When a roadside bomb severely injured her network journalist husband Bob Woodruff, Lee Woodruff discovered how quickly life can change—and what you can learn from surviving a crisis. Today she speaks with grace and humor about her own family's experience and their approach to the crisis that befell them, one that resulted in the healing and strengthening of her whole family. As co-author of the best-selling book, In an Instant, Woodruff garnered critical acclaim for the compelling and humorous chronicle of her family's journey to recovery and she continues to work with groups nationwide to raise awareness of traumatic brain injury and the sacrifices of our military troops and families.

Rebekah Kowalski is the Vice President of ManpowerGroup’s Global Strategic Workforce Consulting Practice. As the Principal Consultant for the practice globally, Rebekah focuses on helping clients understand the risks to business and economic growth strategies posed by workforce supply and demand forces, and partners with them to develop practical options for ensuring they have the right talent in the right place, at the right time, and at the right cost. Rebekah specializes in consulting and advising on how the convergence of government, education, employers, and individuals drives local and global market competitiveness.  Prior to her current role, Rebekah spent nine years at the helm of Manpower’s US and Global Solutions units and led the teams responsible for working with ManpowerGroup’s most strategically significant clients. She is a member of the Advisory Council of University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s Center for the Study of the Workplace and a member of multiple research consortia.

Cisco Chief Inclusion & Collaboration Officer Shari Slate is responsible for building a strategy that enhances Cisco’s vision to be a world class, benchmark company for inclusion and collaboration, driving exponential value across Cisco, its partners and customers. She is promoting thought leadership across Cisco’s people strategy enabling employee engagement and inclusion outcomes to fuel innovation and market leadership. She is also directing the integration of new models of inclusion and collaboration designed to guide future workplace practices to realize the $19 billion opportunity of the Internet of Everything over the next decade.

In her previous role, Slate served as Chief Inclusion and Collaboration Strategist for Cisco’s Sales Organization. She was responsible for making inclusion relevant in the revenue generating arm of the business and incubating new strategies for fostering full spectrum participation to unleash the power and potential of people.

Slate joined Cisco in 2010. Prior to that, she was Chief Diversity Officer and Director of Global Community Affairs at Sun Microsystems. Slate has been widely recognized for her visionary leadership and her transformational views on the true value of inclusion. The YWCA recently named her a 2014 “Tribute to Women in Industry” honoree. In 2013, she was named one of Diversity Woman Magazine’s “Stars Who Mean Business”. Previously, she was honored by the California Diversity Council as one of the “Most Influential Women in California” and a “Woman Worth Watching” by Diversity Journal Magazine. She received the National Coalition of 100 Black Women 2010 Corporate Leader Award and The Network Journal's "40 Under Forty" Achievement Award. Slate serves on numerous charitable and community organizational initiatives and advisory boards.

Slate holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in political, legal, and economic analysis from Mills College.

Bill Inman is a 15-year veteran in the human resources industry who has served in executive leadership positions at several of the nation’s largest contingent workforce management and staffing companies. Currently, he is president of Emergent, a Los Angeles based contingent workforce employer and wholly owned subsid-iary of GEP Administrative Services, Inc., which ranks among the largest employers of contingent labor in the U.S.

Bill has positioned his company as an industry game changer, introducing solutions to disrupt the traditional staffing services market. Emergent is radically changing the way companies engage temporary and project-based contingent workers, providing a compliant employment platform that helps companies source their own contingent workforces to reduce their labor costs, minimize their compliance risk and improve their overall workforce productivity. With his leadership and continued innovation, Emergent will continue to grow as a significant player in the contingent workforce marketplace.

With more than 20 years of industrial engineering and plant management experience at European, Chinese and US-owned companies in a variety of industries, he’s seen just about everything the business world can throw at you. From frenetic growth and high volume, to cutting out fat, cutting into muscle and cutting your own throat.

Todd is a long-time lean operations practitioner and six sigma black belt. He’s started up a billion-dollar semiconductor fab, improved factory performance so it just hums along, integrated operations after mergers and acquisitions and outsourced production overseas laying off hundreds of employees and closing plants.

In 2000, Todd started the Maverick Institute to pioneer the application of lean production principles to training and development. Throughout his career, Todd’s seen that effective knowledge transfer and sharing of expertise are critical elements to success. Today, the blistering pace of change, the globalization of business and the explosion of learning technologies requires organizations adopt a new learning framework.

Geoffrey Dubiski has been a passionate liberator of companies’ talent management processes for over twenty years. Gaining insight with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination, Geoffrey became an executive compensation consultant with Towers Perrin and an operational executive with one of the largest National staffing firms directing large-scale workforce engagements. He now leads Sumner Grace - a human capital strategy and advisory firm dedicated to the advancement of client’s success through talent management.

Working with companies including GE, Cisco, Ingersoll-Rand, Monsanto as well as Discovery Communications, Vail Resorts, TYCO, NCR and Scotiabank, Geoffrey has facilitated over $1.5 billion dollars in client expenditures in the human capital markets and overseen the fulfillment of 240,000 positions.

A self-proclaimed metrics junkie, Geoffrey takes a non-conformist view of data usage and how HR, specifically recruiting, is a profit center for any organization.

Follow Geoffrey on Twitter @talenscout1.

Ms. Walters has more than 30 years’ combined experience in management, HR administration, employment law practice, and teaching.

She has presented at conferences across the country, been engaged as an expert witness, and testified before U.S. Congressional and state legislative committees on employment issues.

Her book, “From Hello to Goodbye: Proactive Tips for Maintaining Positive Employee Relations” is in its 2nd edition and was one of the SHRMStore’s “Great 8” best-sellers for eight consecutive years.

Today, Ms. Walters works as an independent consultant doing business as FiveL Company, “Helping Leaders Limit their Liability by Learning the Law.”SM