CX Experts

Vicki Amon-Higa, CCXP

Amon-Higa & Associates

Vicki is a passionate and experienced catalyst and change leader that partners with leaders throughout organizations to identify and drive improvements that matter to employees, customers and shareholders.   She has spent more than 30 years, both as an internal and external consultant, to change mindset and implement the right improvement methodology to deliver the best outcomes.  Her career started in the early 1980s doing research and translation of how Japan was achieving such top Quality results. 

Her work experience spans industries and countries … high tech (NeXT Computer, Apple, Symantec & Cisco), electric utility (Florida Power & Light), defense (Hughes Aircraft), construction (Shimizu), film (Pixar), software (ADPgsi, KANA & Intuit), and healthcare (Palo Alto Medical Foundation, La Clinica de La Raza & Veterans Affairs Palo Alto Healthcare System) … in the US, Japan and Europe.  She has led teams in Quality, Project Management, Operations, HR, Merger Integration, Process Excellence and Customer Experience.   She is passionate about helping people discover what needs to be done to improve the customers’ experience and coaching employees to be the best they can be.

Kristin Guthrie, CCXP

Vice President, Customer Experience, ICW Insurance

For more than 20 years, Kristin has led sales and marketing organizations across a variety of industries, including: retail, consulting, home security, consumer electronics, and aerospace.  Currently, Kristin is the Vice President, Customer Experience at ICW Insurance.  In this role, she is responsible for driving innovative solutions designed to improve the overall customer experience. Often involving the marriage of data science, change management and psychology.   Kristin has continued her award winning streak by being named a “2015 CX Impact” recipient and a “Who’s Who in CX” from the CXPA.   

She holds a MBA from the University of North Texas and a BS in Marketing from Kansas State University. Kristin is a certified Master Black Belt, SEO Master and CX Professional (CXPA).

Aimee Lucas, CCXP

Senior Principal Analyst, Qualtrics XM Insitute

Aimee has over 15 years of experience improving service delivery and transforming the customer experience through people development and process improvement initiatives. Her areas of expertise include market research, program management, marketing, and instructional design and training.

Aimee’s research and consulting efforts are dedicated to transforming customer experience within large organizations.  She regularly speaks at industry events and leads training workshops.

Prior to joining Qualtrics XM Insitute, she lead the Temkin Group’s research in the areas of employee engagement and B2B customer experience. At the Temkin Group, Aimee implemented the client experience strategy and managed the Voice of the Customer (VoC) program for Crowe Horwath LLP, one of the top 10 public accounting and consulting firms in the US. Her work included planning and managing strategic initiatives and collaborating with cross-functional teams to introduce new-to-company functions and improvements. She also started the firm’s internal market research function.

Aimee is a graduate of the University of Notre Dame with a bachelor’s degree in marketing management. In her free time, she volunteers as a marathon coach for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society’s Team in Training program.

Marc Mandel, CCXP

Global Vice President of Sales, Customerville

Marc Mandel has had the privilege of working with some of the world’s leading brands in their transformational efforts toward customer centricity. He has led leadership working sessions, experience design workshops and innovation sessions with companies in almost all industries, but has a recent focus on healthcare. Marc has recently led successful engagements at Blue Cross & Blue Shield, UnitedHealthcare, Aetna, MVP Healthcare, Harvard Pilgrim Healthcare, PreferredOne, Optum, and more than ten additional leading healthcare firms.

Previously Marc Mandel was the head of client experience at MaritzCX, the world’s largest customer experience solutions firm leading an enterprise-wide effort to design and unify the client experience for the corporation following the merger between Maritz Research and Allegiance in 2014, combining technology and research services into a single, branded delivery process.

In addition to MaritzCX and Convergys, Marc also held leadership roles at Strativity Group, LASSA Partners, and Clarabridge in various sales, relationship management and solution delivery roles.

Marc’s specialties include customer and employee journey mapping, voice of the customer program design, advanced customer analytics, touch point experience design and experience innovation.

Marc lives in Raleigh, North Carolina with his wife Lisa and their 3 dogs.

Valory Myers, CCXP

Principal, InAct, LLC

With more than 20 years consulting Fortune 500 companies on how to transform their organizations around a customer-focused strategy, Valory is passionate about bringing new ideas and approaches to CX that drive action and results.

At Ipsos, Valory helped clients build and capture value from large-scale, global, sophisticated customer measurement and management programs.  She lead client engagements primarily in the financial services sector including payments, banking, investments, and insurance as well as industrial B2B. By partnering with clients on all aspects of the research — high value customer experience measurement, strategic analysis and action planning — clients achieved sustainable competitive advantage and growth.

