Board of Advisors

Christine Barton is an experienced senior partner at the Boston Consulting Group holding multiple roles across her 25-year tenure. Christine brings extensive expertise in various industries including consumer, retail, fashion, luxury, beauty, consumer health and wellness, and private equity. 

In her time at BCG, Christine has become known for her ability to understand human behavior--from consumers to influencers to executives. Her knowledge lives at the nexus of business, society, and motivations, where she helps CEOs craft strategy that is centered on growth, purpose and performance simultaneously.

Currently, Christine is a leader in BCG's global CEO Advisory practice, where she works closely with CEOs, candidates, and next-generation leaders, focusing on areas such as transformation, transition and succession, and profitable growth. 

Additionally, Christine brings substantial board and stakeholder management experience, having served on private for-profit boards and advisory boards at institutions such as Yale University and the University of Texas, as well as in industry associations. Christine's academic background includes a law degree from Yale University and a Masters from Oxford University, where she was a Rhodes Scholar. She completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Texas at Austin.
 

Kofi is the Chief Marketing Officer at DoorDash.  Prior to DoorDash, Kofi was VP of Brand & Consumer Marketing at Facebook, having previously served as the company's Head of Consumer Marketing for internet.org.

Before Facebook, Kofi was Chief Strategy Officer at FCB New York. He joined FCB from Bacardi Global Brands, where he was the Global Communications Director for the Rum category and the architect for the reinvention of the Bacardi brand. As the Founder and Managing Director of Publicis West Africa, Kofi created and launched the first majority-owned network agency on the African continent.  And as the Senior Strategic Planner on Nike at Wieden+Kennedy, Kofi crafted the strategy for Nike’s global Beijing Olympics campaign.  He began his career at Leo Burnett Chicago & Leo Burnett London - working on Kellogg's, Coca Cola, and Global Giving.

In 2014, Kofi was named to Ad Age’s “40 under 40” list of young marketing stars. In September 2017, Kofi won ADCOLOR’s “Rockstar” Award. In 2020, Kofi was named to Business Insider's list of "25 CMO's To Watch" and honored with AdWeek's "Brand Genius" award. And in 2021, Kofi was a recipient of AdWeek’s CMO award. Kofi has a BA in Economics and International Studies from Macalester College. He serves on the Board of Population Services International - the global health and human services NGO dedicated to improving the lives of the world’s most vulnerable populations, and on the Board of Vital Farms - a Certified B Corporation that brings ethical food to the table to improve the lives of people, animals, and the planet. Kofi lives in Redwood City, CA with his college-sweetheart-turned-wife Kate, and their rambunctious young sons Marlowe and Miles.

As the Vice President of Global Programs for Real Estate & Workplace Services, Bakker leads Google’s renowned workplace programs and services such as food, transportation, events, guest services, sustainability, placemaking as well as fitness, massage and well-being. Bakker is focused on providing integrated offerings and experiences that enable Google to thrive. He is also focused on supporting the growth and future of Google through the scaling of these programs, ongoing innovation and partnerships. 

Bakker continues to be very involved in the ever-evolving and growing intersection of food, health, and sustainability through various roles and organizations around the world such as the World Business Council for Sustainable Development  Food and Nature Board, the EAT Forum Advisory Board,, the Yale School of Management Center for Customer Insights' Advisory Board and the Culinary Institute of America’s Menus of Change Business Leadership Council.

Bakker holds a Bachelor of Business Administration degree from the Hotel Management School Maastricht (The Netherlands), an MBA from the University of Bradford (United Kingdom), a Master’s of Hospitality Administration degree from the University of Nevada (USA) and a Master’s degree in Real Estate and Construction Management from the University of Denver (USA).

Jen Berliner is the Head of Marketing, Sales & Ecommerce at Patagonia Provisions, Patagonia's food and beverage division. At Patagonia, she focuses on commercializing and scaling foods that help fight the environmental crisis, with an emphasis on building consumer awareness and adoption of regenerative organic agriculture. 

Prior to Patagonia, Jen was the General Manager and CEO of two high-growth natural foods startups, Medlie, which made organic vegetable drinks, and then Moonshot, the first climate-friendly snack brand. She grew Moonshot from its inception to 3,500 retail locations in under two years. Moonshot was the 2021 Expo West NEXTY winner for Best New Salty Snack, a featured brand in Whole Foods Market’s 2022 Top Trends list, and was acquired by Patagonia in March 2023. 

Jen previously worked at PepsiCo, holding multiple brand management roles with a focus on strategy and better-for-you product innovation, and GMMB, a policy-focused cause marketing agency. She found her passion for using food to drive behavior change that makes people and the planet healthier while earning her MBA at the Yale School of Management. She also holds a BA from Vanderbilt University. Jen serves on the board of Naturally Bay Area, and resides in San Francisco with her husband and two sons.

