Janine Davidson, Ph.D., is the president of Metropolitan State University of Denver, the state’s third-largest public university, serving more than 20,000 students in high-quality, career-oriented undergraduate and graduate academic programs. As president, she has listed her top three priorities as 1) students, 2) students, and 3) students, and has become known on campus for her relatable personality. She’s one of few university presidents who is as comfortable in board meetings as she is playing ping pong with undergraduates. Prior to joining the University, Davidson served as the 32nd undersecretary of the United States Navy, where she managed all Department of the Navy affairs including acquisition, finance, personnel, legislative affairs, research and development, and was responsible for the health and well-being of nearly 900,000 sailors, marines, civilians, and their families.
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• The unique challenges facing leaders in higher education.
• Her commitment to meeting a market need in higher education.
• How she put in place a student-focused infrastructure.
• Her approach to “inclusive leadership.”
• How leadership at a university is a hybrid between “being a mayor and being a CEO.”
TO LEARN MORE ABOUT METROPOLITAN STATE UNIVERSITY OF DENVERCLICK HERE.
Rob Shallenberger, CEO of Becoming Your Best Global Leadership, is one of the world’s leading authorities on leadership and execution. He has trained and coached hundreds of companies around the world, including many Fortune 500 organizations. He served as an F-16 fighter pilot in the Air Force for 11 years and was an Advance Agent for Air Force One. He is co-author, along with his father, of The Transformation Challenge, and works with clients to help them discover how to make communication easier and clearer, live in greater peace and balance, manage time effectively, more persuasively lead others with an inspiring vision, and to embrace change—not fear it.
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TO LEARN MORE ABOUT BECOMING YOUR BEST GLOBAL LEADERSHIP CLICK HERE.
Rick Miller is an unconventional turnaround specialist, sought-after speaker, servant leader, and an expert in driving sustainable growth. For over 30 years he served as a successful senior executive in roles including president and CEO in Fortune 10, Fortune 30, nonprofit, and startup companies, including AT&T Global Services and Lucent Technologies. Throughout his career, he has been recruited from the outside to turn around poor performance in difficult times. His new book, Be Chief: It's a Choice, Not a Title, helps leaders at all levels achieve their true potential.
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TO FIND RICK MILLER ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.
Nag-Bushan Odekar, vice president and head of marketing/individual markets for Great-West Financial, is a marketing executive with superior analytical/problem-solving skills, creativity, strategic agility, and entrepreneurial drive. He began his financial services career at Fidelity Investments in 1999. Nag also has prior experience as the co-founder and CMO at ForeverCar.com, an online retailer that enables consumers to purchase and finance automobile warranties. Prior to ForeverCar, Nag was vice president of consumer marketing at Aviva (now Athene), a leader in indexed life and annuities, where he led the company’s innovation pipeline and brand strategy.
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AJ Wilcox is a long-time digital marketer who fell in love with the LinkedIn Ads platform back in 2011. Since then, he's scaled and managed among the world's most sophisticated accounts worldwide. In 2014, he founded B2Linked.com which specializes in LinkedIn Ads training, consulting, and account management. He is globally recognized as one of the top LinkedIn Ads experts, and he speaks with, trains, presents, and manages advertising campaigns for executives and teams around the world. To date, he and his team have managed >200 LinkedIn Ads accounts, spent a cumulative $110M+ on the platform, and have managed four of LinkedIn's top 10 accounts.
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TO LEARN MORE ABOUT B2LINKED.COM, CLICK HERE.
TO FIND AJ WILCOX ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.
Jeffrey Shaw is the author of LINGO: Discover Your Ideal Customer's Secret Language and Make Your Business Irresistible. Jeffrey helps his clients understand the "lingo" of their ideal customers they want to reach and the audience they want to impact. Jeffrey believes that to understand the lingo of those you want to attract is to know their essence, their values, and what emotionally triggers them so that you stand out, and that to build a successful business is not about education or even skill set. It's about understanding the culture, mindset, values, and the way of being of those you want to serve.
