customer segmentation, call resolution tactics, retention strategies, care desktop assessments, call automation and workforce efficiency. He was Senior Vice President of Customer Care for Dish Network, where his strategic insight improved the efficiency and effectiveness of the organization, resulting in operational and customer experience improvements. Mr. Galvin has led diverse, large scale operations to deliver sales, service and technical solutions to customers in organizations such as MCI Telecommunications. Additionally, Joe has been a key player in start-ups and industry leading Customer Care Outsourcing providers.

 

Laurie Giammona is the Regional Vice President of Customer Care for Comcast’s California Region.  In this role, Laurie is directly responsible for customer service and sales for over two and a half million video, high speed internet and telephone customers.  Laurie is also responsible for shared services for Comcast's California advanced products and e-care functions.  Prior to her current role, Laurie served as Division vice president of Customer Service in California where she was responsible for building four new call centers and migrating outsourced sales and service calls into the new centers.

Prior to AT&T Broadband's merger with Comcast, Laurie served as vice president of Customer Care for AT&T Broadband in the Bay Area.  In this position, Laurie was responsible for providing leadership to the customer care and sales organization.

Laurie has more than 20 years of experience in customer service and operations.  Prior to joining AT&T Broadband in 2001, Laurie held positions of increasing responsibility in customer service, training and development, operations and marketing for United Airlines.  Her last position with United Airlines was as director of customer service for the carrier's extensive operations at San Francisco International Airport.

 

Jorg Heinemann leads SunPower’s Customer Operations and Information Technology (IT) groups.  Customer Operations delivers world-class engineering, procurement and construction (EPC), and operations & maintenance (O&M) services to the company’s commercial and utility customers.  He also oversees the company’s shared services organization (SSO), which provides essential back office support for customers, dealers, and employees across a wide range of business processes globally.  Heinemann drives the company’s core business process excellence program which enables SunPower to serve its customers better through effective and efficient business processes and IT systems.  Prior to joining the company he served as executive partner at Accenture, a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company.  During his 20-year tenure, Heinemann was responsible for Accenture's global business relationships with Hewlett-Packard and led the Clean Tech and Sustainability Practice for Accenture's Communications and High Technology Division. He was instrumental in driving large scale change programs for prominent high-tech companies such as Apple, Autodesk, Cadence, Hitachi Data Systems, Intuit, Sun Microsystems, and Toshiba.  Heinemann successfully implemented business change initiatives that covered a wide range of solutions such as CRM, eCommerce, ERP, IT Strategy & Operations, R&D, and Customer Service. He Heinemann earned a bachelor's of science degree in electrical engineering from the University of California at Los Angeles.

 

Nichole Jordan is the Director of Contact Center Operations (CCO). In this role, she oversees five centers with the mission of creating customer satisfaction with every PG&E contact. CCO is the primary touch point for all PG&E customers, with 45% of customers reaching an agent in 2010. Her team offers 24/7 support and handles approximately 19M calls a year.

Prior to joining CCO, she served as Executive Director of Service and Sales in Areas 1 and 2. Her teams were responsible for promoting energy efficiency programs and advocating for business customers in the Bay Area. Nichole began her career with PG&E in 2002 as a Customer Services Management Trainee and has held several leadership roles in Customer Care, ISTS, and Human Resources. 

She is an active volunteer within and outside of PG&E. She serves on the advisory boards for PG&E’s Black Employees Association and Pride Network and actively volunteers with Habitat for Humanity, Sacred Heart Community Center, and the San Francisco AIDS Foundation. She also serves on the board of directors for two non-profit organizations – the Twenty Pearls Foundation and the African American Art and Culture Complex in San Francisco.

Nichole has a B.S. in Civil Engineering from U.C. Davis and an M.B.A. from the Wharton West Executive MBA program.  Her proudest accomplishments include receiving PG&E’s 2008 President’s Diversity Champion Award and launching the MBA Fellowship program at PG&E – which provides full tuition sponsorship for high potential employees.

 

As a senior product marketing manager at Aspect Software, Michael Kropidlowski contributes directly to company strategy with a view to technology, supplier partnerships and product strategy for Aspect^® Unified IP^®.

Michael is responsible for recommending new product marketing initiatives and implementing strategy that will ensure both market position and revenue remain optimal through working closely with global sales representatives and product management.

Joining Aspect Software in April 1999, Michael brought more than nine years of technical sales and training experience to the company, where he was initially the lead sales and technical channel partner trainer for the company’s contact management platform.  Michael also provided database creation consultation to the company's client base.

Before joining Aspect Software, Michael served as a technical trainer on database applications and inventory tracking systems at Follett Campus Resources.  Previously, he spent eight years with Marshall Field's as human resources trainer, regional trainer and department manager.

Kropidlowski holds a bachelor's degree in business communication from the University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee.

 

Rick has over 30 years of professional experience in Banking, Investments and Customer Engagement. Upon graduation from California State University – Long Beach, he joined Security Pacific National Bank and where he held several management positions in banking operations, consumer/commercial lending, product development and investment management. He also held similar positions at the Bank of Boston.

He move into the customer engagement arena over 10 years ago where he has led sales organizations for leading outsourcers of domestic and international customer care, technical support, sales and fundraising. Rick currently oversees the sales team for ACCENT Marketing, focusing on interacting with leading brands to design strategies which support their customer engagement needs.

 

Kathryn joined Coinstar in February 2007 as vice president, customer support. In 2009, she was promoted to her current role and oversees the entire customer support function for the company’s Coin and DVD businesses. Prior to Coinstar, Kathryn served in various leadership positions at Bank of America, including senior vice president of its customer service site in Seattle.