Claire Burns joined The Hartford in September 2021 as chief marketing and communications officer. In this role, she oversees the enterprise marketing, branding, digital, customer experience, media relations, communication, and community relations functions. She also chairs the company’s Sustainability Governance Committee, where she leads actions to sustain The Hartford’s top quartile ESG performance in the U.S. insurance sector.

Prior to joining The Hartford, Burns served as chief marketing and strategy officer for Prudential International and MetLife’s chief customer officer. Prior to that, she held leadership roles at ALICO (a former subsidiary of AIG), Lincoln Financial, and Aetna.

An advocate for using public-private partnerships to solve social problems, Burns completed a year-long fellowship with the Presidio Institute and the White House Office of Social Innovation in 2015, where she helped harness actuarial data for public good. She has chaired several non-profit boards of directors focused on equalizing access to opportunity including Our Piece of the Pie in Hartford, Conn., Leadership Greater Hartford in Hartford, Conn., and Access Educational Services in Bridgeport, Conn. She currently serves on the board of directors for Healthfirst, a New York health insurer, the Alpha Community Services YMCA in Bridgeport, Conn., and the board of advisors for the Yale Center for Customer Insights.

She earned her bachelor’s degree in International Relations from Wesleyan University and her master’s in business administration from the Yale School of Management.

Matthew Chmura is the Chief Marketing, Communications and Brand Officer of the LPGA. In this role he is responsible for overseeing the strategy and execution of all marketing, communications and content initiatives along with fan acquisition, engagement and retention efforts.

Chmura’s professional philosophy is based in driving innovation and creativity to maximize revenue while maintaining a consumer centric marketing approach. Before joining the LPGA, he was most recently the Chief Marketing Officer of Leader Bank in Massachusetts. Prior to that he spent 15 years with the Boston Bruins, where he was responsible for the business’ overall communications and marketing strategies while overseeing omni-channel marketing, branding, content, media relations and community relation’s efforts as the team’s Vice President of Marketing and Communications.  Notably during his time with the Bruins, Chmura has won five New England Emmy Awards for his role as executive producer and writer for ‘Behind the B’ and ‘Bruins Academy’, as well as a Clio Award for Best Integrated Campaign. In 2011 he was honored with his name being etched on the Stanley Cup, and he has been awarded two President’s Trophies and three Prince of Whales trophies.

Prior to joining the Bruins, Chmura also spent time in the communications departments of the New York Red Bulls, New England Revolution, Tennessee Titans and New England Patriots and has written for the Boston Herald. Chmura earned an MBA from Yale University’s School of Management (Yale SOM) and a BA in Political Science from College of the Holy Cross – where he later served as a Trustee. Currently Matthew sits on the Ladies European Tour (LET) Joint Venture Board of Directors, the Greater Orlando Sports Commission Board of Directors, the Board of Overseers for Boston Children’s Hospital and is a member of the ‘Champion’s for Children’ committee. Matthew has also been a part of various philanthropic efforts with the Taunton Boy’s & Girl’s Club, the Bay State Games, and Good Sport. Matthew and his family reside in Winter Park, FL and Marion, MA.

Jon Cummings recently retired from McKinsey & Company where he worked for 32 years.  Jon began his career in Chicago and was in South Africa from 1994 to 2002, where he co-founded the Johannesburg Office and was the Office Manager for seven years.  Jon subsequently led McKinsey’s Americas Packaged Goods practice (2003-2010) and the North American Merger Management Practice (2014-2019).  He currently is a senior advisor to McKinsey, serves on number of non-profit boards, and is actively involved in principal investing. Jon received his B.A. from Yale University and a M.Sc. from the London School of Economics in the U.K.
 

Phil is a Managing Director and a leader in Accenture’s Customer practice. Phil has over 25 years of strategy consulting experience focused on customer-centered growth and broad-scale business transformation.  Phil has led customer experience improvement and transformation across Travel, Industrials, Software & Platforms, Banking & Payments, Technology, and Telecommunications industries for clients across North America, Europe and Australia.  Based in San Francisco, Phil serves both established and emerging growth companies.

Prior to joining Accenture, Phil has helped reshape business operations and strategy consulting organizations at Visa, Bearingpoint, and Citibank.  As Partner at Bain & Co., Phil led west coast financial services helping to grow the value of client customer franchises – and therefore the businesses themselves.  He believes now, more than ever, that purpose-centered, innovation-enabled enterprises will lead growth in human terms around experience, diversity, and sustainability.

Phil received an MBA from the Yale School of Management with a concentration in Strategy and Finance and a BA in Economics from University of Pennsylvania.  Currently, Phil is a member of Yale SOM’s Board of Advisors and has served on numerous educational and social service non-profit boards.

Sara is a current Trustee of the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, the world’s leading independent non-profit organization dedicated to ocean research, exploration and education. Operation positions in Maintenance and Repair and Traffic and Chartering Departments of the Chevron Shipping Company led to the interest in becoming involved with the Oceanographic. She is also the Board of the Clearwater  Investment Trust, an investment company.

