2019 Speakers

Imran Abbasi

Salesforce Service Cloud Product Marketing Associate
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Roy Atkinson

HDI Senior Writer/Analyst
Sessions: Tell Us How You Really Feel: Customer Satisfaction Is Not Enough | Debating Data: The Role of FCR in the 21st-Century Contact Center

Roy Atkinson is one of the top influencers in the service and support industry. His blogs, presentations, research reports, white papers, keynotes, and webinars have gained him an international reputation. In his role as senior writer/analyst, he acts as HDI's in-house subject matter expert, bringing his years of experience to the community. He holds a master’s certificate in advanced management strategy from Tulane University’s Freeman School of Business, and he is a certified HDI Support Center Manager. Follow him on Twitter @RoyAtkinson.

Jay Baer

Inspirational Expert on Marketing, Word of Mouth and Customer Service
Keynotes: Featured Keynote: Hug Your Haters - How to Connect with and Keep Your Customers

Jay Baer is a Hall of Fame Speaker, New York Times best-selling author of six books, internet pioneer, entrepreneur, and the most inspirational expert on marketing, word of mouth, and customer service.

Jay spent 20 years in digital marketing, consulting for more than 700 companies during that period, including 30 of the FORTUNE 500. His current firm – Convince & Convert – provides social media and content marketing advice and counsel to leading companies such as Oracle, Salesforce.com, California Tourism, Billabong, Hardee's, DOLE and more.

His second book, Youtility: Why Smart Marketing is About Help not Hype, was #3 on the New York Times business best seller list, and a runaway #1 Amazon bestseller. Jay speaks numerous times per year worldwide, and shows how to use technology as an unfair marketing and customer service advantage. As a result, audiences will rethink their approach to marketing and customer service, helping them gain more customers and keep those they've already earned.

Jay's Convince & Convert blog was named the world's #1 content marketing blog by the Content Marketing Institute and is visited by more than 200,000 marketers each month. Jay also hosts and produces the Social Pros podcast, which is downloaded 25,000 times monthly.

A fixture in social media, Jay draws attention to interesting and useful articles, videos, blog posts and events via following on Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin and Google Plus, which number more than 100,000. He is also an active venture capitalist, and is an investor or advisor to more than a dozen early-stage technology and social media companies.

Convince & Convert is the fifth multi-million dollar company Jay has started from scratch. Before his move into digital marketing in 1994 he was a brand marketer and a political consultant, with major roles in state, federal and presidential electoral campaigns.

Befitting his roots in Arizona, Jay is a tequila collector and maintains his allegiance to the teams of his alma mater, the University of Arizona. He lives in the idyllic college town of Bloomington, Indiana, with his wife and children, and travels from Indianapolis to speaking opportunities world-wide.

Stephanie Beal

Unbridled Connect Trainer
Sessions: Unbridled Onboarding: Optimizing Training to Increase Proficiency [CASE STUDY]

Stephanie Beal has been involved in corporate training since 2004. Her experience includes seven years at Sprint training agents on customer service, technical troubleshooting, ticket management, fraud prevention, and social media. She has since worked with Layer3 TV and is currently at Unbridled Connect training call agents.

Rocky Buchta

WebMD Health Services Senior Manager, Health Education
Sessions: How 3 Award-Winning Teams Leverage Contact Center KPIs for Success

Colette Carlson

Human Behavior Expert
Keynotes: Featured Keynote: Many Communicate, Few Connect

Colette Carlson is a human behavior expert and CPAE Hall of Fame motivational keynote speaker who inspires organizations and individuals to connect and communicate in real and relevant ways. With wit, humor and sincerity, each of Colette’s presentations weaves together real-life lessons on genuine connection and the tools to leverage those connections for personal and professional success.

With a Master’s Degree in Human Behavior, a fascination with communication trends, and over 20 years of experience in the personal development industry, Colette guides audiences and clients along the fine line between the trendy topics that keep us relevant and the timeless truths that lead to meaningful achievements and relationships.

A Certified Speaking Professional (CSP), a designation held by fewer than 10% of the members belonging to the International Federation for Professional Speakers, Colette has shared her insights, observations and research with thousands of people throughout the world. In 2017, Colette was inducted into the CPAE Speaker Hall of Fame, a recognition that honors professional speakers who have reached the top echelon of career excellence.

