Communication

Skipper T. Ryan Davis is a 20+ year Retired Naval Officer with 4,000 hours of flight time encompassing multiple deployments in support of combat operations around the globe.  His most recent assignment was as the Commanding Officer for Patrol Squadron 47, a P-8 squadron responsible for executing the nation’s maritime strategy.  During that tour of duty, Commander Davis led his team of 300 Sailors through organizational culture change resulting in the highest morale on record across all VP squadrons, being awarded the Navy and Marine Corps Association Leadership Award, and earning the Battle “E” award for efficiency.  CDR Davis has proven himself a passionate leader who cares about people. 

Ryan is the Founder of Take Flight Leadership, an organization helping individuals and organizations achieve their goals.  He is the author of Take Flight: Cultivating Culture Through Trust, Teamwork, Purpose, & Ownership.  Ryan certified as a SHRM Senior Certified Professional, a Resilience-Building Leader Program Trainer, and as a BCSP Associate Safety Professional to better help him serve the teams he works with.

Paul Meshanko, CSP, is an author, professional speaker and thought leader with over 25 years of experience in leadership development and organizational culture change. Known for his down to earth, humorous and highly-interactive style, he has captivated over a half million leaders and business professionals on five continents.

Pulling from the most current research in organization development, psychology and science, his inspiring programs cover a broad range of topics dealing with workplace culture, diversity, respect, motivation, bias and critical thinking. Paul holds a BSBA from The Ohio State University and an MBA from Baldwin Wallace College. His most recent book, The Respect Effect, was released by McGraw-Hill in 2013.

Melissa Thompson is an HR and TA executive with 25+ years' experience across a wide variety of industries. Melissa is currently the SVP, Talent Acquisition for Nielsen Media.  She joined McGraw Hill Education as the VP, Talent Acquisition in early 2018.  During her tenure, she built the Global TA team from the ground up, including insourcing US TA and engaging an International sourcing partner.  Melissa improved the user experience by implementing Lever ATS onboard and introducing Passport to Recruit, a manager training program.  Most recently, she led the project to redefine and modernize the McGraw-Hill Employee Value Proposition (EVP). During her career she has held recruiting leadership roles at Dell, Citrix, Siebel, and Lenovo. She is an engaging, results-oriented, strategic Talent Acquisition leader with expertise in designing and executing game changing TA programs. 

Jeremy Eskenazi, SHRM-SCP, SPHR, CMC is Managing Principal of Riviera Advisors, Inc., a global Human Resources management consulting and training firm that helps organizations improve, enhance and optimize their internal talent acquisition and recruiting capabilities.

Prior to founding Riviera Advisors in 2001, Jeremy spent almost 20 years leading talent acquisition and recruiting teams at Universal Studios, Amazon.com, and Idealab. A regular SHRM speaker and a member of the SHRM Talent Acquisition Special Expertise Panel, Jeremy is also proud professional member of the National Speakers Association (NSA) and the Institute of Management Consultants-USA.

Jeremy is the author of the books, “RecruitCONSULT! Leadership – The Corporate Talent Acquisition Leader’s Field Book”, and “The High-Performance Talent Acquisition Advantage”.

Katrina Kibben is an award-winning writer and keynote speaker known for helping hiring teams write inclusive, unbiased job postings that help them hire the right person faster.

Before founding Three Ears Media, Katrina was a CMO, Technical Copywriter, and Managing Editor for leading companies like Monster.com, Care.com, and Randstad Worldwide. Today, they are frequently featured as an HR and recruiting expert in publications like The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, and Forbes.

Kat travels the country in their RV while dividing time between North Carolina, Colorado, and the dogs behind the name Three Ears Media.

Sophie is recognized as a Certified Specialist Attorney in Immigration and Nationality Law by the State Bar of California Board of Legal Specialization. She is recognized by TechCrunch as a Verified Expert Lawyer and was recently named to the list of Top 10 Immigration Attorneys in California. Sophie authors a weekly TechCrunch immigration advice column, Dear Sophie. She is the host of the podcast, Immigration Law for Tech Startups. Alcorn Immigration Law is the fastest-growing immigration law firm in Silicon Valley and 2019 Global Law Experts Awards’ “Law Firm of the Year in California for Entrepreneur Immigration Services.

Julia is a Partner at Fragomen specialising in Global Government Strategies and Compliance. She supports clients worldwide with immigration best practices, global mobility strategies and crisis management.

Julia works closely with governments and business on Brexit and provided expert evidence to the European Parliament. She has represented business at the UK Prime Minister’s immigration stock take meeting and acted as an advisor to the Home Office. Julia sits on SHRM’s Immigration Specialty Panel, the board of the London Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the Mayor of London’s Brexit Advisory Group and the Home Office EU Immigration Employer’s Group.

Before joining Fragomen, Julia was a Partner and Head of Global Immigration at PwC leading complex multi-jurisdictional client engagements.

Mr. Brailer joined Johns Hopkins University in April 2013 as Assistant Provost for International Student and Scholar Services.  Now an Associate Vice Provost, Jim has led a transformation in the way JHU supports its growing international populations and serves sponsoring university departments through a reorganization and consolidation of the five offices that were serving international clientele, and has undertaken a comprehensive review of all international services policies and procedures. He also works with government relations staff to ensure policymakers at all levels appreciate the impact of immigration regulations on JHU.  Jim was Executive Director of the Center for Global Education Services at Arizona State from 2010-13.  He began his career at Ohio State in 1991 and has worked in international education for nearly three decades, presenting numerous sessions and workshops at national and regional professional conferences.  He is a current member of the SHRM Specialty Immigration Panel.  He has a BS in Business Administration from Ohio State and a JD from Capital University Law School.

Nancy Woolever, SHRM-SCP, joined SHRM in 1997 to plan SHRM’s conference, seminar, e-learning and executive education programs. In 2006, she began leading SHRM’s academic initiative to raise HR educational standards and led the test development and administration of SHRM’s student capstone exam before joining the certification team as director of exam development in 2017. In 2019, Ms. Woolever became the vice president of certification operations as overall product and project owner with responsibility for exam development, certificant care and testing administration. Before joining SHRM, Ms. Woolever held various management positions in industry and academia. Her specialty areas are test development, training and development.  Ms. Woolever holds a bachelor’s in business administration and a master’s in HR both from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.