Sara is currently on the Advisory Council for the World War II Memorial on the National Mall and the AFI/Silver Theater in Silver Spring, Maryland. She has also served on the board of the Rock Island Company as well as several foundations and schools. 

Julia Dhar is a Managing Director and Partner at Boston Consulting Group. She founded and leads BCG’s Behavioral Science Lab and the firm’s behavioral science network BeSmart, and is a member of BCG’s global Change Management leadership team. Julia champions the use of behavioral insights to improve product and service design and delivery to make countries and organizations more inclusive, sustainable, and productive. She is deeply involved in the firm's IP development on the Future of Work and co-leads BCG’s work on deskless workers. Julia is the co-author of "Building Resilient Organizations: Best practices, tools and insights to thrive in ever-changing contexts" published by the Project Management Institute in 2022 and "The Decision-Maker's Playbook" published by the Financial Times in 2019. Her TED talks on productive disagreement and constructive conversations have been viewed more than 8.5 million times.

Meagen Eisenberg is a seasoned executive, board member, and advisor to some of the fastest-growing and most successful companies in enterprise and SaaS technology. In her current role, Meagen leads the marketing and growth teams of Lacework as its Chief Marketing Officer; she serves on the board of G2 and WorkStep and advises a portfolio of companies including Loom, Styra, productboard, Gretel.ai, Klue, Demostack and Redpanda Data. Meagen also serves as a limited partner in Operator Collective, an investment firm that balances diversity with strategic investments. Her prior board work includes several companies that were successfully acquired - StackRox bought by RedHat, an IBM Company, Reactful bought by Metadata.io, and TinyPulse bought by Limeade. 

With 18 successful exits including 3 IPOs and 15 mergers and acquisitions under her belt since 2011, Meagen’s career is a master class on building and delivering technology companies. She specializes in worldwide demand generation, working in concert with sales, product and executive teams to manage pipeline and aggressive growth. Brand, communications, marketing operations, field marketing, product marketing, web, systems, growth and SDR teams all specialize and thrive under her stewardship. 

Prior to Lacework, Meagen has overseen the growth of TripActions, was the Chief Marketing Officer at MongoDB, VP of Customer Acquisition & Marketing at DocuSign, and leader across a stable of high tech companies including ArcSight, TRIRIGA, IBM, and Cisco. 

Trained as an engineer in MIS and CSC at California Polytechnic San Luis Obispo, an MBA from Yale School of Management and completed the Directors’ Consortium Executive Education from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Meagen’s diverse background that marries the science and art of technology brings her a unique approach to success. 

Beneath her constellation of work endeavors, Meagen’s true superpower is in balancing her family and personal life. Married, with three daughters, and four dogs, she currently resides in the Bay Area, CA.

Steve is an entrepreneurial executive with over 20 years of experience driving transformative growth at innovative tech companies. His career is marked by a strategic approach that combines rigorous analysis of key technologies and their market potential with bold go-to-market initiatives.
Steve developed broad expertise at Intel’s data center group, with roles spanning strategy, product management, marketing, and sales. This included leading a global team to drive >$100M co-marketing campaigns with leading software partners like Microsoft and Oracle to quickly ramp multi-billion-dollar product lines.
A proven innovator, Steve co-founded a division at LSI (now Broadcom), establishing a >$100M product line that served Apple, Facebook, and Oracle, ultimately leading to a $450M sale of the division. His strategic skills propelled SanDisk's (now Western Digital) data center business to a $1B annual revenue rate, a >500% increase in just two years. 
A similar growth story unfolded at Toshiba. As the senior vice president and general manager of the storage division, he overhauled the go-to-market strategy that resulted in a >1000% increase in revenue to $2.5B in four years. While leading communications and marketing at the memory giant Micron, Steve launched their first generation of AI-focused products and spearheaded campaigns to strengthen the company’s reputation with policymakers in pursuit of billions in funding from the U.S. CHIPS Act.
Steve's impact extends into startups and rapidly scaling businesses. He served as President and Chief Business Officer at Pliops, securing global cloud and SaaS customers, as well as investments from NVIDIA, AMD, Intel, and SoftBank. As an investor, executive and advisor, Steve has helped startup companies to secure >$400M in funding and contributed to more than $2B in overall valuation growth.
Steve holds an MBA from Yale University and a BA from Saint Louis University. He takes pride in having mentored several team members who became senior executives, including at the C-level.  Steve lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, Susan.