Her articles on connection, stress management, sales and leadership have been featured in Success, Business Management Daily, and Working Mother magazines. Clients include Boeing, Microsoft, Cisco, Pepsi, Procter & Gamble, Shell, Great Clips, Davidson Hotels, the and United States Government.

Connect with Colette to inspire and entertain at your next event, training or meeting, as she shares the keys to forming and sustaining authentic connections that drive productivity, engagement and collaboration.

Kaye Chapman

Comm100 Learning and Development Manager
Sessions: Fantastic Bots and How to Build Them

Kaye is Comm100's Learning & Development Manager, a seasoned contact center executive, an internationally-experienced writer and trainer, and an MA student at University College London.
Kaye has worked with global Fortune 500, government and private firms to advance customer service operations and to embed effective learning and development strategies. As a specialist in contact centers, she has worn the hats of agent, manager, QA specialist and trainer. She is also an expert in shaping and operationalizing CX strategy.
At Comm100, Kaye is at the intersection of technology and training, providing people-centric learning to help organizations handle the fast pace of technological change, and ensuring that agents, managers and exec teams can successfully implement the technology they invest in.
Kaye is a digital communications advocate, a proud millennial, and a tea-drinking British lady. She is a proponent of AI adoption and careful automation to allow us all more time to focus on the customer interactions that really matter.

Brad Cleveland

ICMI Senior Advisor and Founding Partner
Sessions & Keynotes: The Principles of Effective Contact Center Management | Keynote Address with Brad Cleveland | Characteristics of the Best Managed Contact Centers

Brad Cleveland is often cited as one of the world's foremost leaders and thinkers in customer service and contact centers. He has worked in over 60 countries, has advised numerous governments, and counts many of today's service leaders Apple, HP, American Express, and others among his clients. Brad is author/editor of eight books, including Call Center Management on Fast Forward , which won an Amazon.com best-selling award and is used in universities and corporate training programs around the world. One of the initial partners in and former President and CEO of ICMI, Brad grew the firm into a global industry leader that is now part of United Business Media (London: UBM.L). He now serves as a Senior Advisor to ICMI, and is an in-demand author, speaker and consultant. His current research is focused on the future of customer service.

Art Coombs

KomBea Corporation President & CEO
Sessions: Next-Level Leadership: Making Human Connections

Dawn Crall

Zoro Director of Customer Service
Sessions: Scaling for Talent, Engagement, and Retention in Zoro's Hypergrowth Environment [CASE STUDY]

Jonathan DeVore

ScreenSteps Customer Success
Sessions: Unbridled Onboarding: Optimizing Training to Increase Proficiency [CASE STUDY]

Jonathan DeVore began his career as a CPA with a big four accounting firm in Washington, D.C. There, he consulted Federal Government security programs and provided training to security professionals who were implementing new standards. In 2013, Jonathan joined his brothers at ScreenSteps, a software platform for creating company universities, and is currently the Director of Customer Success.

Neal Dlin

Chorus Tree Founder, Human Experience Practitioner
Sessions: Mapping the Employee Experience to Improve the Customer Experience

Evan Dobkin

Talkdesk Sr. Product Marketing Manager
Sessions: Post-GDPR - The Impact of Data Regulations on Contact Centers

Evan Dobkin is a Senior Manager for Product Marketing at Talkdesk with nearly a decade in the contact center space focused on all facets of the company/customer conversation.

Billie Durden

Meadows Regional Medical Center Director, Patient Access & Care Connect
Sessions: Starting from Scratch: The Journey to Build and Optimize a Small Contact Center [CASE STUDY]

Billie Sue Durden has 30 years experience as a business and healthcare operations manager with a focus in business operations, healthcare management, human resource management, data and statistical research/analysis, and training/staff development. Her specialties include human resource management, business operations/administration, Physician Practice management, healthcare administration, project management, data research/analysis, training/staff development, contract compliance, accounts receivable and collections, payroll & benefit administration. More recently over 2 years' experience in small contact center management. Billie Sue holds a MBA and a Masters in Management from Bellevue University. She is happily married with two children and six grandchildren. Her hobbies include scrap booking, reading, and playing her Nintendo Switch!

