Seri Nabeshima

Chief Global Officer

CDO Club Japan

Board of Directors, Chief Global Officer, Association of CDO Club Japan
Graduate BA Law from Aoyama Gakuin University, Postgraduate in Geopolitics and Energy Policy from University College London in 2016. Joined Digital and Disruptive Technology Unit, PwC Japan Consulting Company after doing Global Research on smart cities and technologies in the electricity industry at the International Affairs Office, Tokyo Electric Power Company. Founder of the think tank Nabeshima Strategy Institute. As a Chief Global Officer at the Association of CDO Club Japan, interviews Chief Digital/Data Officers, researches global emerging technology and reports this information in various media such as article columns, keynote speeches and TV. Also make a specially to cyber security and interested in accelerating digital government to create innovation in Japan and world.

Kendra Bracken-Ferguson

Founder and CEO

BrainTrust

For almost two decades, Kendra Bracken-Ferguson has helped define and navigate the digital space as a creative force for brands and influencers, becoming a recognized and sought after innovative leader, visionary and transformative brand builder.

Most recently Kendra was the Chief Digital Officer of CAA-GBG, the largest brand management agency in the world with 24 offices in over 20 countries. 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”) in 2017. In April of 2019, Kendra bought back BrainTrust and the agency is now independent refocused on Brand Strategy and Social Media for brands, institutions and tastemakers.

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. DBA grew quickly from an idea at a kitchen table into the go-to firm for influencer management and was recently acquired by United Talent Agency (UTA).

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, Cayton 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 Influencer Marketing Association.

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.

Fred Santarpia

Former Chief Digital Officer

Condé Nast

Fred Santarpia was named chief digital officer of Condé Nast in October 2014, and was responsible for building and executing the company’s digital strategy to drive growth across its portfolio of brands, redefine its product and marketing offerings, and deepen its relationship with consumers across all platforms.

In this role, Santarpia dramatically reshaped the digital capabilities of Conde Nast, redefining the way the 100 year old media company operates in a multi-platform world. Under his leadership, each brand repositioned to dynamically respond to changes in consumer expectations leading to explosive growth in both digital audience and revenue, more than doubling the size of the digital business of the company over his tenure.

Santarpia led Condé Nast to launch new partnerships extending the Conde Nast brands to new platforms and entertainment mediums while at the same time diversifying into new revenue streams in paid content, commerce, and data services. He also led the company’s acquisitions of the popular music editorial property, Pitchfork, the London-based editorial tech company, Poetica, the business editorial property, Backchannel, social data and marketing company, Citizen Net, and the launch of the company’s digital innovation center in Austin, Texas.

Santarpia also rebuilt the infrastructure of Conde Nast, overseeing the development and rollout of Copilot, Conde Nast’s proprietary content platform, unifying the company on a single platform for the first time in its history, which is now rolling out globally. He has overseen the development and launch of Conde Nast Spire, the company’s first ever proprietary data platform, which integrates online behavioral patterns with offline purchase activity to create predictive models for real-time decisioning, and has modernized and streamlined the sales infrastructure of the company, implementing new yield management systems and programmatic
capabilities.

Previously, Santarpia served as executive vice president and chief digital officer of Condé Nast Entertainment (CNÉ), where he created and executed the vision and business strategy that brought Conde Nast’s iconic brands into the digital video space. Under his leadership, the company launched and scaled 15 fully distributed digital video and OTT channels from Condé Nast’s iconic portfolio of brands, building a subscriber base of millions and making digital video a core discipline that is now as endemic to the company as print.

Prior to joining CNÉ, Santarpia was EVP & general manager of VEVO, where he was part of the company’s founding leadership team and served as head of all business operations responsible for Audience Development, Product Development, Social Media and Marketing strategy, Business Development and VEVO’s Original Content and Programming teams. Under his leadership, VEVO successfully launched a new $100M+ revenue business for the record industry, began its global expansion into the UK and Europe, built major editorial tent poles and artist discovery programs which continue to this day, and was consistently ranked the #1 video network on YouTube in terms of unique viewership. Before VEVO, Santarpia worked for Universal Music Group, where he held a variety of senior level positions during his tenure with the company, most recently as vice president, operations and finance at Global Digital Initiatives/elabs, eventually overseeing the operations of UMG’s 300 artist and label websites, and building the first ever digital ad supported revenue stream for the company.

