CONFERENCE SPEAKERS

Advisors
Bill Chamberlin
Bill Chamberlin
Distinguished Market Intelligence Professional,
IBM Research

Bill Chamberlin is a Distinguished Market Intelligence Professional on the IBM Corporate Market Development & Insights team.  Bill has devoted much of the last 18 years to helping IBMers understand potential future technologies and how those technologies might impact business and society.  In 2001, he founded IBM's HorizonWatch technology trends research program and internal community.  In 2016 he was awarded the IBM Distinguished Market Intelligence Professional (DMIP) award, the highest award for an analyst in IBM. Bill is a member of the IBM Academy of Technology and leads the Technology Team for the Academy. This past summer he received the President's Award for his service to the Academy of Technology. He has a Bachelor's degree in Finance from University of Illinois and a Masters in Business Administration from Kellogg Management School at Northwestern University


Steven Goedtke
Steven Goedtke
Senior Recruiter ,
Micro Focus/HP


John Barker
John Barker
John Barker Corporate Strategy, Product Developmen,
Regulatory Compliance, Consultant

John Barker is a subject matter expert and consultant in market research, voice of the customer, competitive intelligence, corporate and product strategy, and regulatory compliance.  Prior to becoming an industry consultant, John held a number of positions during a 15-year career at Wolters Kluwer.  His work at Wolters Kluwer included the following roles that served Wolters Kluwer’s businesses and customers in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific:  Vice President of Competitive Intelligence and Strategy, Director of Competitive Strategy, Manager of Customer Workflow, and Product Manager. John’s academic credentials include the following:  BA in Philosophy from the Catholic University of Louivain, Belgium, a Juris Doctor degree from Tulane Law School, and a Master of Science in Regulatory Compliance from Northwestern University. In addition to being a member of the Louisiana State Bar Association, he has the following ethics and compliance certifications from the Compliance Certification Board:  (1) Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional (CCEP); (2) Certified in Healthcare Compliance (CHC); (3) Certified in Healthcare Privacy Compliance (CHPC); and (4) Certified in Healthcare Research Compliance (CHRC).


Grant Martha
Grant Martha
Continental Automotive System, Customer Service,
Continental Corporation


Speakers
Carl Spetzler
Carl Spetzler
CEO and Chairman,
Strategic Decisions Group, International, LLC

Dr. Spetzler has developed creative business strategies for major financial institutions, capital-intensive companies, high-technology manufacturers, and systems businesses.  Dr. Spetzler works with top management and boards of directors to improve the quality of their decisions.  He leads senior executive seminars on innovation, strategic decision, and risk management topics. He is a Life Trustee of the Illinois Institute.  He is co-author of Decision Quality: Value Creation from Better Business Decisions (Wiley, 2016). In 2004, he received the Ramsey Medal, the highest honor awarded by the Decision Analysis Society of INFORMS for lifetime contributions to the field. He is past president and a fellow of the Society of Decision Professionals and the recipient of the society’s pioneer award. Dr. Spetzler received an MBA and a PhD in economics and business administration and BS in chemical engineering from IIT.


Rick Lamos
Rick Lamos
Vice President, Client Services,
MarketsandMarkets

For the last 20+ years, Rick has led teams of experts to assist his clients tackle tough growth challenges in the face of accelerating and transformational change. He specializes in ensuring his clients optimize their investment and ultimately make the best possible business decisions related to their future revenue mix. MarketsandMarkets’s™ flagship competitive intelligence and market research platform, “Knowledge Store”, connects over 200,000 markets and entire value chains for a deeper understanding of the shifting revenue mix of our clients’ customers and their customers’ customers.


Vijay Khera
Vijay Khera
Global Head, Client Services,
MarketsandMarkets

Vijay Khera heads Client Services for MarketsandMarkets with a charter to build a deeper understanding of the clients and their business and ensure they gain maximum value from their engagement with MarketsandMarkets. In this role, Vijay and his team manages various research and consulting engagements with clients across US, Europe and the rest of the world. Prior to this, Vijay held leadership positions with Mu Sigma Inc, a big data analytics and decision sciences company; GlobalLogic, a digital product engineering services company and Infosys Technologies. Vijay has over 22 years of rich experience playing client and market-facing roles, building cross-cultural teams across global locations and running business operations


Shekhar Gupta
Shekhar Gupta
Geography Head-US,
MarketsandMarkets

At MarketsandMarkets, Shekhar Gupta is leading US Central region and managing global client relationship for key strategic accounts with a focus on building and growing client services group. Shekhar has 20 years of consulting experience at various executive levels spanning from Technology Delivery, Business Development and Account Management, and has worked with client’s leadership across key business verticals in Finance, Insurance, Resources, Retail and Healthcare. Before joining MarketsandMarkets, Shekhar was Client Executive at Avanade (Accenture & Microsoft JV) leading Midwest region accounts. Shekhar is passionate about Customer Service Excellence through building strong client relationships and driving business value for both client and company.