Wendy Fowler

ICMI Business Associate
Sessions: FULL DAY ICMI Training: Workforce Management Principles

Murphy Fraser

Skillshare Customer Experience Manager
Sessions: It's Time to Prioritize Inclusivity and Employee Wellbeing in the Contact Center

A child of the Midwest startup space, Murphy is a curious and creative leader whose passion is people, pure and simple. As a former Contact Center Supervisor for a food tech company and currently as the Client Success Manager at Skillshare, she enjoys helping young companies move from customer-curious to customer-centric through process building, engagement strategy development, and experience design. A true advocate for all things customer and employee, Murphy is a believer that when we keep our business interactions human, everyone wins.

Bob Furniss

Bluewolf, an IBM company VP, Smart Contact Centers,
Sessions: The Future of Engagement: What You Need to Know

Bob Furniss VP, Service Cloud Practice, Bluewolf, an IBM Company For more than 38 years, Bob's career has focused on helping companies improve their customer experience. As VP, Global Service Cloud Practice, he and his team drive customer success in the area of service and support strategy across all digital channels - with a focus on the world's top customer engagement platform, Salesforce. As a consultant, he has worked with hundreds of the top brands in the world. Bob is proud to have received the prestigious Lifetime Achievement Award from ICMI in 2017 for his work in the contact center industry. He writes for several industry publications, is active on Twitter at twitter.com/bobfurniss and was named as one of the Top 50 #CCTR Thought Leaders on Twitter in 2015-2018. On a personal note, Bob is married with two children and two amazing grandsons. He lives in Memphis, TN, loves photography and is an avid Pittsburg Steelers fan. He has a heart for the people of Honduras and serves on the board of HondurasProject, a children's charity located in Tegucigalpa. He is actively involved in the support of breast cancer awareness among young women in honor of his daughter.

Beth Gauther-Jenkin

Gopher Sport Vice President, Customer Care
Sessions: Supporting Employee Growth: Developing a Successful Career Path [CASE STUDY]

Andrew Gilliam

Western Kentucky University ITS Service Desk Consultant
Sessions: Sticking to Policy and Procedures Without Killing the Customer Experience

Andrew Gilliam is a passionate customer experience innovator, change agent. He's developed new employee portals, created effective surveys, and built silo-busting escalation systems. Andrew's background in Information Technology put him on the front-lines of customer service as an ITS Service Desk Consultant for Western Kentucky University. His vision: deliver Amazing Customer Service and Technical Support™. Andrew was named one of ICMI's Top 50 Thought Leaders of 2018 and is an ICMI Featured Contributor. He loves connecting with the community on Twitter (twitter.com/ndytg) and LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/andytg).

John Goodman

CCMC, Customer Care Measurement & Consulting Vice Chairman
Sessions: Beyond Efficiency and Cost Savings – Preparing Technology Recommendations Based on Customer Impact | Integrating Customer Insights and Quality With the Contact Center to Maximize Strategic Impact

Laura Grimes

ICMI Business Associate
Sessions: FULL DAY ICMI Training: Contact Center Strategy

Laura is CEO of Harrington Consulting Group Inc. She is an experienced consultant with over 20 years of successful business planning, project management, traffic engineering and resource management. Laura draws on her dynamic and innovative background in service and manufacturing operations with high-growth industry leaders. She has developed unique operational solutions for companies facing the challenges of managing multiple skills in multiple centers spanning the globe, including site selection and facility design. She is deft at developing customer relationship strategies and drilling those strategies down to operational plans. Laura, a frequent speaker at conferences, enjoys sharing her passion for customer service and exploring alternative and innovative ways to efficiently and effectively gain loyalty and retain customers. She has taught and lectured at several universities, and has published many articles on different facets of call center management including strategy development, deployment of resources, motivation of associates and forecasting and scheduling. Laura is an ICMI-Certified Call Center Management Consultant. She earned her master degree in business administration.

Ian Hall

Bold360 by LogMeIn Senior Solutions Consultant
Sessions: Driving CX with AI for Customer Engagement to Agent Enablement

Ian Hall is determined and results-driven leader who has built trusted client relationships with some of the world’s largest companies to deliver sustainable value and growth. These outcomes have led to broader and increasingly strategic collaboration with businesses in his role as a Senior Solutions Consultant. His valuable insight around Machine Learning AI has transformed internal and external business processes through the offering of LogMeIn’s Bold360ai platform. At LogMeIn, he has brought innovation and change to the improvement of his clients’ interactions with their customers.

