Category: Speaker

Lt. Gen. (Ret) Thomas Bostick, PH.D., NAE

Posted on February 18, 2021 by - Speaker

Lt. Gen. (Ret) Thomas Bostick, PH.D., NAE

Lieutenant General (Ret.) Thomas P. Bostick recently served as Chief Operating Officer and President, Intrexon Bioengineering (NASDAD: XON, now Precigen; PGEN). He serves on the boards of CSX (NASDAQ: CSX), Perma-Fix (NASDAQ: PESI), HireVue, American Corporate Partners (ACP), and Streamside Systems. He was the 53rd Chief of Engineers and Commanding General of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Bostick helped lead the nation’s response to Superstorm Sandy. He was the Army’s Director of Personnel; Bostick deployed with the 1st Cavalry Division during Operation Iraqi Freedom and later commanded the Gulf Region Division with responsibility for an $18B construction program. During 9/11, he served as the senior watch officer in the Pentagon’s National Military Command Center on the Joint Staff. He was an Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering at West Point. As a White House Fellow, he was a special assistant to the Secretary of Veterans Affairs. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and is a licensed professional engineer. He is a Forbes Contributor. Bostick is a graduate of the U.S. Military Academy with a degree in Applied Science and Engineering, and he holds Master of Science Degrees in both Civil and Mechanical Engineering from Stanford University, and a PhD in Systems Engineering from George Washington University. 

Vineet Nayar

Posted on December 15, 2020 by - Speaker

Vineet Nayar

Vineet Nayar is Founder Chairman of Sampark Foundation and former CEO of HCL Technologies (click here for wiki Profile) and author of the highly acclaimed management bestseller, “Employees First, Customer Second: Turning Conventional Management Upside Down”(Harvard Business Press, June 2010).

A management visionary and radical thinker, Vineet led the transformation of HCL Technologies into one of India’s fastest-growing global information technology service company, which under his leadership grew from a $0.7 billion in 2005 to a $4.7 billion global technology service company with over 85,000 employees across 32 countries by 2013. This radical transformation led Fortune to recognise HCLT as “the world’s most modern management”, while Business Week named HCLT as“one of the world’s most influential companies”.

His innovative management practices at HCLT were taught as a case study at both the Harvard Business School and London Business School.

Vineet was chosen by Fortune magazine for its first ever global Executive Dream Team, and also found a place on the elite Thinkers 50 List. His innovative, transformative ideas have received fulsome praise from influencers like late C. K. Prahalad, Tom Peters, Gary Hamel, and Ram Charan.

Vineet quit HCLT in 2013 to focus on Sampark Foundation, which he co-founded with his wife Anupama Nayar, to catalyse ‘large-scale transformation in primary education through frugal innovation’. Today Sampark Foundation is improving learning outcomes among 7 million children studying in 76,000 rural schools across 6 states in India: Chhattisgarh, Uttarakhand, Jharkhand, Haryana, Himachal Pradesh, and Uttar Pradesh at less than $1 per child per annum. This large-scale transformation is now a ‘case study’ at Harvard Business School.

Vineet has been cited by Forbes in its ‘Heroes of Philanthropy List 2016’ and also as a ‘Global Thinker 2016’, along with his wife, by Foreign Policy magazine for ‘unplugging technology so kids can learn’.

Vineet joined HCL in 1985 after earning his MBA from XLRI. In 1993, he founded Comnet, a technology start-up, where he developed and put to practice may of the ideas (he later described in his book), transforming it into a multi-billion-dollar business. In 2005, he became president, and in 2007, the CEO of HCL Technologies, where over the next five years, he spearheaded a remarkable turnaround.

Vineet currently serves as a Senior Advisor to ChrysCapital, McKinsey Leadership Institute and many Fortune 1000 companies. He is on the Advisory Board of the Millions Learning project led by the ex-Prime Minister of Australia, Julia Gilliard, and has served as Governor of ICT; member of the Global Advisory Board of Women Leaders and Gender Parity Program at the World Economic Forum. And, as a mentor to multiple technology start-ups, he continues to follow his passion of turning conventional management wisdom, upside down.