 

Dave Newberry is currently the head of Customer Experience Management & Strategy for The Hartford’s Enterprise Operations.    His responsibilities include Customer Experience, Learning Solutions, Quality Operations, Knowledge Management Solutions, Customer Analytics, Contact Center Tools and Coaching.  Before joining The Hartford, Dave spent 25 years with Bank of America and its various wealth management organizations.  He was part of the founding team that designed, implemented and managed a premium, centralized contact and support center for high net worth customers, bankers and brokers starting in the early 90’s.

Dave has spent the majority of his career serving the needs of financial service customers.  His career has included roles as an individual contributor as well as positions in large scale management for sales and service operations.   Although experienced with mass market sales and service, the majority of Dave’s career has been related to advising affluent clients and managing teams dedicated to serving clients’ financial needs.

Dave has maintained securities licenses as a financial relationship manager and private banking advisor. He is certified in residential, consumer and commercial lending. He is also a certified Six Sigma Black Belt and LEAN champion.  Dave earned his Bachelor’s of Science in Business Management in his home town of Phoenix, Arizona.

 

Dan Nordale, Vice President of worldwide marketing for Nuance’s Enterprise Division, is responsible for the Company's market awareness, demand generation and got-to-market activities.  Prior to joining Nuance, Dan held several executive roles in sales, business development and marketing primarily focused on the successful definition and introduction of new technologies and solutions.  Prior, Dan worked in consulting with KPMG and in large project management with Apogee Enterprises.  Dan earned an M.B.A. from the Haas School of Business at University of California Berkeley and his undergraduate business studies at University of Alaska, Fairbanks. 

 

George O’Meara’s cumulative experience spans a broad range of technologies and solution areas, including systems integration, application development, next generation call centers, billing convergence, systems management, customer relationship management, Enterprise Architecture and Centers of Excellence.  His career has been dedicated to enabling transformative solutions by creating a differentiated customer and partner experience.

George joined Cisco in 2000, leading to his role as Senior Vice President of Cisco Services.  He lead a diverse organization for US & Canada with responsibilities for all technical and professional services sales, channel partners, field marketing, sales enablement and customer support in Enterprise, Service Provider, Commercial, Public Sector and Federal segments.  His team transformed Cisco’s internal investments in people, technology and architecture into customer-facing, demand-driven solutions, adding core value to Cisco’s business. 

George was a key contributor to Cisco’s executive management leadership team.  He founded and chaired Cisco’s Customer Experience Board of Advisors, bringing together CXOs from leading private and public sector organizations to share ideas and insights. With his background in creating solutions that solve customers’ business challenges, George played an instrumental role in the development and validation of the Cisco Services portfolio.

Before George retired In June of FY11, the US & Canada Theatres accounted for $5.5 billion, more than 65% of Cisco's worldwide Services business. In a departure from business as usual, George and his team drove 87% of business through channel partners, a bold strategy that increased overall productivity and effectiveness. George is currently writing a book based on his considerable experience transforming sales teams.  The book focuses on the challenges faced today by sales leadership in the world of complex sales.

He was a member of Cisco’s Commercial Business Council and responsible for $1.8 billion in world wide services for this segment.  Additionally, George chaired Cisco Services’ Global Sales and Partner Board, as well as the WW Services Board for Commercial and Small business.

George served as executive sponsor of Cisco Services’ global inclusion and diversity efforts for over 11,000 employees.  In this role, he was an advocate for attracting, developing and retaining a talented workforce, leveraging a variety of experiences and backgrounds for maximum innovation, productivity, and growth.

Originally from Chicago, George spent several years in Detroit, Michigan, where he consulted for the domestic and import automotive industry in many different high-technology areas and customer experience. Before joining Cisco in 2000, George served as Vice President of Amdahl Corporation’s worldwide Enterprise Integration consulting practice in the development and delivery of customer solutions.

George holds a B.S. degree in marketing and economics from Northern Illinois University, where he played middle linebacker in Division 1 football.  Married, with a daughter and two sons, he enjoys golf, cooking, wine and family activities. 

 

Adam Pressman is a Principal with the Consulting Firm  A.T. Kearney. Based in Chicago, he is a member of the global Retail Industry practice and is one of the leaders of the Firm’s Strategic Information Technology Practice.  He has more than 10 years of experience in consulting and industry with retailers and consumer products companies. 

Mr. Pressman has worked with retailers and consumer goods companies on a variety of issues on the executive agenda, ranging from strategy, organizational transformation, store operations, contact center strategy and customer experience,  Customer care has been the focus of many engagements from contact center effectiveness, contact center technologies and contact center set up, launch and ramp up.

Mr. Pressman received an MBA from the University of Chicago and a Bachelors degree from Washington University in St. Louis.

 

Mark Selcow is President and co-founder of Merced Systems. Previously, Selcow was President of Consumer Health Interactive, a software company focused on the health insurance industry, and co-founded BabyCenter, serving as the company's President.

Selcow held previous positions at Amgen and at the Boston Consulting Group. He holds an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a B.A. from Brown University. Selcow is a National Trustee and Board Member of the March of Dimes Foundation.

 

Ed Shepherdson serves as Coveo's Senior Vice President of Enterprise Solutions. Mr. Shepherdson brings 30 years of experience in the technology industry to his role with Coveo. Prior to joining Coveo, he spent 18 years at Cognos, now an IBM company, where he most recently served as Vice President of Global Customer Support. While at Cognos, Mr. Shepherdson also held a variety of senior positions in the company’s Research and Development and Applications Development teams. Mr. Shepherdson has also served as an Advisory Board member in several industry associations, including the Technology Services Industry Association (TSIA).  Mr. Shepherdson holds a Masters Degree in Organizational Leadership and completed the Ivey Executive Program at the Richard Ivey School of Business at Western University.