Leadership & Navigation

Buckle Up!  Be ready to be energized, interactive and entertained!  Candy has been a regular keynote and breakout session speaker for SHRM Conferences across the country and presented at the 2009 SHRM Annual Conference. When Candy speaks and shares her knowledge her participants always come away with the knowledge and skills they need to build and maintain better, more productive relationships, as well as a sense of purpose and direction.  

She brings a wealth of experience from many industries including: training, retail, customer service, restaurant, entertainment, management, and youth ministry.

Candy graduated Cum Laude from Missouri Western State College with a B.S. Degree in Speech Communications, with a Human Relations Emphasis, and earned her Master in Management from the University of Phoenix.

Follow Candy on Twitter @candywhirley.

 

Called the “Apostle of appreciation” by the Globe and Mail, Canada’s largest newspaper, and “creative and refreshing‚” by the New York Times, Chester Elton is co-author of several successful leadership books.  Carrot Principle and  Orange Revolution by Simon & Schuster have been New York Times and #1 Wall Street Journal bestsellers, and his new book All In was released in April 2012. His work has been called a “must read for modern managers,” by Larry King of CNN. Elton’s books have been translated into more than 20 languages and have sold over a million copies worldwide. As a motivation expert, Chester has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Fast Company magazine and the New York Times, and has appeared on NBC’s Today Show, CNN, ABC, MSNBC, National Public Radio and CBS’s 60 Minutes. Chester has spoken to delighted audiences from Seattle to Singapore, Denver to Dubai, and from Toronto to Istanbul. He serves as a leadership consultant to firms such as American Express, Avis Budget Group and Cigna.

Follow Chester on Twitter @chesterelton.

Douglas R. Conant, New York Times bestselling author and keynote speaker founded ConantLeadership, a growing community of people dedicated to improving the quality of leadership in the 21^st century, in 2011. He is also honored to serve as Chairman of Avon Products as well as Chairman of the Kellogg Executive Leadership Institute (KELI) at Northwestern University. The newly formed KELI initiative is designed to help leaders of today enhance their ability to lead in the “here and now.” This program combines the best insights of the Kellogg academic curriculum with the best practices of “world class” leaders across the landscape at the highest levels of the organization.  

An advocate for ethical practices and corporate responsibility, Conant is the current Chairman of CECP (formerly known as the Committee Encouraging Corporate Philanthropy). He is an active member of the boards of the National Organization on Disabilities (NOD), the Partnership for Public Service (PPS), Enactus, the Families and Work Institute (FWI), and the International Tennis Hall of Fame (ITHF). He is also a former chairman of both the Grocery Manufacturers Association (GMA) and The Conference Board (TCB), where he remains a Global Counselor, and he is a former board member of Catalyst. 

From 2001 to 2011, Conant served as CEO and President of the Campbell Soup Company. Conant was the 11^th leader of this iconic company’s 141-year history – faced with reversing a precipitous decline in market value. Conant succeeded by dramatically transforming the global leadership team, reconfiguring the portfolio, cutting costs and making strategic investments in Campbell’s products, marketing programs, innovation pipeline and infrastructure. As a result, the company was able to deliver cumulative shareholder returns in the top tier of the global food industry. The key enabler of this performance was Campbell’s march towards achieving world-class employee engagement levels. During the decade of Conant’s leadership, employee engagement went from being among the worst in the Fortune 500 to being consistently among the best. Campbell has been widely recognized for its progress; its many honors range from being recognized by the Gallup organization with its “Great Workplace Award” for four years running to receiving the 2010 Catalyst Award for helping women advance their careers. During his tenure, the company was also recognized as a leader in social responsibility and ethical leadership.

Conant joined Campbell with 25 years of experience from three of the world’s leading food companies: General Mills, Kraft and Nabisco. He began his career in 1976 in marketing at General Mills. After 10 years, he moved to Kraft where he held top management positions in marketing and strategy. Immediately prior to coming to Campbell, he was President of the $3.5 billion Nabisco Foods Company where he led his team to improved marketplace performance and five consecutive years of double-digit earnings growth.

Follow Doug on Twitter @DougConant.

Shane A. Yount is a nationally recognized thought leader, author, and President of Competitive Solutions, Inc. (CSI), an international Business Transformation consulting firm that pioneered the acclaimed organizational development system known as Process Based Leadership® - A business transformation methodology designed to create a sustainable culture of clarity, connectivity, and consistency through the use of Non-Negotiable Business Processes. Since 1991 he has led the offices of CSI in becoming one of the nation’s most recognized Business Transformation consulting firms,  personally working with such organizations as Michelin, Genentech, Pfizer, Lockheed Martin, the Department of Defense, and many others.