Previously, Valory served in CX leadership positions as both a practitioner and consultant including ADT, Walker Information and Synovate.  Valory holds an MBA from Anderson University, with her BA in Marketing, International Business and French from Ball State University.

Sarah Simon, CCXP

Sarah is an architect of action-based customer intelligence solutions and data-driven customer experience strategy. An innovative solution architect, Sarah focuses on customer data capture and insights design methodology. She guides clients in understanding why, when and how to listen to the voice of the customer, blending behavioral CRM data with survey sentiment to tell a fuller story of the customer within the context of the customer’s journey. Optimizing the customer experience is the guiding light for all of my efforts, and inspiring people to leverage all this customer intelligence into becoming a better company is particularly fun.

Outside of work Sarah loves climbing mountains throughout Colorado and beyond, riding her Harley Davidson, downhill and cross country skiing, traveling off the beaten path, caring for my dogs, cooking and reading obsessively. She hikes a section of the Appalachian Trail northbound every year. Sarah reports a weakness for wine, music and muscle cars. She is on fire when engaged in calculated risk-taking, innovating and building things.

Stephanie Thum,  CCXP

Chief Advisor, Federal Customer Experience, Qualtrics

Energetic Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP) known for collaborative ability and having a futurist leader's point of view. Author of the 2018 Kindle eBook: Uncharted Territory: Where Customer Experience Practices Haven't Arrived in Business. Creator of high-profile customer experience and client development programs.

Background in business development, customer feedback, client teams, social media, crisis communication, corporate communication, marketing, public relations, broadcasting, and employee engagement. Published writer, presenter, panelist, and speaker. Insurance, financial services, government, Big Four accounting, and law firm experience.

Jim Tincher, CCXP

Mapper-in-Chief, Heart of the Customer

With a lifelong passion for customer experiences, Jim founded Heart of the Customer to help companies of all sizes increase customer engagement. Before launching the company, Jim led customer engagement initiatives at Best Buy, Gallup and UnitedHealth Group. In the process, he became an expert in using Voice of the Customer research to identify unmet needs, develop new products and improve customer service. His Heart of the Customer journey maps are a powerful tool designed with one simple goal: customer loyalty. Customers ranging from start-ups to Fortune 500 companies use his processes to improve customer-focused results. His fascination with customer experience led him to test himself by becoming a Certified Customer Experience Professional, only the second in the world to earn such a designation.

Greg Tucker, CCXP

CEO, Tucker & Company

Greg is an inspirational leader and speaker with broad and deep experience in customer experience and digital transformation.  As a senior executive at AAA, Clorox and Copart Auto Auctions, he led customer experience transformations that delivered strong increases in customer loyalty results as well as over $100MM of profit contributions.  As a leading CX management consultant & advisor, he has worked with dozens of global leaders such Microsoft, Oracle, AT&T, SAP, GE, DocuSign, Thomson Reuters, ForeScout Technologies, Genentech, Wells Fargo, KeyBank, AAA, CSE Insurance, PepsiCo, Adecco, 24|Seven Talent Solutions, Air New Zealand, Primex Technologies and Reed Construction to develop and implement innovative customer experience strategies.  

These efforts have been recognized with the 2012 CXPA Innovation Award, 2016 Who’s Who of CX, 2016 CX Expert and an HBR article that profiled his work and leadership.  Greg received his MBA from Stanford Graduate School of Business and is a certified CCXP, NPS Certified Associate and Six Sigma Black Belt.

Jeannie Walters,  CCXP

Author, Speaker, Trainer

Jeannie Walters has spent nearly 20 years evaluating and improving customer experiences. She’s worked with Verizon Wireless, Allstate, Bath and Body Works, Orangetheory Fitness, Citrix and many others.

Jeannie is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP,) the Chicagoland Ambassador for the Customer Experience Professionals Association, and a TEDx speaker.

She’s passionate about making the everyday interactions we all have as customers better and writes, speaks, studies and trains on customer experience issues around the world.

Bob Azman, CCXP

Founder and CXO, Innovative CX Solutions, LLC

Bob brings 40 years of business and service operation leadership to this role as well as a sought after expertise in improving the customer experience. He is currently the Founder and CXO of Innovative CX Solutions, a boutique CX consulting firm.  Previously, Bob served as Vice President, Traveler Experience Americas and Global at Carlson Wagonlit Travel.  Prior to Carlson, 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.  Bob has also held executive positions at Thomson Reuters, Ceridian and Deluxe Corporation. 

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 a Senior Guest Lecturer in Customer Experience Management at Rutgers University. He is a frequent industry conference speaker on the subject of developing effective customer experience and service strategies.  

