Flex is the destination summit for leaders engaging in the future of flexible work.
The concept of work is no longer about a place but about being as productive as possible. Flex helps today’s leaders prepare their workplace and workforce for a new way of working across multiple offices, remote locations, and coworking spaces, with blended teams made up of freelancers, contractors, robots, and remote workers.
Click here to watch videos from the sessions and get the presentation slides.
Flex is the destination summit for leaders engaging in the future of flexible work.
The concept of work is no longer about a place but about being as productive as possible. Flex helps today’s leaders prepare their workplace and workforce for a new way of working across multiple offices, remote locations, and coworking spaces, with blended teams made up of freelancers, contractors, robots, and remote workers.
Click here to watch videos from the sessions and get the presentation slides.
For many of us, flexible work is viewed as a necessity. We may choose to work from home one day or leave the office early so we can take care of other responsibilities. We live in communities where WiFi is as available as running water, but this isn’t always the case. In this keynote, Dr. Murabit will provide a global view of flexible work and how leaders can use the benefits of flexible work to transform entire communities. She’ll cover the daily and economic challenges of flexible work; how it impacts socio-economic divides; and provide a blueprint for future opportunities that attendees can take on to push flexwork forward.
What does it take to make distributed teams work? It takes more than just a Slack account and a webcam to reap the benefits. In fact, it’s hard work and many organizations struggle and fail. It requires new management skills and approaches to have good meetings, get good outcomes from staff and teams. It also requires different approaches for hiring, motivating, and rewarding staff, and different ways of structuring your digital office and culture. To operate in a new world of business that is both global and fully-digital, we’ll need new technologies, new techniques, and new ways of thinking. While the advantages of distributed work are enormous, if we fail to work differently in this new virtual office, we’ll fail to meet our goals. From world-class international events, to international non-profits and collective movements, Ryan Merkley has led teams across countries and cultures. We’ll explore some of the tools and skills he’s learned along the way.
Change comes first at the edges. In just the last couple decades, technology has gradually enabled us to work from almost anywhere, on almost anything, with almost anyone. That revolution has prompted another one: a transition from the traditional, employer-based economy to an emerging economy of independents—call them “soloists”—who design their own work, create their own jobs, and are reinventing the workplace as we know it. By 2025, soloists will amount to half of the American workforce. But long before they were plentiful, soloists were something else: the pioneers of flexible work. What does their experience teach us about managing in this new world of work? What can we learn from the organizations that have benefitted from skillfully collaborating with them? What secrets do soloists—the original virtual, mobile, remote workers—have to tell us about how to make flexible work work?
The face of business has drastically transformed over the last few decades. Shifts in the tools, how and where we work have upended deeply entrenched ideas of how businesses can and should be structured. And the rate of change will only increase. Networks continue to speed up, laying the pipes for more AI, IoT, data analytics, robotics, augmented and virtual reality applications. In this session, Taher Behbehani explores how the step-change that 5G brings will impact work, the workspace and business.
The way we work is changing and it’s no surprise that AI is playing a major role. According to Gartner, the deployment of AI has tripled in the past year. If you haven’t thought about using AI throughout your organization, it is very likely that your competitors already have. This panel discussion will bring together leaders from three different companies that are using AI to shape productivity and engagement across the workforce.
In a recent survey, 89% of workers stated that flexible work should be how we work, not a benefit. For companies that were founded in the digital age, flexibility may be a no brainer, but this isn’t the case for every company. To be successful, overall company culture, norms, and values will need a shift in thinking. What’s more, perceptions around customer experience, management styles, productivity, training, etc. all create additional complexity that business leaders will need to think through. In this panel, we’ll hear from HR and business leaders who have gone through the process of bringing more flexibility to the workplace. They’ll share insights on overcoming the challenges to flexible working, discuss the necessary changes that need to happen to policies, and offer guidance on building a business case for flexible work at your company.
