BREAKOUT SESSION SPEAKERS
 
Michael Abrashoff
Author, It’s Your Ship
 
At the age of 36, Michael Abrashoff was selected to become Commander of U.S.S. Benfold, at the time he was the most junior commanding officer in the Pacific Fleet. The challenges were staggering with exceptionally low morale and unacceptably high turnover.
 
Few thought that this ship could improve, but Abrashoff only became more resolved.  In some ways, it is an extreme example of the same problems facing many organizations today. The solution was a system of beliefs that he calls GrassRoots Leadership, a process of replacing command and control with commitment and cohesion, by engaging the hearts, minds, and loyalties of workers—a belief that Abrashoff achieves with conviction and humility. GrassRoots leadership is a principle that empowers every individual to share the responsibility of achieving excellence. “It’s your ship,” Abrashoff was known to say.  To this day, his former sailors still remind him of it.
 
By every measure, these principles were able to achieve breakthrough results. Personnel turnover decreased to an unprecedented 1%. The rate of military promotions tripled, and operating expenses were slashed by 25%.  The U.S.S. Benfold became regarded as the finest ship in the Pacific Fleet, winning the prestigious Spokane Trophy for having the highest degree of combat readiness.
 
Abrashoff’s leadership skills have been honed through a number of challenging roles. Prior to commanding U.S.S. Benfold, he served as the military assistant to the Secretary of Defense, the Honorable Dr. William J. Perry.  In this demanding role, Abrashoff accompanied the Secretary of Defense throughout the world on critical missions of national security.
 
Abrashoff’s book, It's Your Ship, is a fascinating tale of top-down change for anyone trying to navigate today’s uncertain business seas.  His next book, Get Your Ship Together, was released in January 2005, followed by his latest, It’s Our Ship, was just published.

Greg Alexander

CEO, Sales Benchmark Index

Greg Alexander is CEO of Sales Benchmark Index (SBI), a strategic advisory firm that helps executives understand how well their sales forces are performing relative to other peer groups. SBI is differentiated through the use of empirical data—a repository of over 10,900 companies, across 19 industries, 11 years of history, and over 250 sales metrics. Through SBI’s sales benchmarking services a company can use comparative data to identify improvement opportunities available by leveraging best practices of world- class sales forces.

Alexander is co-author of Topgrading for Sales: World-Class Methods to Interview, Hire, and Coach Top Sales Representatives and Making the Number: How to Use Sales Benchmarking to Drive Performance. He was also named Sales and Marketing Management’s Sales Manager of the Year in 2004.

He has served as a member of the board of advisors of the metro Atlanta chamber of commerce, the Southern Institute for Business and Professional Ethics, the Technology Association of Georgia, and the Atlanta Technology Angels.

Alexander has an MBA from Georgia Tech and an undergraduate degree from the University of Massachusetts.

Bo Burlingham
Editor-at-large, Inc. magazine
 
Bo Burlingham is an editor-at-large of Inc. magazine and the author of Small Giants: Companies That Choose To Be Great Instead of Big, which was one of five finalists for the 2006 Financial Times/Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year award.
 
He joined Inc. in January 1983 as a senior editor and became executive editor six months later. In 1990, he resigned so that he could do more writing and became editor-at-large. Subsequently he wrote two books with Jack Stack, the co-founder and CEO of Springfield Remanufacturing Corp. and the pioneer of open-book management. One of the books, The Great Game of Business, has sold more than 300,000 copies. The other, A Stake in the Outcome has been called “the first management classic of the new millennium.” Burlingham co-authors with Norm Brodsky the popular monthly column in Inc. called “Street Smarts,” which was a finalist for a National Magazine Award, the highest honor of the U.S. magazine industry, in 2006 and 2008. He and Brodsky are currently working on a book, The Knack, to be published in October 2008.

Norm Brodsky
Founder, CitiStorage and Inc. columnist
 
Inc. columnist and entrepreneur Norm Brodsky is the founder of numerous businesses, including a three-time Inc. 500 company. A graduate of Rider College and Brooklyn Law School, Brodsky began his career as a lawyer but decided that he was destined for entrepreneurship. His first venture was Perfect Courier, a messenger service based in New York City, which was launched in 1979 and made its initial appearance on the Inc. 500 list in 1984.
 