Santarpia began his career in the media assurance practice at Arthur Andersen. He holds his CPA in the state of the New York. He is a graduate of Villanova University, where he volunteers with their Innovation, Creativity and Entrepreneurship Institute and holds an M.S. in finance from Boston University.

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.

Ritesh Patel

Chief Digital Officer - Health & Wellness

Ogilvy

Ritesh bills himself as a digital and social evangelist, and he has been evangelizing digital since the early days of the dot com boom in the late 1990’s. As a young man, he joined Agency.com and quickly began to consult with major fortune 500 companies to evangelize the merits of the World Wide Web.

Along the way, he has worked for the likes of Havas, Cushman & Wakefield and began a deep dive into the healthcare arena in 2009 when he joined Inventiv Health as Head of Digital & innovation.

He joined Ogilvy in 2014, as the Chief Digital Officer for Ogilvy CommonHealth, the specialist health care agency within the Ogilvy Group. There he worked with the digital team at OCHWW and supported and led the creation of the OCHWW Innovation Lab. The Lab has been responsible for showcasing the art of the possible. Voice-activated systems like Alexa and Google Home, connected homes, wearables, chatbots and AI and how these tools and technologies will continue to impact healthcare in the not-too-distant future.

Now working for the recently re-branded Ogilvy, in the Health & Wellness practice of Ogilvy Consulting, he advises major clients on digital transformation and innovation. He is an outspoken digital evangelist who has lent his expert POV in a variety of forums over his 19+ year career. He is passionate about educating his peers and his clients about what the future of digital looks like for health & wellness.

Michael Donnelly

Former SVP, 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 🙂

Sanjeev Addala

SVP, Chief Information & Digital Officer

AES Corp.

Sanjeev Addala, is a Senior Vice President & Chief Information and Digital officer at AES Corp. Prior to joining AES, Mr. Addala was a Chief Digital Officer at GE from 2016 to 2018, Chief Digital Officer at Caterpillar from 2013 to 2015, and Chief Information Officer, Americas, Climate Control Technologies at Ingersoll-Rand from 2008-2013. He also previously held business and technology leadership roles at General Motors from 1994-2008. He served on Energize Ventures and currently serves on Simple Energy , and AppLariat Boards. Mr. Addala is a member of the board of AES Distributed Energy, and sits on AES’ Technology & Innovation committees. Mr. Addala holds a Master of Science degree in Mechanical Engineering and a Master of Business Administration degree from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University. Mr. Addala has also completed an Executive Leadership program at Duke University.

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

Adjunct Professor

Columbia University Business School

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.

Lisa Schneider

Chief Digital Officer & Publisher

Merriam-Webster Inc.

Lisa Schneider is Chief Digital Officer & Publisher at Merriam-Webster, where she leads digital strategy and execution across content and product development, user experience, and technology. She has redefined the dictionary for the digital age through a combination of technology upgrades and content/social strategy, changing people’s perception of the brand from a “dusty book on the shelf” to a timely, relevant resource and commentary users turn to every day. Under her leadership, Merriam-Webster has won numerous awards, and she was recently featured on the AdAge Creativity 50 and the Folio: Top Women in Media lists.

Previously, Lisa held executive roles in digital strategy and product development at Penton, Budget Travel, Reader’s Digest, and Bridal Guide.

Janice Ellig

Chief Executive Officer

Ellig Group

As the head of the Ellig Group, Janice is dedicated to increasing the placement of women and diverse candidates on corporate boards and in C-suites by 2025. Heralded by Bloomberg Businessweek as one of “The World’s Most Influential Headhunters,” Janice is often consulted for her expertise and her commitment to gender parity, inclusion, and diversity. She frequently appears at speaking engagements and as a media guest and has penned multiple articles for outlets such as Directors & Boards, Directorship, Corporate Director, The Huffington Post, and Forbes.com. Janice is Founder of the Women’s Forum of New York’s Corporate Board Initiative and its signature event, Breakfast of Corporate Champions. Since 2011, Janice continues to spearhead this event to honor companies committed to board diversity and to encourage CEOs to sponsor board-ready women for the Women’s Forum database.

