After 31 years on the marketing faculty – nine as chair – Bill Danko achieved emeritus status in 2007 at the School of Business, State University of New York at Albany. During his tenure, he studied consumer behavior, and in particular the topic of wealth formation. He is the co-author of The Millionaire Next Door, a research--based book about wealth in America that has been ranked as a bestseller by The New York Times for more than three years.
Ty Bennett : Leadership
When Ty was 21 years old, he and his brother Scott started a business in direct sales, which they built to over $20 million in annual revenue while still in their twenties. Since that time, he has developed over 500 sales managers globally with sales and leadership in 37 countries. As a young entrepreneur, Ty continues to engage his team’s focus to grow sales. He uses the power of influence and storytelling to get buy-in to the vision of growing their multimillion-dollar sales organization.
Spike Lee : Extraordinary Filmmaker
Spike Lee is a notable writer, director, producer, actor, and author who revolutionized both the landscape of independent cinema and the role of black talent in film. Widely regarded as a premiere African American filmmaker, Lee is a forerunner in the “do-it-yourself” school of filmmaking.
Scott Bedbury : Nike’s “Just Do It”
Scott Bedbury has a genius for unleashing brand potential through innovative products, creative positioning, careful distribution and strategic partnerships. One of the world’s leading brand architects, he has honed and proven his methods for building truly successful brands as the marketing executive responsible for two of the most successful branding strategies in business history: Nike’s “Just do it!” campaign and Starbucks’ reinvention of the coffee category.
Richard Roeper : Film Critic
Roeper began working as a columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times in 1987. The topics of his columns range from politics to media to entertainment. In more recent years, he has been widely considered one of the finest newspaper writers in Chicago, just a notch below the city’s golden-inked “Mount Rushmore” of John Kass (Tribune), Dave Hoekstra (Sun-Times), Jay Mariotti (Sun-Times) and Roger Ebert (Sun-Times).
Joseph Nye : Diplomat
Joseph Samuel Nye, Jr. (born January 19, 1937) is an American political scientist and former Dean of the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. He currently holds the position of University Distinguished Service Professor at Harvard University where he has been a member of the faculty since 1964. He is also the co-founder, along with Robert Keohane, of the international relations theory neoliberalism, developed in their 1977 book Power and Interdependence.
John Winsor : Advertising Pioneer
John Winsor is a leading strategic marketing and product innovation thinker especially known for his work in collaboration, co-creation and crowdsourcing. He is also a respected author of Baked In: The Power of Aligning Marketing and Product Innovation, Spark: Be more Innovative through Co-Creation and Beyond the Brand: Why Engaging the Right Customers is Essential to Winning in Business.
Jim Carroll : Innovation Expert
Jim Carroll is one of the world’s leading international futurists, trends and innovation experts, providing strategic guidance and insight to some of most prestigious organizations in the world for over twenty years. He is recognized worldwide as a “thought leader” and authority on: global trends, rapid business model change, business transformation in a period of economic uncertainty and the necessity for fast paced innovation.
Jennifer Aaker : The Power of Story
A social psychologist and marketer, Jennifer Aaker is the General Atlantic Professor of Marketing at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business. Her research spans time, money and happiness. She focuses on questions such as: What actually makes people happy, as opposed to what they think makes them happy? How can small acts create infectious action, and how can such effects be fueled by social media?
Seth Mattison Speaker – The War Of Work
Seth Mattison is an Internationally renowned speaker, and expert on workforce trends and generational dynamics. As founder and CEO of Futuresight Labs and Strategic Partner at BridgeWorks, LLC, Seth advises many of the world’s leading brands and corporations on the key shifts happening around talent management, change and innovation, leadership, and the future of work.
Maddy Dychtwald : Demographic Trends
Author, speaker and Age Wave co-founder Maddy Dychtwald is a leading expert on the changing demographic trends—both generation- and gender-related—shaping the marketplace, the workplace and our lives. Maddy has spent more than 25 years investigating and forecasting lifestyle and market trends of older adults and the 79 million baby boomers. Building on this knowledge, she has recently emerged as a renowned authority on the rising economic influence of women and their impact on industries, ranging from financial services and healthcare to consumer marketing.
Rasmus Ankersen : The Gold Mine Effect
Rasmus Ankersen is a bestselling author, an entrepreneur, a speaker on performance development and a trusted advisor to businesses and athletes around the world. He wrote his first book The DNA of a Winner at the age of 22. A year later he published his second, Leader DNA, based on field studies of 25 high-profile leaders, including the Secretary of NATO, Anders Fogh Rasmussen and the CEO of the LEGO Group, Jorgen Vig Knudstorp.
Mike Rowe : Dirty Jobs
Mike Rowe is a co-creator and the host of the series Dirty Jobs, now in its fifth year on the Discovery Channel. On the show, he learns and performs hundreds of jobs that require, it’s fair to say, a little bit of getting dirty.
Jim McCann : CEO, 1-800 Flowers.com
Jim McCann likes to make things grow. First, as a florist and then as the founder of 1-800-FLOWERS.COM, McCann, a consummate entrepreneur, has shown a knack for making businesses grow and prosper. From its roots in 1976 as a single flower shop in Manhattan, NY, 1-800-FLOWERS.COM has become the world’s largest florist with revenues expected to exceed $1 billion. In the process, McCann changed the way flowers and other gifts are marketed for birthdays, anniversaries, holidays and special occasions while helping to expand the definition of retailing – positioning his company to help customers express themselves and connect with the important people in their lives.
Douglas Conant : Former CEO, Campbell’s
From 2001 to 2011, Conant served as CEO and President of the Campbell Soup Company. Douglas R. Conant is also a New York Times bestselling author and keynote speaker with over 35 years of leadership experience at world-class global companies. In 2011, he founded ConantLeadership, a growing community of people dedicated to improving the quality of leadership in the 21st century. Deeply committed to leadership, he also serves as Chairman of Avon Products as well as Chairman of the Kellogg Executive Leadership Institute (KELI) at Northwestern University.
Clayton Christensen : Harvard
Professor Clayton received his B.A. in economics, summa cum laude, from Brigham Young University and an M.Phil. in applied econometrics from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. He subsequently received an MBA with High Distinction from the Harvard Business School in 1979, graduating as a George F. Baker Scholar.
Michael Bergdahl : Walmart
Michael Bergdahl was employed at Wal-Mart’s world headquarters in Bentonville, Arkansas as the Director of “People,” working side-by-side with one of America’s most iconic business tycoons; Wal-Mart’s Founder and CEO, Sam Walton.
Andy Stefanovich : Marketing Innovator
With over 20 years of experience transforming Fortune 50 companies and armed with a reputation as one of the most disruptive and effective advisors to business today, Andy Stefanovich believes companies must reorient their focus toward creativity and innovation in order to sustain strategic growth.
Bobbi Brown : Makeup Tycoon
Bobbi Brown is a professional makeup artist and the founder and CCO of Bobbi Brown Cosmetics. Brown has written eight books about makeup and beauty. As a successful makeup artist with access to everything in the market, Bobbi found nearly all products looked too artificial, making it impossible to create a gorgeous, no-makeup look. Bobbi’s big breakthrough was her first American Vogue cover. The image was shot by famed photographer Patrick Demarchelier and featured the soon-to-be-supermodel Naomi Campbell, made up by Bobbi Brown.
Lior Arussy : Customer Experience
Recognized by ABC News, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Times of London and Gartner as one of the world’s leading authorities on customer experience management and customer centricity transformation, Lior Arussy has developed a strategic framework to transform organizations from product to customer-centricity while increasing their profitability through differentiation.