Kristian Ribberström
chief of Design
The Medici Group
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Kristian Ribberström is The Medici Group's Partner and Chief Experience Officer, with responsibility for the design of exceptional experiences for clients. This role that perfectly combines his experience in education and curriculum development with his consulting work with corporate clients spanning industries such as pharmaceuticals, media, publishing, and consumer goods and services. 

In particular, Kristian's speciality is leading strategy sessions where The Medici Group's innovation approach guides clients to develop game-changing strategies. Kristian also advises and coaches projects teams to excel in the proof-of-concept stage that often fails at most organizations, and based on this, develops the culture map to drive organizational change. Recent clients include Nike, Disney, Pfizer, Starbucks and Chick-Fil-A.

Prior to The Medici Group, Kristian taught philosophy and languages in Sweden and developed case study methodology in various entrepreneurial settings. He is passionate about exploring intersections between different cultures, migrations, and multi-ethnic societies. Kristian holds a B.A. and M.A. in Education and Language Arts from the University of Gothenburg, Sweden.

SESSIONS:
Jen Schramm, SHRM-SCP
manager, Workforce Trends & Forecasting
SHRM
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Jen Schramm is the Manager of the Workforce Trends and Forecasting program at SHRM, which produces SHRM’s Workplace Forecast report, monthly SHRM Leading Indicators of National Employment® (LINE®), SHRM Jobs Outlook Survey report and the SHRM HR Jobs Pulse. She also writes the Trend Watch monthly column appearing in HR Magazine.  Prior to joining SHRM, Jennifer worked as Research and Policy Advisor at the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and as Research Manager of the Employment Policy Institute both in London, UK. She received her Master’s Degree in Social and Political Science from the University of Cambridge, UK and her undergraduate degree from the University of Michigan.

SESSIONS:
Robert J. Livingston
vice president, Global Compensation & Benefits and Employee & Labor Relations
Procter & Gamble
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Bob Livingston has more than 25 years of experience with Procter & Gamble, and is currently the Vice President of Human Resources – Global Operations. He has worked through five significant mergers – most recently the merger of Wella into Procter & Gamble. He has a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA with a specialization in Human Resources Management.

SESSIONS:

EXECUTIVE EXCHANGE: Global versus Local in Pay and Benefits: The Best of Both

Monday, June 29, 2015 - 4:00pm to 5:15pm
Robert J. Livingston
vice president, Global Compensation & Benefits and Employee & Labor Relations
Procter & Gamble
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Bob Livingston has more than 25 years of experience with Procter & Gamble, and is currently the Vice President of Human Resources – Global Operations. He has worked through five significant mergers – most recently the merger of Wella into Procter & Gamble. He has a B.Sc. in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA with a specialization in Human Resources Management.

SESSIONS:
Arthur D. Jackson
President and Chief Consultant
ENPM, Inc.
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Art Jackson is a professional speaker, trainer, consultant, coach and counselor. Mr. Jackson is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering, a Master of Science degree in Management and a Master of Arts degree in Theology and Pastoral Counseling. Art is certified in Christian Counseling through the American Association of Christian Therapists. Mr. Jackson is also certified by the Supreme Court of Virginia as a mediator for the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court.Mr. Jackson is a professional speaker through the National Speakers Association and the President of Eagles Nest Performance Management, Inc.   

 Mr. Jackson is the author of the diversity and inclusion book “Lions and Tigers and Bears – Oh My” and his latest book entitled  “Hangin’ Round The Barrel – How To Get Paid Everything You’re Worth And Be Worth Everything You’re Paid”.  

SESSIONS:

Strategic Leadership Development for Greatness

Friday, October 9, 2015 - 9:00am to 10:30am
Arthur D. Jackson
President and Chief Consultant
ENPM, Inc.
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Art Jackson is a professional speaker, trainer, consultant, coach and counselor. Mr. Jackson is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point, Lesley University in Cambridge, Massachusetts and Liberty University in Lynchburg, VA. He holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Engineering, a Master of Science degree in Management and a Master of Arts degree in Theology and Pastoral Counseling. Art is certified in Christian Counseling through the American Association of Christian Therapists. Mr. Jackson is also certified by the Supreme Court of Virginia as a mediator for the Juvenile and Domestic Relations Court.Mr. Jackson is a professional speaker through the National Speakers Association and the President of Eagles Nest Performance Management, Inc.   

 Mr. Jackson is the author of the diversity and inclusion book “Lions and Tigers and Bears – Oh My” and his latest book entitled  “Hangin’ Round The Barrel – How To Get Paid Everything You’re Worth And Be Worth Everything You’re Paid”.  

