Badgley, Andrea

Title: Program Manager of Scaled Support

Company: Automattic

Andrea Badgley is the Program Manager of Scaled Support at Automattic, maker of WordPress.com, WooCommerce, and Tumblr. She manages AI implementations and a team of 100 freelance contractors across multiple brands, where scaled support handles 35% of the more than 100,000 email and chat cases per month. She started at Automattic in 2014 as a front-line agent (a Happiness Engineer), left in 2018 to spend 18 months as Director of Operations for the Support Driven community, and returned to Automattic in 2019 to join the new Happiness Operations team there. She lives in Blacksburg, Virginia with her cats, kids, and husband.

Boggs, Ezra

Title: Forecaster

Company: Dept of Homeland Security/FEMA

Ezra Boggs is a forecaster at the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). His work focuses on developing methodologies that incorporate Industry Standards into a unique call volume environment. Before taking this position, he worked at Accenture, ServiceMaster, and Securus Technologies as an Intraday Specialist, Forecaster, and ROA [Reporting, Operations, and Analysis], and taught theological studies at Porterbrook. Prior to his work in call center environments, Ezra was a professional musician for over a decade and has the very expensive hearing aids to prove it. He has been a keynote speaker at the Objective Music Conference in Nashville for the last 10 years.

Brown, Nate

Title: Co-Founder

Company: CX Accelerator

Nate Brown is a perpetual student of the world’s greatest experiences and the people who create them. Having spent the first decade of this career managing a complex technical support environment for Occupational Health and eLearning software, Nate transitioned to Customer Experience in 2015. After authoring The CX Primer, Brown was dubbed the “CX Influencer of the Year” by CloudCherry in 2019, and a top global CX thought leader by ICMI, Exceeders, Netomi, Martech and many more. As a passion project, Nate created CX Accelerator, a first-class virtual community for Customer Experience professionals. Nate currently serves as the Senior Director of Customer Experience for Arise Virtual Solutions and can be found at a variety of conferences speaking and training on the CX topics he loves.

Bruno, Rae Ann

Title: President

Company: Business Solutions Training, Inc.

Rae Ann Bruno President of Business Solutions Training, Inc. (BST), brings extensive expertise in Experience Management, IT Service Management, KCS, Service Desk Enhancement, and related fields. Recognized for her contributions as a speaker, author, consultant and trainer, she has been featured on HDI’s Top 25 Thought Leaders list multiple times and was inducted into the HDI Hall of Fame in 2017. Additionally, she was honored as one of Cherwell’s IT Legends in the same year. As an APMG certified trainer in Experience Essentials, Experience Foundation, and Experience Practitioner, alongside her role as a host on XLA.TV, Rae Ann demonstrates her commitment to sharing knowledge and advancing Experience Management globally. In addition to her role as an HDI Business Associate (consulting and training), Rae Ann is a recognized voice within the IT service management and Experience Management communities. She frequently speaks and teaches at conferences and contributes articles to publications.

Campbell, Steve

Title: President

Company: Team Rebus

Steve Campbell is a seasoned contact center consultant with over 28 years of expertise. His extensive knowledge of best practices, industry standards and contact center technology has made him a trusted partner for companies across the globe. His distinguished career is defined by his ability to swiftly pinpoint and address challenges in the contact center, while his pragmatic approach has earned the trust of clients, thus resulting in hundreds of successful engagements. With a track record of delivering tangible results, Steve Campbell is your go-to consultant for navigating the complexities of the contact center industry and driving operational improvements.

Steve earned his undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering from Virginia Tech and is a certified practitioner of Six Sigma. Steve maintains active memberships in several professional groups including the International Society for Performance Improvement and Worldwide Contact Center Operations. Steve is an accomplished marathon and ultramarathon runner and resides in Richmond, VA with his wife and daughter.

Cleveland, Brad

Title: Senior Advisor & Co-Founder

Company: ICMI

Brad Cleveland is recognized globally for his contributions to customer strategy and management. He was a founding partner in ICMI and has worked across 45 states and over 60 countries for many of today’s most recognized organizations—American Express, Apple, USAA, and others, as well as the governments of Australia, the U.S., and Canada. Brad is the author of Contact Center Management on Fast Forward, the profession’s top-selling management book. His latest book, Leading the Customer Experience, is a recipient of the NYC Big Book distinguished favorite award. His LinkedIn Learning courses have reached over 1 million views. Today, Brad serves as Senior Advisor to ICMI, and is an in-demand speaker, trainer, and consultant.