Dr. Bill Mitchell
Dr. Bill Mitchell
VP, Business Operations North America, Foxconn & CEO,
Aguila-a foxconn company

Dr. Bill Mitchell is President and CEO of Aguila, a Foxconn company, and VP of Business Operations
- Americas for the Foxconn Corporation. He is known for his success in helping develop organizations with value-based cultures through exceptionable strategic planning. Over the past 25 years, Bill has worked with more than 500 corporations and organizations, helping develop best of breed practices to provide long-term success. He has served as the executive coach and corporate psychologist for many current leading corporations and provides unique insights in the development of policy, process and people that serve as a catalyst for systematic sustainable growth. Over 30 years of professional public speaking, Bill has motivated audiences in 47 states and 5 continents. He has designed and presented training in the areas of teamwork, ethics and leadership, communication, corporate culture and many more. Dr. Mitchell’s unique conversational style and subtle humor allow him to instruct, inspire, and impact audiences from all walks of life.


Enrique Mayorga
Enrique Mayorga
Principal, Market Development & Insights, Cloud Platforms & Infrastructure,
IBM


Roland Cantu
Roland Cantu
Market Development & Insights Senior Advisor,
IBM

Roland Cantu is a Senior Market Development Advisor with IBM, currently supporting IBM Global Markets. He has over 20 years experience in market intelligence, supporting senior executives across marketing, sales and strategy within IBM. Roland has extensive experience managing teams across the globe and has held multiple positions within IBM focused on different geographies and business units and now in a global role. He strives to build a shared agenda with executive clients, strategically looking to the future and understands the importance of finding insights within data to impact the direction of the business.
 


Austin Black
Austin Black
VP Strategic Partnerships & Business Development ,
Wide Narrow

Austin Black is a tech nerd, partnership manager, and VP of Business Development at Wide Narrow (the Productivity Tool for Intelligence Teams). Heralding from Washington State, Austin has worked in a multitude of enterprise organizations with a focus on streamlining team workflows and increasing the ROI of business processes.

This experience translated seamlessly to Wide Narrow, where Austin helps customer teams quantify and increase the ROI of their Intelligence efforts.


Jennifer Preston
Jennifer Preston
Global Market Research and Intelligence Director,
Thermo Fisher Scientific

Jennifer Preston leads the Market Research and Intelligence team for the Chromatography & Mass Spectrometry Division at Thermo Fisher Scientific. She supports growth initiatives and strategy generation by designing quantitative data analyses on customer, competitor and industry trends. Prior to joining Thermo Fisher Scientific, Preston directed research as a government contractor supporting the military’s Joint Non-Lethal Weapons Directorate, designed websites for clinical research at a start-up, and was a consultant for PricewaterhouseCoopers.  Jennifer received her undergraduate degree from Duke University Pratt School of Engineering, her PhD in Biomedical Engineering from the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill with a focus on injury prevention for athletes, and her MBA from The Fuqua School of Business Duke University.


Sejal Sura
Sejal Sura
Vice President Analytics ,
Spark Foundry


David Chiesa
David Chiesa
Vice President for business development ,
Systems Control

David Chiesa is the Vice President for business development for Systems Control. In this role, David is responsible for the profitable growth of System’s Control’s Electrical Enclosure and Control Panel businesses.

Mr. Chiesa began his career in the United States Army serving as a maintenance company commander, general officer aide‐de‐camp, and U.S. Forces maintenance manager for the NATO troops conducting peacekeeping operations in Bosnia.


Scott Blessman
Scott Blessman
Director Of Analytics,
DDB

North American Director of Analytics with over 12 years of industry experience helping brands grow through strategic, actionable insights and a clear understanding of success. Strong analytics professional skilled in Broadcast and digital advertising, Google Campaign Manager, Search Advertising, E-commerce, social and brand site analytics. Having worked on numerous award-winning campaigns for brands in various industry verticals.


