Mitch Albom is the author of numerous books of fiction and nonfiction, which have collectively sold more than forty million copies in forty-seven languages worldwide. He has written seven number-one New York Times bestsellers – including Tuesdays with Morrie, the bestselling memoir of all time, which topped the list for four straight years – award-winning TV films, stage plays, screenplays, a nationally syndicated newspaper column, and a musical. Through his work at the Detroit Free Press, he was inducted into both the National Sports Media Association and Michigan Sports halls of fame and is the recipient of the 2010 Red Smith Award for lifetime achievement. After bestselling memoir Finding Chika and “Human Touch,” the weekly serial written and published online in real-time to raise funds for pandemic relief, his latest work is a return to fiction with The Stranger in the Lifeboat (Harper, November 2021).  He founded and oversees SAY Detroit, a consortium of nine different charitable operations in his hometown, including a nonprofit dessert shop and food product line to fund programs for Detroit’s most underserved citizens. He also operates an orphanage in Port-Au-Prince, Haiti, which he visits monthly. He lives with his wife, Janine, in Michigan. Learn more at www.mitchalbom.com, www.saydetroit.org, and www.havefaithaiti.org. 

Val Ries is the author of the #1 New Release on Amazon: Chief Inspiration Officer - How to Lead the Team everyone wants to be on. She is the owner of Executive Muse, a training and mentoring organization designed to help companies create cultures where employees care and want to do remarkable things. 

Ries holds a Bachelors in Nursing and Masters in Business. Val has certifications in leadership coaching and organizational culture.  She has worked with hundreds of tech startups to Fortune 500 companies across the US to enhance their culture. Val lives in San Jose, CA with her husband, 2 teenagers and dog named Odee.

Brisa Renteria is a talent strategist who has built her career on helping companies optimize their organization by finding the right talent, the first time. Before starting Improve Growth, Brisa was a sought-after sales consultant for the largest sales training organization in the world. It’s during this time that she discovered that companies without the right foundation, its people, cannot succeed with training and onboarding alone.

Today, she teaches companies how to recruit top-performing employees using a five-step process that predicts whether the candidate will succeed in the client’s environment. She has been featured in radio, print, and online as a leading voice in recruiting and has worked with companies like Keller Williams, CKoe Metals, and Microsoft. Brisa is the creator and host of the Successful Sales Hiring podcast, where she shares all-things sales hiring in under 20 minutes.

Laura Sherbin is Managing Director of Consulting at Seramount. She is an economist who specializes in the creation of advantage through inclusion and diversity. Most recently, Laura was co-president at the Center for Talent Innovation (CTI) in New York City, a premier think tank and content provider that studies global workplace diversity.

Laura has co-authored several Harvard Business Review articles, including “How Diversity Can Drive Innovation,” “How Gen Y and Boomers Will Reshape Your Agenda,” and “Off-Ramps and On-Ramps Revisited,” as well as the Harvard Business Review research report titled “The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology.” She has also taught a Women and Globalization course at the School of International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

Laura built the rigorous data analytics machine and team that have been core to innovative approaches to measuring and tracking employee experiences. She is known as a leading expert in applying diversity and inclusion data to human behavior in organizations and using such data to quantify how workforce sentiments and satisfaction affect company bottom lines.

Laura holds a BS in math and economics from the University of Delaware and earned her PhD in economics from American University. She currently resides in Irvington, New York, with her husband, their four children, and their dog, Gus. Laura has always loved math and numbers, but when not working, she also enjoys baking, traveling, and meditating.

As Vice President, Research Growth Strategy at EAB, Carla leads the design and development of new research initiatives, experiences, and services to drive action and results for Seramount’s DEI Research Partnership as well as EAB’s K12 and higher education partner institutions. With Seramount, her research seeks to understand the DEI needs of organizations and to help CDOs effect change in their own companies that advance the cause of DEI more broadly.

Following her time as an undergraduate at Colgate University, Carla cultivated a passion for education as a K12 teacher in the Bronx and Washington, DC. She holds an MS in Teaching from Pace University and a Duke MBA from the Fuqua School of Business. When not cheering on the Cubs or the Crimson Tide, you’ll find Carla volunteering as a mentor for Tennessee Achieves or serving as chair for the Duke University Learning Innovation Advisory Council.