Chris Hanna

Evolving Management Management Coach
Sessions: How To Have Success With Knocking Down Walls and Silos

Chris Hanna was a 2018 ICMI Mover & Shaker in the category of Workforce Manager. In 2019, he joined ICMI's Featured Contributor panel providing resources for the contact center community. Passionate about developing high-potential talent and leaders, he is a Management Coach, providing resources and solutions at Evolving Management. He believes that if leaders prioritize the employee experience and engagement, then it is much more effective to exceed expectations with the customer experience, allowing growth, profits, and most importantly, shared success to follow.

Kate Hastings

Zendesk Manager, Advocacy Quality Assurance
Sessions: From White-glove Service to Omnichannel CX - How Zendesk does Quality Assurance

Prior to joining the Zendesk family, Kate worked for a large medical software company as a QA Engineer. She joined Zendesk 4 years ago, and her passion for quality customer service blossomed due to the outstanding environment fostered by the company.

After 6 months cutting her teeth learning the product as a Customer Advocate, she founded the Advocacy QA team and launched the program globally after 4 months.

Vicki Herrell

Society of Workforce Planning Professionals Executive Director
Sessions: "The Power of One" in the Contact Center

Vicki Herrell serves as the Executive Director of the Society of Workforce Planning Professionals (SWPP) and has been at the helm of the association since its inception in 2002. Vicki has over 20 years of experience in the call center and workforce management industry, serving for many years in the area of client relations and events management for the former TCS Management Group. Vicki is a popular industry speaker, serving as an industry expert on best practices in workforce management. She is the editor of the SWPP newsletter, On Target, and the Workforce Management Expert Solutions book. She may be reached at [email protected]

Todd Hixson

Hulu Capacity Manager
Sessions: Ask the Experts: Mastering Your Metrics | Maximizing Productivity: The Power of Flexible Scheduling and Off-Peak Optimization

Todd has been in contact center operations/management for around 20 years, working for Travelocity, Cabelas and Intuit prior to joining Hulu. He has been an out-sourcer, and in-sourcer and an us-sourcer with a belief in efficiency realized using creative scheduling, performance based "right for me" shift bidding, and pushing limits with optimization focusing on delighted customers and engaged employees. His current projects include capacity planning that relentlessly pursues better ways while ensuring his team "embraces fun." In all of this, the focus is on the fact that it starts with the customer! He has driven back-office utilization of WFM practice, multiple channel skill based operations practices, and cross functional "day in the life of WFM" workshops. Todd has served on ICMI's advisory board, consulted in industry standard certification with CIAC and was the recipient of ICMI's distinguished Life-time Achievement Award in 2018.

Al Hopper

Black Rifle Coffee Company Customer Experience Manager
Sessions: Debating Data: The Role of FCR in the 21st-Century Contact Center

John Hunt

onPeak Senior Director of Operations
Sessions: Improving Customer Experience and Agent Morale - An onPeak Case Study

John directs and manages a full contact center with a focus on assisting customers with all of their housing needs. It’s his goal to not only help people, but to have them walk away with their customer service expectations exceeded. In addition, he supports a team that’s handling written and escalation ticketing systems which allows for faster service and turnaround time. Half of his staff members work remotely which gives him the flexibility to have redundancy across multiple locations.

He also directs and manages a team of operations coordinators.

John recently spearheaded a project and partnered with Sharpen to upgrade their contact center from (three) traditional PBX to a cloud-native, omni-channel system. This lets the staff work remotely, while still keeping them connected with a seamless contact center integration across multiple offices, letting onPeak be the leader in the event services industry.

Hale Jay

Midwest Contact Center Association Founder & Board Member
Sessions: MWCCA Chicago Chapter Launch

Hale has been in the contact center industry for 20 years and in 2009 helped create the Midwest Contact Center Association. The MWCCA was formed to build a local community of practitioners in the industry for networking, education, and collaboration. One of the hallmarks of Hale's professional career has been to bring like-minded individuals together around a common cause. The MWCCA is designed to allow contact center professionals to open up about their challenges and share their success stories in order to facilitate discussions where everyone learns. In 2020, the MWCCA is expanding to open a chapter in Chicago. Hale is also the President of Contact Center Consulting Group.

Chelsey Johnson

Gopher Sport Education and Quality Supervisor
Sessions: Supporting Employee Growth: Developing a Successful Career Path [CASE STUDY]

Chelsey is the Education & Quality Supervisor for Sales with Gopher Sport. Chelsey is an experienced education and quality leader demonstrating success in coaching and supporting front line team members. Her strengths include delivering training material effectively, executing quality assurance, and providing continuous support for front line team members.