Joyanta Majee

VP & Head of the Data & Analytics Practice

Orion

Joyanta Majee is the Vice President & Head of the Data & Analytics Practice at Orion. He has over two decades of multi-faceted global experience spanning management consulting, advanced analytics and digital solutions, across a broad spectrum of industry verticals including Consumer Goods, Retail, Banking & Financial Services, Hi-Tech, Healthcare and Travel/Transportation. He is passionate about working with data and leveraging advanced analytics tools and frameworks to address critical business challenges for his clients. Prior to joining Orion, Joyanta held senior positions at several marquee organizations including VP & Head of Knowledge Process Operations at Accenture, VP & Global Head of Account Management at Datamatics, and Americas Sales Head at TCG Digital. In his most recent assignment, he was SVP & Head of the Analytics Practice at a Bay Area based AI & Data Science products and solutions company. Joyanta started off his career in Management and Strategic Consulting working at Pricewaterhouse Coopers.
Joyanta is a B.Tech. from the Indian Institute of Technology, and MBA from the Indian Institute of Management.
In his current role at Orion, Joyanta is responsible for driving the Go-to-Market strategy and growth of the Data & Analytics Practice and socializing new ideas and innovative analytics solutions with its clients.

Linda Avery

Chief Data Officer

Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Linda Avery is the New York Federal Reserve Bank’s first Chief Data Officer. Over the past five years, Linda has shaped the Bank’s data strategy, standing up a new organization that, through strong business connectivity, has driven change in the Bank’s data management practices and has cultivated capabilities in the areas of AI, data visualization, and product strategy. Linda’s SVP role also encompasses the leadership and transformation of a large data collection, data quality and analysis organization.

Linda was previously a Managing Director at Goldman Sachs, where her career spanned twenty years. At Goldman, she held a diverse set of leadership roles driving innovation across the Trading, Investment Banking, and Operations, Technology, and Finance Divisions. Linda also played an important financial industry leadership role, working closely with the global regulatory community as co-chair of the LEI Trade Association, to drive towards the establishment of a globally accepted, federated Legal Entity Identification system as a foundational component in managing risk within the financial system. Across her career at Goldman, she was asked to play a lead role in the start-up of a number of new companies as joint ventures.

Linda graduated with a degree in English Literature from Bucknell University. She developed a passion for technology and data shortly thereafter. She has worked as a technologist in companies both large and small, well-established and just starting, and came to realize early in her career that the difference between failure and success can come down to how you manage the data.

Janko Bazhdavela

VP of Product & Engineering

The Corcoran Group

Janko is VP of Product & Engineering at The Corcoran Group, a premier real estate brokerage, where he leads the global Product Management, Product Design, and Engineering teams. He is responsible for the product vision, strategy, as well as the execution for all digital products: public websites, agent platform, and data & analytics.

Before Corcoran, Janko was Director of Product for Enterprise Platform at Olapic (a visual marketing platform) and had various product roles at Amplify Education (K-12 education technology company) and at Thomson Reuters (the world’s leading provider of news and information). Before that, he was leading engineering teams at Seavus (a global software consulting company).

Janko brings over 14 years of experience in building digital products (B2B and B2C) in consulting, finance, education technology, marketing, and real estate.

Emi Horcada

Global Head of Design and
Digital Transformation Partner

Globant

Emiliano is currently the Global Head of Design and Digital Transformation Partner at Globant, where he leads the company’s consulting practice. Emi’s extensive background in experience design is rooted in a human-centric methodology that combines behavior and technology together to power sustainable digital transformation programs for today’s leading organizations.

Lili Gil Valletta

CEO and Co-founder

CulturIntel and CIEN+

Lili is a recognized cultural intelligence™ expert, World Economic Forum Young Global Leader and an award-winning entrepreneur. She came to the U.S. at the age of 17 without speaking English, leaving her entire family behind in Colombia, and managed to become a recognized corporate executive turned entrepreneur. After a successful corporate career including a 10-year tenure at Johnson & Johnson, where she pioneered various diversity strategies and co-founded the Hispanic business resource group “HOLA”, Lili co-founded CIEN+ and CulturIntel. Her firm, based in New York City with offices throughout the U.S. and Latin America, offers big-data analytics, business consulting and marketing strategies for companies to successfully turn cultural trends into innovation and profits. Her proprietary methodologies of Cultural Intelligence™ and ability to use big data, machine learning and A.I. tools to discover cultural insights globally, have been presented and featured by The United Nations, The World Economic Forum, Harvard University, among others.