James Firestone was the president of  Corporate Operations at Xerox Corporation. He was named to this position in September 2008. He was also an Executive Vice President of the corporation, appointed in April 2007. Mr. Firestone was responsible for the company's core corporate organizations that support all areas of the business worldwide, including research and development, information management, strategy, Fuji Xerox relations, human resources and ethics, marketing and communications, and Xerox's environmental health and safety initiatives. Prior to this role, Mr. Firestone was president, Xerox North America, a position he assumed in 2004 after serving as the company's chief strategist. As head of North America, Firestone was responsible for direct and indirect channels of distribution in the United States and Canada including direct sales and service, agents, resellers and Teleweb. In this role, he led the company's $1.5 billion acquisition of Global Imaging Systems in 2007, increasing Xerox's access to small and mid-size businesses in the U.S. by 50 percent. Jim joined Xerox from IBM in August 1998 as president of the Xerox Channels Group, responsible for creating a network of resellers for Xerox's office printers and multifunction systems. He then was named senior vice president for the Corporate Strategy and Marketing Group. At IBM, Jim was responsible for all of the company's consumer products and services for the home and family market. He joined IBM in 1995, helping launch a new division to develop and market hardware, software and multimedia products. Prior to IBM, Jim headed the consumer division of Ameritech, a telecommunications company, from 1993 to 1995. He spent the first 15 years of his career at American Express, serving as President of the Japan Division, and subsequently leading the Corporate Card and Travelers Cheques businesses. Jim serves on the board of directors of Fuji, The Japan Fund and The Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company.

Prior to joining PepsiCo, Stephan was the chief strategy officer for Interbrand North America, overseeing North American and Global practices. Before joining Interbrand, Stephan was co-owner and CEO of the global marketing consultancy EffectiveBrands, which focused exclusively on building effective marketing organizations for global brand leaders until it was acquired by WPP in 2014.  Stephan began his career at Unilever, where he held both brand management and leadership roles in Europe and the U.S.

Stephan was born in Amsterdam, The Netherlands, and lives with his family in Greenwich, CT.

Jami has 25+ year of Insights, Analytics, and Strategy experience across companies such as Quaker, PepsiCo, Wrigley, Mars, SC Johnson and the McDonald’s Corporation.  He is an active member of several academic, industry, and not-for-profit boards.  Jami has an Undergraduate Marketing Degree from the University of Northern Iowa and an MBA from DePaul University.

Jami is married, with two kids (aged 19 and 18), and a dog (Maggie, aged 15).  He is an avid runner and boater.

Jon Iwata is Practice Leader of the Yale Program on Stakeholder Innovation and Management (Y-SIM) at Yale School of Management, where he is an Executive Fellow and Lecturer. Y-SIM was established in 2022 based on the work he and his collaborators led exploring stakeholder capitalism’s impact on leadership. He is founding executive director of the Data & Trust Alliance, a not-for-profit  organization that brings together leading businesses to develop and adopt responsible data and AI practices. Its first initiative, announced in 2021, was the  development of algorithmic anti-bias safeguards for workforce practices, adopted  by companies including American Express, CVS Health, GM, Humana, Mastercard,  Meta, Nike, and Walmart. 

Over a 35-year career at IBM, Jon held multiple roles, including senior vice  president, chief brand officer, and leader of the company’s global marketing, communications, and citizenship organization. He reported to three IBM CEOs  during two decades of significant transformation. He was chairman of IBM’s corporate strategy committee and established the company’s values and policy  committee. According to Interbrand, IBM became the second most valuable brand in the world during Jon’s tenure as CMO.

Jon is chairman of the Board of Trustees of Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design  Museum; a director of the Ladies Professional Golf Association and chair of its  nominating and governance committee; a trustee of the Stevenson School; and a member of the advisory board of Responsible Innovation Labs. 

Jon is an inductee of the B2B Hall of Fame, the Marketing Hall of Fame, the CMO Club Hall of Fame, and the Page Society Hall of Fame. He was named a Brand Genius by AdWeek. He holds a B.A. from the School of Journalism and Mass Communications at San Jose State University. 

Jon is co-inventor of a U.S. patent for a nanotechnology and process for atomic-scale semiconductors.

Todd Kaplan is the Vice President of Marketing at Pepsi where he is responsible for leading PepsiCo’s flagship brand – Pepsi.  In his role, he oversees all brand creative, communications and commercial execution across Pepsi, Diet Pepsi and Pepsi Zero Sugar, while building a long term strategy and new product innovation for the brand overall.

Todd has spent the past 14 years at PepsiCo, where he has consistently brought his creativity, strategic thinking, and passion to each of his roles.  Most recently, Todd oversaw PepsiCo’s multi-billion dollar US Water Business where he transformed the company’s water portfolio by creating and launching two of the biggest innovations in PepsiCo history - LIFEWTR (premium water) and bubly (sparkling water).  These products delivered close to $500MM in sales in their first 2 years alone and quickly helped PepsiCo become the #1 driver of growth in the US water category.  Over the years, Todd has worked across a variety of businesses at PepsiCo, from leading marketing for Mountain Dew, to overseeing Pepsi’s NFL and MLB sponsorships, to creating disruptive new beverage innovation products for PepsiCo’s foodservice division.  Prior to joining PepsiCo, Todd worked for Millsport LLC, a sports marketing consultancy, where he oversaw the VISA International business. 

