Bernie is a leading strategic advisor and entrepreneur with over a 25-year track record across the broadband and customer experience (CX) ecosystems. Vast experience supporting clients with analysis, strategic consulting, and market research to understand markets and seize opportunity.
Currently, he is an Industry Principal at Frost & Sullivan where he offers strategic consulting and market analysis to clients. Prior to Frost, Bernie spent close to 18 years as a principal and partner at Pivot Group, a CX and marketing consulting firm in the broadband industry and is the founder and past publisher and editor-in-chief of Telecompetitor.com, an online broadband industry publication.
Lina has over a decade of experience in the Consumer Care Industry. As a consultative partner, Lina builds programs for her clients designed to create long-lasting relationships with customers that turn each interaction into an opportunity to create brand loyalty and capture business insights to share across the organization. This unique approach delivers value through consistent end-to-end consumer experiences that go beyond the typical call center.
Lina’s purpose is to inspire others to reach their potential while she works every day to become the best version of herself. Her background in International Business fuels her passion and curiosity about the richness of the world, its people, and their culture. She brings awareness around the value of Diversity and the impact of Inclusion in creating an environment where we can all thrive.
Terri’s love for service is the common thread in her 28 years in the consumer care industry, and she is grateful for spending the past 22 years helping to lead service at Nestlé Purina PetCare. Terri has been involved in all areas of service delivery with an extensive background on developing and activating consumer engagement strategies within her organization.
In her current role as Director of Consumer Care at Purina, Terri works to reshape and advance service by leveraging digital innovations, executing ideas, and driving agility within Purina’s core and direct-to-consumer businesses.
Sean is a successful serial entrepreneur who has started and led multiple companies to exits over the last twenty years. Actively engaged in the Texas startup ecosystem being on the Board of the Blackstone Launchpad at University of Texas at Dallas, Executive Council of the University of Texas at Dallas Jonsson School of Engineering and an active mentor and investor with the Capital Factory.
John has published 20 books on leadership, culture change, teamwork, inspiration, innovation, entrepreneurship and customer service. He has more than 30 years of business leadership experience as an entrepreneur, president, executive, advisor, and management consultant. Recognized worldwide as an executive coach, keynote speaker, transformational leader, Lean sensei and mentor, John has been featured on more than 500 radio and television programs.
“We can imbue technology with our hopes and dreams for a future focused on bettering humanity. We just need to understand what we are optimizing for and why.” – Dr. Natalie Petouhoff
Dr. Petouhoff’s career has been focused on: working with brands and CX leaders in an advisory role, as a management consultant/systems integrator as well as working directly with technology as part of several vendor firms, in the capacity of an analyst and advising private equity firms and investors to ensure the highest return on the investment.
These roles provided her with experience in AI, Customer / Employee Experience, Sales, Sales Enablement, Customer Service, Customer Success Management, Business and Organizational Transformation, Strategy Consulting and Advisory, Content Marketing, Social/Digital Content, Online Communities, and Analyst Relations.
Deeply committed to inclusion and diversity, Dr. Petouhoff was voted top 250 Most Influential Women & Top 50 Customer Service Professionals.
Hilke is an Emmy-award winning investigative reporter and journalism professor at NYU. Her work covering artificial intelligence has been published in The New York Times, The Guardian, the MIT Technology Review, and The Wall Street Journal, where she led a team investigating how AI is changing our lives. She has also reported for NPR’s Planet Money podcast on fake online reviews and her investigation for VICE on HBO was a finalist for a Peabody Award. Her PBS Frontline documentary Outlawed in Pakistan premiered at the Sundance Film Festival and was honored with an Emmy award.
Erin is the CEO of Compass Experience Labs and a dedicated advocate for improving customer and employee journeys. Holding a Bachelor of Arts in International Relations and Economics from American University and a Masters of Business Administration in Strategic Management from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania, Erin has developed and executed innovative service models from the group up to enhance customer relationships with businesses.
A passionate leader, Erin’s career spans across multiple practices, including retail, tech start-ups, academia and BPO.
Greg brings a unique blend of creativity and leadership to the business world. A graduate of Berklee College of Music with a degree in Composition and Film Scoring, Greg’s journey from music to technology is as unconventional as it is inspiring. Alongside his brother Trevor, Greg established ScreenSteps, a Knowledge Operations Platform that helps teams reduce their reliance on tribal knowledge, onboard with less stress, and adapt to change in less time.
Under Greg’s guidance, ScreenSteps has become an essential tool for companies seeking to modernize how they transfer knowledge to their employees. Greg is also the co-author of “Find & Follow: Reduce Supervisor Burnout & Improve Employee Performance by Transferring Knowledge Faster.” His unique perspective on knowledge transfer and employee training has helped businesses develop onboarding programs that reduce new hire time to proficiency by as much as 11 months.