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Manny Rodriguez is the chief marketing and experience officer for UCHealth, a nationally recognized Colorado health system comprised of leading community hospitals and the region’s top academic medical center. Manny is responsible for overseeing brand, marketing, advertising, sponsorships, public relations, and patient experience. A seasoned marketing executive with proven success, Manny is an expert in brand positioning and building, consumer marketing, community marketing, and sports and entertainment marketing. At UCHealth, he established sponsorships with the Denver Broncos, Colorado Rockies, Denver Nuggets, Colorado Avalanche, and Colorado Mammoth. He launched a new brand for UCHealth, positioning the health system as patient-centered and innovative.
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Gavin Zuchlinski is the founder of Acuity Scheduling, a platform with a mission to be “the slickest way for businesses to automate and manage their appointments online, allowing clients to schedule themselves.” He is a self-professed tech geek and believes wholeheartedly that business should be fun. Acuity Scheduling supports over 50,000 businesses of all sizes, from people working for themselves to major corporations with thousands of employees. The company’s customer support focuses on easy and pain-free scheduling with one-on-one support as they help their client’s businesses grow and thrive.
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Jeff Rohrs is a creative, strategic, and experienced marketing leader with a passion for collaboration, innovation, and building dynamic brands in today's fragmented media landscape. He is the chief marketing officer for Yext and the author of Audience: Marketing In The Age Of Subscribers, Fans & Followers, in which he establishes "proprietary audience development," explores the flip-side of content marketing, and sets forth a modern marketing imperative. The Social Content Marketing Blog named Audience the number one social media marketing book for Academia. Jeff loves nothing more than helping companies navigate the evolving landscape of consumer needs, preferences, expectations across locations, channels, and devices.
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Jeff Rohrs is a creative, strategic, and experienced marketing leader with a passion for collaboration, innovation, and building dynamic brands in today's fragmented media landscape. He is the chief marketing officer for Yext and the author of Audience: Marketing In The Age Of Subscribers, Fans & Followers, in which he establishes "proprietary audience development," explores the flip-side of content marketing, and sets forth a modern marketing imperative. The Social Content Marketing Blog named Audience the number one social media marketing book for Academia. Jeff loves nothing more than helping companies navigate the evolving landscape of consumer needs, preferences, expectations across locations, channels, and devices.
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Prior to becoming the vice president of Industry Insights for Yext, Duane Forrester accumulated over 20 years’ experience in the search and social fields. He is the author of How To Make Money With Your Blog and Turn Clicks Into Customers. Duane has worked in marketing and PR with Caesar’s Palace, run his own websites, communities, and consultancy, and worked for small and enterprise publishers online. Past work includes almost nine years with Microsoft and Bing where he helped run their Webmaster Tools program, as well as the SEO program at MSN. In between the bookends of Yext and Bing, Duane ran operations for Bruce Clay, Inc., one of the oldest names in digital marketing. For several years, Duane’s focus included writing for SearchEngineLand.com, moderating in the original SearchEngineForums.com, and being a board member with SEMPO, where he founded the InHouse Committee and SEMPO’s annual Industry Salary Survey.
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Adam Anderson is CSO of Element Security Group. His 15 years of entrepreneurial startup experience and his knowledge Enterprise Cyber Defense gives him a window into what’s wrong with communication between large and small companies. He combined this knowledge and the good works from the National Institute of Standards and Technology’s Cyber Security Framework to co-author the book Small Business Cyber Security: Your Customers Can Trust You…Right? This book was later turned into an online class by Clemson University, where he is a scholar in residence. Adam is also the author of The Monster Within and co-founded a peer advisory board for chief security officers of Fortune 500 companies. This mix of small and large businesses has positioned Adam as one of the few people in the world to understand the complete supply chain of cyber security.
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TO LEARN MORE ABOUT ELEMENT SECURITY GROUP, CLICK HERE.
TO FIND ADAM ANDERSON ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.