Todd was recently named one of the “Top 25 Most Innovative CMO’s” in the world by Business Insider and one of the country’s 40 Most Innovative Marketers under 40 years old by Brand Innovators.  He has been profiled on the cover of Event Marketer magazine and is a regularly featured speaker in the industry, including mainstage appearances at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity and South by Southwest. Todd holds a BA in Economics from Northwestern University, and an MBA from Yale University.

Rohit has 30 years of Sales & Marketing leadership experience having worked at leading organizations including Marriott, Unilever, Novartis and UnitedHealth Group. At Marriott, Rohit played a key role in developing the medical association convention business, that resulted in him receiving the American Medical Associations' vendor of the year award. He then joined Unilever and shaped the marketing for iconic brands including Lipton Tea, I Can't Believe It's Not Butter! Promise Margarine and Lipton Iced Tea Mix. At Unilever, he successfully led the global team that launched the world's first tea bag that brews directly in cold water. He was recruited to Blyth Inc. to consolidate a fragmented brand portfolio across 11 countries. At Blyth Inc., he received a US patent in his name for a new air freshener device that was subsequently launched into the United States. At Novartis, Rohit led the marketing for Gerber Baby Food and the entire Gerber portfolio of wellness products. Most recently Rohit spent 14 years at UnitedHealth Group leading healthcare marketing and thought leadership strategy for Optum focused on the employer segment

Currently, Rohit is leading a fast-growing entrepreneurial healthcare organization focused on ambulatory and local healthcare delivery in the digestive health space.

Rohit has a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of New Hampshire and an MBA from the J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management at Northwestern University.

Antonio rejoined HP Inc as Chief Marketing and Corporate Affairs Officer in 2024, having previously served as Chief Marketing and Communications Officer following the separation of Hewlett-Packard Company in 2015. Under his leadership, HP reframed its vision, mission and brand while growing revenue and market share.

Antonio is a recognized thought leader and global influencer in marketing transformation. Inducted into the American Advertising Federation Hall of Fame in April 2023, Forbes Most Influential CMOs Hall of Fame in June 2022 and the American Marketing Association Hall of Fame in May 2022, he is one of the very few to be recognized by these three prestigious distinctions and is one of the world’s most experienced and successful marketing leaders. Throughout his career, Antonio has been successful in driving growth by building businesses, brands and marketing teams that have stood the test of time, working with some of the most recognized companies and iconic brands, across multiple industries. In addition to HP, he has held Global CMO roles for Meta and Visa, as well as the role of Chief Innovation and Portfolio Transformation Officer for PepsiCo. 

Antonio is a celebrated and award-winning champion of diversity, equity, and inclusion by organizations like ANA/AIMM, AdColor, Adweek and PRWeek, among others. He is the co-founder of Virtuosi LEAP, the Leadership Empowerment Acceleration Project aimed at advancing marketing practice through transformational leadership skills and DEI. Antonio is also an Executive Fellow at Yale SOM, and is a mentor to some of the world's most renowned CMOs. 

He earned a B.A. in history from Louisiana State University. He was born in Spain, raised in Puerto Rico, and currently resides in San Francisco. He is fluent in English, Spanish and Portuguese. Antonio is based in Palo Alto, California.

Prof. Pavan Mamidi is an associate professor at IIM Ahmedabad, and an affiliated professor with the Programme on Legal Profession at Harvard Law School. Prof. Mamidi's areas of research interest cover signaling theory, trust, social norms, contracting, behavioral ethics, negotiation, and experimental methods. He has held positions at Harvard, MIT, University of Michigan, and IIM Bangalore previously. 

In addition to his academic credentials, Pavan has extensive professional experience providing consulting services to the technology industry, covering both Indian and US firms. His early research included work on patenting criteria, technological innovation and the social costs of intellectual property. 

In his more recent work, he undertakes field-based empirical work on social norms, trust, and inter-ethnic negotiations. He is also currently engaged in a RCT-based field experiment that measures the impact of criminalising bribe-giving on the supply-side of corruption. Pavan has a D.Phil in Sociology from Oxford, an LL.M from Harvard Law School, and an undergraduate degree in Mathematics from Osmania University.

Kalindi Mehta is an experienced Insights and Analytics professional, a strategic advisor, thought leader, and people manager with a pioneering attitude and passionate advocacy for human centricity.  She has over 20 years of experience across multi-geographies and in different cultural contexts. She is seen as an expert in people and cultural understanding in both developed markets like the US as well as emerging markets like China and India.

Prior to her role with Estee Lauder, Kalindi's past experience was largely with Colgate Palmolive holding leading roles in Asia-Pacific, Philippines, India, and the Global Corporate team where she led Insights and Analytics for North America. Her experience focused on building empathy with consumers and translating that cultural understanding into business plans, brand strategies, and innovation by driving foresight and predictive insighting, leveraging emerging data sources and behavioral data, and democratizing Insights across the organization.

Kalindi completed her education in India with a Bachelor's degree in Statistics and Mathematics and an MBA focused on International Marketing.  She is a trained Design Thinking Catalyst (Stanford Design School Program) and Agile Way of Working coach. She completed the Global Leadership Executive Program at the Tuck School of Business in 2019.