Rachel Kelly

Salesforce Sr Solution Engineer
Sessions: Employee Experience - From Hire to Retire - Building a Best Workplace to Drive Business Performance

Sheri Kendall

Wayfair Training Manager
Sessions: It's Time to Prioritize Inclusivity and Employee Wellbeing in the Contact Center

Murph Krajewski

Sharpen VP of Marketing
Sessions: Improving Customer Experience and Agent Morale - An onPeak Case Study

Murph has nearly 20 years of contact center industry experience. Since 2016 he has served as vice president of marketing for cloud contact center provider Sharpen Technologies. His responsibilities include designing, implementing and measuring marketing strategies that increase brand awareness and drive sales. Prior to Sharpen, Murph served as senior marketing manager for customer experience solutions provider Interactive Intelligence (acquired by Genesys). There he led new media initiatives focused on creative digital marketing.

He has experience on both the IT side, having served in system administration
roles, and on the frontlines, working with contact center managers to reveal the
underpinnings of superior customer and agent experiences. Among his many accomplishments, Murph is also a frequently cited customer experience professional, having been interviewed by Forbes, Inc., CustomerThink, No Jitter and other nationally renowned media outlets.

Katie Krier

Point B Principal
Sessions: Asking for Project Funding?: The Top 5 Things Executives Need to See

Katie Krier is a Contact Center executive who has spent nearly 30 years developing and delivering solutions for operations on three continents. Having spent her career in both advisory and operations roles, Katie has developed a breadth of skills and insight into contact solutions that focus on integrated solutions that deliver people, process, technology, metrics and operational improvements.

Tracey Lawrence

Grand Family Planning Founder
Sessions: It's Time to Prioritize Inclusivity and Employee Wellbeing in the Contact Center

Brian Leeson

Alberta Pension Services Manager, Member Services
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Brian Leeson is the manager of Member Services for Alberta Pensions Services (APS) in Edmonton, Alberta. With a focus on innovation, collaboration, and leveraging best practices, Brian’s experience working in contact centers for Dell Technologies and Alberta Health Services has helped shape the strategy that led to the APS’s successes during a major organizational transformation: Next Generation. Brian is a proud contact center leader, and he attributes the success he’s had to the teams he’s worked with.

Randy Littleson

NICE inContact CMO & SVP of Global Expansion
Keynotes: Morning Welcome: Scaling a Customer Centric Culture

Randy Littleson is Chief Marketing Officer and Senior VP of Global Expansion at NICE inContact. In this role, Randy is responsible for the direction, strategy and overall management of NICE inContact’s marketing efforts. Randy has amassed over 28 years of executive-level marketing experience within the software industry, most recently as Senior Vice President of Marketing with Flexera Software. During his time with Flexera, Littleson was a senior member of the executive team with global responsibility for marketing, product management and corporate development. Randy brings a wide range of marketing experience in the enterprise software space to NICE inContact and a progressive track record of accomplishments. He has held executive level roles with product management and marketing responsibilities at Kinaxis, Interface Software, InstallShield Software, Spyglass, Inc., and Palindome. He holds an MBA from the Keller Graduate School of Management at DeVry University and a BS in Computer and Communication Sciences from the University of Michigan.

Danielle Maravelas

Logistics Health Incorporated Experience Designer
Sessions: The Power of Modernized UI: Improving the Employee Experience While Cutting Costs [CASE STUDY]

Danielle Maravelas is all about advocating for users and improving their experience through re-imagination and technology improvements. She is an Experience Designer and software application Product Owner with Logistics Health Incorporated, a company dedicated to delivering innovative healthcare solutions for our nation's Military and Veterans. She leads teams that develop new technologies that bring better care, faster to those who serve our country. Her experience spans across the Healthcare Industry as well as the agency world where she has worked for companies such as The Mayo Clinic and XumaK, an Adobe Business Partner.

Fancy Mills

Group Training and Content Director, ICMI
Sessions & Keynotes: FULL DAY ICMI Training: Small Contact Center | Keynote Address with Fancy Mills | Spotlight on What's Hot and Happening in the Contact Center World

As the current Director of Training and Content, Fancy brings over twenty years of experience specializing in consulting, training and human resource development. Her main area of focus has been working with service and support centers and contact centers across various industries to optimize their performance. As a former ICMI Business Associate she has certified thousands of service and support professionals, managers, directors, analysts, agents, technicians, and corporate trainers around the world in virtual and classroom environments. In addition to training, she has developed and facilitated customized curriculum, training and consulted for Fortune 500 companies in the areas of customer service, customer experience, quality management, workforce management presentation, communication, and time management skills. Fancy has also served as a session speaker for various industry conferences and events such as Fusion, HDI and ATD.