Piaggio Fast Forward is carving out a brand new category of robotics: technology that aims to support and enhance human experiences. As we look to the future of the live/work movement and everyday life evolves into flexible work schedules, the lines begin to blur between indoor and outdoor, work and home, shop and dine, and so on. Rossitza Kotelova will discuss how PFF taps into some of today’s most prominent lifestyle trends, both at work and in play. We are prioritizing physical wellness, mindfulness in spite of technology, seeking fulfillment through engaging experiences, and the desire for -- live, work, play, shop, dine -- environments. We are making the journey the best part of the day.
Collaboration technologies have undoubtedly played a role in the evolution of the workplace. After all, it’s these tools and platforms that allows us to better communicate with our colleagues, customers, teams, and prospects from afar. The definition of a team has shifted from one that resides in the four walls of an office to one that is distributed across locations and a blended mix of freelancers and full-time workers. This panel will provide a deeper understanding of what collaboration tech can bring to your organization, different approaches to key collaboration challenges, criteria to help in your decision-making process, and what future trends will continue to shape the way work gets done across your organization.
As more of the workforce becomes distributed, the complexity around building trust and ensuring security in an organization multiplies. DDoS attacks, social engineering, simple scripting, and deep hackery have the potential to prevent any company from conducting business as usual. This discussion will focus on how IT leaders can build environments that foster trust for remote teams and challenges that can pop up along the way.
Now more than ever, individual workers and teams need to be more responsive, adaptable, and productive. With the rise of distributed and blended teams, it is more complicated to collaborate and be well-managed. To remain competitive in the new environments, new skills and approaches enable executives and teams to work together and perform at higher levels.
Soft skills are rising in importance--with empathy at the core--allowing workers to build strong relationships, connect better, and interact and collaborate more effectively--across hierarchy levels, generations and locations. Referencing neuroscience and behavioral psychology, Sophie will explore and explain empathy using specific examples, recommend ways to understand coworkers’ emotions, and how to practice and measure empathy to improve leadership, engagement, collaboration, and productivity.
Ava Robotics, a spin-off of iRobot, develops advanced telepresence robots that allow remote colleagues or experts to visit and collaborate anywhere at your site. Ava telepresence robots autonomously get to where the user wants to be, and allow the remote user to safely move around the facility during the visit. In this session, Ava co-founder Marcio Macedo will demonstrate Ava in a live session and will discuss use cases at the most innovative customers deployments.
As we look to the future, we know that technology will persistently shape and augment our work lives. Employees will continue to demand a work experience that is consistent with their daily consumer experience. New ways of working across distributed teams will be the norm. But what will work look like in 2040? What will digital disruption enable and how will it force organizations to change? And how do business leaders avoid friction between what’s current and what’s new?
In this session, Liz will explain the leadership maturity needed to design and support new ways of working flexibly and with agility and visibility to performance. Within this digital culture, understand how AI will impact organizational design and HR, and glean the principals needed to create work experiences.
Sophie Wade is author of Embracing Progress. Next Steps for the Future of Work which is an Executive MBA Program and management leadership textbook. She has held senior management, strategy and finance roles around the world working in media, technology, and venture capital, for companies such as IMG, Yahoo, and SONY. Sophie has a BA from Oxford University and an MBA from top international business school, INSEAD.
Sophie is Founder and Workforce Innovation Specialist at Flexcel Network, a Future-of-Work-focused consultancy. She helps companies to future-proof their work environments and create compelling, competitive, and digitally-integrated workplaces to attract, engage and retain their multigenerational and distributed talent.
Michael Hopkins is an award-winning writer, magazine executive, and content strategy leader who finds and tells stories that illuminate the rapidly emerging future of work.
He helped build the Inc. Magazine brand as its longtime executive editor, turned around the MIT Sloan Management Review, created The Build Network (the “catalog of ideas” for C-suite leaders at mid-sized businesses), and pioneered innovation research and digital publications for The Monitor Group, Boston Consulting Group, The Financial Times, and Dow Jones, among many.