Annette Franz, CCXP

Founder/CEO, CX Journey Inc.

Annette Franz, CCXP is founder and CEO of CX Journey Inc. She’s got more than 25 years of experience helping companies understand their employees and customers and identify what drives retention, satisfaction, engagement, and the overall experience – so that employees, customers, and businesses reap the benefits and achieve their desired outcomes.

Annette was named one of “The 100 Most Influential Tech Women on Twitter” by Business Insider and is an internationally recognized customer experience thought leader. She mentors other professionals in this field to help them advance their careers and is a speaker and an avid writer. In 2019, she published her first book, Customer Understanding: Three Ways to Put the “Customer” in Customer Experience (and at the Heart of Your Business).

Annette is also an official member of the Forbes Coaches Council, an invitation-only community for successful business and career coaches. Members are selected based on their depth and diversity of experience. And, finally, she is an Advisory Board Member for CX@Rutgers.

Ian Golding, CCXP

Global Customer Experience Specialist

Ian is a highly influential freelance CX consultant, advising leading companies on CX strategy, measurement, improvement and employee advocacy techniques and solutions. Ian has worked across multiple industries including retail, financial services, logistics, telecoms and pharmaceuticals and has deployed CX tools and methodologies all over the world. An internationally renowned speaker and blogger on the subject of CX, Ian was also the first to become a CCXP Authorised Resource & Training Provider.

Peter Haid, CCXP

Managing Director, TouchPoint Dashboard
Chief Product Officer, Strativity

Peter has more than 16 years of B2B/B2C experience in the areas of Customer Experience Management (CEM), market research, advisory/consulting services, engineering, operations, M&A, strategic partnerships, performance measurement, and product management.

In recent years Peter earned his practitioner badge by leading two F500 global CX programs. This allowed him to mature his skills in all aspects of CEM, including assessments, strategy, brand alignment, employee engagement, Voice of Customer programs, measurement methodologies, customer insights, market segmentation, personas, journey mapping, process design, text and speech analytics, social strategies, and vendor evaluations.

At Strativity, Peter and his colleagues transform Customer Experience insight into real-world action, offering corporations and brands the tools, training and thought leadership they need to become fully customer centric.

Prior to joining Strativity, Peter was Vice President of Business Lines at E Source – providing research and advisory solutions to the utility industry in North America.

Tony Hillson, CCXP

Customer Experience Design Director, Idean

Tony’s expertise is in combining over 10 years of CX Experience with emerging Human Centred Innovation and Experience Design practices. For the past 5 years he has worked assisting organisations to mobilise and deliver Customer Experience Design across many industries, startup and corporate organisations across all touchpoints.

Tony’s company now leads Customer Experience Design projects across Australasia helping organisations not only deliver design projects, but establishing Innovation and Design Pipelines and building internal Customer Experience Design Capabilities.

Tony’s currently focused on CX Testing and Innovation, CX for Digital transformation, CX for B2B and establishing Lean Design.

Tony’s background is 10 years of Service Transformation and IT Management across Asia Pacific Brands such as Air New Zealand, ASB and CBA. Subsequently, he  consulted in Customer Experience Strategy for 5 years across Aviation, Banking and Utilities. The past 5 years his Customer Experience Design and Innovation work has assisted leading Australasian brands such as Spark New Zealand, IAG, Ballance Agri Nutrition, Unison, Contact Energy and Auckland University of Technology.

Diane Magers, CCXP

Chief Experience Officer at Experience Catalysts

A little about me…
Passionate CX professional and change agent. Sherpa for new and developing customer obsessed leaders. Thought leader and innovator for ways of engaging associates and customers. Spirited entrepreneur. Skilled in business benefits development and systematically embedding CX into an organization. Believe that brands who win choose to focus on human and emotional elements. Develops the hearts and minds of others. Firm executor in the ‘pay it forward’ model. Writer, speaker and artist.

Here to help you with lessons learned on what worked and what didn’t - more formally,…
Diane’s demonstrated leadership abilities helps organizations design and execute strategies to drive customer obsession with targeted business results. Currently with AT&T’s Office of the Customer, she is building and executing programs to drive change in their culture, systematically embed CX, and strategically drive CX innovation.

In 2011, she founded Customer Experience Catalysts, a thought leadership and consultancy practice helping brands identify and optimize their opportunities to engage customers and associates. Clients include VMWare, Honeywell, Blue Cross & Blue Shield and Align Technologies. She developed and led Customer Engagement, Customer Strategy and Business Transformation projects at Sysco including omni-channel design for call center, sales interactions, website, digital platforms for product and business services. She brings nearly 25 years of experience in customer experience and engagement, sales and marketing with complex organizational change management for measurable business results.