While at HD/ICMI she served as a chair for International Certification Standard Committees, served on certification testing committees, conference committees, as well as published articles for Support World Magazine. In 2017 Fancy received her Masters in Human Resource Development with a specialization in Adult Education from Texas A&M University. While at Texas A&M University. Fancy is a published author on generational conflict strategies and was a featured speaker at the 2016 TEDx TAMU speaking on The XYZ Strategies for Succeeding in a Multi-Generational World. She served on the Texas A&M Graduate Advisory Board and the Steering Committee for The Academy for Future Faculty and was awarded the 2016 Senior Fellow. She was also selected to serve as the Student Representative Commencement speaker for graduation.

As a fifth generation Texan, she lives in Austin, Texas with her husband Kevin, son Mills, and their tabby cat Sparky. She's an avid sports fan and enjoys rooting for all Dallas sports teams but her favorite team is anyone that her son is playing on!

Gina Montague

Infinite Campus Manager, Support Services
Sessions: Top 10 Must-Haves to Build an Effective Team

Gina Montague is passionate about staff development, process improvement, and creating positive employee and customer experiences. Gina has more than 25 years of leadership and customer service experience, and she's proud to have a career in the support industry. For the past eight years, she's had the honor of leading the support team for Infinite Campus, a student information system for K-12 education. In April 2013, the Infinite Campus support team was awarded the HDI Team Excellence Award, and in 2016, they were a finalist.

Tim Montgomery

Alamo City STAT Principal Consultant
Sessions: Building the Contact Center You Always Wanted to Work For: The CSG Story

Tim Montgomery is a Founder and Managing Partner at Alamo Cloud Solutions (ACS). ACS is led by a team of call center veterans that built and sold one of the first 100% cloud based BPO call centers. His proven expertise in customer service and contact center operations has made him a sought-after advisor to companies in a variety of vertical industries. Tim has personally assisted some of the world's most recognized service organizations – DELL, AIG, Lifetouch Publishing, ADP, Mitsubishi Motors, Farmers Insurance, Premera Blue Cross, Deluxe Corporation, Allstate, Kodak, Liberty Mutual, Cinergy, Prudential, Meguiar's, Isagenix, Department of Veterans Affairs, The Gartner Group, Amerigroup, Prime Therapeutics, Harvard Medical School, and many more.

Travis Nichols

Moxie Pest Control Director of Operations
Sessions: The Best of the Best: How Moxie Pest Control Attracts and Retains "A Players" [CASE STUDY]

Travis is the Director of Operations for Moxie Pest Control. His responsibilities and expertise include building and developing national teams, writing and implementing operational processes, and creating and organizing performance reports and scoreboards. He is passionate about business and employee development and is an active consultant in several local entrepreneurial groups. Travis earned his MBA from Arizona State University. When not working, he enjoys spending time with his wife and 2 kids in Mesa, Arizona.

LESLIE OFLAHAVAN

E-WRITE Founder
Sessions: Live Chat: The Channel Is Mature, but Chat Quality Is Not Good Enough | How to Deliver Consistent Communication in an Omnichannel World

Leslie O'Flahavan has helped thousands of people learn to write well for online readers. She has delivered customized writing courses for customer service agents, social media managers, and support desk staff. She is a problem-solver for all the writing-related challenges faced by contact centers: e-mail, chat, and social media. She helps contact centers train agents to write excellent e-mail, measure the quality of their e-mails to customers, and rewrite and maintain their entire library of canned answers. Recently, she completed a complete overhaul of customer service writing for a global airline's domestic and international contact centers. Leslie is a Lynda.com author of the courses How to Write Customer Service Email, Customer Service: Writing for Social Media, and Technical Writing: How to Write a Quickstart Guide. Leslie is the co-author of Clear, Correct, Concise E-Mail: A Writing Workbook for Customer Service Agents.