He is co-founder of The Solo Project, a team exploring the end days of the “job” as we’ve known it, and is currently writing a major book uncovering lessons from the vanguard of indie professionals and the innovative organizational leaders who collaborate with them. (Beta title: “The Joy of Work: How to create and lead your Big Solo Life in a world where we’ll all, sometimes, be on our own.”)
Tom Cheesewright is one of the most respected consultants and commentators on tomorrow’s world. As an Applied Futurist, Tom helps people and organisations around the world to see what’s next and to build a coherent response.
Tom is a frequent presence on TV and radio, explaining today’s world of high frequency change and the technology that drives it. He has appeared thousands of times over the last decade across the BBC, ITV, Channel 4, and Sky News as well as in many print and online publications including The Guardian, The Times, and The Evening Standard.
Tom consults with clients looking for greater foresight into the near future, and teaches and licences a range of tools for building more agile organisations. He is a frequent speaker on the future across a range of industries. Customers include global corporations such as BASF. BP, KPMG, LG, Nikon, and Unilever, as well as universities, charities and public bodies.
Tom’s first book, High Frequency Change, will be published in 2019. Find out more at https://tomcheesewright.com
Elizabeth Kiehner leads a global, cross sector team responsible for C-suite engagement and business development at IBM. Her passion and creativity have impacted some of the world’s most recognized enterprises, and as an entrepreneur at heart, Kiehner excels at generating business results. She is a believer in the positive impact of human and machine collaboration and its benefits to the future of work.
For two decades Kiehner has united creative, business, and technology teams to produce ground-breaking ideas for organizations including Google, Microsoft, Ford, John Deere, Viacom, American Express, Apple, Turner, Fidelity, Schwab, GM, GE, Khan Academy and many more. With a background in marketing and advertising Kiehner’s focus on digital reinvention bridges the gulf from traditional media to AI.
Powered by a mission to transform customer experiences into meaningful innovations that drive growth, Kiehner’s day ranges from identifying and mentoring the newest crop of talent to capturing the pulse of an ever-changing data and technology landscape. Her strategy and sales acumen drive go to market teams for pioneering platforms and products designed for our data driven, cognitive era. Her thought leadership has been shared at TED, EG, Adobe, SxSW, CES, New Context Conference, Cannes, and Promax/BDA.
Pavel is the VP Technology, Media Networks for Activision Blizzard, the world's most successful standalone interactive entertainment company.
Blizzard is pushing the boundaries of esports fan engagement with online competition, rich media delivery, and interactive watch experiences. Its portfolio includes some of the biggest franchises in all of entertainment, developed by the incredibly talented teams at Activision Publishing, Blizzard Entertainment, King Digital Entertainment, Activision Blizzard Studios, Major League Gaming, and its independent studios, including Toys for Bob, Infinity Ward, Sledgehammer Games and Treyarch. Its central corporate operations provide shared services such as Finance, IT, Sales and Supply Chain, Human Resources and Legal.
Ryan Merkley is CEO at Creative Commons. CC licenses are the global standard for sharing, supported by a distributed staff in the US, Canada, Chile, Brazil, and Kenya, and international community in over 80 countries. He is focused on building a vibrant, usable commons powered by collaboration and gratitude. Ryan is also the co-producer and host of Plays Well With Others, a podcast about the art, science, and mechanics of collaboration. Last year, CC launched Search, indexing over 270M images online, with a goal of including all of the 1.4 billion CC licensed works on the web. Ryan was previously COO at the Mozilla Foundation, and served as Director of Communications for Vancouver during the 2010 Winter Olympics. As Senior Advisor to former Toronto Mayor David Miller, he led the city’s budget, and launched its open data initiative. He lives in Toronto with his wife Kelsey, his daughter, and their dog Barkley.