She is a regular TV commentator seen on Fox News, Fox Business and CNN en Español, and has been featured by Forbes, CNN Money, The Huffington Post, The NY Daily News, MM&M, among others. She is also the recipient of many recognitions including being selected as the 2018 Hispanic Businessperson of the Year by the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, Listed in the 2018 Power Women 100 as one of the most powerful women in New York, 2018 Women of Excellence Award, Top 50 Healthcare Influencers by PRWeek, among others. Lili is an advocate to minority and women-owned businesses contributing to initiatives at The United Nations, The World Economic Forum, The White House and around the world. Lili serves as a board member of the Harvard Women’s Leadership Board, National Board of Directors of the YMCA USA and mentor to the Stanford Latino Entrepreneur Leaders Program. In 2017 she was appointed by Governor Cuomo to join the New York State Council on Women and Girls and Mayor Bill de Blasio to join the NYCx Technology Leadership Council. Lili is also the creator of the entrepreneurship platform Dreamers Ventures designed to empower minorities and women in the U.S. and Latin America. She holds a degree in Business Administration from Southwestern Adventist University, completed foreign studies at Deakin University in Melbourne, Australia and holds an M.B.A. from the University of Colorado and an executive degree from the Harvard Kennedy School in Global Leadership and Public Policy. She lives in New York with her husband Chris Valletta and her two sons.

John Minardi

Senior Director, Digital Healthcare &
Connected Commerce Technology Services

Johnson & Johnson

John Minardi is a Senior Director Healthcare and Connected Commerce Technology Services with a true passion for delivering creative IT solutions that serve as foundation for technology advancements and innovation in the healthcare and retail industries. With over 27 years of IT leadership experience, John seamlessly applies his keep strategic vision and extensive business acumen to drive operational excellence, while ensuring alignment with organizational needs. Through collaboration and leadership, John has successfully engineered core transactional websites, Retail/Omni-channel applications, as well as mobile/tablet innovations that win and retain customers within a rapidly changing landscape.

Specializing in digital technologies and the Omni-channel experience, John uses his extensive industry knowledge to master complex data. Most recently, John leads an organization whose goal is to generate technical solutions that drive an optimal user experiences across multiple lines of business within Johnson & Johnson.

John’s primary interests include collaborating with business and IT partners to influence new and innovative solutions, providing consultative support to all levels of the organization on IT-related activities, and identifying areas where business process improvements can be made to increase overall efficiencies for the organization.

John holds a BS in Computer Science from William Paterson University of New Jersey and enjoys spending time with his family in New Jersey.

Karl Hightower

SVP - Chief Data Officer

Novant Health

Karl Hightower is an innovative technology executive with a focus on differentiation through data access
and cognitive computing.

Karl joined Novant Health in 2018 as Chief Data Officer. In this role, he works with leaders from across
the system to provide the digital products and services required to deliver remarkable care to the patients
and communities we serve.

Karl has held executive roles in large retail and energy trading companies, and has held pivotal roles in
telecommunications, manufacturing, supply chain, insurance, government, banking and finance, and food
and beverage. In these roles, Karl set strategic direction and created alignment to direct structures during
the pivot years of these industries, devised and led game-changing initiatives, increased revenue by
millions – and in one case billions – of dollars, became an early champion and expert in cloud adoption,
personalization through social media data, real-time pricing structures, and extreme automation through
machine learning and AI-based algorithms.

Karl has an undergraduate degree from University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in Political Science,
and was in the first class to go through Carnegie Mellon’s prestigious ISRI Enterprise Architecture and
Strategy program.

Karl is the son of two college professors, and is from a long line of educators. This upbringing instilled a
continuous thirst for learning and creating opportunities for others to learn. While in Dallas, Karl helped to
found and build the STEAM education program for the district. The program included one entirely Spanish
immersive middle school as well as associate degree paths in the high schools. Karl was heavily involved
in the Texas Amateur Golf Association as well as the Dallas LPGA events. In Charlotte, Karl has joined
the District Advisory Board for Career and Technical Education (CTE) for the Charlotte Mecklenburg
School district.

Karl lives south of Charlotte with his wife, Mary Ann, his daughter Kayla and son Aidan, and four dogs.

Julia Bardmesser

SVP, Head of Data, Architecture and Analytics

Voya Financial

Julia Bardmesser is a Senior Vice President, Head of Data, Architecture and Analytics at Voya. In her role Julia is leading the transformation of Voya’s enterprise data, architecture and analytics to increase agility and speed to market by eliminating redundant data silos and consolidating data processes; to deliver key insights from proprietary data; and to reduce costs through re-use and infrastructure simplification.