Peter Cappelli

Posted on December 15, 2020 by - Speaker

Peter Cappelli

Peter Cappelli is the George W. Taylor Professor of Management at The Wharton School and Director of Wharton’s Center for Human Resources.  He is also a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research in Cambridge, MA, served as Senior Advisor to the Kingdom of Bahrain for Employment Policy from 2003-2005, is a Distinguished Scholar of the Ministry of Manpower for Singapore, and was Co-Director of the U.S. Department of Education’s National Center on the Educational Quality of the Workforce from 1990-1998. He was recently named by HR Magazine as one of the top 5 most influential management thinkers, by NPR as one of the 50 influencers in the field of aging, and was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Human Resources.  He received the 2009 PRO award from the International Association of Corporate and Professional Recruiters for contributions to human resources and an honorary Doctorate degree from the University of Liege in Belgium.  He writes a monthly column for HR Executive magazine and hosts the In the Workplace podcast series for HRO Today magazine.  His recent work on performance management, agile systems, and hiring practices, and other workplace topics appears in the Harvard Business Review.

David C. Novak

Posted on November 24, 2020 by - Speaker

DAVID C. NOVAK

David Novak is Founder and CEO of David Novak Leadership, a digital leadership development platform he created to help people become better the best leaders they can be.

He is Co-Founder, retired Chairman and CEO of Yum! Brands, Inc. (NYSE:YUM), one of the world’s largest restaurant companies with over 45,000 restaurants in more than 135 countries and territories.  He retired in 2016.

Novak’s passion is to make the world a better place by developing leaders at all ages through David Novak Leadership, his family’s Lift-a-Life Foundation, Lead4Change, Global Game Changers, The Novak Leadership Institute at the University of Missouri and his top-ranked business podcast, “How Leaders Lead with David Novak.”

A renowned expert on leadership and recognition culture, Novak is also a bestselling leadership book author.  His highly respected and critically acclaimed books include The New York Times bestseller Taking People With You, The Only Way to Achieve Big Things, The Education of an Accidental CEO, Lessons Learned from the Trailer Park to the Corner Office and his latest parable, O GREAT ONE! A Little Story About the Awesome Power of Recognition.

Yum! Brands includes KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell, the global leaders of the chicken, pizza and Mexican-style food categories. Yum! Brands employs 1.5 million company employees and franchise associates across its worldwide system. Outside the United States, the Yum! Brands system opened over six new restaurants per day on average, making it a leader in global retail development.

During his tenure as CEO, Yum! Brands doubled in size to 41,000 restaurants and established itself as a global powerhouse going from approximately 20 percent of its profits coming from outside the United States in 1997 to nearly 70 percent in 2016, while remaining an industry leader in return on invested capital. In so doing, Yum! Brands’ compound annual shareholder return has been 16 percent and its market capitalization has grown to nearly $32 billion from just over $4 billion.  Novak was also the architect of spinning off Yum! China as an independent public company as its largest licensee.  In so doing, Yum Brands is now almost wholly owned and operated by franchisees.

Prior to leading Yum! Brands, Novak was President at both KFC and Pizza Hut, and held senior management positions at Pepsi-Cola Company, including Chief Operating Officer, and Executive Vice President of Marketing and Sales.

Novak has been recognized as “2012 CEO of the Year” by Chief Executive magazine, one of the world’s “30 Best CEOs” by Barron’s, one of the “Top People in Business” by FORTUNE and one of the “100 Best-Performing CEOs in the World” by Harvard Business Review.  He received the prestigious 2015 Horatio Alger Award for his commitment to philanthropy and higher education and became a lifetime member of the Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans.  He is the recipient of the 2012 UN World Food Program Leadership Award for Yum! Brands World Hunger Relief effort that raised awareness, volunteerism and funds to address the global problem. He also received the national 2008 Woodrow Wilson Award for Corporate Citizenship.

