Misty Copeland

Featured Keynote Speaker

Misty Copeland, born in Kansas City, Missouri, and raised in San Pedro, California, began ballet at 13. Despite starting late, she quickly excelled, winning the Music Center Spotlight Awards at 15. She trained at San Francisco Ballet School and American Ballet Theatre (ABT), joining ABT in 2001. In 2015, she made history as ABT’s first African American female principal dancer.

A trailblazer in ballet, Misty has starred in Swan Lake, The Nutcracker, and Romeo & Juliet. She has been featured in Vogue, Essence, and 60 Minutes, and has endorsements with American Express, Stuart Weitzman, and Under Armour’s viral I Will What I Want campaign.

Beyond dance, Misty is a bestselling author of Life in Motion, Ballerina Body, and Firebird. She launched the Misty Copeland Foundation in 2022 to promote diversity in ballet. She debuted in Broadway’s On the Town, starred in Disney’s Nutcracker and the Four Realms, and founded Life In Motion Productions.

Recognized with the NAACP Spingarn Medal and Glamour’s Women of the Year, Misty remains dedicated to advocacy, mentoring, and philanthropy, inspiring future generations through dance and storytelling.

Dan Heath

Featured Keynote Speaker

Dan Heath is the #1 New York Times bestselling co-author (or author) of six beloved business books: Switch, Made to Stick, Decisive, The Power of Moments, Upstream, and his latest book, Reset, which debuted in January 2025.

His books have been translated into 35 languages and have sold over 4 million copies worldwide. His writing honors include: One of the best nonfiction books of the year, according to Amazon. One of the best audiobooks of the year, according to Apple. And the Owl Award for Best Business Book of the Year.

Dan also hosts a Top 5 Apple Careers podcast called: “What It’s Like to Be…” In every episode, he interviews someone from a different profession: a couples therapist, a homicide detective, a cattle rancher, and more.

He has an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA from the University of Texas at Austin. He lives now in Durham, North Carolina.

Cassandra Worthy

Featured Keynote Speaker

Cassandra Worthy is a dynamic thought leader in organizational resilience and adaptability, specializing in helping businesses navigate major shifts such as mergers, acquisitions, restructures, and market disruptions. She is the creator of Change Enthusiasm®, a groundbreaking strategy that empowers individuals and organizations to harness emotion as a powerful tool for embracing change.

With over a decade of M&A experience, Cassandra equips leaders with the critical skills needed to drive transformation successfully. Her impactful keynotes and workshops have inspired Fortune 500 companies, C-suite executives, and global organizations, including Procter & Gamble, Allstate, and WeWork, to foster a culture of adaptability and growth.

Casey Brown

Featured Workshop Speaker

Casey Brown is a 25-year pricing geek with a passion to help leaders, entrepreneurs, and sellers command the prices they deserve. She’s helped >1,000 companies generate >$1 billion in incremental profits. In her signature keynote and her best-selling book Fearless Pricing, Casey demystifies customer tactics and arms audiences and readers with practical, ready-to-implement steps to negotiate fearlessly, price confidently, and make more money. Her TED talk has been viewed nearly 4 million times. 

Cheryl Grise

Featured Workshop Speaker (Moderator)

Cheryl is the Global Client Service Partner for The Walt Disney Company. In addition to Cheryl’s role leading EY’s Services at Disney, she also serves as the Global and Americas Women, Fast Forward Executive Sponsor and the Global Entrepreneurial Winning Women Program Executive Sponsor. She is an energetic and forward-thinking transformational leader who is passionate about helping clients navigate significant changes and grow their business in a connected, fast-paced and complex world.

Cheryl has also led the Global Advisory Strategy practice, where she launched the Purpose-Led Transformation team and capability in the marketplace for clients. She co-founded the Beacon Institute at the World Economic Forum in Davos.

Anne Hartslief

Featured Workshop Speaker

Anne is a masterful business builder. She is highly skilled in shifting businesses to realize their unique greatness. Her career trajectory is the result of multifaceted leadership prowess, having worked across multiple sectors both locally and globally.

Anne is a partner at Lockstep and has furthered her business commerce qualification through strategic planning at the UCT Graduate School of Business and is an advanced Theory U practitioner. She has a performance mindset and believes that performance and humanity can and should co-exist.

Victoria Labalme

Platinum Summit Speaker

Victoria Labalme is a master at helping people dramatically elevate their ability to communicate, connect, come alive…and win over the people they serve. 

Her results-driven approach offers a strategic blend of art and business that taps into her decades of performing arts experience. Featured press includes: The Hollywood Reporter, Variety, BBC, CBS, GMA, The New York Times, and Los Angeles Times. 

A member of the Speaker Hall of Fame, a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, and a graduate of Stanford University, Victoria is known for her customized keynotes, VIP workshops and online learning experiences. Her proprietary systems and strategies have been embraced by top teams at more than 700 organizations around the world. 

Founder of Risk Forward®, Rock The Room® and High Performance Communications, she's a trusted consultant to elite leaders and teams, helping them knock their communications and presentations out of the park and deliver their message with the unexpected twist that distinguishes their brand. Learn more at www.VictoriaLabalme.com.