Guha Athreya Bhagavan
Guha Athreya Bhagavan
Director, Data Science,
Grainger

Guha has over 15 years’ experience building data and AI capabilities aligned to business needs.

Key Accomplishments:
• Made data easier to use across 8 Fortune 500 companies.
• Recruited, hired and trained over 100 Data Science practitioners in Asia, Europe and America.
• Transformed 43 business processes by embedding predictive capabilities.

The last 4 years have been about building an enterprise data science capability at Grainger, bringing together disparate data sources and creating value for the business through better product recommendations, improved search relevance, local product availability and optimized digital marketing.


Previously, he worked as a Data and Analytics consultant helping clients in Hospitality, CPG, fin-tech and eCommerce enhance their returns from marketing and supply chain investments. 


Farrukh Khan
Farrukh Khan
Founder & CEO,
Inference Analytics, Inc.

Farrukh is founder and CEO of Inference Analytics, Inc. He has over 20 years of experience in product management, strategy and general management in the analytics space. He has held leadership roles in early stage startups to large fortune 500 enterprises. Most recently Farrukh was GM and VP of IBM’s Netezza ($1.6Bn IBM acquisition) and Big Data distribution sector team where Farrukh worked closely with Business and Information Technology leaders across the world to define solution strategy that transformed key business processes like customer interactions, supply chain and operations into assets that created deeper customer understanding, more efficient operations, greater competitive advantage and increasing ROI. He has held senior leadership roles in Product Management at key analytics and Business Intelligence companies including IRI, Informatica where he was one of the early product managers and at MicroStrategy where he was co-founder of Strategy.com. He has a Masters of Business Administration from the Kellogg School of Management of Northwestern University and a Bachelors of Science in Electrical Engineering from Columbia University.


Mary Jane Duff
Mary Jane Duff
Marketing Director,
Agrithority

Mary Jane Duff works in agriculture, an industry that typifies complexity in development although not usually from the green field. She leads Marketing and Strategic Services for AgriThority, a firm her husband, Jerry Duff founded 11 years ago.  With a global footprint, AgriThority specializes in science-based services for business, product, and market development in agriculture.

Mary Jane faces the challenge of developmental work and creating unique positioning for agricultural products and systems. In that role, she successfully works with organizations that range from multi-nationals to start-ups, with their complex mix of needs, resources and constraints. Believing in a process of thorough analysis, alternative thinking and action planning, Mary Jane is results-oriented. She strives to help clients reach new heights by leveraging partnerships and collaborations while helping them develop internal capabilities.

A native of central Missouri, Mary Jane was graduated from the University of Missouri with both Bachelor and Master’s degrees.  


Bill Chamberlin
Bill Chamberlin
Distinguished Market Intelligence Professional,
IBM Research

Bill Chamberlin is a Distinguished Market Intelligence Professional on the IBM Corporate Market Development & Insights team.  Bill has devoted much of the last 18 years to helping IBMers understand potential future technologies and how those technologies might impact business and society.  In 2001, he founded IBM's HorizonWatch technology trends research program and internal community.  In 2016 he was awarded the IBM Distinguished Market Intelligence Professional (DMIP) award, the highest award for an analyst in IBM. Bill is a member of the IBM Academy of Technology and leads the Technology Team for the Academy. This past summer he received the President's Award for his service to the Academy of Technology. He has a Bachelor's degree in Finance from University of Illinois and a Masters in Business Administration from Kellogg Management School at Northwestern University


Trent Allan
Trent Allan
Product and Market Development Manager,
Wolters Kluwer

Trent Allan has been creating research tools and defining product strategy for tax professionals for 19 years. He is currently working on finding new market opportunities for tax research and creating new products for Wolters Kluwer Tax and Accounting, Research and Learning, as a Product Market and Development Manager.
Prior to this he was a product manager at Deloitte, working on client facing tax analytics applications. He has also worked as a product line manager for Wolters Kluwer and a Senior Editor for the West Group.  He has degree in journalism from Drake University and a Juris Doctorate from Chicago Kent College of Law.