Fischer, Adrienne

Title: AVP-Director of Contact Center

Company: STCU

With over 15 years of leadership experience driving continuous improvement in financial operations and member service, Adrienne Fischer has amassed a wealth of expertise that she is eager to share. Throughout her career, Adrienne demonstrated a proven track record of developing and implementing successful business strategies that enhanced efficiency and service quality. Adrienne's exceptional communication, influencing, and organizational abilities were instrumental in building productive relationships with supporting departments. Certified as a Six Sigma Black Belt, she specialized in process optimization and efficiency, bringing a data-driven approach to organizational excellence. In her current role as AVP - Director of Contact Center at STCU, Adrienne leads the development and execution of a holistic business strategy for the Contact Center division. Achieving an outstanding employee engagement score of 88%, she strategically implemented programs to foster a positive workplace culture and ensured tailored training for team members.

Fowler, Wendy

Title: Call Center Consultant

Company: Quality Service Solutions, LLC

Wendy Fowler is a seasoned industry expert with 27 years of broad contact center experience with an emphasis on workforce management and quality management. Wendy has a proven track record of implementing and reengineering workforce management and quality management programs for companies of all sizes and across a variety of industries. 

Wendy has been helping organizations improve performance by providing expert analysis, feedback and actionable solutions to make improvements in such areas as: Customer Satisfaction, Quality Assurance, Workforce Management, Call Routing, Contact Center Design, Employee Retention, Recruiting and Hiring, Training & Development and Performance Management.

Wendy is also a guest speaker at many industry events for such contact center forums as ICMI, NECCF and SWPP.

She has a passion for Customer Service and a talent for being able to identify opportunities quickly within an organization and provide the necessary design to make cost-effective, data driven change that have proven to improve efficiencies, customer satisfaction and quality.

Garteski Bergler, Courtnie

Title: Director

Company: Mayo Clinic

Courtnie Garteski Bergler serves as the Director of Mayo Clinic’s Innovation Contact Center. With 23 years of Contact Center experience, Courtnie is dedicated to designing efficient workflows and pioneering new features to enhance agent productivity and elevate the customer experience. She is currently leading a digital contact center transformation project, which is propelling Mayo Clinic forward by experimenting with workflows like outbound dialer, two-way texting, customer relationship management, and outbound campaigns. Courtnie’s unwavering commitment to customer satisfaction aligns seamlessly with Mayo Clinic’s core value: “the needs of the patient come first.” She is also a champion for supporting frontline agents and the important work they do. Courtnie is a Bronze Quality Fellow in the Mayo Clinic Quality Academy, a Certified Scrum Product Owner, and a Certified Tourism Ambassador.

Goodman, John

Title: Vice Chairman

Company: Customer Care Measurement & Consulting

Mr. Goodman is Vice Chairman of Customer Care Measurement and Consulting (CCMC).    The universal adages, “It costs five times as much to win a new customer as to keep an existing one.” and “Twice as many people hear about a bad experience as a good one.” are both based on his research.  He helped lead the 2022 National Rage Study which was featured by the CBS Evening News as well as the 2021 National Delight Study, providing the latest data on complaining, service expectations and word of mouth.  He has assisted 45 of the Fortune 100 companies.   Harper Collins published the second edition of his book, “Strategic Customer Service”, in March, 2019.  Harper Collins will publish the second edition of CX 3.0 featuring updates on AI and other technologies as well as research in April 2024.

Grimes, Laura

Title: CEO

Company: Harrington Consulting Group, Inc.

Laura is CEO of Harrington Consulting Group Inc. She is an experienced consultant with over 20 years of successful business planning, project management, traffic engineering and resource management. Laura draws on her dynamic and innovative background in service and manufacturing operations with high-growth industry leaders. She has developed unique operational solutions for companies facing the challenges of managing multiple skills in multiple centers spanning the globe, including site selection and facility design. She is deft at developing customer relationship strategies and drilling those strategies down to operational plans.

