Modern Business Experience 2020

Luvvie Ajayi is an award-winning author, speaker, and digital strategist who thrives at the intersection of comedy, technology, and activism. Her debut book, “I’M JUDGING YOU: The Do-Better Manual” was an instant New York Times bestseller. It’s a collection of essays that critiques our fame-obsessed, social media-centric lives while encouraging us to do better. The 16-year blogging veteran uses her blog AwesomelyLuvvie.com to cover all things pop culture with razor-sharp commentary and wit. In 2018 she launched a podcast called Rants and Randomness where she shares her most-pressing rants, raves, and faves while interviewing some of the most interesting people you know (and some you might not). She recently launched her eSchool, The Do-Better Academy that focuses on teaching people how to thrive in business and their careers. The University of Illinois alum is a sought-after speaker who has spoken at the Obama White House, MAKERS Conference, SXSW, Social Media Week, among others. She has interviewed bosses including Oprah Winfrey, Geena Davis, and Shonda Rhimes. Luvvie was selected to Oprah Winfrey’s inaugural Supersoul 100 list, voted as the Influencer of the Year at the 2016 Iris Awards, and was chosen as a Black Innovator by XFINITY Comcast. She is committed to using her voice for pop culture critique and gender and racial justice.

FutureThink CEO Lisa Bodell is the bestselling author of “Kill the Company” and “Why Simple Wins.” She’s a global leader on simplification and innovation, whose keynotes leave audiences inspired to change and arms them with radically simple tools to get to the work that matters. Bodell brings a compelling perspective to the sought-after topics of simplification and innovation to more than 100,000 people each year. A thought leader and serial entrepreneur, her transformational message has inspired executives at top-ranked organizations such as Google, Cisco, Citigroup, and the US Navy War College. Bodell provides a provocative yet practical approach that enables organizations and individuals to eradicate the unnecessary complexity and time-sucks that hold them back from more meaningful work, and allow simplicity to become their new operating system. Bodell has contributed her expertise to a wide variety of media. She is a monthly contributor to Forbes and has frequently appeared in other media including Fast Company, WIRED, The New York Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Harvard Business Review, The Huffington Post, FOX News, and CNN. She has also been featured in many major books such as Warren Berger’s “A More Beautiful Question,” Adam Grant’s “Originals,” and “After Shock,” the upcoming 50-year celebration based on futurist Alvin Toffler’s “Future Shock.” Bodell has taught innovation at American University and Fordham University, and has a TED talk on the topic. She has served on the board of advisors of several organizations, including the Global Agenda Council for the World Economic Forum, the United States National Security Agency, the Association of Professional Futurists, and the Novartis board of diversity and inclusion.

Erik Brynjolfsson is director of the MIT Initiative on the Digital Economy, Schussel Family Professor at the MIT Sloan School, and research associate at NBER. His research examines the effects of information technologies on business strategy, productivity and performance, digital commerce, and intangible assets. At MIT, he teaches courses on the Economics of Information and the Analytics Lab. Professor Brynjolfsson was among the first researchers to measure the productivity contributions of IT and the complementary role of organizational capital and other intangibles. His research also provided the first quantification of the value of online product variety, often known as the “Long Tail,” and developed pricing and bundling models for information goods. His research has appeared in leading economics, management, and science journals and has been recognized with ten Best Paper awards and five patents. Author of several books including, with co-author Andrew McAfee, NY Timesbest-seller “The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies” (Norton, January 2016) and “Machine, Platform, Crowd: Harnessing Our Digital Future” (Norton, June 2017), Brynjolfsson is editor of SSRN’s Information System Network and has served on the editorial boards of numerous academic journals. Holding bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Harvard University in applied mathematics and decision sciences and a doctorate from MIT in managerial economics, he has also taught at Harvard and Stanford.

Safra A. Catz has served as chief executive officer of Oracle Corporation since 2014 and a member of the company’s board of directors since 2001. She previously served as president of Oracle and has also served as the company’s chief financial officer. Prior to being named president, Catz held various other positions since starting at Oracle in 1999. She currently serves as a director of The Walt Disney Company and previously served as a director of HSBC Holdings plc.

