TAMI ERWIN

Vice President and
Chief Marketing Officer

Verizon Wireless

Tami Erwin is vice president and chief marketing officer for Verizon Wireless, the largest wireless company in the United States. She is responsible for all marketing initiatives and for the management and development of mobile products and services, including brand management, media buying, agency management, and website integration across the entire corporation.

Erwin began her wireless career 25 years ago as a customer service representative in Bellevue, Washington. Her passion for great customer service and respect for her fellow employees remain her guiding principles.

Prior to her current assignment, Erwin was West Area president responsible for the $15 billion revenue stream and 20,000 employees in the company's 14 western states.

Previously she served as president-Washington/Baltimore/Virginia Region for Verizon Wireless, responsible for sales, marketing, customer service and retail stores in Washington DC, Maryland and the Commonwealth of Virginia. Previously, she served as president – Southwest Region, and vice president – Customer Service for the West Area.

Over the years Erwin has also handled management assignments representing a broad range of customer service functions, including outbound calling, technical operations, call center administration, activations and service inquiries. She also worked on an international team responsible for implementing cellular service in Hungary.

Erwin attended Pacific Union College in Angwin, Calif., majoring in Business Administration and graduated from the Executive Program at the Stanford School of Business.

In addition to being the mother of two college students, Erwin is a three-time winner of the Verizon President's Cabinet Award for sales achievement. She is the recipient of the Women of Excellence Award in Community Service for 2011 from the National Association of Female Executives. She serves on the Verizon Foundation Board, the Forbes Executive Women's Board and is a board member of the Paley Center for Media.

As West Area president, Erwin created and now leads a Women's Leadership Conference to develop women for professional growth and advancement. She is a passionate speaker on the topics of leadership and professional development, customer service excellence, domestic violence awareness and prevention, and the empowerment of women and other minorities in business.

SETH FARBMAN

Global Chief Marketing Officer

Gap

Seth joined Gap in early 2011 and manages a global marketing team from the company's New York-based Creative Center. He is responsible for the brand marketing strategy, creative direction, advertising, digital and social media, communications programs and store experience. During his tenure, Gap has experienced significantly improved marketing and business results. In 2012, Seth was recognized in Forbes magazine as one of the top ten most influential CMOs in the U.S.

Seth brings 20 years of marketing experience to his role. Before joining Gap, he served as Worldwide Managing Director at Ogilvy & Mather, where he guided brands like DuPont, Time Warner Cable, GE, Coca-Cola, Unilever and UPS. He is known for his ability to develop purpose-driven brands that create deep bonds with customers, while also positively changing daily behaviors.

While at Ogilvy, Seth founded OgilvyEarth, a top-ranked global sustainability marketing practice, and has become a well-known thought leader in the space. In 2010, at United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon's request to increase awareness of the U.N. Climate Change Conference in Copenhagen, Seth led a cross-agency team to create Hopenhagen, the industry's largest-ever pro-bono campaign. More than six million people from more than a hundred countries around the world became "citizens" of Hopenhagen, by signing the U.N. petition to curb global warming.

Prior to Ogilvy, Seth led marketing teams at several U.S. wireless carriers that are now part of Verizon Wireless and AT&T Wireless. While still in graduate school at Syracuse University, Seth started his career as a journalist, reporting for five years at ABC and NBC television affiliates.

Seth lives in New York with his wife and their young son, but remains an undeterred Philadelphia sports fan. He travels regularly and always offsets his carbon, but still feels guilty about it.

CHRIS HASTINGS

Chef/Owner

Hot and Hot Fish Club

Chris Hastings first discovered his appreciation for food during family vacations in the Lowcountry of South Carolina. Hastings deferred his college acceptance to work in the kitchen at Silver Cricket in Charlotte, NC, then enrolled in Johnson & Wales in Providence, RI.

After graduation, Hastings returned to the South, accepting a position at the Ritz-Carlton in Atlanta where he first learned to apply European influences to southern cuisine. On a weekend trip to Birmingham, Hastings met Chef Frank Stitt of the acclaimed Highlands Bar and Grill. It wasn't long before Hastings relocated to Birmingham to work for Stitt as chef de cuisine, where he also helped to open Bottega, Stitt's Mediterranean restaurant.

