Breakout Bios

Tuesday 2:50pm

Cary Cusumano, Manager, Customer Experience Strategy and Design, Verizon

Cary Cusumano is a seasoned Customer Experience (CX) and Design Thinking professional in Verizon Enterprise Solutions. As a Principal Client Partner, he works with Verizon’s largest enterprise clients to articulate, design, and implement their CX strategy and vision. He is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) and a 2016 winner of the Customer Experience Professional Association's (CXPA) CX Impact Award. He is also a certified Lean Six Sigma Black Belt and specializes in analysis of unstructured Voice of the Customer listening post data to promote empathy and drive customer-centered process improvements at key points of the customer journey.

 

 

Erin Van Remortal, Principal Client Partner, Verizon Enterprise Solutions

Erin Van Remortel is a certified Customer Experience Professional (CXPA) and Lean Six Sigma Black Belt at Verizon Communications, a leading provider of wireless, fi ber-optic and global network services. As a Principal Client Partner, Erin works with Verizon's largest enterprise clients to articulate, design, and implement their Customer Experience strategy and vision. Erin specializes in analysis of unstructured Voice of the Customer to promote empathy and drive customer-centered process improvements at key points in the customer journey.

Jackie McAtee, VP Marketing & Patient Experience, Mayfair Diagnostics

Jackie is a senior global marketer and customer experience professional with 15+ years experience in the luxury travel and hospitality industry. Originally from Brisbane, Australia, she has lived in Sydney, Auckland, Dubai, and now Calgary, Canada. With creativity, passion and award-winning know-how, Jackie supports service orientated organizations improve their guest experience through innovation, engagement, and empowerment.

  

Noah Grayson, Principal, Senior Vice President, Walker

Noah Grayson leads Walker’s consulting services practice which is made up of customer strategists, analysts, and managers that work with companies to improve business performance through the implementation of effective customer strategies. With more than 20 years of experience at Walker, he has specialized in long-term client relationships in a wide range of industries. A certified customer experience professional, Grayson was recognized by the CXPA in 2013 as a recipient of the CX Impact Award which showcases professionals who have successfully led customer experience initiatives.

 

 

Martin Mehalchin, Partner, Lenati

Martin Mehalchin is a Partner at Lenati where he leads the relationship with some of the firm’s largest clients and helps drive the growth of our Customer Experience Services. He has dedicated his career to working with executives and managers to help them define their strategies and then translate those strategies into results. Martin is a Brain Trust panel member on Retailwire.com and is a sought after seminar leader and speaker at conferences and on webinars. Martin has worked with global Consumer and B2B brands such as Nike, Microsoft, Qualcomm, Expedia, Victoria’s Secret, Adidas and DuPont. Martin is a Board member and Chair of the Marketing Committee for the North Cascades Institute.

 

Marisol Trowbridge, Engagement Manager, Lenati

With over 10 years of experience in marketing and product strategy, Marisol Trowbridge is focused on helping companies develop customer strategies that drive business results. Marisol is a “T-shaped” strategist and designer. She has a depth of skill and experience in strategy development, but her wide-ranging experiences - in the fields of economic data analysis, fashion design, app management, and international development - give her a breadth of skills across other disciplines, allowing her to collaborate cross-functionally and lead innovative teams. Marisol is passionate about leveraging customer insights and analytics to help clients create positive customer experiences that improve customer acquisition and retention. She also focuses on helping clients leverage technology to deliver cross-channel experiences at scale, drawing on her background in both technology and design to meld customer-centricity with technical realities. Her work has taken her across the US, Canada, Ethiopia, Mexico, The Netherlands, and India and she has worked with many global brands including Nike, Hilton, Adobe, Macy's, Thermo Fisher Scientific, Ann Taylor, Brooks Running, and Eileen Fisher.

Wednesday 10:30am

Bob Azman, CCXP, VP Traveler Services Americas, Carlson Wagonlit

Bob brings 35 years of business and service operation leadership to this role as well as a sought after expertise in improving the customer experience. Most recently, Bob was Chief Experience Officer for Avtex Consulting Solutions where he consulted with companies in a variety of industries on developing and implementing strategies to improve their overall customer experience and service operations. Prior to his role with Avtex, Bob held executive positions at Thomson Reuters, Ceridian and Deluxe Corporation. He managed global customer service and technical support organizations as well as software implementation and training and development functions worldwide.