Leveraging a deep technical heritage from iRobot, Ava Robotics designs and builds autonomous robots that comfortably coexist with humans in workplaces and other large spaces. Ava Robotics is transforming what it means to collaborate by combining autonomous mobility with Cisco's high definition video conferencing. Ava Robotics’ engineers are developing these products based on what we call “practical teleportation”, enabling workers to easily and safely move around a remote location as if they are physically there.
Alaa Murabit is a medical doctor, Canadian Meritorious Service Cross recipient, one of 17 Global Sustainable Development Goal Advocates appointed by the UN Secretary General, and a UN High- Level Commissioner on Health Employment & Economic Growth. In 2016 she founded a global Mentorship Programme for emerging leaders and co-founded The Omnis Institute, an independent non- profit committed to challenging critical global issues through the empowerment of emerging local leaders, and became the Executive Director of Phase Minus 1, which provides thought leadership in conflict resolution and inclusive security. Alaa previously founded The Voice of Libyan Women at the age of 21.
An MIT Media Lab Director's Fellow, Ashoka Fellow and International Deliver For Good Influencer, Alaa serves as a board member for The Malala Fund, Women’s March Global, International Alert, and Malaria No More.
Her efficacy in security, health policy & sustainable development was most recently recognized as one of Canada’s 25 Most Influential Women. She also received the 2018 Nelson Mandela International Award from The Mandela Family.
In 2017 she was named a Forbes 30 Under 30, Aspen Institute Spotlight Scholar, and Bay St. Bull Canada's 30x30. Her leadership in global policy and in elevating the role of women, particularly young, minority women, on global platforms was recognized by Harvard Law who named her the youngest 2017 Woman Inspiring Change.
Rosie leads a multidisciplinary team of designers and engineers focusing on research, design, and development of human robot interaction behaviors. She joined PFF in 2015 after graduating from the Harvard Graduate School of Design, and is one of the founding team members that invented the intelligent mobile carrier, gita®.
Founded in 2015 by the Piaggio Group, Piaggio Fast Forward (PFF) creates lightweight, intelligent mobility solutions for people and goods. We design for a culture of movability that reduces congestion for our planet, enabling everyone to move more freely. Velocity today is more than speed and acceleration, it is mental and social. We aim to change the paradigm from seeing walkers as pitiable to powerful. We believe in technology that extends people's capabilities. Crossing threshold of mobility, activity, and variety with fluidity. Anywhere. Indoors, outdoors, home and work.
Elias Torres is the founder and CTO of Drift, the world’s leading conversational marketing and sales platform. Prior to Drift, he served as the VP of Engineering at HubSpot, where he led the product team to a successful IPO after the acquisition of his previous company Performable in 2011. Prior to Performable, Elias served as VP of Engineering at Lookery and spent the first 10 years of his career as an engineer at IBM.
In addition to starting, advising and helping early stage companies, Elias is passionate about building winning teams. He is also a community activist focused on supporting LatinX entrepreneurs across the US.
Jen Stroud is an Employee Experience Evangelist and Strategist at ServiceNow. In her role, Jen communicates the ServiceNow value proposition to HR and Employee Experience leaders and teams and is a trusted advisor to our community of customers. She comes to ServiceNow from TeleTech (now ttec) where she spent 10+ years in HR and most recently was the Executive Director of Human Capital Services.
Jen spent most of her career at TeleTech implementing HR technology solutions, improving processes and training her colleagues on HR best practices. Though her efforts over the years often produced positive results, the HR team was plagued with significant challenges including a high volume of administrative and repetitive activities that negatively impacted their ability to work directly with employees when it really mattered. Employees also lacked a consistent and reliable support channel and often commented on how difficult it was to be an employee.