Diane Magers holds an M.S. in Clinical Psychology and an MBA. She is a Certified Customer Experience Professional (CCXP), and Promoter Score (NPS), Voice of Customer (VoC) and Customer Experience Management (CEM) certified. Additional affiliations include CXPA (founding member), LUMA Institute, Board member for CXPA Certification and active volunteer for the Autism Society of American, Leukemia and Lymphoma Society and the American Heart Association. She resides in Dallas with her family.

Sonya McAllister, CCXP

Senior Vice President and Principal, Walker

As Senior Vice President and a Principal at Walker, Sonya is responsible for ensuring customer intelligence is being used as effectively as possible to drive bottom line business results for key, strategic clients. Based near San Diego, her primary focus is working with technology, telecommunications, and manufacturing companies to maximize the strategic impact customer focus can have in their organizations. Sonya holds a BS in Marketing and an MBA, and she has been recognized with CXPA’s Impact Award.

Natalie Schneider, CCXP

VP Digital Health, Samsung

Blue Devil and passionate healthcare consumer advocate, Natalie has first-hand knowledge on how to improve the economics of a business by creating distinctive consumer experiences that reduce churn and improve the cost to serve customers. She has designed and implemented award-winning consumer experiences by securing buy-in from the Boardroom down, navigating the funding and budgeting process and assembling cross-functional teams to research, design and pilot experiences – all while fostering a ‘consumer-first’ culture. Prior to joining Samsung, Natalie lead Anthem’s consumer transformation work, to help the company pivot from a B2B company with lagging customer satisfaction to a B2C company to reach our aspiration of being the most recommended health plan. During her tenure, Anthem made tremendous progress as evidenced by their double-digit NPS (Net Promoter Score) improvements. She also had responsibility for Anthem’s consumer culture program, consumer Project Management Office and consumer innovation – including their health plan of the future blueprint and roadmap. She also served on the the Boards of the CXPA, Indiana University Kelley School of Business Life Sciences and Forrester’s Leadership Council. She credits her creativity to a design academy in South Africa and her business sensibilities to over 20 years of experience with companies like McKinsey & Company, Anthem and Ford Motor Company which enable her and her team to design experiences through the eyes of the customer while generating bottom line impact.

Karl E. Sharicz, CCXP, EdM, CX-PRO

CEO | Founder, HorizonCX, LLC

Karl brings over thirty years of skills and experiences gained in high-tech research and manufacturing B2B environments along with proven business acumen. Throughout his career he has served a broad range of roles within marketing, sales, business development, instructional design, training, and training management—developing both internal and external customer relationship skills and building a decided customer-centric focus along the way.  In 2014, Karl left the corporate world and founded HorizonCX which offers professional services around all aspects of CX on a contract basis to organizations both large and small, but particularly targeting those within the earlier stages of CX maturity. Based on his foundational skills in instructional design, Karl has developed training courses in CX fundamentals, designed specifically for those newly assigned to a CX role as well as those in the early stages of their CX career.

In his former corporate role within Tyco SimplexGrinnell, a leading fire and life-safety provider doing business throughout North America, Karl led the Customer Experience journey where he and his team focused on driving those elements of customer relationships and experiences that increased customer satisfaction, reduced customer churn, increased customer lifetime value and in-turn helped increase service revenues.

Karl is steeped in the Customer Experience Management discipline, including developing a customer-centric cultures; determining the voice of the customer and deriving insights and understanding; fostering organizational adoption and accountability; creating customer experience strategies, designing approaches that will achieve customer experience excellence; and setting up metrics and measurement systems that help drive organizational return on investment.

Through his knowledge of adult education and learning styles plus prior experiences as a director of training, he offers additional skills in developing structured learning environments. During his tenure at Tyco for example, Karl developed the Next Improvement in Customer Experience (NICE) Workshop concept that has been in operation throughout the organization since 2010, driving increasing levels of customer focus and customer retention. He has developed certification programs for professional services teams, and was a certified consultative sales trainer and coach.

Karl holds a Master's degree in Education from Boston University. He formerly served on the CXPA Board of Directors from 2011 – 2015. He founded one of the first local CXPA networks in Boson in 2012 and has served as committee-lead from 2012 – 2019.  Karl also served in past leadership positions within the Association for Talent Development (ATD) formerly known as the American Society for Training and Development (ASTD). Karl is an active blogger and is well published.  In addition to his professional CX persona, Karl is a contributing writer to the Music Museum of New England (MMONE) and is also as a singer-songwriter and musician and has recorded two CDs of his own original music.