Tim is a Sr. Solutions Consulting Manager with Zendesk, the global leader in Customer Experience. Tim leads a team of Enterprise Solution Consultants who work with Zendesk’s largest customers to simplify the complexity of business and make it easy for companies and customers to create connections.
He has over 17 years of experience in technology strategy and consulting, working with companies to drive business outcomes through technology.
Prior to his time at Zendesk, Tim spent 6 years in consulting and leadership positions at Oracle, Inc., helping Oracle customers transform their customers’ experiences. He began his career at research firm IDC consulting on various technology markets.
Holding a dual major in Computer Science and Psychology from Connecticut College, Tim focused his undergraduate research in areas of AI and Computational Intelligence.
Brett, a leader in the realm of customer experience, co-founded Service Matters, LLC, with a singular belief: in an age where products are often indistinguishable, Service Matters. This Customer Experience & Brand Ambassador Think Tank dedicates its expertise to companies of all sizes, instilling the philosophy that superior service is not just a differentiator but a necessity.
Brett’s approach is about more than just solving problems; it’s about fostering leadership and community within the industry. Brett honed his skills in high-profile key positions such as Vice President of Customer Service at Sunbasket and Head of Customer Experience consulting at Arise. His tenure in the corporate world also includes significant roles at global giants Adobe and Microsoft in the Asia Pacific region, where he led customer service and support teams to new heights.
As a 5-time CMO, Susan Ganeshan brings vast knowledge and a proven playbook spanning marketing strategy, brand building, demand generation, and metrics-based decisioning.
Susan’s high-tech B2B experience traverses small to mid-size companies in high growth mode and billion-dollar valuation enterprises working to expand globally. She passionately builds highly effective teams and champions customer’s success.
Over her 30+ year career, Susan has proudly represented software solution providers, including Emplifi, Clearwater Analytics (NYSE: CWAN), Granicus (backed by Vista Equity), Clarabridge (now Qualtrics), NewBrand (now Sprinklr), webMethods (now IBM), and Deloitte Consulting, among others.
Mike runs the Zendesk Labs team, an innovation lab whose main focus is to develop and incubate new ideas and prototypes that complement Zendesk’s product strategy. Zendesk Labs identifies and researches opportunities in adjacent markets that expand existing capabilities, and develop forward-thinking solutions that keep Zendesk at the industry’s forefront.
Mike has been at Zendesk for over 12 years, supporting the transformation of the company from a Series C startup into a nearly $2B revenue enterprise with over 6,000 employees. Prior to running Zendesk Labs he worked in a number of leadership roles across the Enterprise Sales and GTM organizations. In these roles he had the opportunity to partner with some of Zendesk’s largest and most strategic customers on solutions that solve critical business needs.
Jeff Kramp is the CTO for VIPdesk Connect. Jeff is a technology guru who has been leading initiatives for the customer service industry for over two decades. Jeff’s love of data and development fuels his ability to provide clients with strategy, insights and solution design.
Jeff’s ability to translate complex customer service technology needs into easy-to-understand language has made him a team and client favorite. He is frequently requested to share his insights on the latest trends and technologies that are impacting the customer service landscape. He produces creative, streamlined solutions for clients as well as in-house proprietary applications. Over the last 2 years, Jeff has been focused on incorporating generative AI solutions into our service delivery model to increase efficiencies and overall quality of service.
In Jeff’s spare time, he likes spending time with his loved ones, exploring new places and indulging in creative pursuits – whether it be renovating his home, making Halloween costumes or coding. He relishes any chance to be innovative and to learn something new.
With more than a decade of experience in the SaaS industry, Trey currently serves as a Senior Account Executive for Parloa’s North America division, where he drives substantial customer value. With a proven track record of fostering growth and innovation, his prior roles included key account leadership positions at SAP and Salesforce, where he accounted for over $40M in revenue spanning several industries.Trey is committed to fostering innovation and driving positive change within the contact center ecosystem. Through his dedication and expertise, he continues to shape the landscape of contact center solutions, providing guidance, support, and the occasional cocktail recipe to his colleagues and peers.
Chloé is an innovative professional with more than 10 years of experience in communications, product management and consumer care. Proficient in monitoring trends and capitalizing on emerging opportunities, Chloe has built a consumer care department from scratch for one of the top Canadian Food & Beverage public companies, fully operational within less than three months. When she’s not chatting about juice in the company of her dogs, you’ll find her on the ice playing hockey or in the stands cheering for her favorite teams.