In the early ‘90s, Brodsky received a phone call from a Perfect Courier customer asking him to store 27 boxes. Unfamiliar with the records storage business, Brodsky researched the area and discovered a niche that seemed to offer enormous opportunities. Brodsky proceeded to launch CitiStorage, which today stores more than 3 million boxes of documents in its warehouses on the Brooklyn waterfront. CitiStorage, in turn, led him to found a third business, U.S. Document Security—a secure document destruction company.
 
Brodsky’s monthly Inc. column, “Street Smarts,” was a 2006 and 2008 finalist for a National Magazine Award—the highest honor of the U.S. magazine industry. Brodsky is currently writing a book to be published in October 2008 with Bo Burlingham, his “Street Smarts” co-author.

William Casey
President, Executive Leadership Group
 
William Casey consults in the area of organizational behavior management specializing in organizational structure design and large project management. Before co-founding Executive Leadership Group, he was a vice president with a subsidiary of Touche Ross, the Garr Consulting Group.
 
In addition to his consulting practice, Casey serves on the faculty of the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey, California, teaching strategic planning and execution to senior civilian and military leaders, in the Navy's Executive Business Course and Corporate Business Course. Casey has also taught for the Haas School of Business (UCal, Berkeley), the Daniels School of Business and University College (University of Denver), and others. He completed his doctorate in psychology at the University of Kansas, with a dissertation that focused on business applications of reinforcement theory.
 
His clients have included Chase Manhattan Bank, Sunoco, Zurich Life Insurance, The Denver Post, The May Company, Microsoft, Qwest, Coors Brewing Company, ING, US Navy, US Marine Corps, US Coast Guard, and the Naval Postgraduate School.
 
He writes both professional and popular articles on management and has co-authored three books in the areas of psychology and communication, and co-authored a chapter for each of two texts on management. For two years Casey co-authored, with Wendi Peck, “Managing for Results,” a monthly column in the Denver Business Journal and contributed to the book, Business Driven Information Technology: Answers to 100 Critical Questions for Every Manager.

Mark Comiso
Founder, Compelling Capital
 
Mark Comiso is a serial entrepreneur who loves helping others grow their businesses. Having founded and built seven companies—including a three-time Inc. 500 honoree—he knows the trials andtribulations, as well as the incredible feelings of accomplishment and success, that go along with growing a company. Comiso has worked with companies of all sizes—from start-ups to the Fortune 100. He possesses the ability to listen to people and understand their needs and then match the right skills and capabilities to those needs—which is the quintessential definition of marketing. Based in Silicon Valley, Comiso is an active member in his community, speaks frequently around the world, and most recently, completed a two-year term on the international board of directors of the 7,000 member Entrepreneurs’ Organization.

Chester Elton
Co-author, The Carrot Principle
 
Called the “apostle of appreciation,” by the Globe and Mail, Canada's largest newspaper, and “creative and refreshing” by the New York Times, Chester Elton is co-author of several successful leadership books. The Carrot Principle has been a New York Times and Wall Street Journal best-seller, and The 24-Carrot Manager has been called a “must read for modern-day managers” by Larry King of CNN.  In 2006, The Invisible Employee also made the New York Times best-seller list. Elton's books have been translated into over 20 languages and have sold over half a million copies worldwide.
 
As a motivation expert, Chester has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, Fast Company magazine, and the New York Times, and has been a guest on CNN, Bloomberg Television, ABC “Money Matters,” MSNBC, and on National Public Radio. A sought-after speaker and recognition consultant, Chester is the senior vice president of the Carrot Culture Group with the O.C. Tanner Recognition Company. He serves as a recognition consultant to Fortune 100 firms such as DHL, KPMG, Wal-Mart, and Avis Budget Group.

Tamara Erickson
Author, Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent
 
Tamara Erickson is a McKinsey Award-winning author and widely respected expert on organizations and the changing workforce—on the shifting relationship between individuals and corporations—and on enhancing innovation and workforce productivity.  Her work is based on extensive research on changing demographics and employee values and, most recently, on how successful organizations innovate through collaboration.