In 1989, he relocated to San Francisco, to work alongside his mentor Chef Bradley Ogden while he opened the Lark Creek Inn. During his tenure in California, Hastings witnessed the rise of the farm‐to‐table movement first‐hand and could regularly be found visiting farmer's markets to source the freshest local ingredients.

In 1991, Hastings returned to Birmingham with the goal of opening a new restaurant alongside his wife, Idie. They opened the Hot and Hot Fish Club in 1995, offering contemporary American cuisine with Southern influences and supporting the work of local artisans in both the kitchen and front of house.

In subsequent years, Hastings released his first cookbook: The Hot and Hot Fish Club Cookbook, A Celebration of Food, Family and Traditions. In February of 2012, Hastings competed in the Food Network's "Iron Chef: America" challenge, triumphing over Chef Bobby Flay in "Battle: Sausage". And, just a few months later, he was recognized by the James Beard Foundation as the 2012 Best Chef in the South.

ROSE FASS

Founder and CEO

fassforward consulting group

Rose Fass is the founder and CEO of fassforward consulting group, a leading-edge business transformation boutique. Rose works with executive teams from Fortune 500 companies. Her work delivers thought leadership along with methodologies and tools that enable clients to address tough challenges, solve complex business problems, execute on their strategies and deliver bottom line results.

She has over 35 years of corporate experience in technology and consumer-based industries. As Chief Transformation Officer at Xerox Corporation, Rose led the transition to the global industry and solutions business. She integrated acquisitions, diverse cultures, and operating units to develop and execute the new enterprise strategy.

Rose has been a guest on CNBC, is quoted in several bestselling business books and is the author of the newly released book The Chocolate Conversation: Lead Bittersweet Change, Transform Your Business. She is listed in Forbes 2012 Top 10 Women Business Leaders of New York. Her firm has been awarded the Inc. 500/5000 for three consecutive years.

Rose has a bachelor's degree from Boston University's School of Management and completed the Advanced Executive Studies Program at Harvard Business School.

JOSEPH JAFFE

Social Media Thought Leader, Author and Founder of Evol8tion, LLC

One of the most sought-after consultants, speakers and thought leaders on innovation, marketing, new media and social media, Joseph Jaffe is Founder & Partner of Evol8tion, LLC, an innovation agency that matches early stage startups with established brands to partner via mentoring, pilot programs, investment and/or acquisition. Evol8tion launched in January 2012 with Anheuser-Busch InBev and Kraft Foods as founding clients.

Prior to Evol8tion, Jaffe had founded and managed a strategic consultancy, crayon, servicing clients including The Coca-Cola Company, Panasonic, Kraft Foods and H&R Block. Crayon was acquired by social media agency, Powered, and the client roster grew to include Target, Verisign, Anheuser-Busch InBev and General Motors/Onstar. Before that, Joseph was Director of Interactive Media at TBWA/Chiat/Day and OMD USA, where he worked on Kmart, ABSOLUT Vodka, Embassy Suites and Samsonite.

Jaffe's popular blog and audio podcast, "Jaffe Juice," provides daily and weekly commentary respectively on all things new marketing. He has been several books including, Life After The 30-Second Spot: Energize Your Brand With A Bold Mix Of Alternatives To Traditional Advertising; Join the Conversation: How to Engage Marketing-weary Consumers with the Power of Community, Dialogue and Partnership; and most recently, Flip the Funnel: How to Use Existing Customers to Gain New Ones which presents a powerful hypothesis that retention can become the new acquisition through the strategic incorporation and elevation of customer service, customer experience and customer initiated word-of-mouth, content creation and incentive-based referrals.

Joseph's impassioned, straight-shooting and honest perspectives have found their way to every major media outlet, including CBS Evening News, ABC World News, Bloomberg, NPR, The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Fortune, Newsweek, Business Week, Ad Age, Adweek and more.

LEILA JANAH

Founder and CEO

Samasource

Sama means equal in Sanskrit and is the guiding principle of Leila Janah's life and work.