Ambassador Bonnie McElveen-Hunter

Posted on November 24, 2020 by - Speaker

Bonnie McElveen-Hunter

 

Ambassador Bonnie McElveen-Hunter is the Founder and CEO of Pace, the largest independently owned custom content agency in the nation, serving Fortune 500 companies. She was appointed as the first woman National Chairman of the Board of the American Red Cross in 2004 and is currently serving her fifth term.  In 2007, she co-founded the American Red Cross Tiffany Circle Society of Women Leaders, which has grown to include 63 Chapters. To date, Tiffany Circle Chapters nationwide have raised over $200 million dollars.

Ambassador Hunter served as U.S. Ambassador to the Republic of Finland from 2001-2004. As Ambassador, she initiated the Stop Child Trafficking: End Modern-Day Slavery and Children of Karelia program, as well as founded the Women Business Leaders Summit®, a model for business entrepreneurship partnering women business leaders around the world. She was awarded one of Finland’s highest honors – The Commander Grand Cross of the Order of the Lion.

As a long-time philanthropist and charitable-cause activist, Ambassador Hunter served on a United Way of America board and chaired the Alexis de Tocqueville Society, founding the first Billion Dollar National Women’s Leadership Initiative which to date has raised over $2 billion dollars. She currently serves on the boards of the Kennedy Center International Committee on the Arts, Blair House Fund, National Museum of Women in the Arts,  Museum of the Bible, Macedonian Ministries, Inc., Elon University School of Law, Ellis Island Foundation, Max Planck Institute for Neuroscience, Norton Museum of Art, and the Society of the Four Arts where she also serves as Chairman of the Esther B. O’Keeffe Speaker Series.

Awards and Honors: Horatio Alger Association of Distinguished Americans, Points of Light Tribute, Carolina Entrepreneur Hall of Fame, North Carolina Award for Public Service, Courage Visionary Award from National Historically Black Colleges & Universities Alumni Association, Internationalism Award, American Women for International Understanding, North Carolina Society of New York Honoree, United Way Women’s Leadership Award, United Way National Women’s Leadership Council’s Inaugural Women in Philanthropy Award, National Alexis de Tocqueville Society, John M. Templeton Biblical Values, Appeal of Conscience Public Service Award, Ellis Island Medal of Honor, Lifetime Member of Hadassah, Lifetime Member of Association of Junior Leagues International, Inc., Honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from North Carolina State University, Dr. Carl-Christian Rosenbröijer Award, Woman Entrepreneur of the Year by National Foundation for Women Legislatures, National Athena Award, Northwood University Outstanding Business Leader, Trailblazer of the Year by Women Leaders Forum, and Junior Achievement Business Hall of Fame.

Ambassador Hunter lives in Palm Beach, Florida, Greensboro, North Carolina, and Washington, DC.  Her husband, Bynum Merritt Hunter, Sr. (deceased) practiced law with Smith Moore Law in Greensboro for over 60 years. Their son, Bynum Merritt Hunter, Jr., is a graduate of Williams and Harvard Business School.

Ilene Gordon

Posted on November 24, 2020 by - Speaker

Ilene S. Gordon

Ilene Gordon is retired chairman, president and CEO of Ingredion Incorporated (NYSE:INGR). Currently she is presiding director of International Paper and a director of Lockheed Martin.

From 2009 through 2017 Ms. Gordon was chairman, president and CEO of Ingredion and executive chairman January through July 2018. Ingredion is a leading global producer of nature-based ingredient solutions for food, beverage, brewing and industrial customers around the world. A FORTUNE 500 company, Ingredion has 11,000 employees, 2017 net sales of $5.8 billion.