Todd Piccuillo

HDI/ICMI Group Sales Director-Services
Sessions: Spotlight on What's Hot and Happening in the Contact Center World

Todd is the Group Sales Director-Services, HDI/ICMI, and has 25 years of experience managing complex professional services, training and consulting projects in the contact center, organizational development and technology arenas. In his 10 years with ICMI, Todd has worked closely with ICMI’s most strategic customers, helping design enterprise-level programs for developing people, improving processes and optimizing contact performance. A graduate of Fairfield University, Todd resides in his native Connecticut with his wife and two sons, and when he’s not improving the lives and fortunes of his clients, he’s likely throwing batting practice and wishing he could play more golf.

Jerri Pigg-Shoemake

WPS Government Health Administrators Director, Customer Service
Sessions: How 3 Award-Winning Teams Leverage Contact Center KPIs for Success

Vasu Prathipati

MaestroQA CEO and Co foundner
Sessions: From White-glove Service to Omnichannel CX - How Zendesk does Quality Assurance

Vasu Prathipati is the CEO and co-founder of MaestroQA, the leading customer service quality assurance, coaching, and conversation analytics platform. In his free time, he loves to play soccer, basketball, and tennis, considers himself very tan, and knows nothing about wine.

Rebecca Roemen

TTEC Senior Consultant, CX Strategy & Operations
Sessions: Nobody Puts the IVR in the Corner: Give It the Attention It Deserves!

Becky Roemen has deep-rooted passion for customer experience strategy, technology, and operations. She's an accomplished leader of digital, operational, and customer experience transformations. Becky launched her career in technical marketing before serving as a contact center systems engineer, and quickly became an advocate for customer-centric design. Becky has been recognized as an ICMI Top 50 Thought Leader and her articles can be seen in several trade publications. Currently serving as a Senior Consultant of CX Strategy & Operations at TTEC Digital, Becky helps organizations of every shape and size rise above their most complex customer experience hurdles. Follow Becky on Twitter (twitter.com/BeckyRoemen) and connect with her on LinkedIn (linkedin.com/in/becky-roemen/).

Jeff Rumburg

MetricNet, LLC Managing Partner
Sessions: Are Your Performance Targets on Target? | Ask the Experts: Mastering Your Metrics | From Good to Great in 9 Months: Kinecta Credit Union's Success Journey [CASE STUDY]

Jeff Rumburg is co-founder and Managing Partner of MetricNet, LLC. He was awarded the Ron Muns Lifetime Achievement Award by HDI for his contributions to the IT Service and Support industry. He has authored a best-selling book on Benchmarking, and has published more than 100 whitepapers on Contact Center Best Practices. He has also been retained as a contact center expert by more than half of the Global 2000, including such well-known companies as HP, Intel, General Motors, IBM, and American Express. Equally broad is his industry experience, which includes contact center project management and benchmarking for virtually every major industry. Prior to co-founding MetricNet, Mr. Rumburg was president and founder of The Verity Group, an international management consulting firm specializing in benchmarking and competitive analysis. As president of The Verity Group, Mr. Rumburg launched a syndicated benchmarking service that provided contact center benchmarks to more than 1,000 corporations worldwide. Additionally, Mr. Rumburg has held executive positions at META Group, and Gartner. As vice president at Gartner, Mr. Rumburg led a project team that reengineered Gartner’s global benchmarking product suite. And as vice president at META Group, Mr. Rumburg’s career was focused on Contact Center Benchmarking and reengineering. Mr. Rumburg's education includes an M.B.A. from the Harvard Business School, an M.S. magna cum laude in Operations Research from Stanford University, and a B.S. magna cum laude in Mechanical Engineering. He is author of A Hands-On Guide to Competitive Benchmarking: The Path to Continuous Quality and Productivity Improvement, and has taught graduate-level engineering and business courses.

Patrick Russell

8x8 Director, Product Marketing
Sessions: Contact Center Ask Me Anything

Patrick Russell is a contact centre expert with 17 years in the industry and is the Director of Product Marketing at 8x8. Patrick has held nearly every role within a contact centre to include managing operations of several thousand agents, and has been recognised as an industry thought leader by several contact centre organisations. With a passion for technology and finding new ways to help businesses improve, Patrick is an optimistic, creative thinking problem solver with an employee-first approach to improving the customer experience. When he’s not working you can find Patrick working on carpentry projects or travelling the world.