Bob earned both his MBA and bachelor’s degrees from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN. He is an Adjunct Professor in the University Of Minnesota Carlson School Of Management's Supply Chain and Operations Management department and is a frequent industry conference speaker on the subject of developing effective customer experience and service strategies.

 

Geeta Wilson, VP, Consumer Experience - Enterprise Transformation, Humana, CCXP

Geeta Wilson is a highly innovative and transformational Customer Experience and Operational Excellence leader with extensive domestic and international experience in start-ups and Fortune 500 companies, including Humana and NCR Corporation.

A visionary with a dynamic, results-oriented approach to success, Geeta brings the spirit of a start-up to healthcare insurance giant Humana while returning significant business impact to the company.

Geeta is the founder of Humana’s FastStart Consumer Experience lab. In her role as head of consumer experience transformation at Humana, she has built an enterprise consumer-centric movement that challenges convention and corporate routines. Her FastStart team has brought their disruptive CX approach to 5,000+ associates and 1,000+ leaders using methods from Lean Start-up, Agile/Scrum, Design Thinking, and Lean Six Sigma to expedite speed-to-market across all lines of business.

Adopting a "scrappy not crappy" philosophy of accelerating improvement processes, Geeta has led the FastStart team of professionals from different disciplines across the company to break down silos, rethink routine, pioneer simplicity, thrive together and cultivate uniqueness – rejecting bureaucracy and making it easier for consumers to do business with Humana – all while being entrenched in trust-centered leadership and an associate-empowered environment.

Geeta has been featured in numerous publications, including Forbes, The Wall Street Journal’s CIO Journal, and 1:1 Media. This year, she was recognized by American City Business Journals (Louisville Business First) among its 2017 “People to Know.” The FastStart lab was honored with a 2016 Customer Experience Professionals Association (CXPA) Innovation Award. Geeta's recent speaking engagements focusing on the consumer experience include Forrester 2016 NYC CX conference, 2016 CXPA Insight Exchange, 2016 LeanStart up conference, and Dreamforce 2016, the largest tech conference in the world.

Geeta holds an MBA degree and certification as a Lean Six Sigma Black Belt. When not delivering results at Humana, Geeta enjoys spending time with her family, raising four sons with her husband Clive.

 

 

Sarah Simon, Director, VOC Consulting, Americas, Confirmit
Sarah Simon has been the chief architect of the Confirmit Compass CX Assessment and lead developer of Confimit’s consulting services. Sarah’s passion lies in operationalizing the Voice of Customer to put customer intelligence to work and drive outstanding customer experiences. A career customer and business intelligence professional, Sarah brings to Confirmit eleven years of customer experience expertise.

Her specialties include VoC architecture, developing linkages to business performance, reduction of customer defection and analyzing customer feedback to tell the customer’s story. Let’s put your customer intelligence to work!

-- CXPA CX Expert since 2015
-- Active CX industry thought leader
-- 20 years putting customer and business intelligence to work

 

Erica Penner, Manager of Performance Management, KCP&L

Erica has worked in the electric utility industry for over 15 years with much of the time focused on customer service. In her current role with Kansas City Power & Light (KCP&L, 1 million customers) Erica provides strategic leadership and direction for effective delivery of performance management initiatives within the Customer Contact Center and across the Delivery division. She oversees quality assurance, benchmarking, customer satisfaction surveying, communications and change management. Passionate about quality and customer service, her team’s efforts provide guidance to build and maintain a first-class workforce that delivers personalized service.

Rhonda Basler, Director, Customer Engagement, Hallmark Business Connections

Rhonda Basler leads the customer engagement segment at Hallmark Business Connections, the business-to-business division of Hallmark Cards. An avid business trend watcher and strategic thinker, her customer advocacy expertise stems from over 15 years of experience in data-driven brand marketing. Rhonda started her career working in both inbound and outbound customer service contact centers. Her responsibilities include finding new places and spaces for Hallmark to help businesses build deeper, stronger relationships with employees and customers.

Diane Magers, CCXP, Interim CEO, CXPA
Diane is a passionate, experienced Customer Experience executive, change agent and sherpa for new and developing customer-obsessed leaders. With o ver 25 years of Customer Experience leadership with brands like AT&T and Sysco, Diane has led transformations to embed customer and employee engagement with definable business benefit. In 2011, she founded Customer Experience Catalysts as a consultancy and thought leader for organizations who were launching or progressing customer and employee experience to grow their brand value. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP), a CXPA CX Expert, and NPS, and is Voice of Customer and Customer Experience Management certified.

