Kendra Bracken-Ferguson

Chief Digital Officer of CAA-GBG

Founder of BrainTrust

For almost two decades, Kendra Bracken-Ferguson has helped to define and navigate the digital space as a creative force for brands and influencers, becoming a recognized and sought-after business innovator and global digital architect.

Now the Chief Digital Officer of CAA-GBG, the largest brand management agency in the world with 24 offices in over 20 countries, Kendra leads a global team of digital marketing experts and social media natives. The BrainTrust, the social media agency that Kendra founded in 2016, joined CAA-GBG which is a joint venture between Global Brands Group Holding Limited (“Global Brands”), and Creative Artists Agency (“CAA”).

Prior to BrainTrust gaining notoriety and success, Kendra saw an opening in the market for digital, social and influencer marketing, and she co-founded Digital Brand Architects. Now in its sixth year, DBA grew quickly from an idea at a kitchen table into the go-to firm for influencer management.

Before launching DBA, Kendra created the social media footprint for fashion behemoth, Ralph Lauren, where she was the company’s first Director of Digital Media. Kendra’s work during and since her time at Ralph Lauren was informed by her years as Vice President, Digital at Fleishman-Hillard, New York, where she led the digital consumer team in developing social media strategies for clients including AT&T, DKNY, and P&G. A compelling and charismatic keynote speaker and industry leader, Kendra has been awarded the Emerging Voice Award by her alma mater Purdue University, named one of the “Most Influential African American Women” by Essence Magazine, Zimmer Children’s Museum board member and noted by Mobile Marketer as a “Mobile Women to Watch” amongst other industry accolades. Kendra is also on the Forbes Agency Council and serves on the Advisory Board of Starco Brands (OTC:STCBD).

Working ahead of trends and predicting opportunities, Carpe diem is not just a saying to Kendra – it is a way of life.

Andrew Fitzgerald

Chief Digital Content Officer

Hearst TV

Andrew Fitzgerald is the Chief Digital Content Officer for Hearst Television, responsible for digital content across Hearst’s 26 local markets and national brands like Stitch. Prior to Hearst, Fitzgerald led Twitter’s global Curation team, responsible for editorial decision-making in Twitter Moments across five languages and fourteen markets and also worked with news organizations, journalists, and authors on Twitter’s Media Partnerships team. Before Twitter, he worked as a journalist focused on citizen journalism and social media story-telling at Al Jazeera English, Current TV, and elsewhere.

Subha Madhavan, PhD, FACMI

Chief Data Scientist

Georgetown University Medical Center

Dr. Subha Madhavan is the Chief Data Scientist at the Georgetown University Medical Center and Director of the Innovation Center for Biomedical Informatics (ICBI) and Associate Professor of Oncology. She is a world-class leader in data science, clinical informatics and health IT who is responsible for several biomedical informatics efforts including the software development of Georgetown Database of Cancer (G-DOC) a resource for both researchers and clinicians to realize the goals of personalized medicine and co-directs Lombardi Cancer Center’s Biostatistics and Bioinformatics shared resource.

In her role as the CTSA biomedical informatics director, she has enabled access to over 2.5 million patient records from 10 MedStar Health hospitals to translational researchers. She was the PI on the Breast and Colon Cancer Family Registries data center that coordinates public health and epidemiology data across 12 sites in the US, Australia, and Canada. More recently, she has partnered with the FDA on the Center for Excellence in Regulatory Science program to develop evidence bases for pharmacogenomics and vaccine safety. She collaborated with the Inova translational medicine institute to help manage 1000’s of patient genomes on the Amazon cloud to facilitate large-scale statistical analysis and genotype-phenotype association testing. She has contributed to novel information sciences findings in research articles published in journals such as Nature, Bioinformatics, Molecular and Cell Biology (MCB), AJPM, Frontiers in Oncology, Bioinformatics, Cancer Informatics, and Molecular Cancer Research (MCR).

Prior to joining Georgetown, Dr. Madhavan served as the Associate Director of Product and Program Management in the Life sciences informatics area at NCI’s Center for Biomedical Informatics and Information technology. At NCI she led a group of scientists, physicians and software engineers in building REMBRANDT (REpository for MolecularBRAin Neoplasia DaTa) – a data platform that hosts and interconnects clinical data points with various genomics datasets from large brain tumor clinical trials. This effort won the Service to America Award. While at NCI she also established the data coordination center for The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA), managing genomic data of approximately 100 TB over a period of 3 years.

Dr. Madhavan has a Master’s degree in Information Technology from University of Maryland and a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Biological Sciences from the Uniformed Services University for the Health Sciences through a highly ranked Indo-US Collaborative program.

Joe DeCosmo

Chief Analytics Officer

Enova International

Joe joined Enova as Chief Analytics Officer in 2014. As CAO, Joe leads a multi-disciplinary analytics team that provides end-to-end data and analytic services including data warehousing, business intelligence, business analytics, fraud, credit risk and marketing. His team supports the global online financial services offered to consumers and small businesses by Enova International and also delivers on-demand decision-making technology and real-time predictive analytics services to clients through the Enova Decisions® brand.

Prior to working at Enova, he served as Director and Practice Leader of Advanced Analytics for Chicago-based West Monroe Partners. He has also held a number of executive positions at HAVI Global Solutions and The Allant Group. Joe received a B.A. in economics from Lewis University and an M.A. in economics from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He is Past President and a current Director of the Chicago Chapter of the American Statistical Association and is on the Advisory Board of the UIC College of Business Administration. Joe lives in the Chicago area with his wife and daughters.