Samasource, a nonprofit Leila founded four years ago, connects people living in poverty to microwork -- small, computer-based tasks that build skills and generate life-changing income. To date, they’ve moved over 14,000 people out of poverty in nine countries, secured over $5M in contracts with over 75 leading technology and data firms including eBay, Walmart.com and LinkedIn, and received funding from leading donors including the Google, Rockefeller, Cisco and Ford Foundations. The organization is the recipient of dozens of awards, including the 2012 Secretary’s Innovation Award from Secretary Hillary Clinton, the Templeton Freedom Award and the NetExplorateur Award from the French Senate.

The same concept inspired her to co-found Samahope, the world’s first crowdfunding site for medical treatments for people in need. Samahope has received funding from angel donors in Silicon Valley and been featured in Fast Company.

Before Samasource, Leila worked at the Stanford Program on Global Justice and co-founded Incentives for Global Health, an initiative to increase R&D spending on diseases of the poor. She's also worked as a management consultant and as a travel writer for Let's Go in Mozambique, Brazil and Borneo.

Leila is a frequent speaker on social entrepreneurship and technology, a Young Global Leader at the World Economic Forum, and the recipient of the TEDIndia, PopTech and Rainer Arnhold Fellowships.

Her work has been profiled by Forbes, CBS, CNN, NPR, the BBC, The New York Times, and on the cover of Fast Company's July 2012 issue. She has been fortunate to receive several awards for her work, including a 2011 Entrepreneur of the Year Award from the Social Enterprise Alliance, a 2010 World Technology Award, a 2012 TechFellow Award, and the 2012 Club de Madrid Young Leader award, presented by President Bill Clinton.

She serves on the boards of CARE, the global poverty-fighting organization (and inventor of the care package), OneLeap and TechSoup Global and as an advisor to BrightFunds and RevelTouch.

Leila received a BA from Harvard and lives in San Francisco.

JESSICA MATTHEWS

Co-Founder & CEO

Uncharted Play

As the Co-Founder & Chief Executive Officer of Uncharted Play, Inc., Jessica drives the creative vision of an award-winning social enterprise with a mission to combine play with cutting-edge technology to make the world a better place. Jessica has been lauded for her invention of the sOccket, a soccer ball that harnesses the energy generated during play and then stores it for later use as a portable power source. She has been noted for her thought leadership on subjects including social innovation, the development of disruptive technology and consumer behavior.

Her accolades include being named Huffington Post's Greatest Person of the Day 2011, Black Enterprise's 40 Under 40: Next Generation of Women in Power 2012 and Fortune Magazine's Most Powerful Women in Business – Next Generation Entrepreneurs 2011. Former President Bill Clinton on Jessica Matthews: "If ever there was an innovator, she’s it."

A dual citizen of Nigeria & the US, Jessica has a degree in Psychology and Economics from Harvard University, and is currently working towards her MBA at Harvard Business School.

JULIA C. SILVERMAN

Co-Founder & Chief Social Officer

Uncharted Play

Julia is the co-founder and Chief Social Officer of Uncharted Play, where she oversees the distribution, curricular programming, and monitoring & evaluation of initiatives worldwide.

Her work as the co-inventor of the SOCCKET, an energy-harvesting soccer ball, has received global recognition, including awards from the Harvard Foundation, TED, the Women in the World Foundation and McKinsey Consulting. She has lived and worked all over Africa, with notable field initiatives in Tanzania, Kenya and South Africa.

Julia graduated with honors from Harvard University with a degree in Social Anthropology and Economics and is currently pursuing her MBA at Harvard Business School.

DAVIS S. RIDLEY

Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer

Southwest Airlines

Davis "Dave" Ridley is Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer for Southwest Airlines. Southwest is the largest U.S. airline in terms of domestic passengers carried and has been the only airline to be profitable every year since 1973.

In his current job, Dave oversees the Marketing and Sales Department and the Revenue Management Department. He is responsible for building and maintaining the brand while maximizing company revenues. This includes leadership and direction of Southwest's pricing, advertising and promotion, loyalty program and the world's second largest travel website, southwest.com. He is also a member of the Executive Planning Committee, the CEO-led committee responsible for company strategy and policy.

Since joining Southwest in 1988, Dave has served as Vice President, Marketing and Sales; Vice President, Ground Operations; and Senior Vice President, People and Leadership Development.

Dave graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1975 with a BBA (Honors Program) and earned an MBA from Southern Methodist University in 1981. Dave and his wife, Mary Flo, have been married for thirty-two years and have two married daughters, a son and three granddaughters.