Wednesday 11am

Judy Bloch, Customer Listening & Engagement Strategy and Program Development, Citi

Judy Bloch is responsible for Customer Listening and Engagement Strategy & Program Development at Citi. She joined Citi in August 2011 after an accomplished career in the wireless telecom industry. In her current role, supporting the Omni Command Center, Judy acts as a customer advocate to ensure Citi clients have best in class digital servicing experiences through real-time customer behavior listening. This innovative approach has taken traditional digital and customer monitoring to the next level, providing actionable insights that deliver quality digital design and customer success.

Judy is known for her ability to shift the customer experience lens from anecdotal conversations to a data-driven model centered on engagement and client delight, with predictive capabilities. Her ability to build trust with customers and business partners differentiated her in driving a customer-centric culture.

 

Michelle Brigman, Director Digital and Social Listening and Engagement, Citi

Michelle Brigman currently serves as the Director of Customer Listening and Engagement, tuning into changes in customer’s digital behaviors and social conversations. Her team is monitoring >1B annual digital interactions, adapting real time to increase digital containment and seamless interactions. In her previous role, Michelle was responsible for the North America Servicing Net Promoter (NPS) Program. She is Executive Sponsor of the Dallas Women’s Network, a member of the Site Leadership Team, and active mentor and trainer for Citi sponsored STEM initiatives. Michelle is known for her ability to shift the customer experience lens from data point focus to a customer driven model centered on engagement and client delight. Her ability to build trust with customers and business partners differentiated her in driving culture change

Prior to joining Citi, Michelle spent 16 years at Dell, where she developed a strong suite of programs that embedded Client Experience into the culture. As Director of Global Social Media Listening & Engagement Program, she launched Dell’s Global Listening Command Center, which was responsible for listening to 25k conversations a day across 11 languages. The Command Center has been recognized by Forrester, American Business Awards, Bees Award, Altimeter, CeBit Australia, PR News & Groundswell as the industry benchmark in how companies should engage with customers. Prior to directing the Social Media Listening efforts, Michelle was responsible for Global Consumer Client Experience, where she led contact center quality, process improvement, escalations management, cost reduction, & NPS.

 

Mark Slatin, CCXP, SVP, Director of Client Experience, Sandy Spring Bank

Mark Slatin leads the client experience effort at Sandy Spring Bank, one of the largest and oldest banks based in Maryland, DC, and Virginia. Mark is passionate about CX and promoting the profession. He has served as an Adjunct Professor at Loyola University Maryland for over 7 years and he has recently developed and teaches a Customer Experience Management course in the MBA program there.

Mark is proud to represent Sandy Spring who was nominated as a top 10 finalist for a CX Innovation Award in 2015 and again this year.

He loves Jeanne Bliss’s description of our CX work as pushing a rock up a mountain. He is humbled every day by the task but refuses to quit.

 

Raj Sivasubramanian, CCXP, Director, Customer Experience Consulting Services, Verint

Raj is a seasoned Customer Experience leader and CCXP with a diverse set of experiences as both a CX practitioner and a consultant in a variety of industries. Raj leads Verint’s strategy around CX consulting offerings and helps Verint’s clients optimize the business impact of their Voice of Customer programs.

Prior to Verint, Raj was at eBay where he enhanced their NPS program by driving a shift from simply trending metrics to delivering actionable insights used to improve the customer experience. Prior to eBay, Raj was a consultant advising clients on various aspects of developing customer insights capabilities.

Raj is a frequent conference speaker and advisor on the topic of customer-centricity, metrics, and customer feedback. Raj holds an MBA from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley and a BS in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology.

 

Chris Woolard, CCXP, Vice President, Walker

Chris Woolard has more than 15 years of experience in the customer experience industry where he as worked with more than 100 clients from a wide range of industries. He holds a master’s degree in industrial and organizational psychology which has driven a specialization in employee engagement – a critical component for any customer experience initiative. Chris has been a featured speaker at a number of conferences and has been quoted in numerous publications including The Wall Street Journal, Washington Times, USA Today, and other newspapers and magazines.