Anne Marie DePaul is the CEO of Truth Grows, LLC, a human resource consulting, training, and coaching firm serving a wide-array of global organizations and industries. As a human resource strategist, coach, trainer, professional speaker and author, Anne Marie draws from her expertise in industrial/organizational psychology and experience serving as the Vice President of Human Resources for a nearly billion-dollar corporation to offer customized and relevant business solutions. She is a sought-after speaker in the areas of resilience, performance, team dynamics, business ethics, diversity and inclusion, leadership, and building a stand up culture. Anne Marie engages audiences with real-life stories of courage and resilience, first-hand tales of leadership triumphs, entertaining employee blunders, and human resource horror stories and miracles.

For the last three decades, Jack Smalley has devoted his career to the field of human resources. His experience includes executive-level management in a number of different industries such as oil, chemical and packaging with an emphasis in manufacturing, engineering, sales, logistics and corporate management.

Jack serves as the director of HR learning and development for Express Employment Professionals. He provides human resource training and consulting for nearly 600 Express offices and clients in the U.S. and Canada. Jack offers clients preventive measures that minimize the threat of allegations emanating from workplace problems and employee relations issues.

Jennifer McClure is an entrepreneur, keynote speaker, and high-performance coach who works with leaders to leverage their influence, increase their impact, and accelerate results.

Frequently recognized as a global influencer and expert on the future of work, strategic leadership and innovative people strategies, Jennifer has decades of in-the-trenches leadership and executive experience working in and with startups, privately held companies, and Fortune 500 organizations in a variety of industries.

As a top-rated keynote speaker, Jennifer has shared her insights with thousands of leaders at conferences and corporate events around the world. Clients include Procter & Gamble, General Electric, IBM, SAP, Bloomberg, Charles Schwab, Stryker, LinkedIn, Notre Dame University, Society for Human Resource Management, Association for Legal Administrators, and Association for Talent Development.

In her informative and entertaining keynote programs and workshops, she shares a blend of research, best practices, case studies and storytelling which leaves audience members inspired and motivated to take action when they return to work.

Jennifer is also the Chief Excitement Officer of DisruptHR, a global community designed to move the collective thinking forward when it comes to talent in the workplace, and she hosts a weekly podcast – Impact Makers with Jennifer McClure – sharing conversations with practitioners, entrepreneurs, authors and speakers who are changing the world while building careers that they love, and lives that matter.

Lance J. Richards, SHRM-SCP, GPHR, SPHR, HRMP is a work force futurist and global HR strategist.  Most recently, he was vice president of Innovation for Kelly Services. Based in Detroit, Lance is one of SHRM's top rated speakers. He is a frequent speaker and writer on workplace issues, having presented at HR conferences around the globe. He is co-author of the Amazon-published book Gen Now (which is available in the SHRM Bookstore). Lance brings almost 25 years of cross-border expertise, with companies like British Telecom, Verizon, Bell Canada and Kelly Services. He is also a Visiting Professor at the Sasin Business School in Bangkok, where he teaches a graduate course in Global Human Capital.
Follow Lance on Twitter @LanceJRichards.
 

Olivia Fox Cabane has lectured at Stanford, Yale, Harvard, MIT, the Marine Corps War College and the United Nations. As keynote speaker and executive coach to the leadership of Fortune 500 companies, she helps people become more persuasive, influential, and inspiring. From a base of thorough behavioral science, Olivia extracts the most practical tools for business, applying the latest in global behavioral science to everyday leadership needs to improve her clients' productivity, effectiveness and efficiency. 

In addition to being a columnist for Forbes and The Huffington Post, Olivia is often featured in media such as The New York Times, Bloomberg or BusinessWeek. She has been profiled in The Wall Street Journal as well as NPR's Marketplace show. Olivia currently serves as Director of Innovative Leadership for Stanford's StartX program. Her course at Berkeley's Business School was so popular that university staff had to guard the entrance to ensure that only the students admitted to that course gained entrance. Her first book, The Charisma Myth, published by Penguin/ Random House, went into second printing before it even launched. 

Olivia has both French and American nationalities and is fluent in 4 languages; her books have been translated into 17 languages and she was the youngest person ever to have been appointed Foreign Trade Advisor to the French Government. Her upcoming book on the mental side of innovation is representative of her ability to take the complexities of psychological factors and transform them into immediately applicable leadership tools for individuals.