Anil's career has been forged at the intersection of business innovation and market disruption. He is EVP, Community & Urban Services, at Sharecare.  In this role, he and his team work with a range of global urban services partners to develop new tools and solutions that integrate community health outcomes into infrastructure investments and smart city solutions to drive individual and societal prosperity.

Anil also served as Senior Advisor to HRH The Prince of Wales on Sustainable Markets (the role ended when HRH became King Charles III).  Prior to joining Sharecare, he served roles ranging from Senior Advisor to the Chairman, Managing Director (overseeing all of the global industries), and a Member of the Managing Board at the World Economic Forum in Geneva, Switzerland, and Global President of Smart+Connected Communities at Cisco Systems, where he was one of the key leaders of Cisco’s Internet of Things (IOT) business through its incubation and growth within the company. As global president, he shepherded the Cisco Smart+Connected Communities business from a startup within Cisco to a billion-dollar business. Anil was also the deputy chief globalization officer and led Cisco’s globalization headquarters in Bangalore, India, and also served as chairman of Cisco India’s External Board. From 2002 to 2009, Anil held several global functional roles at IBM HQ, ranging from global head of IBM brand strategy for managing IBM's transition from a hardware brand to a business technology brand, to being the head of worldwide market intelligence, and to serving as the chief marketing and strategy officer for IBM's $34B global hardware business. Before joining IBM, Anil was a successful tenured professor on the graduate faculty at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School in Atlanta, Georgia, and a senior advisor and consultant to a number of global blue-chip consumer and industrial companies on market innovation and transformation.

Anil is a recipient of the American Marketing Association’s Alpha Kappa Psi/Sheth award for academic research with the biggest impact on the practice of marketing. He was also awarded the Academy of Marketing Science’s Distinguished Practitioner award for his brand strategy work at IBM.  He has served on the board of Coca-Cola Company’s Technology Incubator, Fizzion, on Citibank India’s board of advisors, and as a trustee of The New Cities Foundation. on the board of directors for the Center for Global Health Innovation in Atlanta, the Center for Customer Insights at the Yale University School of Management, and on the board of directors for the Antique Phonograph Society.  He is a faculty affiliate and industry advisor at MIT’s Senseable City Lab. He is an active investor and an advisor to several B2B-focused digital platform startups.

Vikram Nangia is SVP, Customer Operations at Charter Communications, a leading provider of internet and mobile phone services in the United States. He is responsible for defining the customer service experience to cover all channels, including IVR, Chat and customer communications. In this role he leads the digital servicing, credit management and fraud prevention functions. 

Vikram has been at Charter for the past 5 years, prior to which he was a leader in Customer Service at American Express for over 15 years. He also has significant prior experience in strategy, finance, and M&A in the consumer goods industry with companies like Kraft, General Foods, Jacobs-Suchard and Philip Morris. Over his career, Vikram has worked in NY, Chicago, Paris and Hong Kong, leading global and country teams.

Vikram holds an MBA from the University of Michigan and is active in causes supporting education. He is an Advisory Board Member at the Center for Customer Insights at Yale University’s School of Management. He is based out of Stamford HQ of Charter Communications. 

Raja Rajamannar is the Chief Marketing & Communications Officer of MasterCard.  He is also the President of its Healthcare division.  He is responsible for building the MasterCard brand, driving business for MasterCard products and services and advancing sustainable competitive differentiation for the company. He also serves on the Board of Directors of PPL Corporation, a Fortune 500 power generation and utilities company, and on the board of the Ad Council.

Prior to his role at MasterCard, Raja served as the Chief Transformation Officer of Anthem (formerly, WellPoint), a Fortune 500 health insurance company.  Raja also served as Chief Executive, International and Chief Innovation & Marketing Officer at Humana for a period of three years. Earlier, Raja was at Citigroup for 15 years holding a number of leadership roles, including Global Chief Marketing Officer, Cards and Payments, where he was responsible for transforming the credit card business model and strategies. Raja served as Chairman and CEO, Diners Club North America from 2004 to 2006. He also served as head of credit cards for Citi’s Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) region and head of all consumer asset products for Western Europe. Prior to Citigroup, Raja spent 7 years with Unilever in sales and product management roles. He started his career with Asian Paints in India.

Raja has a Master of Business Administration degree from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore, India, and a Bachelor of Technology degree in Chemical Engineering from Osmania University in Hyderabad, India. He also holds a patent in the consumer packaged goods space.  Raja is married and has two sons.

Joel is the CEO of Lidl US, the US operation of one of the world’s largest food retailers. 

Prior to joining Lidl, Joel was a Partner and Managing Director at AlixPartners, where he co-led the firm’s global Grocery practice. Joel spent over twenty years advising owners, boards and CEOs in the food retail and wholesale industries. He had the privilege of working with some of the best food retail brands in the world and helped deliver successful outcomes in complex turnaround and transformation situations. Joel has an MBA in Finance from the Yale School of Management.