Erickson has co-authored four Harvard Business Review articles as well as the book Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent. The research initiatives she and colleagues have undertaken include Demography is De$tiny, exploring the implications of current demographic changes on human resource practices, and The New Employee/Employer Equation, developing new and powerful approaches to increasing employee engagement through segmentation. Her most recent research, Cooperative Advantage, done in collaboration with a team at London Business School, explored the working practices of over 50 teams in 15 multi-nationals, representing the most extensive academically-grounded study of industry-based team working ever conducted.

Erickson is a former member of the Board of Directors of PerkinElmer, a Fortune 500 company competing in advanced technology markets, and a former member of the Board of Directors of Allergan.

She holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Biological Sciences from the University of Chicago and a MBA from the Harvard Graduate School of Business Administration where she was the recipient of the James Thomas Chirurg Fellowship.

Timothy Ferriss
Author, The 4-Hour Workweek
 
Author of the best-seller The 4-Hour Workweek, Timothy Ferriss is a serial entrepreneur and ultravagabond, who has been featured by dozens of media, including The New York Times, National Geographic Traveler, NBC, and Maxim. He speaks six languages, runs a multinational firm from wireless locations worldwide, and has been a popular guest lecturer at Princeton University since 2003, where he presents entrepreneurship as a tool for ideal lifestyle design and world change.
 
Ferriss received his BA from Princeton University in 2000, where he studied in the Neuroscience and East Asian Studies departments. He developed his nonfiction writing with Pulitzer Prize winner John McPhee and formed his life philosophies under Nobel Prize winner Kenzaburo Oe.
 
He is 29 years old, and The 4-Hour Workweek is his first book and magnum opus.

Cynthia Flanders
Global Commercial Banking Mid-Atlantic Region Executive
Bank of America
 
Cynthia Flanders is the Global Commercial Banking Mid-Atlantic Region executive for Bank of America. In this role, she leads Middle Market and Business Banking in Virginia, DC, Maryland, Delaware and Southern New Jersey. Based in Rockville, Maryland, Flanders is responsible for Middle Market and Business Banking teams that deliver a full array of financial services and expertise to Small, Middle Market and Micro Cap companies. Flanders has been with Bank of America and its predecessor organizations for over 30 years. In addition to over 20 years in Commercial Banking, she also spent time in Consumer Banking, Operations and Finance. She was most recently the market executive for Commercial Banking covering Maryland, DC, and Northern Virginia.
 
Flanders received a B.S. degree from the University of Maryland, RH Smith School of Business, graduating summa cum laude, and a MBA, also from the RH Smith School of Business. She was formerly the President of the University of Maryland Alumni Association and currently serves on their Finance Committee. She is a NASD Registered Principal with Series 7, 24, and 63 securities licenses. Flanders is active in various civic and community affairs and currently serves on the Board of the Boys and Girls Club of Greater Washington.

Michael Gerber

Founder and chairman, E-Myth Worldwide

Michael Gerber, founder and chairman of E-Myth Worldwide, is an author and an entrepreneur who has been the leading champion of small business owners for almost three decades. He is best known for coining “the E-Myth” or “Entrepreneurial Myth,” which is the idea that most people who start businesses are entrepreneurs, and it follows the fatal assumption that an individual who understands the technical work of a business can successfully run a business that does that kind of technical work.

Documented in his mega-best selling books, The E-Myth: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, and The E-Myth Revisited, Gerber prescribes a way out of what he calls “the tyranny of routine,” which drags down the owner’s entrepreneurial spirit with dull, repetitive work. Gerber also successfully created a programmatic method that works for anyone determined to improve the condition of his or her business, or for anyone who intends to start their own business.  As a result, the firm Gerber founded, E-Myth Worldwide, which brings that programmatic method to the global business community via business consulting and education.

Gerber’s latest book is Awakening the Entrepreneur Within: How Ordinary People Create Extraordinary Companies Without Any Experience to Guide Them.