Aaron Schwarzberg

Learning Tribes Chief Operating Officer
Sessions: Foster Growth and Empowering Education: The Role of Learning Curation at Sitel Group [CASE STUDY] | Modern Age Content Curation

A strategic leader and collaborative driver in the L&D/eLearning space, Aaron Schwarzberg has 10+ years of expertise in leading global operations, client services, and corporate partnerships for education-centric corporations. Throughout his professional career, Aaron has worked closely, and extensively, with a myriad of senior leaders (CEOs, CLOs, Presidents, and Provosts) helping them to understand the internal learning needs of their respective organizations as well as the needs of their end-users. Aaron began his professional career in the Online Program Management ("OPM") space overseeing Call Center Operations, Enrollment, and Student Success departments. It was in the OPM space that Aaron began to develop a passion for meaningfully impacting learner outcomes. After his time in the OPM space, Aaron became the Executive Vice President of Global Operations for a Learning Management System ("LMS") company, where he oversaw the expansion of the organization to include 1,000,000+ platform users in 8 different countries. It was in this role that Aaron developed interest and expertise in the technological side of L&D. Aaron now serves as COO of Learning Tribes, a global learning and development organization with the mission of empowering teams to deliver the best possible customer experience through customized and innovative learning solutions for greater engagement and development. In addition to supporting the operations, solutions, and marketing divisions, Aaron is responsible for managing the efficiency, effectiveness, and quality of LT's learning solutions delivery. Aaron also designs and implements business operations, systems, and processes, while expanding the team with an intentional focus on culture and client outcomes. Aaron received his Bachelor's Degree from the University of Denver, his JD from Nova Southeastern University, and his MBA from New England College.

Megan Selva

ICMI and HDI Group Content Manager
Sessions: MasterMinds - Connecting Beyond the Conference | How 3 Award-Winning Teams Leverage Contact Center KPIs for Success

Josh Street

Scoreboard Group Chief Executive Officer
Sessions: Selecting a New Vendor: An ICMI "How To" Guide

Amas Tenumah

Better Experience Founder
Sessions: The Future of Engagement: What You Need to Know

Amas Tenumah has been helping organizations use customer experience as a competitive advantage for almost 20 Years. Over the last 5 years, he has advised clients like The Honest Company, MoneyGram, Fastly, and many others on improving the customer experience using technology and optimizing processes. He is an author and speaker focused on helping contact Centers become more effective.

Jeff Toister

Toister Performance Solutions, Inc. President
Sessions: High-Performance Management: Getting the Most Out of Contact Center Agents | How to Be a Contact Center Superhero | The Secrets of Onboarding: Helping Agents Thrive in Your Culture

Jeff Toister is a former contact center trainer and manager. He's the author of three customer service books including The Service Culture Handbook. More than 140,000 people on six continents have taken one of his training programs on LinkedIn Learning (a.k.a. Lynda.com), including "Running Company Onboarding." Jeff is a member of ICMI's Top 50 Contact Center Thought Leaders on Twitter and a Global Gurus Top 30 worldwide customer service professional. Feedspot has named his Inside Customer Service blog one of the top 50 customer service blogs on the planet. Jeff is passionate about training and is a Certified Professional in Learning and Performance.

Clement Tussiot

Salesforce Senior Director of Product Management
Keynotes: Morning Welcome: Focus on the customer experience with AI and Automation

Clement Tussiot is a Senior Director of product management for Salesforce Service Cloud. He manages the product development lifecycle for Service Cloud and is specifically focused on how AI and machine learning can improve customer service.

Jeremy Watkin

8x8 Product Marketing Manager
Sessions: Contact Center Ask Me Anything

Jeremy Watkin is a Product Marketing Manager at 8x8. He has more than 19 years of experience as a customer service professional leading high performing teams in the contact center. Jeremy has been recognized numerous times as a thought leader for his writing and speaking on a variety of topics including quality management, outsourcing, customer experience, contact center technology, and more. When not working you can typically find him spending quality time with his wife Alicia and their three boys, running with his dog, or dreaming of native trout rising for a size 16 elk hair caddis. Be sure to connect with him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Cameron Weeks

Edify CEO and co-Founder
Sessions: Why Omnichannel? Why Now?

Cameron Weeks is the driving force behind Edify Labs. He guides the team to think and act differently when it comes to changing the way companies connect with their customers and employees interact with each other. Under his leadership, Edify is developing new business in existing and emerging markets, and pushing the boundaries of the business communications sector with its new cloud-native, unified, omnichannel platform.