Joel has a deep history of insights and analytics, driven by a passion to see companies grow, brands be built, meaningful change in the world to happen and our colleagues to have fulfilling careers. 

He has worked across FMCG giants P&G and Reckitt in local, regional, global and capability roles, from Australia to Singapore to London to Amsterdam. 

Joel made the move in 2021 to Insights and Analytics at IKEA where the function has been radically transforming, investing significantly in the team and the capabilities in order to be a strong force for good moving forward.

Humam Sakhnini is the President of King, having been appointed to the role in early 2019. He oversees all strategic and operational management at the leading casual games company, most famous for its iconic mobile games franchises—including Candy Crush and Farm Heroes—which reach hundreds of millions of players each month.

Humam has been with King since 2016, initially serving as the Chief Financial Officer and Chief Strategy Officer. Humam also spent six years at King’s parent company, Activision Blizzard, as the Chief Strategy and Talent Officer. During this time, he led several successful growth and corporate development initiatives, including the company’s acquisition of King. Earlier in his career, Humam spent eight years at McKinsey & Company as a partner, where he provided counsel to executives at the world's leading media and technology companies. During his tenure at McKinsey, he focused on business strategy including acquisitions, international growth, and market entry, as well as marketing, sales, and organizational transformation.

Humam was educated at the University of Western Ontario, where he received his undergraduate degree in Economics. He subsequently went on to earn an MA in Economics from Queen’s University and an MBA in strategy and finance from the Yale School of Management. 

Linda Schupack is Doris Duke Foundation's first Chief Marketing and Influence Officer where she has oversight of communications and public relations, digital strategy, branding and events. She is also a central architect of all of the foundation’s programmatic work by enlarging and enhancing the range of activities Doris Duke Foundation undertakes to advance its mission of a more creative, equitable and sustainable future. 

Prior to this role, Ms. Schupack was the President of Marketing, Entertainment Networks at AMC where she led all marketing functions for AMC, BBC America, SundanceTV and IFC. Prior to that, Ms. Schupack was the Executive Vice President of Marketing for AMC where she was responsible for the strategic oversight, management and implementation of the network’s multiplatform consumer and trade marketing activities, including advertising campaigns and consumer and ad sales promotions. Ms. Schupack also directed the network’s brand identity as an uncompromising celebration of great stories, which speaks to its record-shattering Emmy® and Golden Globe® wins for its original series.

Ms. Schupack joined AMC in 2005 from parent company Rainbow Media Holdings LLC, (now AMC Networks) where she served for four years as Senior VP of Creative Services. In that role, she served as Rainbow Media’s chief creative mind and was a key architect in the evolution of the AMC, IFC and WE tv brands.  Before joining Rainbow Media, Ms. Schupack, an industry veteran, held a number of senior positions at Viacom’s Nickelodeon, including vice president of marketing and programming for Nick International, where she oversaw the creative development of Nickelodeon internationally, interpreting the brand for local audiences through the development and execution of marketing and programming strategies.

Ms. Schupack earned her undergraduate degree from Yale College ‘83, and Master of Business Administration degree from the Yale School of Management ‘92.  In 2008, she was named by AdWeek as Entertainment Marketer of the Year and in 2009, AMC’s marketing department was acknowledged as Marketing Team of the year by the Cable Faxies.  In 2012, she received the Vanguard Award for Marketing from the National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA).

As the Chief Commercial Officer, Pritesh is responsible for the development and execution of Novocure’s commercialization strategy worldwide, and for overseeing Novocure’s international business units.

Mr. Shah joined Novocure in 2012 as the Senior Director of Global Marketing and progressed through a series of roles of greater responsibilities within the commercial organization. Most recently, he acted as Senior Vice President of the Americas. Prior to joining Novocure, Pritesh had extensive experience in the oncology field, including roles at Roche, Genentech, Bristol-Myers Squibb, OSI Oncology and AVEO. Pritesh holds a Doctor of Pharmacy from the University of Maryland and a master’s degree in Strategic Communication and Leadership from Seton Hall University.

Ari Sheinkin is a growth leader who specializes in applying advanced analytics to drive financial results. In his current role, he leads marketing demand generation globally for IBM directing $1B in spend to deliver over $20B in annual marketing sourced revenue. Ari leads an international team of over 1,000 employees responsible for all aspect of media, campaigns, and digital, and manage all the supporting martech, data, and analytics. His approach to business growth through data-science has been recognized with the ANA Genius Award, I-COM Grand Prize, Stevie Gold Medal, SAMMY Product of the Year Award, Google Customer Success Award, GroupM Search Award, and covered by press including the Harvard Business Review. Prior to Ari's marketing roles, he spent a decade consulting with companies across industries and government agencies on the strategic application of analytics for business growth. Prior to this, he had a short-lived career as a film maker which greatly shaped his storytelling leadership style. 