Anita is the founder and CEO of CabinetM, a marketing technology management company. CabinetM’s platform makes it easy to find and manage marketing technology. She has spent most of her career as a high tech marketer working for companies from inception to M&A and IPO, and has had extensive experience addressing the marketing challenges that come with fast-growing businesses. In addition to her marketing roles, Anita ran FashionPlaytes, a B2C commerce and gaming company, and co-led Boston Golden Seeds an angel investment group that invests in women-led businesses. She continues to be an active member of the Boston start-up ecosystem as a MassVentures board member, MassChallenge judge, and start-up investor and mentor.
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TO LEARN MORE ABOUT CABINETM, CLICK HERE.
TO FIND ANITA BREARTON ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.
Jason Hsaio is the chief video officer and co-Founder of Animoto (animoto.com), an award-winning online video maker that makes it easy for anyone to create a professional-quality video. Used by millions of consumers, businesses, photographers, and educators, Animoto is deeply rooted in the belief that making videos should be simple, cost-effective, and accessible to everyone. Prior to Animoto, Jason served as a television producer for MTV Networks.
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“Social media has by far the best ROI for any advertising that’s out there.”
Michael Koral, a sales and marketing expert, is the co-founder and COO at Needls.com, a social media advertising platform that allows businesses to automatically create, target, and optimize digital ads. Michael leads customer acquisition and operations at Needls. He and his team automate the creation, curation, and optimization of digital ads across Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram through the deployment of the Needls purchase intent engine that monitors social media conversations.
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Tricia Halsey is co-founder and executive director of The Big Idea Project, a company in Denver that is “solving the leadership crisis” in our nation by “raising up a generation of generous leaders who are unafraid to creatively solve challenging social problems.” Tricia builds leaders, teams, and organizations. Wherever she looks, she sees untapped potential and a vision for what could be. She brings the right people to the table and facilitates synergistic connections where all people feel valued, heard, and inspired to do good. Her specialties include building ideas from concept to implementation, developing creative strategies, selling a common cause, enlisting the support and involvement of others, team leadership, building trusting relationships, communicating effectively across differences, and program/project management.
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Ryan Coté is the director of digital services and partner at Ballantine, a third generation family-owned direct mail and digital marketing company based out of Fairfield, NJ. The business was started in 1966 by Ryan’s grandfather and great-uncle, and its mission is to make their clients’ marketing initiatives more successful through expert guidance, flawless execution, and remarkable service. He currently manages the growing digital marketing division, primarily responsible for sales and strategy.
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Cheryl Leitschuh has spent 25 years focusing on leadership development for individuals, teams, and organizations. She has a doctorate in psychology and brings astute insights to complicated situations that provide targeted leadership results. As a Leadership Energy Guru and founder of The Leadership Energy Model, Cheryl is a nationally known speaker on cutting-edge leadership tools and resources. Her recent book, Straight Talk for Smart Businesswomen, became an Amazon best seller in five days in the leadership energy category.
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TO FIND CHERYL LEITSCHUH ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.
Bob Tipton, founder and CEO of Team Tipton and organizational transformation architect, has been working as an entrepreneur in professional services since 1986. He is a high-energy, innovative, and insightful transformational change architect, leadership facilitator, keynote speaker, and author. For over 30 years he has been refining Team Tipton’s innovative approach for guiding businesses through future-forward, results-focused transformational change initiatives. With a game-changing approach toward driving strategic growth and positive culture shifts, the Team Tipton model has been successful in sectors including government agencies, public works, utilities, nonprofits, healthcare, and education.
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Patrick Scott rarely does anything halfway. As a sophomore at Harvard, he took a job as a deliveryman for a student-run laundry service; a year later I was elected president of the Harvard Student Agencies, the largest student-run business in the world with over 600 employees and $5 million in annual revenue. After graduating from college, he entered a training program at Kraft Heinz; a year later he had redesigned and managed the forecasting process for sales to their largest client, Walmart. Patrick now works at the Alex’s Lemonade Stand Foundation, an organization that his younger sister, Alex, founded, and that is now one of the largest pediatric cancer foundations in the country. In his role, he leverages data to drive the organization forward – managing the Foundation’s Search Engine Marketing, implementing new Customer Relationship Management software, and developing Key Performance Indicators to use for visual management. He is passionate about confronting new challenges, reconceptualizing systems, and applying data creatively.
