Leadership & Navigation

Alex Hagan is an Instructor at The Futures School, and the Founder and CEO at Kienco, a boutique workforce strategy consultancy. Kienco helps organisations to shape the future of their organisations and workforces, by blending Workforce Analytics with Strategic Foresight in a way that provides both evidence-based and future-focused insights that inform strategy. Hagan has advised Global Fortune 500 organisations, NGOs, and government departments on every continent except for Antarctica, and is frequently engaged as a corporate speaker and trainer to help companies and governments stay relevant in times of unprecedented change.

Norma Dávila has dedicated her career to develop others in industries as diverse as banking, technology, telecommunications, pharmaceuticals, retail, utilities, automotive, and education.  She is a hands-on consultant in organizational development and training who designs and implements change management and capacity building strategies. She prepares internal organizational capacity for different roles through coaching.  Norma provides outplacement support, designs employee handbooks, and challenges operational processes among other services.   Her consulting practice also includes leadership development and talent management programs. She is known for her flexibility in working with her clients to address their needs and partnering to find the best solution to their challenges.  Norma is certified as Project Management Professional (PMP), Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR), and Society for Human Resources Management Senior Certified Professional (SHRM-SCP).  She earned her bachelor’s degree in Psychology at Yale University and her master’s and doctoral degrees in Psychology at the University of Chicago. 

Tim Sackett, SCP, is the CEO of HRUTech.com, a leading technical recruiting firm. Tim has over 20 years of combined executive HR and talent acquisition experience working for Fortune 500 companies. Tim is a highly sought-after international speaker on leadership, HR &TA Tech, talent acquisition, and HR execution. Tim is currently a Senior Faculty member with the Josh Bersin Academy. He is also an Angel investor and advisor and sits on multiple HR Technology corporate boards.

Tim is the author of the newly released book The Talent Fix, Vol. 2. He also writes daily on his blog, the Tim Sackett Project. Tim is married to a hall-of-fame wife, has three sons, and his dog Tucker. In 2023, he was named a Top Global HR & Recruitment Influencer by HR Executive. He has more Twitter (X) followers than his 3 Gen Z sons and is sponsored on stage by diet Mt. Dew.

As Chief Marketing Officer at iCIMS, Susan Vitale is ultimately responsible for shaping and sharing the iCIMS story across various audiences, including prospective and existing customers, the media, industry thought leaders, employees and candidates. She is also responsible for iCIMS’ brand strategy across public relations, events, advertising, product marketing and content marketing.

After graduating from Lehigh University in 2005, Vitale began her career as a marketing coordinator at iCIMS. She quickly grew alongside the company, becoming the director of marketing, and by the age of 30 was promoted to chief marketing officer.

Vitale takes pride in converging the worlds of recruitment and marketing, and incorporating this passion into the company’s own recruitment marketing strategy. Given iCIMS’ role in talent acquisition, she has a deep understanding of how to effectively manage recruitment advertising investments, social recruiting strategies, candidate relationship management (CRM) and recruitment events. As a member of several online mentoring communities, Vitale provides career advice and insight on finding the right career fit for young professionals. She also serves on the board of advisors at Switch, a job matching technology, and Oodi, a marketing services marketplace, and is a member of the board at NY/NJ Baykeeper Association.

Rona Borre, CEO of Instant Alliance, stands out as one of the leading female entrepreneurs in Chicagoland. Since its founding in 2001, Instant Alliance has become a nationally recognized woman-owned business enterprise, consistently increasing revenue year over year. As a leader in the Chicago community, Rona sits on the board and holds leadership roles with the Economic Club of Chicago, the Young Presidents Organization and The Chicago Network. As a thought leader in the human capital industry Rona has been featured by CNBC, CBS 2 Chicago, USA Today, CNN, and Crain’s Chicago and has been honored as an Influential Woman in Business by The Business Ledger and the National Association of Women Business Owners. Rona was also acknowledged as the Enterprising Woman of the Year by Enterprising Women Magazine, in addition to the number of accolades awarded to her agency. She received her BS in Business from University of Arizona. Rona is passionate about helping companies achieving their goals by pairing them with the absolute best talent.

As CEO of Propel Forward LLC, Carlann Fergusson and her team partner with leaders to gain the insights, capacity and confidence to transform themselves and their organizations. Whether providing coaching, visioning, strategic planning or leadership development, her ultimate goal is to create leaders who love their role and bring passion and energy to their work. Corporations shouldn’t be places where people are counting the days till the weekend or the years till retirement.

Carlann is known for her unique approach of blending coaching and organizational development to create both personal and business results. Her keen insight and her ability to synthesize information from numerous sources results in solutions that stick. She has over 25 years of experience in executive and leadership coaching, strategic planning, organizational development, and leadership development. She is also a master certified coach. 