SESSIONS:

Strategic Leadership Development for Greatness

Thursday, October 8, 2015 - 10:15am to 11:45am
Greg Burns
senior vice president, Human Resources
Allstate Insurance Company
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Greg Burns is a senior vice president in Human Resources.  In this role he leads the Client Partnership organization, which provides strategic HR support to Allstate’s business areas. Greg also serves as HR business partner for the president of The Allstate Corporation, and president, Emerging Businesses.  

Greg has a deep knowledge of the business, extensive field and corporate experience, and a proven ability to collaborate and influence to drive business results. He brings a diverse  background and unique perspective to HR.   

Greg joined Allstate in 1985. His Allstate career has included a variety of roles in Claims, HR and Business Insurance. As the regional commercial manager for the Northeast Regional Commercial Center in New York, he was responsible for the profit and loss for the Commercial Center. Most of his career has been in HR, with roles supporting Business Insurance, Allstate Personal Property & Casualty, the Illinois Region, the Southern California Region, Encompass, and Allstate Personal Lines Eastern and Western Territories. In 2012, he was promoted to senior vice president, with responsibility for HR’s field organization and Claims support. He took on his current position in January of 2015.  

Greg earned a bachelor’s degree in Finance from the University of South Florida and an MBA from the

University of Illinois at Chicago.  He earned his CPCU in 2007. 

Greg is a board member for Countryside Association and the Lake County Workforce Investment Council.

SESSIONS:
Robert F. Wiedefeld
Appaloosa Resources, LLC
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Robert F. Wiedefeld’s career in senior management positions has spanned four and a half decades in both the private and public sectors.  He has served as President and Chief Operating Officer of Sales Systems, Inc., in Memphis; Clarinda Color, Inc., in Minneapolis, and the John D. Lucas Printing Company, Inc., in Baltimore.  Each of these private sector assignments involved critical turn-around situations which required extensive use of the fundamental principles of management, finance, marketing, and customer service in the restructure of the firms.  During the early 1980s he performed the duties of Regional Director of Marketing for the American Management Association, and traveled extensively throughout the United States and Canada delivering workshops on various management, finance, marketing, and strategic planning topics.  Mr. Wiedefeld has an extensive background specializing in the restructure and development of companies for optimal organizational and profit performance.  When his time permits, he also serves as a facilitator of seminars and workshops with the ultimate goal of working with practitioners to strengthen their strategic and operational management skills for improved productivity and performance.    

Earlier in his management career he served as Chief Pilot of the United States Naval Academy Flight Training Program, Chief Fiscal Officer at Catonsville Community College, and Chief Financial Officer at Prince George’s Community College, two of the larger community colleges in the Baltimore/Washington area.    He has also served as Chair of the Management and Marketing Department at Prince George’s Community College, and as the Area Chair of Management, and Professor of Finance, Philosophy, and General Studies in the undergraduate and graduate programs at The University of Phoenix.  He has delivered strategic planning sessions, workshops, and seminars for the past thirty years for clients such as the Martin Marietta Corporation, Pfizer, The United States Postal Service Executive Institute, NASA, Genstar Corporation, The Gernhardt Management Group, Monotype Composition, Inc., EBI Inc., and the Southern Management Corporation, among others.

Mr. Wiedefeld has served in an active capacity on the Board of Directors of the John D. Lucas Printing Company, the Board of the Maryland Schools for the Deaf, and numerous selection committees for high-level positions in the private and public sectors.

Mr. Wiedefeld has an MBA in Management and Finance from Loyola College, a BA in Pre-Law Studies from the University of South Florida, and has extensively pursued studies in management, finance, and marketing at George Washington University, The University of Nebraska at Omaha, and the University of Baltimore.  He completed his doctoral course work and is abd, at the School of Public Administration, the University of Southern California. He is also a graduate of AMA’s Management Course for Presidents. He is coauthor of a novel entitled Alejandra’s Quest, published in 2013.

SESSIONS:

Conflict & Relationship Management

Saturday, October 10, 2015 - 8:30am to 5:00pm
Marla Bradley
CEO
Bradley Lambert
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Marla Bradley founded Bradley Lambert (BLI) in 1979, with a vision to improve the performance of organizations by developing skills and knowledge of individuals who work and manage in them. Ms. Bradley leads the organization in developing learning solutions, consulting with clients on their training needs; designing individual training products for clients and helping in their implementation.

Ms. Bradley is a much sought after facilitator and public speaker. She has facilitated thousands of meetings from Board of Director planning meetings to rescuing teams that are failing to make progress. She is asked to give key note speeches on organizational improvement issues at corporate off site meetings and planning sessions. She and her team regularly conduct workshops for the clients or facilitate high level presentations by client executives and senior staff to employees.