Sandeep Upadhyay
Sandeep Upadhyay
Senior Director Digital Business and Technology,
Cognizant

Sandeep Upadhyay is an experienced management executive with a successful track record of driving digital transformations for life sciences clients. Sandeep is passionate about driving commercial and operational effectiveness through hyper-personalization, AI, digital assistants, advanced mobility and digital twins. Sandeep is a recognized lateral thinker, innovator, thought leader, and patent owner for “Netflix Model of BI”


Krishnan Thyagarajan
Krishnan Thyagarajan
President & COO,
DataWeave

Krish is a technology executive and veteran with 25+ years’ experience in the IT industry globally. He has run technology businesses across geographies, cultures and maturity levels and successfully managed P&L responsibilities with technology leaders such as Microsoft and Dell. His specialties include P&L management, market & enterprise customer development, developing partner ecosystems, and incubation of new businesses. He is also an active investor and advisor to startups globally.


Jocelyn R. Johnson
Jocelyn R. Johnson
Global Director,  Value Propositions & Insights,
GE Healthcare

Jocelyn is the Global Director, Value Propositions & Insights at GE Healthcare, an $20B global healthcare equipment and services division of the conglomerate. She leads & establishes the development and conformance to frameworks and drives global consistency and efficiently localizable value propositions. While providing value-driver and other customer and market analytics and insights at key milestones throughout the product and solutions development process to inform development of differentiated features, benefits and outcomes addressing customer and market needs. Establishes and executes clinical, operational and financial outcomes based research and evidence generation programs in support of new products and solutions and for portfolio products in response to shifting market dynamics. Jocelyn strategically leads and runs customer and segment panels and advisory boards to shape development of offering and to understand and test value drivers.  Working closely with commercial excellence and development teams she ensures direct and indirect sales are able to effectively articulate value propositions and gain price. Her team leverages commercial analytics and implement agile testing and field learning feedback processes to rapidly adjust value proposition and price positioning based on customer and market reaction.


Shailendra Singh (Shelly)
Shailendra Singh (Shelly)
Board Member,
MarketsandMarkets

Shailendra Singh (Shelly) is a member of MarketsandMarket's board. He focuses on global sales and client services functions, as well as commercial optimization at MarketsandMarkets. He has years of expe¬rience in global delivery and outsourcing sector in the IT/ Consulting/Analytics/Big Data sectors. Prior to MnM, he was leading the global sales, client services and commercial ef¬fectiveness functions for Mu Sigma, a unicorn company and a leading global provider of Decision Sciences and Big Data analytics solutions.


Karina Besprosvan
Karina Besprosvan
Datastoryteller Insight & Innovation Exponential C,
Sony Pictures Entertainment

Karina Besprosvan is a Communications and Media Expert, Data Storyteller, and Consumer Insight Specialist with significant experience working in multicultural environments and a diverse amount of industries, mostly in the US and Latin American. She has written more than 50 thought leaders & papers and have served as guest speaker at more than 100 industry events around the world. She is authoring a book GenZ RuleZ, based on her recent research on the topic. She is also a co-author and editor. After working for 12 years with OmnicomMediaGroup in-house, serving Fortune 500 best in class companies, Karina is now working as a Business Strategy Consultant at OmnicomMediaGroup (Oct 2015-present). She also consults for many other companies in the entertainment business as well as other organizations like Ong’s, governments, startups, among others. She is helping companies such as Sony Pictures, in the area of data storytelling, Insights & innovation, Grupo Garnier, BBDO, TBWA, Porter, in the area of digital transformation and Direcciona HR in the area of the future of work.


Jessica Williams
Jessica Williams
Research and Strategy, Market & Talent Intelligen,
Microsoft

Jessica is a leading strategist within the emerging field of Talent Market Intelligence. She brings a unique perspective to market intelligence by analyzing business strategy through the lens of skillsets.  Her approaches are grounded in the practices of U.S. three-letter intelligence agencies.  Jessica’s expertise have helped shaped products such as LinkedIn Talent Insights and is currently innovating a new products, intelligence platforms, and tools that impact Microsoft strategy.