As a past Senior Director of Global Organizational and Leadership Development as well as a Manufacturing Manager overseeing a team of 740, Carlann uses her line and staff management experience to achieve measurable results. Her past position titles also include Strategic Planning Manager and Change Manager.  Carlann has worked for a diversity of businesses including Intel Corporation, Visteon Automotive, Meijer Corporation, Press Ganey, Florida Power and the United States Government. She and her teams were recipients of two Intel Quality Awards, Press Ganey’s Innovation Award, The Department of Treasury Treasurer’s Award and a finalist for the Visteon Summit Award. Today her client list includes pharmaceutical, fashion & design, financial, healthcare, construction and technology companies.

Carlann teaches the Leadership Certificate Program for Northwestern University in Chicago, IL. She is the author of Shoots and Ladders Workbook; Insights to Accelerate Your Leadership and has been cited in CBS MoneyWatch, International Business Times, Newsday, and The Boston Globe.

She holds a Master’s degree in Industrial-Organizational Psychology from Southern Illinois University and a Bachelor of Science degree from the University of Maryland.

Steve is a member of the Speaker Hall of Fame and was recognized in 2015 as one of the top 10 motivational speakers globally from over 9,000 candidates.

In addition to being one of the most sought-after speakers in North America, he has written 11 books and was named Author of the Year by Advantage/Forbes for his book Enjoy The Ride.

Steve built a multimillion-dollar company, which the Pittsburgh Business Times named one of the fastest-growing privately held companies in the region. Steve is one of SHRM’s top-rated speakers. This is his 18th consecutive year speaking at the SHRM Conference.

Jay is responsible for leading the design and delivery of talent solutions used across the entire ADP enterprise.  Talent solutions are the processes and tools used to identify and close gaps between the organization’s talent supply and demand.  This includes strategic workforce planning, succession planning, talent review, and talent assessments.  During his time at ADP, Jay has also worked with the Global Talent and Learning organization to formalize a Change Leadership and Management center of expertise, revitalize performance management, and deliver global leadership development programs and tools.

Prior to joining ADP, Jay was the Manager of Organizational Effectiveness and Leadership Development at Selective Insurance.  His responsibilities included the talent review and succession planning processes, leadership and management development programs, talent systems, team development, individual development planning, and company-wide organizational development initiatives to intentionally shape the company’s culture.  Jay also led an immersive summer-intern program to develop a pipeline of early career insurance professionals. 

Prior to joining Selective, Jay was an Associate Consultant at the Leadership Research Institute (LRI).  Jay used research and data driven approaches to help his clients address their leadership and organizational development needs.  His areas of expertise included leadership and management development, talent and organizational assessments, cultural integration, and HR systems/processes.  Jay’s consulting work was focused in the Finance, Pharmaceuticals, and Information Technology industries.  

Jay is a member of the Conference Board’s Strategic Workforce Planning Council, th Society for Human Resources Management (SHRM), the Association for Talent Development (ATD).  He earned an M.A. in Industrial/ Organizational Psychology from the University of New Haven and a B.A. in Psychology from Quinnipiac University.  In addition to earning his Senior Human Resources Professional (SPHR) Certification, Jay is a Certified MBTI and DiSC facilitator, and has completed Strategic Workforce Planning Certifications with both Human Capital Institute (HCI) and The Conference Board.

Andy Boynton is dean of Boston College’s Carroll School of Management, one of the world’s leading business schools, the author of several books and co-creator of DeepDive™, the world’s leading methodology for helping executives harness the power of teams to significantly improve problem-solving speed, innovation and results.

Prior to joining Boston College, Boynton was a professor of strategy at the International Institute for Management Development (IMD) in Lausanne, Switzerland for 10 years. At the IMD he led a faculty team and was program director of one of the world’s top ten Executive MBA programs, as recognized by BusinessWeek.

Boynton has recently launched new research projects to explore how distinguished experts from a variety of knowledge-domains work with ideas to achieve professional success and improve their effectiveness in social networks. His latest book, The Idea Hunter: How to Find the Best Ideas and Make them Happen (Jossey-Bass), is based on this research and is co-authored with Bill Fischer and William Bole.

He has also published extensively on factors underlying high-performing teams across a variety of disciplines, including art, science, exploration and design. His previous books include Virtuoso Teams: Lessons from Teams That Changed Their Worlds (Financial Times-Prentice Hall) and Invented Here: Maximizing Your Organization’s Internal Growth and Profitability (Harvard Business School Press).

He is a 1978 graduate of Boston College. Boynton earned his MBA and PhD at the Kenan-Flagler School of Business, Chapel Hill, North Carolina. He has served on the MBA faculty at the Kenan-Flagler School of Business and at the Darden School of Business, University of Virginia.

In addition to his publishing career and role as dean of the Carroll School of Management, Boynton has over twenty years of experience speaking and designing powerful executive education sessions and seminars for firms around the world. He is often utilized by organizations looking to build more innovative and effective teams and his articles in this area have appeared in elite management journals such as Harvard Business Review, Sloan Management Review and The California Management Review.