Brian Hamilton
Co-founder and CEO, Sageworks

Brian Hamilton is the co-founder and CEO of Sageworks, where he manages overall strategy and product development. Sageworks is a 2007 Inc. 500 honoree. He is an original co-developer of “FIND” (Financial Information into Narrative Data),
the company's core artificial intelligence technology which converts financial numbers into plain-language  reports. “FIND” is the basis of ProfitCents® and Sageworks Analyst®, applications that are used today by  thousands of financial institutions and accounting firms throughout North America and the United Kingdom.
 
Hamilton is an accomplished entrepreneur who has guided Sageworks since its inception. He holds an MBA degree from Duke University and a bachelor's degree from Sacred Heart University, where he graduated summa cum laude. Brian is a noted expert in finance who has been published and quoted in most major national media outlets. He is currently a guest columnist for Forbes.com.

Sam Horn
Author, POP! Stand Out in Any Crowd
 
Sam Horn is an award-winning keynote speaker, best-selling author, respected creative consultant, and an in-demand media resource. 
 
As an originator of innovative communication and creative methodologies, Horn created the trade-marked communication methodology of Tongue Fu!® and has certified instructors around the world  to teach this program through her Tongue Fu!® Training Institute. Her most recent book POP! Stand Out in Any Crowd teaches companies and their leaders ways to craft one-of-a-kind titles, slogans, and brands so they can become one-of-a-kind instead of one-of-many.
 
A frequent media guest who has been interviewed on every major network and on dozens of radio shows including National Public Radio, WGN, and Bloomberg Report. Her work has even been featured on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and To Tell The Truth, where she and her Tongue Fu!® team stumped the panel.

Frans Johansson
Author, The Medici Effect
 
Frans Johansson is the creator of The Medici Summit, a popular speaker and acclaimed author. A successful entrepreneur who co-founded (while still in his 20's) two businesses in the U.S. and Sweden, Frans truly 'lives what he preaches'—using the intersections in his life to innovate. His best-seller, The Medici Effect, has been translated into 17 languages and has been recognized on numerous lists as a top business book. Recognized as a thought leader on the topics of innovation and diversity, Johansson has provides a unique learning experience for those ready to embrace the lessons of The Medici Effect and shows companies, such as Nike, Disney, ESPN, Microsoft, why and how to use diversity to drive innovation.

Liddy Karter

Managing director, Karter Capital Advisors
 
Liddy Karter is managing director of Karter Capital Advisors, which helps entrepreneurs obtain capital, restructure, or sell their businesses in an efficient and expeditious way. Karter specifically offers clients expertise in the financial services, banking, software, and manufacturing sectors. As president of Resource Recovery Systems, one of the pioneers of the municipal recycling industry, Karter grew sales from $600,000 to $20 million with 13 factories in eight states. The company was sold in 1998 and remains one of the largest parts of the successor firm’s business with many of the original employees still in place. As CFO at Netkey, a leading enterprise software firm, Karter raised $15 million in institutional venture capital. She was responsible for spearheading sales for the new enterprise technology platform to banking and retail clients.

Katrina Ling
Founding Principal, Grace Consulting Corp.
 
Katrina Ling is an experienced Blue Ocean Strategy practitioner passionate about helping executives to gain a deeper understanding of Blue Ocean Strategy and to enable their organizations to break away from head-to-head competition. Using Blue Ocean Strategy principles, she enables her clients to experience higher growth and profitability by achieving both differentiation and low cost simultaneously to unlock new demand and to create mass appeal fast, further making the competition irrelevant through economies of scale.
 
Wielding two degrees from MIT and building on her international experience in strategy formulation and implementation from McKinsey & Co. and Accenture, Ling founded Grace Consulting Corp. in 2000 to serve Fortune 100 clients from around the world.

Keith McFarland
Author, The Breakthrough Company
 
Keith McFarland is author of the No. 1 The Wall Street Journal best seller and The New York Times best seller The Breakthrough Company:  How Everyday Companies Become Extraordinary Performers.  He is founder of McFarland Strategy Partners, which has provided strategic advisory services to scores of leading growth companies.  Prior to founding McFarland Strategy Partners he was CEO of two-time Inc. 500 company, Collectech Systems, and CEO of Nivo International—which ran 2000 testing and certification centers in 56 countries for Microsoft.  McFarland did his doctoral coursework with famed management theorist Peter Drucker.  At age 26 he was named associate dean of the Pepperdine University School of Business.  He writes a regular column for Businessweek, occasional columns for Time magazine, and is an Inc.com blogger.