BRIAN WONG

Brian Wong is the co-founder and CEO of Kiip (pronounced "keep"), a category-creating mobile rewards network that is redefining mobile advertising through an innovative platform that leverages "moments of achievement" in games and apps to simultaneously benefit users, developers and advertisers. Kiip has been named one of the world's 50 Most Innovative Companies by Fast Company, listed by Forbes as one of the 4 Hot Online Ad Companies to Put on Your Watch List and included on the Dow Jones FasTech50 List. Called the youngest person to ever receive venture capital funding by CNBC and The Wall Street Journal, Brian received his Bachelor of Commerce from the University of British Columbia at age 18, after skipping four K-12 grades.

He has been recognized with many awards for his accomplishments and leadership, including: the Top 20 Under 20 awards for all of Canada; Business Insider's Top 25 Under 25 in Silicon Valley, 30 Under 30 in Advertising and 18 Most Important People in Mobile Advertising; Forbes' 30 Under 30 in 2011 and 2012; Mashable's Top 5 Entrepreneurs to Watch; iMedia 25; One of AdWeek's Seven Would-be Mobile Titans; and the AdAge Creativity Top 50.

Before starting Kiip, Brian led key publisher and tech partnerships at the social news website Digg.com, where he accelerated the company's mobile presence by launching the Digg Android mobile app.

Natalie Zmuda

Natalie Zmuda oversees Ad Age's CMO Strategy section. She is responsible for identifying and analyzing the latest trends impacting chief marketers and regularly interviews the marketers making headlines. Natalie also covers the retail and non-alcoholic beverage categories at Ad Age. Prior to joining Ad Age, Natalie spent five years at Conde Nast Publications, where she held the positions of Retail Editor and Associate News Editor at Footwear News. She has also been a Contributing Editor to Women's Wear Daily Accessories. Natalie has a degree in Magazine Journalism from Ohio University's E.W. Scripps School of Journalism.

Chuck Salter

Chuck Salter is Fast Company's longest serving writer, having worked for the magazine since 1997, in Baltimore, Chicago and now New York. He has taken readers inside dozens of the most innovative outfits on the planet, including Google, Amazon, IBM, Disney, 3M and the Mayo Clinic. He is responsible for much of Fast Company's sports coverage, including the magazine's annual list of the most innovative companies in sports. He has also written for The New York Times Magazine and Sports Illustrated.

Andy Didorosi

Andy Didorosi is a 25-year old Detroit native, social entrepreneur and college dropout. Founder of The Detroit Bus Company, The Thunderdrome!, Paper Street, BuildingMinder, WiFi Ferndale and Co-Founder of The Land Blank, Andy is most interested in finding new, disruptive solutions to old problems - both public and private.

David Egner

David Egner has more than 20 years of experience working with nonprofits and foundations, and has led the Hudson-Webber Foundation as its President & CEO since 1997. The foundation has assets of $146 million and concentrates its efforts and resources on its mission of improving the quality of life in metropolitan Detroit. Recently, Egner led an effort that enhanced the focus of the Hudson-Webber Foundation's work and giving to include 15x15, a shared vision to attract 15,000 young, talented households to Greater Downtown Detroit by 2015.

Josh McManus

Josh McManus is Lead Inventor at Little Things Labs, an independent problem-solving laboratory working in post-industrial American cities. A leader in demonstrating progressive strategies in merging creativity and economic development, driving the retention and attraction of talent, and cultivating emerging leadership, Josh assists foundations, corporations and large non-profits in multiplying their effectiveness. Never one to take a normal path, Josh has molded his youthful admiration for transformative architects, designers and inventors with his interest in civic leadership into a fifteen year exploration of developing small ideas to make a big difference. Josh's insights on the subjects of talent retention and attraction, and the intersection of creativity and economic development, have been featured on fastcompany.com, CNNmoney.com, the Economist Liveanomics Report, the Huffington Post, Entrepreneur Magazine, and even Garden & Gun.

John George

John George is the founder of Motor City Blight Busters, a 22 year old nonprofit dedicated to beautifying, renewing and reinvigorating Detroit neighborhoods. Over 120,000 volunteers have painted, renovated and built homes across the city, building civic coalitions and regional partnerships along the way. George was the recipient of the "Points of Light" award by President Bill Clinton for outstanding volunteer service. He insists that his mission is to change the world, starting with Detroit.