Laura, a frequent speaker at conferences, enjoys sharing her passion for customer service and exploring alternative and innovative ways to efficiently and effectively gain loyalty and retain customers. She has taught and lectured at several universities, and has published many articles on different facets of call center management including strategy development, deployment of resources, motivation of associates and forecasting and scheduling.

Laura is an ICMI-Certified Call Center Management Consultant. She earned her master degree in business administration.

Hanson, Brandon

Title: CX & AI GTM & Product Marketing Leader

Company: Qualtrics

Brandon Hanson leads Go-To-Market and Product Marketing for Qualtrics CX, AI & Contact Center Solutions. He joined Qualtrics in 2017, prior to which he worked at Cisco and Adobe. He primary focus is helping organizations build and execute their contact center transformation strategy, with recent engagements in Telco, Financial Services, and Healthcare. He holds an M.B.A. from Duke University and an undergraduate degree from BYU. He loves to snowboard and golf, and he and his wife recently welcomed their third child, a little girl named Sadie.

Hardy-Bowen, Vanessa

Title: Director of Guest Care & Contact Centers

Company: Spirit Airlines

I am an accomplished Senior Leader who is passionate about finding the best way to support our guests, our employees, and our organization in achieving our goals together. As a seasoned veteran of the contact center world, I have endeavored to establish cross functional relationships to show the value of the interactions that we have with guests and the incredible intelligence that can be garnered from it. I am a change agent, who is constantly looking to get a little better every day while driving transformation of the team. With a heart for data and analysis, partnered with wisdom and experience, I help to chart the course for our organization through direct management of the center and a large sphere of influence on the guest experience and corporate direction for our enterprise. Driving change, I stay in tune with how the organization functions, while also establishing plans to de-risk any landmines in the way. A technology junkie, I firmly believe that we need to be on the cutting edge of where the tools that are available to us can improve our world. I am also a huge proponent of ensuring the process that is established is the appropriate process for that tool set and believe that proper deployment is critical to receive the maximum benefit from technology. Old process with new tools doesn't drive transformation! I love sharing from my experience, while learning from the experiences of others to ensure that we all win together.

Haynes, Tonya

Title: CEO

Company: Phoenix Business Group

In 2002, Ms. Haynes launched Phoenix Business Development Group, an IT Project Management and Business Consulting firm focused on supporting Executives and key Stakeholders within Fortune 500 companies align their operations to best serve their customers and employees. Through this initiative, she developed and refined the methodology and approach for transforming service and support; Assess, Align, Customize, Execute.
This methodology was applied to successfully close numerous initiatives, projects, and thus far generated two books: 1) The Serious Entrepreneur’s Play Book; Playing and Winning the Business Game! 2) Customer Service is the Business; Designing a Customer Experience that Align Operations, Motivates People and Activates Innovation! And motivated the “Excellence in Technology” training award from the State of California for curriculum design, workshop facilitation and results in increasing broadband adoption amongst small business owners throughout the state of California.
Tonya sits on several boards aimed at improving the customer experience: 1) Rutger’s Customer Experience (CX), 2) Nice inContact Quality Assurance (QA) and mentors and provides feedback to several Vendors who support the customer service industry. A social entrepreneur at heart, Ms. Haynes speaks, trains, develops curriculums and sits on several non-profit boards that assist unserved and underserved communities.

Heibel, Christa

Title: CEO/Founder

Company: CH Consulting Group

Christa Heibel, President and Founder, CH Consulting Group Since beginning her contact center career as an agent in 1992, Christa has focused on creating solutions that bridge the gap between people and technology. With an innate understanding of the industry's core values – relationships, communication and trust – Christa understands the unique needs of all stakeholders including business leaders, employees and consumers. Having experienced first-hand how technology has revolutionized the industry, Christa believes the contact center of the future will be experiential rather than transactional. With AI and self-service increasingly fulfilling simple tasks, the contact center is becoming a solution center and hub for connections between brands and people, both employees and consumers. Christa has served in nearly every position in the contact center, from telemarketer to CEO, and has built a reputation as an industry insider, thought leader and change maker. Passionate about driving transformations reinforced by quantifiable results, Christa started CH Consulting Group in 2011 to provide comprehensive contact center services driven by her philosophy of cooperation over competition. Since then, she has built a team of industry experts with more than 350 years combined experience and served companies that include Microsoft, Nutrisystem, Deluxe and many more.