In 2012, Jen was responsible for leading an enterprise HR transformation initiative at TeleTech to address these challenges. Central to this initiative was the transition from a decentralized HR support model to a Shared Services operating model. Jen and her team successfully leveraged ServiceNow for this transformation. The HR portal her team developed included an extensive HR knowledgebase, a service catalog with over 70 distinct transactions and a case management workflow. Her team also successfully launched chat support. This transformation initiative boosted employee satisfaction scores by over 50% and enabled her team to reduce headcount costs by $1.6M and achieve an overall ROI of approximately $7.4M. The ROI was gained through 4 areas: employee self-service, HR headcount reduction, administrative and tactical work transfer to off-shore regions, and productivity gains.
Jen is passionate about leveraging her HR and EX knowledge and experience to strategize with other organizations on how to improve their HR and EX business outcomes and provide employees with the great workforce experience they want and deserve. Since joining ServiceNow, she has worked with hundreds of organizations across different industries and has discovered that most HR organizations are facing many of the same challenges she faced while at TeleTech: Create a modern digital employee experience, improve how work gets done in HR, and move HR from the back room to the boardroom by automating tasks and removing unnecessary administrative work. Jen is uniquely qualified to lead Employee Experience Visioning workshops that are designed to help organizations establish the fundamental and foundational components of their future employee experience.
As CMO, Brian is responsible for the Fuze brand, market positioning, demand generation, thought leadership, and integrated marketing worldwide. Brian is a results-oriented executive with more than 20 years of experience creating and implementing successful growth strategies ranging from startups to global, billion-dollar organizations.
Brian is among the most successful marketing executives in the world of technology. In the past year, Brian was recognized as one of the “50 Most Influential CMOs” (Forbes) and “100 Most Influential Chief Marketing Officers in the World” (Richtopia), as well as one of the “30 Tech Marketing Leaders Changing the Industry” (Synthesio). The Fuze Marketing Team recently won the prestigious ROI Award from SiriusDecisions for Excellence in Demand Creation.
Prior to Fuze, Brian was CMO at Lattice Engines, the leader in predictive marketing and sales applications. Before Lattice, Brian was CMO at Eloqua (NASDAQ: ELOQ) where he was part of the team that led Eloqua’s explosive growth and leadership in the marketing automation sector, resulting in a successful IPO and subsequent purchase by Oracle. Previously, Brian was Chief Strategy and Marketing Officer at Forrester Research (NASDAQ: FORR) where he helped turn the brand into a leader in the tech research sector. He also served as CMO at Reed Business Information (NYSE: RELX), the largest B2B publisher in the world.
Brian received his BS and MBA degrees from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.
A proven technology leader, recently joining Bose by way of acquisition of his most recent startup ZiipRoom, which developed a simpler and mobile-first meeting experience solution. Now at Bose, Martin is leading their entrance into the conferencing market where they plan to deliver Best-in-class solutions that improve collaborative experiences for workers in many environments. Prior to ZiipRoom Martin founded and led Revolabs, a technology manufacturer specializing in wireless audio and conferencing products, which was acquired by Yamaha. Martin holds BSEE and MSEE degrees and attended MIT Sloan’s GB Executive Program.
Dr. Skyler Place serves as Chief Behavioral Science Officer at Cogito - the world leader in AI powered Emotional Intelligence Software. Cogito is a spin-off from MIT Media Lab, and has raised over $70MM and is backed by Goldman Sachs, Battery Ventures, OpenView, Hearst and Romulus Capital. The software solution provides real-time measurement and emotional intelligence coaching for tens of thousands of advisors, customers service, claims and care professionals at the world's largest insurance, healthcare and financial services organizations to improve call outcomes.
Dr. Place combines decades of psychological theory with cutting edge behavioral data to drive positive behavior change. He influences product capabilities and provides thought leadership to clients within enterprise sales and service operations. His team of behavioral scientists, analysts and consultants apply best practice principles and novel insights to ensure higher performance for both organizations and individuals. Skyler has over fifteen years of experience developing and implementing new approaches to better predict and improve human behavior. Prior to Cogito, Skyler led large-scale academic research projects at the intersection of artificial intelligence and behavioral science. Skyler holds a BA in computer science from Colby College, PhDs in psychology and cognitive science from Indiana University, and completed his post-doctoral work in computational social science at the Institute for Quantitative Social Science at Harvard University.