Prior to joining Voya Julia was a Global Head of Data Integration at Deutsche Bank, where she led the implementation of global metadata management platform that enabled data lineage and robust front to back data quality measurement.

Julia has over twenty years of experience in data management, data governance, data architecture and cross-platform solution delivery in the financial industry. She also worked at Citi, FINRA, Freddie Mac, Thomson Financial Services, Bear Stearns and Bloomberg L.P.

Julia has a Master of Arts degree in Economics from the New York University.

Jeff Sporn

Chief Digital Officer,
Data-driven Marketing

Equifax

Jeff Sporn guides the Digital vision and strategy for Data-driven Marketing services from Equifax, overseeing the development and proliferation of digital solutions. He has led the development of a best-in-class database that integrates Equifax marketing data into the digital ecosystem for use in optimizing display advertising targeting. Before transitioning to Equifax’s digital business, Jeff led product management efforts for consumer markets within the IXI Services division of Equifax. He developed marketing solutions to serve industries including travel, retail, telecommunications and automotive. Prior to joining IXI Services, Jeff was Executive Director of Marketing at Verizon where he led the Marketing Analysis / Closed Loop Marketing team. He also previously worked at MCI as Director, eventually leading Product Marketing and Strategy for the Mass Markets business. Jeff holds an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University’s Tepper School of Business and a B.A. in Economics from Wesleyan University.

Atif Rafiq

President of Commercial and Growth
MGM Resorts International

(former CDO, Volvo Cars)

Atif was the first chief digital officer in the Fortune 100.

He possesses significant experience with culture change, organizing a company around customers, recruitment of new tech-savvy talent, and business model evolution. His most recent roles have included CDO & Global CIO of Volvo Cars and Global CDO of McDonald’s.

Atif has been at the center of Internet and digital disruption for over 20 years, building on 15 years experience in pure play tech companies such as Amazon, Yahoo! and AOL during their primes. Atif has also been the Founder / CEO of a Silicon Valley start-up.

Atif has been on all sides of industry disruption from the garage to the C-suite.

He’s both disrupted as a new technology entrant into various spaces, and helped reposition large incumbent companies for the next generation of customers. He provides strong vision for new consumer experiences / products with relentless customer focus and high business discipline around execution.

In May, he will start at President, Commercial & Growth for MGM Resorts, a Fortune 300 company in the hospitality / entertainment sector. This is a newly created role with significant ownership for the company’s P&L, growth plans, strategy and customer offering.

Destry Sulkes, MD, MBA

Chief Experience Officer

Wunderman Thompson Health

Destry Sulkes, MD, is Chief Experience Officer at WPP’s Wunderman Thompson Health, where he leads efforts to uncover human truths around health, then delivering the best experiences. The backbone of this model includes 360 degree views of clinicians and patients as ‘people’, not just healthcare participants. He helped design and now stewards the health intelligence engine which is grounded in behavioral economic principles. The engine provides continuous guidance on holistic creative and media strategies that humanize and personalize customer engagements with client brands.

Prior to WPP, Dr. Sulkes built long-term value in a series of start-ups serving life science companies that invest in innovative uses of data, analytics and communications to improve healthcare quality. With an undergraduate degree from Dartmouth, and a joint MD/MBA degree from Tufts, he helped Zeiss launch the OCT device globally, led two medical communication groups through rapid growth and acquisition, guided strategy for WebMD/Medscape, and co-founded a healthcare analytics company, Prognos.ai. In a voluntary capacity, he also serves as Past President of the Board of Directors at the Alliance for Continuing Education in the Healthcare Professions.

Marc Blaskey

SVP Account

Wunderman Thompson

Marc Blaskey is the Senior Vice President Account at Wunderman Thompson

With more than 16 years of experience in consumer technology and integrated digital marketing across Europe, China and America, Marc has built and led agency teams to design and deliver world-class digital customer experiences for brands such as: Apple, Dyson and Land Rover.

Marc also loves to bake and play the drums. Rarely together.

Mike Edmonds

Managing Director, VP Product

Moonshot by Pactera Digital

Mike is the Managing Director and VP of Product at Moonshot by Pactera, a digital product studio based in Chicago. Mike leads a team of product managers, experience designers, empathy researchers, and software engineers helping brands use design thinking and lean innovation to discover, design, and scale lovable products based on emerging technologies. Mike is also an Adjunct Professor of Digital Product Management at Northwestern’s Segal Design Institute and DePaul’s School of Computing and Digital Media.