Author, keynote speaker, and former Merrill Lynch stockbroker Mark Jeffries has become a trusted adviser and communications consultant to some of the world's largest and most successful corporations, agencies, and partnerships. Dividing his time mostly between the United States, Canada, and Europe, Jeffries is invited to deliver his highly effective keynotes on business communication, influence, and presentation to audiences across many industries. His speeches are relevant, entertaining, and filled with instantly useable takeaway ideas. He has also mastered a fascinating niche: moderating major corporate events. He has rapidly become the go-to person for facilitating, moderating, and emceeing multinational events for large and small organizations around the world. As well as running countless industry panels and chatting with more than 150 C-Suite execs on stage, Jeffries has also interviewed many celebrities including Will Smith, Richard Branson, Bob Mueller, Serena Williams, Michael Phelps, Janet Yellen, and Michael J. Fox. Jeffries has published two books, “What’s Up with Your Handshake?” and “The Art of Business Seduction,” and has just launched two highly innovative and very engaging elearning courses dedicated to elevating users into trusted advisors, persuasive communicators, and key influencers. Discussing the power of business influence and Networking 2.0, Jeffries regularly appears as an expert guest on NBC’s Today Show, Fox Business, and BBC News, and he writes for the Huffington Post.

Nelson Kunkel is the chief design officer for Deloitte Digital and leads the growth of Deloitte’s Experience Design teams across a network of global digital studios. Having traveled the world as an entrepreneur, builder, brander, designer, and problem-solver, Kunkel is obsessed with learning from others, collecting stories, and finding relationships between people and ideas. Since founding his first business out of his high school locker, he has built several companies including two digital agencies, a search management startup, a restaurant chain, and a winery—all while spending a career building brands across fashion, finance, technology, and retail industries. He holds several design patents, has been a teacher of interactive design, and his work has been published in several leading books and magazines on brand design and digital experiences. His publicized clients include Adobe, Agilent, Barneys NY, Chipotle, Cisco, David Yurman, Fox Sports, Jones Apparel Group, lululemon athletica, Massage Envy, Neiman Marcus, Nike, Nine West, Prada, Sony, Tiffany & Co., VMware, and Walmart.

Gerri Martin-Flickinger is executive vice president and chief technology officer at Starbucks. She is responsible for technology strategies and teams that enable the company to connect with customers worldwide. She joined Starbucks in 2015 and has led the technology organization through significant transformation while developing and enabling industry-leading innovations including mobile order and pay and voice ordering.

Steve Miranda is executive vice president of Oracle Applications product development. He is responsible for leading all aspects of product strategy, product development, and product delivery for the entire portfolio of Oracle Applications and related services. Miranda’s primary focus is on delivering the industry’s most complete, proven, and innovative set of cloud solutions encompassing enterprise resource planning; supply chain, human capital, and enterprise performance management; customer experience; and Oracle Data Cloud applications. Miranda joined Oracle in 1992 and has held a variety of leadership positions within the development organization. In 2007 he was asked to lead the engineering of Oracle’s next-generation suite of software applications, Oracle Fusion Applications. Under his leadership, Oracle has delivered on its promise to help applications customers innovate and remain competitive while leveraging their existing IT investments and increasing the value of those investments with new Oracle products and services. Prior to Oracle, Miranda worked at GE Aerospace. He holds degrees in mathematics and computational sciences from Stanford University.

Guy Raz is an acclaimed radio and podcast personality and creator of the popular podcast How I Built This and TED Radio Hour, which have found a consistent home on the top charts. TED Radio Hour takes listeners on a journey through the world of ideas. Each week, the world’s greatest thinkers, scientists, artists, and visionaries join Raz for an exploration into the common experiences that make us human. How I Built This is a podcast about the greatest innovators, entrepreneurs, and idealists, and the stories behind the movements they built. Raz is also the creator of NPR's first-ever podcast for kids, Wow in the World, as well as Spotify’s The Rewind. His shows are heard by more than 19 million people each month around the world. How I Built This and TED Radio Hour have been named top podcasts by Apple Podcasts, and Inc. Magazine called How I Built This the best podcast to take on the new year.

Harper Reed is a technologist who predicts the future for a living. He spends most of his life building big things, hacking things, and talking about doing both of those things. As CTO of the Obama 2012 campaign, Reed was the first to bring the tech mentality to a political level. He believes the talent of a great bunch of humans can transform an organization like nothing else, and he uses that belief to strengthen, deploy, and inspire every team he works with. Reed also believes his incredible luck has led him to achieve wonderful things including pioneering crowdsourcing at Threadless.com, founding Modest Inc., and guiding the software team at PayPal. You can find him hacking on personal projects and enjoying life in Chicago with his partner, Hiromi, and their beautiful and bizarre poodle, Lulu.

Zac Upchurch directs the daily operations of the Talent Strategy Group, including strategy, research, and finance across all five lines of the TSG business. He frequently consults with the boards and executive teams of the world’s most advanced organizations on talent management with a focus on the intersection of people and organizations and enabling the full potential of both. Upchurch graduated Summa Cum Laude from Arizona State University with a Bachelor of Science degree in economics.