Youssef Saleh is an entrepreneurial leader with a passion for turning ideas into profitable and growing businesses. He is Co-Founder and CEO of Ava Robotics, a recent spin-off of iRobot focused on intelligent mobile robots for enterprise, commercial and industrial environments. Previously, Youssef was SVP/GM of Remote Presence Business Unit at iRobot, where he was responsible for the iRobot’s industry-leading autonomous robots for commercial applications. Prior to iRobot, Youssef was VP/GM of telepresence at Polycom. Youssef holds a BSEE from Northeastern University.
Linkedin profile: https://www.linkedin.com/in/youssefsaleh/
Twitter: @YoussefASaleh
Meaghan Williams is the Remote Work and Inclusion Program Manager at HubSpot in Cambridge, MA. Meaghan's goal is to improve the remote employee experience and manage the rollout of a global philosophy around remote work that includes high level company-wide guidelines as well as team-based flexibility based on business needs.
Marcio is Co-Founder and VP of Product and Marketing at Ava Robotics, a recent spin-off of iRobot focused on intelligent mobile robots for enterprise, commercial and industrial environments. At iRobot he was Director of Product Management for commercial robots, with responsibility for iRobot’s industry-leading autonomous robots for commercial applications. This includes the RP-VITA telemedicine robot, launched in partnership with InTouch Health, and the iRobot Ava 500 telepresence robot, launched in partnership with Cisco. Prior to iRobot, Marcio served in product management leadership roles at HP and Polycom, after having started his career in engineering at PictureTel Corp. Marcio has a BSEE from the Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro, an MSEE from Northeastern University and an MBA from Babson College.
Linkedin profile: www.linkedin.com/in/marciomacedo
Twitter: @marciorobots
As Fuze’s VP of Market Intelligence, Eric Hanson manages product strategy and strategic initiatives with key customers, while also representing the voice of the customer with product management & engineering. Most recently, Eric served as the VP of Marketing for (the former) Fuze prior to its acquisition by ThinkingPhones. In this role, he managed user acquisition and conversion, brand, competitive analysis, and other business initiatives. Eric is a serial entrepreneur with a background that spans disciplines including sales, design, operations, product, and M&A. He is passionate about visualization and communication technologies that optimize human interaction, increase engagement, and boost productivity among connected workers. Eric spent much of his career in creative services, leading globally distributed teams that delivered work for films including Iron Man, Hunger Games, and Avatar. He has a degree in Political Science and Economics from the University of California at San Diego.
Given the pace of change and market disruptions, it has never been more critical for leaders to set the vision and direction for their organizations. Jenny is an organization transformation advisor passionate about meeting leaders at the intersection of disruption and workforce solutions to prepare multinational organizations for large scale change. As part of Deloitte Consulting’s Human Capital Practice, she has led complex initiatives for healthcare organizations focusing on global business readiness, talent management and organizational solutions. As an expert facilitator, Jenny applies group dynamics and innovative approaches to enable leaders to unlock powerful insights that define workforce innovations and market break-throughs.
Jenny is a respected and sought after speaker on the topics of talent trends and inclusive leadership, at such events as the Multicultural Women’s National Conference, Boston Non-Profit Summit and Deloitte’s Finance Leadership Forum. She is a graduate of Columbia Business School (MBA) and Tufts University (BA, Economics).
Megan Burns is an expert on customer-centricity and customer experience management. She helps companies thrive by restoring empathy, trust, and humanity to the way they interact with customers and employees, even as more interactions take place in arms-length digital channels.