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TO LEARN MORE ABOUT ALEX'S LEMONADE STAND, CLICK HERE.
TO FIND PATRICK SCOTT ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.
Paul Duncan co-founded Pie Consulting & Engineering in 1999. As president and CEO, he is the managing partner and leads all aspects of the business including oversight of the corporate office in Colorado and regional offices in Minnesota, Texas, Florida, and California. He has consulted on projects nationwide with services on large commercial property, apartment complexes, specialized building performance testing, as well as large residential developments. Under his leadership, Pie has experienced an average annual growth of greater than 15 percent since 2010 including record performance in each of these years. He attributes the company’s strong performance to building a strong company culture based on values, and having an excellent technical staff and outstanding employees who share the same vision of making a difference for others.
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TO LEARN MORE ABOUT PIE CONSULTING & ENGINEERING, CLICK HERE.
TO FIND PAUL DUNCAN ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.
Rick Gemereth is the chief information officer and senior vice president for Lionel, the iconic American designer and importer of toy trains and model railroads, based in Concord, NC. Rick provides corporate technology leadership and oversees many of the company’s business processes, including ERP and financial systems integration, as well as many other technologies used to streamline the business. Rick’s core focus at Lionel is aligning information technologies with the culture of the workforce in pursuit of the business vision. He is a proven manager who orchestrates solutions that improve the productivity and quality of life for the employees and the customers, and ultimately have a direct impact on the financial success of the organization.
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Ted Mann is the CEO of Slyce, the market leader in image recognition and visual search. Slyce has created the first computer vision system for visual product search and has led to customers like Macy's, Home Depot, JC Penney, Neiman Marcus, Best Buy, and Urban Outfitters to deploy image recognition in their apps. Before Slyce, Ted founded SnipSnap, the first mobile app to let consumers save printed coupons to their smartphone and redeem in store. At the time SnipSnap was acquired, it was profitable and the app had five million users, who redeemed more than 250 million coupons. Prior to starting SnipSnap, Ted was digital development director at Gannett, where he led the development of the company's first hyper-local network, daily deal websites, and blog operations, in addition to managing the core news websites.
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Erik Reynolds, vice president of product marketing and communications for Loot Crate, is an 18-year veteran of the video game, tech and entertainment industries. Erik has worked with some of the most impactful brands and talent to help them craft the public story of their IP, and deliver those narratives in an engaging and audience-friendly manner. From executive producing an hour-long special about 50 Cent and hip-hop’s influence on video games for Spike TV to scripting and shooting BTS materials for dozens of games, Erik has leveraged every channel for storytelling to get the job done. Previous collaborators and represented brands include 50 Cent, Katy Perry, Mr. Miyamoto, Wizarding World of Harry Potter, The Legend of Zelda, Pokemon, and more than 100 other games/IP launches supported in his career generating billions in revenue for the companies he’s represented.
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“Give your teams time to be thoughtful.”
Erika Eklund is director of communications at HGA Architects and Engineers, a national multi-disciplinary design firm rooted in architecture and engineering. The company has more than 850 people in 10 offices from coast to coast and works to make a positive, lasting impact for clients in healthcare, arts and culture, community, corporate, education, government, and energy markets. In her role Erika oversees firm-wide internal and external communications, including brand strategy and media relations. She has an extensive communications and external relations background with creative organizations, and previously served as business developer for HGA’s Arts, Community and Higher Education Practice Group.
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TO LEARN MORE ABOUT HGA ARCHITECTS AND ENGINEERS, CLICK HERE.
TO FIND ERIKA EKLUND ON LINKEDIN, CLICK HERE.