Emily Silver currently serves as senior vice president, chief marketing officer at DICK'S Sporting Goods, a role she has held since joining the company in April 2023. In this role, Emily is responsible for the company's overall marketing strategy and implementation, including building the DICK'S brand, all traffic-driving elements and continued marketing and digital transformation. Emily also oversees the company’s communications and public relations efforts.

Prior to joining DICK'S, Emily spent 16 years at PepsiCo in various leadership roles, most recently serving as senior vice president, portfolio marketing with responsibility for creating and implementing portfolio strategy, oversight of the portfolio marketing teams, and marketing transformation. Before joining PepsiCo, Emily spent four years working on political campaigns in Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.

Emily earned her Bachelor of Arts degree in political science and economics from Brandeis University and her Master of Business Administration from Yale's School of Management.

Arun Sinha is a Board Advisor, Global Chief Marketing Officer and a leading business builder in Technology and Financial Services. He is a former Global Chief Marketing Officer of MSCI, J.P. Morgan, Zurich Financial Services, and Pitney Bowes. He currently manages a portfolio of platform companies in Digital Marketing, Wealth Management and Technology in addition to advising CEOs and senior leadership teams to build and grow for strategic exit. Arun has been a Board Member of many digital and consumer marketing companies including Bounteous, Ansira, Olson, Guthy|Renker, Direct Marketing Association (DMA) and Michigan State University College of Communications Arts & Sciences.

Arun specializes in transforming businesses to become customer-centric and growth oriented. His expertise is in growing brands from obscurity to top-100 Global brands by driving cultural change within businesses.

As a Lecturer and Senior Fellow at Yale School of Management, Arun co-created a MBA class in Marketing, "Strategic Marketing Leadership: The Role of a CMO." He is a frequent media commentator and author of several business strategy books including “Sweet Spot: How to Maximize Marketing for Business Growth”. He has been awarded “Chief Marketing Officer of the Year, and “Marketer of the Year” among other awards.

Donna Tuths is the former Chief Transformation and Innovation Officer and Chief Marketing Officer at Sutherland, where she was responsible for a global experience design practice that delivers exceptionally engineered experiences for both customers and employees, and led the $1.5B company’s transformation agenda. Donna is known as a forward-thinking leader committed to helping clients become fully digital, delivering real business results, and cultivating talent—passions she gets to apply every day. She is a noted speaker on the shift from Marketing to Experience and writes frequently about the impact this has on a company’s ability to compete in the world. She has lectured on this topic in the professional studies program at the Yale School of Management in its executive studies program. Donna’s passion for the impact of technology runs very deep. She began her career as a think-tank economist covering global trends in technology and related trade policy; and has 25 years of strategy and technology consulting experience focused on marketing and digital transformation. As the former CEO of Ogilvy Healthworld, President of Organic and head of Digital Content at Accenture Interactive, Donna is one of very few executives that have held positions at the top of both the Advertising and Consulting industries. Donna was a member of the 4A’s Government Relations Committee from 2006 to 2010, where she helped shape the Advertising Industry’s agenda in Washington, DC related to digital and data privacy. Donna was a founder of Accenture Interactive and through her work there from 2010 to 2017, is credited with leading a movement that disrupted the agency landscape pioneering new services that combined the capabilities of a traditional agency, with those of business, digital and technology consultancies. She continued to innovate in this space launching Cognizant Interactive where she expanded its offerings around Insight to Experience and its global footprint through multiple acquisitions. Her efforts were recognized by Ad Age, which in 2017 named Cognizant Interactive the world’s third largest digital network, and #1 in the United States.

Donna was the 2009 recipient of the MM&M’s Manny award recognizing her contributions in the field of advertising. She is an Advisory Board member of the Yale Center for Customer Insights, a life member of the Council on Foreign Relations where she sits on several technology Roundtables, and a Board Member of the MAKERS. Donna holds an MBA from the Yale School of Management, an MA from the Paul Nitze School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins, and a BA from Barnard College. Outside of the office, Donna plays the role of mother, wife, traveler, beachcomber, is an avid reader of Nordic noir fiction, and a die-hard NY Mets fan.”

Vanessa Vachon is the Insights & Analytics leader at Seagen, a global high-growth Biotech company. She began her career at Procter & Gamble in Canada in marketing/digital and insights in 2000, then moved to Switzerland in 2002, leading business growth & turnaround via insights & analytics in global P&G beauty divisions like Skin Care, Fragrances, and Salon Professional. After a 16-year career at P&G, she transitioned to Coty with the sale of P&G’s beauty portfolio, driving top- and bottom-line through digital transformation. Her passion to make the world a better place finally led her to health care and Sanofi until 2020 where she’s elevated the function to strategic foresight partner focusing on insights & behavioral science, trends & innovation, and performance culture & analytics. She is now at SeaGen with the goal to revolutionize cancer care: discovering, developing and commercializing transformative therapies that make a meaningful difference in people’s lives. Vanessa currently lives in Zug, Switzerland.