Dr. Sara Mahdavi

Featured Workshop Speaker

Dr. Sara Mahdavi is an International Scholar and Collaborator at Harvard University and a Clinician Scientist and Adjunct Professor in the Temerty Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto.

She received her doctorate from the Faculty of Medicine at the University of Toronto in the field of gene-environment interactions and cardiometabolic disease. She also holds a Master of Science in exercise physiology and has two undergraduate degrees in nutrition and marine biology from Western University.

She is the founding president of DNA Doctors Wellness Institute, specializing in personalized medicine and holistic health. Dr. Sara Mahdavi is a visionary leader, translating complex science into practical tools for a healthier future.

Allison Maslan

Featured Workshop Speaker

Allison Maslan has built 10 successful companies over the past 40 years. She was recently named “One of the 10 Women Entrepreneurs to watch”, by Forbes Magazine. She is the Wall Street Journal Best Selling Author of, Scale or Fail, which is endorsed by Daymond John and Barbara Corcoran of Shark Tank.  

For the past 16 years, she and her team of CEO Business Mentors have helped over 150,000 Founders scale their companies, fast-track their success and create a more freedom-filled life through her company, Pinnacle Global Network, one of the Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Private Companies 4 years in a row. 

Katrina Noelle

Featured Workshop Speaker

Katrina Noelle leads KNow Research, a full-service qualitative consultancy with over 21 years of custom research expertise. She specializes in hybrid methodologies that blend traditional in-person and digital research approaches, serving clients in retail, financial services, and higher education.

As a certified Women-Owned Small Business and California Certified Green Business leader, she champions innovation in research design. Katrina is particularly proud of her commitment to supporting women in the insights community and is Co-Founder of Scoot Insights, a trademarked decision-making methodology rooted in qualitative research. 

Shannon Byrne Susko

Featured Workshop Speaker

Shannon Byrne Susko is a renowned entrepreneur, CEO & Leadership Team coach, and business strategist who has built and successfully exited two high-growth companies. She is the creator of Metronomics, a proven growth operating system that helps CEOs and leadership teams scale with confidence.

A four-time bestselling author, Shannon has written The Metronome Effect, 3HAG Way, Metronomics, and The M Game: The Metronomics Monograph. Her leadership and business acumen have earned her recognition and was inducted into the Top 100 Most Powerful Women in Canada Hall of Fame in November of 2023. Other years recognized: 2018, 2020, 2022.

In 2022, she received the Universal Women’s Network “Game Changer” Award for her contributions to business leadership and growth strategy. Shannon delivers practical, no-nonsense insights on “how’ to grow your business, leadership alignment, and execution strategy.

She holds two degrees in Business and Computer Science from Saint Mary’s University and a Master’s in Computer Science from the Technical University of Nova Scotia. Shannon resides in Whistler, British Columbia, with her husband and three children.

Anamika Varma

Featured Workshop Speaker

Anamika Varma is a seasoned SaaS leader with over 20 years of experience in ERP, having built her career at Oracle-NetSuite. She started by supporting marquee customers and quickly advanced, leading teams with deep industry expertise across Manufacturing, Retail, EdTech, Distribution, and Social Impact.

As Vice President of Customer Success, she heads a global consulting team, driving process optimization and innovation in NetSuite solutions. Passionate about technology and AI, Anamika helps clients streamline operations, unlock new opportunities, and make data-driven decisions.

Her leadership, rooted in accountability and empathy, makes her a trusted force multiplier and turnaround expert. She consistently prioritizes the customer’s voice, ensuring impactful solutions. From her early career to her current role, Anamika remains dedicated to improving processes, driving meaningful change, and shaping the future of enterprise technology.

Barbara Waxman

Featured Workshop Speaker

Barbara Waxman, founder of The Odyssey Group, is redefining how we approach aging. As a gerontologist and coach, she empowers individuals to live longer, healthier, and more purposeful lives. Her work blends coaching, leadership, longevity, and wellness, resulting in the Entrepreneurship Turned Inward™️ (ETI) coaching process, the Seven Lifestyle Levers Assessment™️, and the Longevity Roadmap™️. She also introduced Middlescence as a transformative life stage and authored The Middlescence Manifesto.

Barbara’s insights have been featured in Thrive Global, The Wall Street Journal, Next Avenue, and CBS This Morning. A sought-after speaker and podcast guest, she challenges outdated views on aging, advocating for aligning healthspan with lifespan and rethinking retirement.

She is a faculty member at the Modern Elder Academy, an advisor to the Stanford Center on Longevity, and a board member at ExtraFood.org. Barbara holds a master’s in Gerontology and Public Administration from USC, a degree from Colgate University, and coaching certifications from the International Coach Federation and The Hudson Institute.

Geoff Woods

Featured Workshop Speaker

Geoff is the #1 bestselling author of The AI-Driven Leader and Founder of AI Leadership and The AI-Driven Leadership Collective™, a highly vetted network of executives collaborating to harness AI to build better businesses and better lives.

As the former Chief Growth Officer of Jindal Steel & Power, Geoff's strategic leadership helped the company grow its market cap from $750 million to over $12 billion in just four years. Prior to that, he co-founded the training and consulting company behind The ONE Thing, advising businesses ranging from $10 million to $60 billion in annual revenue.