Ms. Bradley has been an adjunct Professor at Loyola Marymount University in their Executive MBA Program. She has been a lead instructor and program designer for the Certificate in Management Effectiveness, an executive program offered through the University of Southern California (USC), Graduate School of Business Administration. She also has conducted seminars for the Instructional Television Network at USC.

Ms. Bradley received her Bachelor of Science and a Master in Business Administration from USC.

SESSIONS:

Finance for Strategic HR

Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - 8:30am to 5:00pm
J. Jeff Kober
chief executive officer
World Class Benchmarking
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For nearly thirty years Jeff has focused on knowledge and performance management initiatives for the private, public and non-profit sectors. Those private sector activities have ranged from providing leadership development for top executives at GE to transforming to improving performance for over 125,000 employees of Starwood Hotels & Resorts. Clients have included Shell, Federal Express, Office Depot, MetLife, Boeing, and Volkswagen of North America. Learning and development solutions have ranged from strategic leadership to performance management; from communications & customer service to employee engagement.

In the public sector, Jeff has been focused on creating learning solutions for federal, state and local entities. This included a multi-year focus in increasing management, communications and IT capacity for Federal Student Aid in The U.S. Department of Education. Likewise, he designed strategic initiatives and facilitated change management programming for state groups such as the Iowa State Department of Administrative Services. He spent several years providing leadership-wide development and transformation support for the New York City Department of Finance, improving tax compliance and attitudes toward government. Jeff has provided programming on performance management, leadership and communications for a host of public sector organizations as diverse as U.S. Fish & Wildlife, U.S. Postal Service, U.S. Air Force, Manitoba Provincial Government, and the City of Miami-Dade. Through the U.S. Office of Personnel Management, he offers the most comprehensive customer service programming provided to federal workers. His multi-year work with the Microsoft-headquartered community of Sammamish, Washington, has led the town to being named the Friendliest Town in America by Forbes. Additionally, Jeff is CEO for World Class Benchmarking, where he provides strategic thought leadership in building customer-centric and high-performance organizations. He has co-authored Lead With Your Customer, Transform Culture and Brand into World-Class Excellence.

Many of Jeff’s earlier consultant activities were associated with The Disney Institute, a best-practices institution modeled on America’s first corporate university.  While there, Jeff was responsible for providing custom management programming to corporations wanting to benchmark Disney’s best practices. Those models, concepts, and examples were later introduced to corporate America in Be Our Guest, a popular benchmarking title published by The Disney Institute, with a forward by former Disney CEO, Michael Eisner. He has also authored, The Wonderful World of Customer Service at Disney, and Disney’s Hollywood Studios: From Show Biz to Your Biz.

SESSIONS:
Mark David Jones
chief operations officer
World Class Benchmarking
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Mark is an acclaimed consultant – having worked with dozens of Fortune 500 companies in six of the seven continents of the world over the past two decades. As an author and highly demanded speaker, Mark has an innovative, results-focused passion for helping people make a difference.

Mark first joined the Walt Disney World Resort® in 1978, working in a wide variety of leadership roles. After more than ten years, Mark left to establish The Consultant Network, eventually leading over 60 business consultants. 

In 1992, during his doctoral studies, Mark was recruited to lead the consulting team at the Federal Aviation Administration’s national training headquarters. Mark played a key role in the Department of Transportation’s organizational redesign – spearheading initiatives such as executive development, assessment and design, change dynamics, self-managed/directed work teams, and train-the-trainer programs.

Mark returned to the Walt Disney World Resort® in 1996 to help lead the transformation of the Disney Institute Business Programs. While in this role, Mark was in charge of Leadership, Creativity & Innovation, and Quality Service initiatives. He also served externally as the senior project manager for numerous highly successful large-scale organizational initiatives for leading domestic and international corporations – many of which are showcased in the Disney-published book Be Our Guest: Perfecting the Art of Customer Service. In recognition of his contribution to the Disney organization, Mark was nominated for the prestigious “Partner’s in Excellence” award – Disney’s highest regarded corporate award.

Currently, as Chief Operating Officer of World Class Benchmarking, Mark leads a network of experts from the world’s most renowned companies in implementing organizational transformation. 

Mark’s best-selling book, Lead With Your Customer: Transform Culture and Brand into World-Class Excellence showcases what world-class organizations do to attain and sustain extraordinary results. He is also one of the contributing authors in the renowned ASTD Leadership Handbook – showcasing thought leadership from “a who’s who of leadership experts”.

SESSIONS:

Lead with Your Customer: Transform Brand & Culture into World-Class Excellence

Wednesday, October 7, 2015 - 8:30am to 5:00pm