Hertz, Etie

Title: CEO

Company: Loris.ai

Etie has over 20 years of experience building & scaling technology-led organizations. He was the founder & CEO of Payment Revolution, acquired by ShopKeep Inc. where he was the CRO. ShopKeep was later acquired by Lightspeed Commerce Inc. (NYSE:LSPD). His next goal is to revolutionize messaging in the CX space at Loris, and believes machine learning paired with human judgment is the future of customer support.

Hurt, Karin

Title: CEO

Company: Lets Grow Leaders

Karin Hurt helps human-centered leaders find clarity in uncertainty, drive innovation, and achieve breakthrough results. She’s the Founder and CEO of Let’s Grow Leaders, a global leadership development firm known for practical tools and techniques for human-centered leaders. A former Verizon Wireless executive with more than two decades of experience in sales, customer service, and human resources, Karin is known for growing courageous leaders, building great cultures, and inspiring high-performance teams. Since 2013, Karin and her husband, David have grown tens of thousands of leaders on every continent (except Antarctica) with their leadership development programs and keynotes. They also provide clean water to the people of Cambodia through their Winning Wells philanthropic initiative. Karin is an award-winning author of five books, including: Powerful Phrases for Dealing with Workplace Conflict: What to Say Next to Destress the Workday, Build Collaboration and Calm Difficult Customers (May 2024) Courageous Cultures: How to Build Teams of Micro-Innovators, Problem Solvers, and Customer Advocates She is the host of the popular LinkedIn show, Asking for a Friend and is the advice column, Courage Coach. She was recently named by Inc. Magazine as a Top 100 Great Leadership Speaker.

Johnson, Chelsey

Title: Education and Quality Manager

Company: Gopher Sport

Chelsey is the Education & Quality Manager for Customer Care at Gopher Sport. With a proven track record in education and quality leadership, she excels in training, coaching, and supporting front-line team members. Her expertise lies in delivering engaging training materials to enhance customer experiences, leading quality assurance initiatives, and ensuring ongoing support for her team.

Kinder, Afshan

Title: CEO

Company: SwitchGear, Ltd. & elevate2Great

Afshan was voted by her clients to be in the ICMI top 25 thought leaders in North America. This recognition stems from her consistent track record of surpassing her clients’ expectations, establishing, and helping them maintain world-class standards in customer experience and employee engagement.

 This is achieved through her innovative strategies that cultivate customer-centric mindsets, bolster leadership capabilities, and streamline customer experience and operations using cutting-edge technologies such as AI.

To ensure high adoption and sustainment of newly introduced changes, Afshan has created a unique leadership and coaching program called the elevate2Great Leadership and Coaching Series or e2G which has been certified by the International Coaching Federation (ICF).

Away from a client’s site, Afshan sits on the GTACC Advisory Board and is a contributing author to 3 books, Call Centers FOR DUMMIES, Game Changing Ideas: 10 Years of SwitchGear Insights, and Amazon Kindle best-selling book, Called to Action. Afshan is also a proud member of the International Coaching Federation (ICF), Women Business Enterprises (WBE) and a requested speaker.

Kindzierski, Lauren

Title: Founder

Company: Working Mama Reset

Lamont, Jon

Title: Director of Care Revenue

Company: Mint Mobile

Jon Lamont is a customer service executive with two decades in the call center and experience launching successful sales operations centers, implementing AI solutions, and delivering significant revenue growth. In his current role as Director of Care Revenue at Mint Mobile, he is responsible for balancing customer retention while expanding existing customer revenue. He has past experience with both in-house and outsourced customer service organizations, including Xerox, Ultra Mobile, Conduent, Viasat, and ACS.