Bob Pearson
Vice president, communities and conversations

Bob Pearson serves as vice president of communities and conversations for Dell.  As a member of Dell’s communications team, he is responsible for digital media activities, ranging from customer resolution to management of IdeaStorm, Direct2Dell, StudioDell and other digital initiatives.

Before joining Dell, Pearson worked for Novartis Pharmaceuticals as head of global corporate communications and as head of global pharma communications, where he served on the pharma executive committee. Prior to Novartis, he was president of the Americas for GCI and was responsible for creating and building the firm’s global healthcare practice.  He was previously vice president of global public affairs and media relations at Rhone-Poulenc Rorer (now Sanofi Aventis) and worked at CIBA-Geigy in both communications and field sales. He has more than 20 years experience in executive corporate communications and public relations.

Pearson graduated from the University of North Carolina at Greensboro with a degree in communications and completed his MBA at Fairleigh Dickinson University.  He has served on the boards of Cancer Care and The Huntington’s Disease Society of America and currently serves on the boards of The Dell Foundation, Introgen Therapeutics and The Association for Multiple Impaired and Blind.  He is also a member of the executive committee of Dell’s Political Action Committee and he serves as the vice-chair of the Emerging Technology Committee for the State of Texas.

Wendi Peck
CEO, Executive Leadership Group
 
Wendi Peck is CEO of Executive Leadership Group, a consultancy specializing in helping leaders form and execute their strategies. Its private-sector clients have included organizations such as Molson-Coors, Seagate, St. Paul Companies, Qwest, Sunoco, ING, and Microsoft.

Its public sector clients have included the U.S. Navy, the U.S. Coast Guard, the U.S. Marines, The Office of the Secretary of Defense, and the U.S. Air Force. Most recently, they have been working with senior U.S. Navy leadership at the Pentagon on issues of strategy execution and cross-organizational alignment.

Peck teaches strategic planning and execution to senior civilian and military leaders at the Center for Executive Education at the Naval Post Graduate School in Monterey, California.
She completed her MBA at the Daniels School of Business, University of Denver.

Jack Stack
President and CEO, SRC Holdings Corporation
 
Jack Stack is President and CEO of SRC Holdings Corporation. SRC manufactures gasoline and diesel engines for the automotive and off-highway markets, distributes engine kits, manufactures power units and electrical components, and conducts seminars and training programs specializing in all aspects of teaching people how to implement open-book management. SRC has sales of over $300,000,000 a year and currently employs more than 1,000 people.
 
Stack came to SRC in 1979 as the Plant Manager of International Harvester after eleven years of direct management experience. In 1983, Stack and the SRC employees bought the company from IH and have turned it into what Inc. magazine has proclaimed "one of America's most competitive small companies." He is the author of the book, The Great Game of Business published in 1992, which was selected one of the thirty best business books of the year by Soundview Executive Book Summaries. The open-book management program has been recognized by the CBS Eye on America, PBS’ McNeil-Lehrer Report and has received both the National Business Ethics Award and the Business Enterprise Trust Award.  SRC was also selected as one of the Top 100 Companies to Work for in America. Stack’s second book, A Stake in the Outcome, was published in 2002.
 
Stack is a national and world judge for the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Awards Institute and has served as an advisor for this group since 1998.  Inc. has called him the “smartest strategist in America” and named him one of twenty-five entrepreneurs selected to represent the 25 years the magazine has been published.
 
He serves on the Board of Directors of Quest Capital Alliance, is one of Drury University’s Board of Trustees, and is a past president of the Springfield Business Development Corp., a subsidiary of the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce. Stack was the 2007 recipient of the Excellence in Business Award presented by Ozarks Technical Community College.

