John Ferguson is the Chief Human Resources Officer at NASCAR, the No. 1 form of motorsports in the United States.

In this role, Ferguson oversees the development and execution of NASCAR’s human resource planning, aligning it with the overarching business plan and strategic direction of the organization. This includes cultivating a "people-first" company culture across more than 20 office and race-track locations throughout the U.S.

Ferguson serves on the Board of Directors for the SHRM Foundation, Alumni Board of Directors for Furman University, and the UNCF Orlando Leadership Council.

Ferguson holds Bachelor’s in Political Science from Furman University, Executive Certificate in Strategic Diversity & Inclusion Management from Georgetown University, and a Master’s in Business Administration from the Howard University School of Business.

Deborah Hanus is the CEO and co-founder of Sparrow, the first high-tech, high-touch leave management solution to help employers care for their people. By managing federal, state, and local leave compliance, Sparrow ensures employee leave is stress-free for human resources, payroll, compliance, managers, and employees. Before founding Sparrow, Deborah earned multiple engineering degrees from MIT, worked in Cambodia as a Fulbright Scholar, and started a Ph.D. in AI at Harvard. Under her leadership, Sparrow has quickly grown to impact hundreds of thousands of lives.  

Ariela Safira is the Founder and CEO of Real, a mental health care company building a new therapy model rooted in health equity, affordability, and a true brand evolution, ensuring we all engage with preventative care and feel proud doing so. Starting her career at IDEO, she studied, researched and developed new concepts to approach mental health care and mental wellbeing. Building on her research, Ariela joined Cityblock, founding their first behavioral health clinic in Brooklyn, NY. Ariela earned a BS in Mathematics and Computational Science from Stanford University, where the impetus for her work in mental health care began. Later, she joined Columbia’s Clinical Psychology program to train as a therapist and left the program in 2019 to launch Real. She’s biked across multiple countries to fundraise for suicide prevention. Ariela is the recipient of the 2019 American Psychiatric Association’s Innovation Award, recognized as Forbes 30 Under 30, and Inc’s Top 100 Female Founders.

Jennifer McCollum is CEO of Linkage, Inc., where she oversees the strategic direction and global operations of the Boston, MA-based leadership development company. With a mission to “Change the Face of Leadership,” Linkage has dedicated 30 years to improving leadership effectiveness and equity in hundreds of organizations globally. Linkage provides assessments, training, coaching, consulting and conferences, with Solutions designed to Accelerate Purposeful Leaders; Advance Women Leaders; and Create Inclusive Organizations. 

Jennifer is a highly sought-after consultant and speaker, with a deep expertise in Inclusive Leadership and Advancing Women Leaders. She has delivered workshops, keynotes, webinars and podcasts to thousands of leaders globally on live and virtual stages, including 100 Leaders Live (Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches conference), Chief Learning Officer Exchange, Chester Elton’s “Leading with Gratitude” LinkedIn Live, John Baldoni’s “Grace under Pressure” LinkedIn Live, Candy O’Terry’s “The Story Behind Her Success” podcast, and VoiceAmerica radio broadcast. She is a contributing author to Leadership in a Time of Crisis and has been published in The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, Chief Talent Development Officer, CEO Refresher, and Real Leaders. She is a member of the Marshall Goldsmith 100 Coaches.

Background & Experience:

Jennifer has 20 years of experience building and leading businesses in the leadership space. Prior to Linkage, Jennifer spent a decade growing businesses within Korn Ferry and Corporate Executive Board (CEB), now Gartner. At CEB, she led product management within the leadership division, driving innovative solutions that helped organizations select, develop and place leaders at all levels. She also ran CEB’s Leadership Academies business, which developed more than 30,000 professionals in 2,100 companies throughout 50 countries and grew revenue at a 97% combined annual growth rate across five years. 

Previously, Jennifer served as CEO of IntraVision, a leadership consultancy she founded and grew over the course of eight years. She worked with public companies, start-ups, associations and nonprofits. Her passion is creating vision, executing strategy and managing cohesive teams toward aspirational goals, with a special focus on supporting women in leadership roles.

She is an avid tennis player and skier, and lives in Bethesda, MD, with her husband and three children.

Education & Training:

Jennifer has a master’s degree in communications from the University of Stirling in Stirling, Scotland, and an undergraduate degree from Wake Forest University in psychology and communications.

Jocelyn King, SHRM-SCP, is the CEO and Founder of VirgilHR, a SaaS solution that empowers HR professionals to make smart, compliant employment and labor law decisions in real-time. HR has been the passion and focus of Jocelyn’s entire career as she’s supported high-growth technology start-ups and public companies throughout her tenure. She defines herself as a true HR generalist and has touched on all aspects of HR in her more senior roles. Jocelyn has strong expertise in creating and executing HR strategy, managing employee relations for multi-state and global organizations, developing a diverse and high-performing work culture, owning organization development and change management, and crafting the total reward, talent development, and talent acquisition strategies.

In addition to HR, what has also remained consistent in her career has been technology. Jocelyn has worked for technology companies most of her career and, as an HR executive, has had the privilege of supporting executives and departments in all functions across the organizations. In her role as CEO for VirgilHR, she’s displayed proven success in building a venture-backed technology company from the ground up.

She has held previous roles as the Vice President of People, North America for Ocado Group, as well as Vice President of People for Cybrary, a Series-C start up. She’s spent a majority of her career working with a range of tech companies from Pre-Seed to Post-IPO.

Jocelyn earned her bachelor's degree in Liberal Studies from Georgetown University. A Washington, DC native, she lives in metro area with her husband Jonathan, daughter Teagyn, and mischievous pups, Sophie and Jax.

Tomer is the co-founder and Chief Product Officer of Gusto. He is responsible for the development and execution of the product vision — reimagining how modern payroll, benefits, and compliance should operate.

Dror Gurevich is the Founder and CEO of the Velocity Network Foundation®, a non-profit membership organization, hosting the leading global workforce-tech vendors and solution providers, deploying Velocity Network™, the world's Internet-of-Careers®, a blockchain based data utility layer to underlie the global labor market.

Dror has +25 years of experience in workforce tech, as founder and leader of multiple successful companies in this space, that in addition to his current leadership role made him a sought-after keynote speaker on innovations in workforce tech and technology and the Future of Work.