Alicia Marion-George

Alicia Marion-George was born and raised in the city of Detroit. Alicia attended Aviation Flight School to be a Flight Attendant, but was expecting her first child and began a career with Marriott Hotels. In 1998 she began working with John George of Motor City Blight Busters, a non-profit housing organization. She began dreaming of opening her own coffee shop in the old Redford District, about 20 minutes from Downtown. The area did not have a lot of local businesses; she wanted to bring her dream to the corner of that neighborhood so that it could be a place where the community could come hang out and be proud of their community. It took 10 years, about a quarter of a million dollars and a lot of blood sweat and tears, but Motor City Java House opened in October 2010. Subsequently, Alicia married John George of Motor City Blight Busters (who helped build the Java House) and they have 3 children together. John and Alicia George now regularly field visitors from around the world who come to witness their labor of love - and grab a cup of great coffee.

VINTAGE TROUBLE

Vintage Trouble formed in 2010 out of the ashes of a few other bands, and not by chance, Ty Taylor (vocal) and Nalle Colt (guitar) teamed up with drummer Richard Danielson and bassist Rick Barrio Dill. They entered The Bomb Shelter Studio, recorded an album's worth of material in three days, which was intended to be demos and ended up being pressed into CDs. The Bomb Shelter Sessions became Vintage Trouble's first album.

Weekly residences in L.A. led to a large assembly of fans in a short amount of time; these fans became known as the TroubleMakers. It was that underground buzz that led to legendary manager Doc McGhee taking notice and signing Vintage Trouble to his roster after hearing only a single chorus. Their first venture overseas resulted in a similar groundswell with Music Weekly naming them 2011 Breakout Artist of the Year and HMV hailing them as their Next Big Thing.

The band's performance on Later... with Jools Holland was one of the most talked about of the year, blowing up Twitter as the 6th most tweeted topic worldwide just hours after the show. The very next day, their self-released debut, The Bomb Shelter Sessions entered the charts, becoming the No. 1 R&B Album and No. 2 Rock Album on Amazon UK, No. 6 on Amazon overall and No. 13 on iTunes. The band went on to play 80 shows in 100 days in front of an estimated 400,000 people throughout the UK and Germany. The next three months brought them an opportunity to support Bon Jovi in stadiums and arenas on the UK, Ireland and German legs of the tour — all the while, headlining smaller venues. Guitarist Magazine ran a feature about Nalle, and The Bomb Shelter Sessions was named one of the Top 25 Guitar Albums of the Year by Total Guitar Magazine.

Lead vocalist Ty Taylor was invited to front Queen for Freddie Mercury's 65th birthday celebration in London, setting the stage for Vintage Trouble to embark on their third overseas tour, with destinations including Italy, Germany, Paris, Belgium and the Netherlands.

2012 proved to be just as busy. In January they sold out The Troubadour in Los Angeles and took up residencies at both The Cosmopolitan and Hard Rock Hotel in Las Vegas. Their first video "Nancy Lee," filmed entirely with an iPhone, won at the Original iPhone Film Fest, not just taking the Music Video category, but the festival's grand prize as well. In February, Google Music selected Vintage Trouble as the featured artist at Sundance where their live performance rocked the film community, and they made their first appearance in Rolling Stone. To celebrate the official US release of The Bomb Shelter Sessions, Best Buy featured Vintage Trouble on their TV screens in stores nationwide.

Vintage Trouble was invited by KISS to open for them at the 2012 NCAA Final Four Basketball Tournament in New Orleans, toured the East Coast with The Cranberries and joined Lenny Kravitz for a German tour in the summer of 2012. More recently, they have been supporting The Who on their North American Tour and making appearances on late night TV with both David Letterman and Jay Leno.

Vintage Trouble's Ty Taylor, Nalle Colt, Richard Danielson and Rick Barrio Dill together form a quartet of sincere musicians whose combination of hard work, talent and luck are undoubtedly going to take them right where they deserve to be: on our radios, in our cars, in our headphones, on our televisions, at the venues where we go to see our favorite bands and on the soundtrack of our favorite moments in life.