Alejandro Scannapieco

EVP & General Manager

Globant's US East Region

Alejandro Scannapieco is EVP & General Manager of Globant’s US East Region, responsible for Globant’s business operations and strategic growth in the region. Before this, he was the Chief Financial Officer of Globant. As such, he successfully led the Company to its IPO in July 2014, making Globant the first IT services company from Latin America to be listed on the NYSE.

Prior to joining Globant in 2008, Alejandro previously served as Chief Financial Officer at Microsoft South Cone and Patagon South America, as well as Senior Finance Analyst at JP Morgan. Alejandro has a post-graduate degree in capital markets, a degree in public accounting and a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the Pontificia Universidad Católica Argentina. He has also completed a post-graduate degree in finance from Torcuato Di Tella University.

Michael Donnelly

Former - Senior Vice President, Digital Experiences Group

Mastercard

Michael is a data driven, technology focused, digital transformation executive and has most recently been focused on the development and delivery of exceptional customer experiences that fuel growth, create differentiating competitive advantage and make doing business with Mastercard a seamless and more Priceless experience.

Honored to be listed #5 on the 2017 Top 50 CDO Influencers List, an AdAge “Media Maven”, a MediaPost “Online All-Star” & to be inducted into “Marketer & Media Legends & Leaders”, programs under his supervision have won several awards at Cannes, “Best in Show” at OMMA, (2) Emmy nominations and others from the Clios, Effies, IAB, Webby, Festival of Media, Midas, Shorty, AdWeek, Mashable and more.

He was with The Coca-Cola Company for 6 years where he created their “Fans First” Digital Business Strategy and led the team responsible for the largest brand page on Facebook and the #1 food/beverage brand on Twitter and You Tube and was with Johnson & Johnson for 9 years where he created their first Interactive Marketing Center of Excellence focused on developing an incoming pipeline of emerging media opportunities and on creating a community for marketers to test, learn and share experiences.

He is married and has four incredible digitally savvy children to share with adn learn about new technologies together in the Donnelly Family Digital Lab 🙂

Satyam Priyadarshy, MBA, Ph.D

Technology Fellow & Chief Data Scientist

Halliburton

Dr. Satyam Priyadarshy is a pioneer in the fields of data science, big data, analytics, and emerging technologies. Dr. Priyadarshy is the first Chief Data Scientist of Oil and Gas Industry. He is a Technology Fellow and Chief Data Scientist with Halliburton. In 2018, Corinium Intelligence listed Dr. Priyadarshy as one of the top innovators for Data and Analytics. Also, in 2018 The DEW Journal, a flagship journal of Energy sector, refers to Dr. Priyadarshy as the Guru of AI, Data and Analytics. In September 2016, Smart Industry (www.smartindustry.com) named Dr. Priyadarshy as one of key innovators on the leading edge of digital transformation.

Dr. Priyadarshy is a globally recognized leader with a breadth of scientific knowledge, in-depth technology experience, and extensive business acumen. He holds various academic positions at Oklahoma State University, George Mason University. Dr. Priyadarshy has appeared as keynote speaker at several international conferences and has written, co-authored, presented and published numerous research papers in peer-reviewed journals and magazines.

He has held various leadership positions in AOL, Network Solutions, Acxiom Corporation before joining Halliburton. He has co-founded few startups in DC and Silicon Valley and is an advisory board member of few startups in Healthcare, Retail, Finance and Analytics domain. Agenda Week of The Financial Times listed Dr. Priyadarshy as one of the potential board candidates with emerging technology and analytics expertise. His profile has appeared in many magazines including Chemical and Engineering News, The Scientist, Silicon India, Oil Review Middle East, Petroleum Review, RigZone among others. He has published over 35 papers and articles including an expert opinion in magazines like Science. Dr. Priyadarshy obtained his Ph.D. from IIT Bombay and MBA from The Pamplin School of Business, Virginia Tech.

Asha Saxena

Big Data Expert for Innovation and Growth, Tech Entrepreneur, Columbia University Professor, and Podcast Host

Asha Saxena is a strategic, innovative leader with a proven track record of building successful businesses for last 25 years. With a strong academic background, creative problem-solving skills, and an effective management style, Saxena has been instrumental in building business models for success.

Mrs. Saxena is an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, where she teaches graduate class on Healthcare Consulting, Entrepreneurship and Big Data Analytics. She has served four-year term as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Columbia Business School.

Published Author and Columnist at Entrepreneur Magazine, Asha Saxena is a well know key-note speaker on Entrepreneurship, Leadership, Women in Technology, Artificial Intelligence and Big Data and is a Board of Director for several for-profit companies. She served as CEO of ACULYST Corp. Healthcare Data Analytics Firm, built an eCommerce Company and served as a CEO of Future Technologies Inc., an international data management solutions firm for twenty years.

Saxena has her Masters in Science in Data Science and Machine Learning from Southern Methodist University, Texas and her undergraduate degree as a computer science engineer from Bangalore University in India and attended management programs at MIT and London Business School. In the area of operational excellence, Saxena is certified as a Six Sigma Black Belt professional. She started her professional career in a New York-based IT firm and has enjoyed challenging, diverse assignments in the financial services industry.

Saxena was invited to be a part of the World Economic Forum where Future Technologies Inc. was named “Global Growth Company 2007.” Her entrepreneurial spirit has also enabled her to gain notable success as a restaurateur, real-estate developer, and movie studio producer.

In addition to her entrepreneurial and educational success, Saxena has been an instrumental leader in the community by developing long-lasting relationships with numerous organizations (both profit and not-for-profit) through memberships, affiliations, and mentorships and has received awards for her personal and professional contributions.