For two decades, Megan has had an inside view of what the world’s most beloved companies do to earn loyalty from the people they serve. While at Forrester Research, her groundbreaking work shaped the field of experience management into a multi-billion dollar industry and set the stage for transformation at Fortune 500 firms across the globe. Megan published more than seventy-five reports on topics like the business value of better experiences and what leaders need to do to drive culture change so customer-centricity can become their organization’s new normal. She’s been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, interviewed by NBC News, and tapped by more than half of the Fortune 50 to serve as their guide on the path to customer-driven growth.
Megan works with leaders to transform culture and operations through speaking, workshops, facilitation, and executive coaching. She creates ah-ha moments that make employees think differently about themselves and their role in exceeding today’s higher customer expectations. Pledging to “be more customer-centric,” though, is like saying you’ll “eat healthy and exercise.” Even when you know you should, the pace of life today makes it hard to stay consistent. That’s why Megan works with organizations find small, practical, sustainable changes that will compound over time to get teams where they need and want to go.
Taher Behbehani is the General Manager of Samsung Electronics America’s Mobile B2B division, a multi-billion dollar business unit. In this role, Taher runs P&L, marketing, sales and business operations. He restructured an enterprise sales organization that serves 40,000 accounts across seven verticals, including small and medium businesses, large enterprises and the Fortune 500. Taher owns relationships with leading mobile carriers, distributors, resellers and service providers to bring emerging technology solutions to market.
At his core, Taher is an entrepreneur who takes a customer-centric approach to innovation. Currently, he is driving enterprise 5G adoption and exploring its potential to disrupt businesses worldwide. He brings a bold vision of change to Samsung and its B2B customers, fueled by his experience in different high-tech segments, including fintech, digital media, cloud services, communications and product development. He has a successful track record as an investor, advisor and entrepreneur, having founded two companies focused on advanced wireless technologies and telecom services.
His prior experience showcases an unconventional perspective that extends well beyond traditional executive leadership. As the former CMO of BroadSoft, Taher transformed its digital and marketing strategy and led C-Level discussions to rebrand and reposition the company as the leading industry visionary. He was instrumental in fostering Cisco’s $2B acquisition of BroadSoft in 2016. As a senior executive at American Express, Taher formed the digital innovation team and transformed digital strategy and product development to generate e-commerce growth.
Taher holds a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and an M.S. in electrical engineering from Yale University.
Jim Lundy is the founder and CEO of Aragon Research. Jim also serves as the lead analyst for collaboration, mobile, social, content management, and learning. He is also the practice lead for sales and marketing.
Jim has over 30 years of technology and management experience as a vendor, user, and analyst. Jim spent 12 years at Gartner, where he formed and led the collaboration and social software research team and also served as a lead analyst for enterprise content management (ECM) and corporate learning. Jim has extensive experience in product strategy, development, and go-to-market plans.
Prior to founding Aragon Research, Jim was the VP/general manager of the collaboration business unit at Saba Software. Jim also spent 15 years at Xerox in a variety of software and hardware sales and marketing positions. Jim has a B.S. in finance from Penn State University.
Gaylan has over 25 years of HR experience, with an emphasis and particular passion around employee experience and engagement, proselytizing remote/flexible workforce models, data-driven decision making, employee relations and coaching leaders. She most recently served as an HR Business partner for the Global Sales team at Shutterstock in New York City. Prior, she was the Global HR Care Leader at Intuit – In her 12 years there, held several positions, but most recently led a large global team of HR generalists, posted around the world, providing a follow-the-sun HR Care Model. In the top 10 percent of people managers for quantifiable employee engagement scores, she maintained an employee engagement rate of 98 percent favorable for her remote, globally-dispersed team, which consistently achieved best-in-class tNPS scores for customer care.
Justin Pirie is a SaaS & Cloud expert and Senior Product Marketer for Flex Ecosystem at Twilio. Before joining Twilio, he was the PMM responsible for OpenDJ and OpenIG at ForgeRock, the world’s largest Open Source IAM company. Prior to that he was a early employee and Director of Cloud Strategy at Mimecast (MIME), one of Europe’s leading SaaS companies.