Ms. Gordon joined Ingredion in 2009 from Rio Tinto Alcan, where as president and CEO of Alcan Packaging she led a $6.5 billion global packaging business based in Paris, France. Over her 10-year tenure with Alcan and Pechiney, which was acquired by Alcan in 2003, she held various leadership positions, starting as senior vice president of Pechiney Plastic Packaging.

Previously Ms. Gordon spent 17 years in executive roles of increasing responsibility at the Packaging Corporation of America, a division of Tenneco Inc. Before joining Tenneco Inc., Ms. Gordon spent two years at Signode, a leading global packaging company specialized in materials handling. From 1976-1980, Ms. Gordon worked at the Boston Consulting Group (BCG), an international management consulting firm, as a strategy consultant, based in the Boston, London and Chicago offices.

Ms. Gordon holds a Bachelor of Science degree in mathematics, Phi Beta Kappa, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Mass., and a Master of Science degree in management from MIT's Sloan School of Management.

In the past, Ms. Gordon was the first female director of five different public companies: Arthur J. Gallagher & Company, United Stationers Inc., Outboard Marine Corporation, Sundstrand Corporation and Zenith Electronics.

Ms. Gordon is a vice chair of The Conference Board and is an honorary board member of The Economic Club of Chicago (after serving as Chair of the Club). She is listed among Forbes Global Game Changers and was one of FORTUNE’s Most Power Women for a number of years: five consecutive years on the U.S. list and two years on the global list.

In 2018 Ms. Gordon received the Executive Leader Award from the Association of Fundraising Professionals. In 2017 she received: The Civic Federation Lyman J. Gage Award for outstanding civic contribution; the Chicagoland Chamber of Commerce Daniel H. Burnham Award for Distinguished Leadership; the Committee of 200 Corporate Innovator Luminary Award; and the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award, distribution and manufacturing category. Additionally, she received the Committee for Economic Development Leadership in Diversity Award in 2016 and the National Association of Corporate Directors 2013 Director of the Year award.

Maggie Wilderotter

Posted on November 24, 2020 by - Speaker

Maggie Wilderotter

Maggie Wilderotter is a seasoned executive who, as CEO, has led both Fortune 500 companies and start-ups in her career. In addition, she has extensive Board leadership serving on over 35 public company and 14 private company Boards of Directors.

Today, Mrs. Wilderotter serves on the public boards of Costco Wholesale Corporation, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Lyft and is Board Chair at DocuSign. She serves on the private board of Tanium as well as a number of non-profit organizations. Mrs. Wilderotter is also a Senior Advisor to the Blackstone Group, Okta, Atairos Private Equity and TSSP.

Mrs. Wilderotter was Chief Executive Officer of Frontier Communications from November, 2004 to April, 2015, and then Executive Chairman of the company until April, 2016. During her tenure with Frontier, the company grew from a regional telephone company with customer revenues of less than $1 billion to a national broadband, voice and video provider with operations in 29 states and annualized revenues in excess of $10 billion.

Previously, Mrs. Wilderotter was Senior Vice President of Global Business Strategy and ran the Worldwide Public Sector at Microsoft. Before this, she was President and CEO of Wink Communications Inc., Executive Vice President of National Operations for AT&T Wireless Services Inc., Chief Executive Officer of AT&T's Aviation Communications Division, and a Senior Vice President of McCaw Cellular Communications Inc.

Mrs. Wilderotter previously served on the President's National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC) as both Vice Chairman and Chairman during her 4-year tenure ending in 2014. Mrs. Wilderotter also served until January, 2017 on the President’s special Commission responsible for a recommendation report to the new President of the United States on Enhancing National Cybersecurity.

Mrs. Wilderotter holds a bachelor's degree in economics from the College of the Holy Cross. She has been awarded an Honorary Doctor of Engineering degree from the Stevens Institute of Technology and an Honorary Doctor of Laws degree from the University of Rochester.