Jeanne Bliss pioneered the role of the Chief Customer Officer, holding the first ever CCO role for over 20 years at Lands’ End, Microsoft, Coldwell Banker and Allstate Corporations. Reporting to each company’s CEO, she moved the customer to the strategic agenda, creating transformational changes to each brands’ customer experience. She has driven achievement of 95 percent loyalty rates, improving customer experiences across 50,000-person organizations. She is now the President of CustomerBliss, where she guides the C-Suite and Chief Customer Officers around the world on earning business growth by improving customers’ lives. Her clients include: AAA, Johnson & Johnson, Brooks Brothers, Bombardier Aerospace, and Kaiser Permanente. She is a sought after speaker and thought-leader, the author of four best-selling books, and co-founder of the Customer Experience Professionals Association.
Lindsay Pedersen is the author of Forging An Ironclad Brand: A Leader’s Guide. She is a brand strategist and leadership coach who views brand as a blend of science, intuition, behavioral economics, and ancient storytelling. She developed the Ironclad Method™ while building brands with companies such as Starbucks, Clorox, Zulily, T-Mobile, IMDb, and burgeoning startups. Lindsay lives in Seattle with her husband and two children. Keep in touch with Lindsay through her website: https://www.ironcladbrandstrategy.com and follow her on Twitter.
Kedma Ough, MBA is the author of Target Funding: A Proven System to Get the Money and Resources You Need to Start or Grow Your Business. One of today’s most respected authorities on small business funding and entrepreneurship, she is a nationally renowned business coach and funding expert and winner of the Small Business Administration (SBA) Small Business Champion of the Year Award. As a small business consultant and educator, she has guided more than 10,000 individuals through a wide range of business advising and is a past contributing writer for Entrepreneur Magazine. When she is not running around as a live superhero, she enjoys time with her family and traveling the world. Ough is a proud fifth-generation entrepreneur.
As an Area Director and faculty member with the University of Georgia Small Business Development Center (SBDC), Mark assists valued clients in evaluating and strategizing the best and most efficient path to starting or growing a successful business.
Grayson Kemper is a Senior Content Writer for Clutch, a B2B research, ratings, and reviews company in Washington, D.C. Clutch provides a resource to review services providers all over the world to find the best partner for your business’ needs. Check out their list of top HR companies in Atlanta.
Diana Nadim is a writer and editor who has a Master degree in Marketing. She combines her passion for writing with her interest in research and creates thought-provoking content in various fields. Besides working as a contributor writer for ASBN, Diana also runs her own 3to5Marketing blog.
Dr. Natalie Sappleton is Subject Matter Expert in Management and Leadership at Smartly. Her research interests are in social networks and social capital in the context of entrepreneurship. Natalie received her M.A. (Hons.) in Economics and Politics at the University of Glasgow and her PhD in Entrepreneurship and Masters in Research from Manchester Metropolitan University. Her PhD thesis investigates the role of gender role (in)congruency on the ability to acquire resources among New York City entrepreneurs. Natalie is co-editor of Entrepreneurship, Self-Employment and Retirement (Palgrave McMillan).
Bruce Tulgan is an adviser to business leaders all over the world and a sought-after keynote speaker and seminar leader. He is the founder and CEO of RainmakerThinking, Inc., a management research and training firm, as well as RainmakerLearning.com, an online training service. Bruce is the best-selling author of numerous books including It’s Okay to be the Boss (Revised & Updated, 2014), Not Everyone Gets a Trophy (Revised & Updated, 2016), Bridging the Soft Skills Gap (2015), and The 27 Challenges Managers Face (2014). He has written for the New York Times, the Harvard Business Review, HR Magazine, Training Magazine, and the Huffington Post. You can follow him on Twitter @BruceTulgan, or visit his website http://www.rainmakerthinking.com.