Oflahavan, Leslie

Title: Owner

Company: E-WRITE

Leslie O'Flahavan has helped thousands of people learn to write well for online readers. She has delivered customized writing courses for customer service agents, social media managers, and technical support staff. She is a problem-solver for all the writing-related challenges faced by contact centers: e-mail, chat, social media, and text. She helps contact centers train agents to write well, measure the quality of their writing, and maintain their libraries of canned answers. Recently, she completed a complete overhaul of customer service writing for a global airline’s domestic and international contact centers. In recent years, Leslie was named one of ICMI’s “Top 25 Thought Leaders,” Netomi’s “50 of the Best CX Influencers,” ProcedureFlow’s “Top 30 Customer Service Influencers,” and Engati’s “30 CX Leaders to Follow.” Leslie is a LinkedIn Learning author of six courses: Customer Service: Serving Customers Through Chat and Text, Customer Service: Writing for Social Media, Technical Writing: How to Write a Quickstart Guide, How to Write Customer Service Email and Writing in Plain Language. Leslie is the co-author of Clear, Correct, Concise E-Mail: A Writing Workbook for Customer Service Agents.

Rabold, Doug

Title: Principal Consultant

Company: Bold Ray Consulting

Doug Rabold is a committed CX and ITSM Leader who has led high-performing global teams of up to 350 resources and managed a portfolio of contracts exceeding $60M annual revenue. He is an acknowledged Customer Experience and Employee Experience expert who focuses on growing and developing talent to deliver exceptional service and support. Doug attended University of Illinois, holds numerous certifications and is a Certified Instructor. He has extensive public speaking experience, is a frequent podcast guest, and a contributing author to several publications. Doug is currently serving as Chairman of the HDI National Board of Directors and sits on the ITAM Forum Strategic Advisory Council. Doug was named AOTMP IT Management Professional of the Year in 2021, was a finalist for 2021 HDI Best Service and Support Manager and was selected as People’s Choice Winner for 2018 HDI Manager of the Year. He was named an HDI Top 25 ITSM Thought Leader in 2022, 2023, and 2024. Doug was selected by Customer Experience Magazine as a Top 25 CXMStar Influencer in 2023 & 2024. He is also a 2023 Top 50 CX Influencer by CX Network, AOTMP University Influencer, and added to MattsenKumar’s CX Thought Leadership circle. He was recently named a 2024 ICMI Top 25 CX Thought Leader.

Scheele, Kyle

Title: Accidental TikToker (3M+ Followers!)

Turning 30, artist and speaker Kyle Scheele wanted to do something unusual to mark this milestone. Instead of a birthday bash, he decided to hold a funeral to memorialize the decade of his life that was ending. Building a 16-foot Viking ship out of cardboard, he invited friends to help him set it on fire—a symbolic farewell to his 20s and all the grief, regret, and mistakes that accompanied those years. When the video of his Viking funeral went viral, it encouraged many others to let go of past hurts as well. Moved by the response he received, Kyle planned a second funeral (this time with a 30-foot cardboard Viking ship) and asked people to share the things they carried—the bad choices, disappointments, heartaches, and negative thinking that they wanted to lay to rest. He received more than 20,000 responses from around the world—stories both heartbreaking and hilarious, painful and inspiring.
Scheele's crazy ideas have been featured in the Washington Post, Fast Company, GoalCast, UpWorthy, BuzzFeed, Yahoo! and more. Videos of his projects have been viewed over 200 million times. But what’s even cooler is this: by chasing his own crazy ideas, he's inspired other people to chase theirs.

Smitley, Dan

Title: Consultant

Company: 2:Three Consulting

Dan has been in contact centers for over 20 years and leading WFM for over 15 years. In previous roles he has been the Director of People Analytics and WFM and on the Board of Advisors for SWPP. He is currently a WFM consultant, helping teams think critically about how they can leverage their contact center and WFM teams as strategic assets for their organizations.  

He is passionate about work/life balance and providing flexibility to all levels of employees in the organization. A primary driver for him is the employee experience and how WFM can be the culture champions at any organization. He lives outside of Charleston, South Carolina but was born and raised in Ohio. 