Tom Szaky
Co-founder and CEO, TerraCycle
 
Tom Szaky is co-founder and CEO of TerraCycle, producer of the worlds first products made from and packaged in waste. TerraCycle has been named the producer of most eco-friendly brands in America and has received the Home Depot Environmental stewardship award twice, been featured in Wal-Mart's sustainability report and been repeatedly named the ultimate eco-friendly brand.
 
Born in Budapest, Hungary in 1982, Szaky emigrated from Hungary to Holland. In 1989 he and his family emigrated again from Holland to Canada. At 14 he started his first business, a web design company called Flyte Design. While in high school, Szaky cycled solo from Toronto to Vancouver to raise funds for the environmental organization Ontario Naturalists, setting a national speed record of 21 days for such a bike ride. He came to the United States in 2001 to attend Princeton University. In 2002, Szaky took a leave of absence to dedicate himself full-time to starting TerraCycle, beginning as a two man outfit in the crowded basement of an old office building.
 
Today, TerraCycle is the leader in upcycling, with sponsored waste partnerships with America's biggest brands, ranging from Capri Sun to Oreo to Stonyfield Yogurt, and is distributed in America's biggest retailers ranging from Wal-Mart to Target to Home Depot. TerraCycle has been featured in virtually every major media outlet from 60 Minutes to The Wall Street Journal and is a 2007 Inc. 5000 honoree.

Angus Thomson
Vice president and general manager, Intuit Mid Market Group

Angus Thomson has led the Intuit Mid Market Group since early 2007. He has found a strong connection with Mid Market team given the focus on the customer and helping customers grow—a passion of his. Growing up in San Francisco he watched his mother run two small businesses of her own, and later, in 1995, he spent a year growing a small business in India.  He has also been deeply involved in the creation of the Solution Provider Program, which is a major component of Intuit’s future in the Mid Market.  Before joining the Mid Market team, Thomson’s background was mostly centered on strategy—both as Intuit's vice president of corporate strategy and as a strategy consultant at the Boston Consulting Group. When Thomson isn't helping Enterprise Solutions customers, you'll find him in deep discussions about foreign policy—he holds a doctorate in International Relations from Oxford University—or relaxing with some mountain biking and yoga.

Ari Weinzweig
Founding Partner, Zingerman’s Community of Businesses

In 1982, with his partner Paul Saginaw, Ari Weinzweig started Zingerman’s Delicatessen with a $20,000 bank loan, a staff of two, a small selection of great-tasting specialty foods, and a relatively short sandwich menu. Today, Zingerman’s is an Ann Arbor, Michigan, institution—the source of great food for over 500,000 visitors every year. Zingerman’s Community of Businesses now includes seven additional businesses: Zingerman’s Bakehouse, Creamery, Catering, Mail Order, ZingTrain, Zingerman's Coffee Company, and Zingerman's Roadhouse, a full service restaurant featuring traditional American foods, beers and wines. Zingerman’s was named the Coolest Small Company in America by Inc. magazine in 2003.

Weinzweig is the author of a number of articles and books, most recently, Zingerman's Guide to Good Parmigiano-Reggiano, Zingerman's Guide to Giving Great Service, and Zingerman's Guide to Good Eating.

John Winsor
Executive Director of Strategy and Product Innovation, Crispin Porter + Bogusky

John Winsor has over 17 years of publishing and business management experience. After completing his Masters of Business Administration at Denver University, Winsor worked for the advertising division of Cablevision Magazine. He wrote a book, Fitness on the Road and in 1986 started Sports & Fitness Publishing with the launch of Rocky Mountain Sports. In 13 years SFP grew to 10 national titles including, Women's Sports & Fitness, Gravity, InLine, a number of nationally prominent events and a market research division. Sports & Fitness Publishing was sold in 1998 to Condé Nast and Petersen Publishing. Winsor founded Radar Communications, a consulting company specializing in market research, in the fall of 1998, and in 2004, published a book called Beyond the Brand. His most recent publication, Spark, delves into the world of product innovation and co-creation.  In May of 2007, Radar was acquired by the creative-driven agency, Crispin Porter + Bogusky. CP+B clients include Microsoft, Volkswagen, and Burger King.