Bret Toplyn
Bret Toplyn
Product Market Intelligence ,
ABB

Bret started working for ABB in 2012 performing analysis on the energy markets.  Through his career at ABB he has worked with clients in energy regulation, renewable generation, transmission planning, grid operations, market pricing and fossil generation.  As Product Manager of Market Intelligence Bret helps ABB clients with new tools focused on market analysis, simulation and forecasting.  Bret worked for Goldman Sachs prior to ABB and has a degree in Business Administration from the University of Colorado, Boulder.  He is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Business Analytics from the University of Colorado, Boulder.  Bret started working for ABB in 2012 performing analysis on the energy markets.  Through his career at ABB he has worked with clients in energy regulation, renewable generation, transmission planning, grid operations, market pricing and fossil generation.  As Product Manager of Market Intelligence Bret helps ABB clients with new tools focused on market analysis, simulation and forecasting.  Bret worked for Goldman Sachs prior to ABB and has a degree in Business Administration from the University of Colorado, Boulder.  He is currently pursuing a Master’s Degree in Business Analytics from the University of Colorado, Boulder. 


Sachin Bahad
Sachin Bahad
Associate Director, Global Market Intelligence ,
MERCK


Igor Menghini
Igor Menghini
Director, Strategic Insights and Analysis ,
Roche

Igor Menghini is a scientist turned marketer; in his role at Roche Diagnostics, he provides strategic insights into the world of Genomics and Next Generation Sequencing, a fast-moving field where data from traditional sources are scarce. Igor relies on his experience as founder of NValue Analytics, a data analytics consulting firm, and his knowledge of the biotech industry to bring new, data-driven approaches into the practice of Market Research and Competitive Intelligence.


Evan Brownstein
Evan Brownstein
Global Head of Marketing ,
Wipro

Evan Brownstein is Global Head of Marketing as a Service for Wipro. He led a team that created a $283 million start-up within a $9 billion corporation. This was achieved by creating value and growth for clients such as Intel, PwC, Sony, Nestle, Uber, Masonite, Florida Blue, and Pfizer. Before joining the Wipro team, Evan led Marketing for Health Plan Services and Checkers & Rally’s Restaurants (two opposite ends of the healthcare continuum). He also served as Creative Director with McCann-Erickson and Ogilvy, launched a film production company to produce movies and television shows with Rosario Dawson, James Earl Jones, and Todd Oldham, and help create the Tribeca Film Festival. Evan serves on the Board of Directors with Berkeley Preparatory School, The Advent Health System Foundation, the Greater Tampa Chamber of Commerce, and the American Diabetes Association.

 


Anamika Gupta
Anamika Gupta
Global Strategic Marketing Executive Leader ,
Fujitsu, America

Anamika Gupta, Director & Head of Account - Based Marketing at Fujitsu America, Inc., has significant expertise – including a previous stint leading ABM for Capgemini America, Inc. – building business in Account - Based Marketing (ABM), Field Marketing and Cross-Geo Marketing. Anamika offers her thoughts about her approach to building strategic partnerships and best practices that drive revenue and build market share, generating game-changing results.


Maggie A. Pax
Maggie A. Pax
Vice President, Strategy and Marketing ,
Thermo Fisher Scientific

Maggie Pax has a track record of driving strategic innovation and market leadership at both established and entrepreneurial health care companies. Maggie Pax is currently the Vice President, Strategy and Marketing for Thermo Fisher Scientific’s Clinical Trials Division. Her responsibilities include strategy, business planning, acquisitions, new service development and marketing for the company’s market-leading clinical supply, cold chain, cell therapy and logistics services. She previously led post-merger integrations and strategic commercial initiatives in Thermo Fisher’s Corporate Strategy group.


John Barker
John Barker
John Barker Corporate Strategy, Product Developmen,
Regulatory Compliance, Consultant

John Barker is a subject matter expert and consultant in market research, voice of the customer, competitive intelligence, corporate and product strategy, and regulatory compliance.  Prior to becoming an industry consultant, John held a number of positions during a 15-year career at Wolters Kluwer.  His work at Wolters Kluwer included the following roles that served Wolters Kluwer’s businesses and customers in North America, Europe, and Asia Pacific:  Vice President of Competitive Intelligence and Strategy, Director of Competitive Strategy, Manager of Customer Workflow, and Product Manager. John’s academic credentials include the following:  BA in Philosophy from the Catholic University of Louivain, Belgium, a Juris Doctor degree from Tulane Law School, and a Master of Science in Regulatory Compliance from Northwestern University. In addition to being a member of the Louisiana State Bar Association, he has the following ethics and compliance certifications from the Compliance Certification Board:  (1) Certified Compliance and Ethics Professional (CCEP); (2) Certified in Healthcare Compliance (CHC); (3) Certified in Healthcare Privacy Compliance (CHPC); and (4) Certified in Healthcare Research Compliance (CHRC).