Spurlock, Damon

Title: Director, GMS Workforce Management & Command Center

Company: TechStyle OS

Damon earned his Bachelor of Science in Operations Management at Saint Cloud State University in May 2009. Damon has held various technical consultant and workforce management (WFM) leadership roles in the contact center industry for nearly 15 years. Damon current serves as the Director of Global WFM and Command Center at TechStyleOS in which he leads a team of 25 WFM analysts, supervisors, and managers who supports 1000 contact center employees located across 16 countries servicing North American and European customer markets with 7 languages for a 24/7 business operation.

Streets, Josh

Title: CEO

Company: Scoreboard Group Consulting

Josh Streets is Founder and CEO of Scoreboard Group Consulting, as well as a Sr. Certified Consultant for ICMI. He has spent the last 20+ years in contact center leadership, executive leadership, consulting and advisory. He is widely known as a thought leader in the industry, working alongside many of today's leading brands. Transformation and modernization of customer and employee experiences has been his career long purpose. Josh's engagements traditionally meet at the intersection of CX, AI, Ops & I.T. He is a strategist at heart, who enjoys being the liaison between executives to assess, create and deliver strategy + tactics toward best in class CX. Josh is a sought-after speaker who has presented at many leading industry events over the years including Execs in the Know, ICMI Expo, Quality & Training Conference, GTACC Roundtables, Service Management World, etc. You can always find his most recent thoughts and opinions on the future of contact centers and AI via LinkedIn.

Tedder, Doug

Title: Principal Consultant

Company: Tedder Consulting LLC

Doug Tedder is the principal of Tedder Consulting LLC, an ITSM and IT governance consulting practice. Doug is a strategic, innovative, and solutions-driven service management professional with more than twenty five years of experience across a variety of industries. He is a resourceful, pragmatic, and hands-on leader with a proven track record of success implementing ITSM processes, focusing on value delivery and organizational transformation.

Doug is a Fellow in Service Management (FSM), an ITIL Expert and v2 Service Manager, and a certified ISO/IEC 20000 Consultant Manager. He holds all of the ITIL Capability certificates, and he’s a certified ITIL Foundation trainer. As an active volunteer within the ITSM community, Doug is a frequent presenter at industry user group meetings, webinars, and conventions. He is also a former president of itSMF USA. Follow Doug on Twitter aids="582208847c1fea1404eef533" data-mce-href="http://www.twitter.com/dougtedder">@dougtedder.

Thomas, Daniel

Title: Principal Analyst, Enterprise IT

Company: Informa

Daniel Thomas is Principal Analyst of Enterprise IT at Informa Tech, producing thought leadership content for the HDI and ICMI communities. He has more than a decade of experience researching and writing on the most critical topics of interest for the technology sector, including cybersecurity, AI, data analytics, risk and privacy, networking and digital security policies. He previously served as a Senior Analyst for CyberRisk Alliance and as the Director of Research for GovExec Media in Washington, D.C..

Thomsen, Jim

Title: VP of Customer Success

Company: Showdown Displays

Jim Thomsen has been the VP of Customer Success at Showdown Displays for the past 10 years. His focus is building highly engaged and World-Class teams that are driven to deliver Legendary Customer experiences on every interaction. Jim’s teams have a long history of being recognized for excellence and some of their recent awards are as follows: 2020 Best Contact Center, (ICMI), 2021 Best in Class Runner-Up, (CCW), two consecutive years, 2022 & 2023, winning the Global Gold Medal for Best Customer Service, (Contact Center World). In addition, individual leaders on his team have received Industry recognition with 3 of his managers being named “Best of the Best Contact Center Manager” in 2023, (CCW) along with one of the Senior agents being named “Best Contact Center Trainer”, (ICMI) in 2023. Lastly, Jim has been honored with being named Customer Contact Leader of the Year in 2020, (CCW) and Customer Service Executive of the Year in 2023, (ABA).

Toister, Jeff

Title: President

Company: Toister Performance Solutions, Inc.

Jeff's first customer service interaction ended in a service failure. Vowing to learn from that experience, he became obsessed with customer service. Today, he helps leaders build customer-focused teams. He's written four books including the bestselling The Service Culture Handbook. More than three million people have taken one of his video-based training courses on LinkedIn Learning, including Phone-Based Customer Service. Jeff is a former contact center manager, trainer, and agent who has been recognized as a Top 25 Thought Leader by ICMI for 2024.