Speakers
For THINK 11, we’ve gathered visionary speakers from all corners of the business world. You’ll be challenged to expand your traditional methods of thinking, and take home creative ways to take your credit union to the next level.
Jeanne Bliss, Customer Loyalty Expert
Becoming a "Member" Organization to Gain Greater Sales
Author and executive consultant Jeanne Bliss began her career at Lands' End, reinforcing core principles of customer and employee focus during the organization's formative years. Bliss also has served Allstate, Microsoft, Coldwell Banker Corporation and Mazda Corporation.
She now runs CustomerBliss, an international consulting business that coaches executive leadership teams and customer leadership executives on how to put customer profitability at the center of their businesses by getting past lip service to operationally relevant, operationally executable plans and processes. Bliss's many clients include Johnson & Johnson, TD Ameritrade, St. Jude's Children's Hospitals and Bombardier Aircraft. Many others have drawn inspiration from her two best-selling books: Chief Customer Officer: Getting Past Lip Service to Passionate Action and I Love You More Than My Dog: Five Decisions that Drive Extreme Customer Loyalty in Good Times and Bad.
TAKE HOME: How engagement and cross-sales help make more money and build loyalty among current customers and teams.
Virgin America
Porter Gale, Vice President, Marketing
Connecting with Members via Social Media to Grow Organically
With over 20 years of experience working in marketing, advertising and independent filmmaking, Gale joined Virgin America in October 2007, and currently manages the Brand and Online Marketing, In-flight Content and Loyalty teams.
Gale is an innovative marketing strategist and out-of-the-box thinker who believes in pushing creative boundaries. She has extensive experience in partnership marketing, branded content development, social media and more, and is a frequent guest lecturer, panelist and public speaker.
TAKE HOME: How to build loyalty with members via social media and how deeper engagement and cross-sales can increase profitability.
Tony Hawk, Pro Skateboard Legend
Success via Authenticity
Tony Hawk was nine years old when his brother changed his life by giving him a blue fiberglass Bahne skateboard. By fourteen he'd turned pro, and by sixteen he was widely considered the best skateboarder on Earth.
World champion for 12 years in a row, Hawk continues to skate demos and exhibitions internationally, making him the most recognized action-sports figure in the world, and according to some marketing surveys the most recognizable athlete of any kind in the United States. Today, his business skills have helped create a personal brand that includes a billion-dollar video game franchise, successful businesses such as Birdhouse Skateboards, Hawk Clothing, Hawk Shoes and Tony Hawk HuckJam sporting goods.
His Tony Hawk Foundation has donated more than $3.2 million to more than 450 skatepark projects throughout the United States.
Tony regularly appears on television and in films, and hosts a weekly show on Sirius XM. His autobiography, HAWK-Occupation: Skateboarder was a New York Times bestseller. In 2010 Wiley Publishing released How Did I Get Here? The Ascent of an Unlikely CEO.
TAKE HOME: How to find visionary insights and act upon them to grow your business ventures.
American Association of Advertising Agencies
Nancy Hill, President and Chief Executive Officer
A technologically savvy champion of digital marketing tools, as well as a leading voice for increasing diversity, youth education and training in the advertising industry, Nancy Hill has worked with many prominent brands at some of America’s best-known ad agencies on both coasts.
Prior to becoming head of the American Association of Advertising Agencies, Hill served as Chief Executive Officer of Lowe, New York, Executive Vice President, Managing Director at BBDO, New York, as well as in management roles at Doner, Baltimore, Goldberg Moser O’Neill and Hill Holliday, San Francisco and TBWA\Chiat\Day, St. Louis and Los Angeles.
Hill’s personal pursuits include PEOPLE HELPING PEOPLE, the virtual charity founded in 1993 to provide relief after Hurricane Andrew struck South Florida. With no administrative cost or overhead, the charity exemplifies the innovative use of technology to take on projects wherever on Earth they’re needed. Hill is speaking at THINK 11 in appreciation for a donation to PEOPLE HELPING PEOPLE.
Brett King, Author and Strategic Advisor to the Global Financial Services Sector
Banking 4 Tomorrow to Gain Greater Membership Today
An expert on innovation, customer experience and channel distribution strategy, Brett King publishes regularly in his role as industry advisor on Huffington Post, Internet Evolution, FinExtra and his own personal blog Banking4Tomorrow. He is an International Judge for the Asian Banker Retail Excellence Awards and for the Middle-East Business Achievement Awards.
He also has been featured on Bloomberg TV, BBC and CNBC, and in The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, The Economistand other media.
King’s consultancy, User Strategy, focuses on improving customer interaction for leading financial services companies and businesses. King previously led the Asia division for Modem Media/Digitas (part of the Publicis group) and the E-Business service line for Deloitte (Financial Institutions Industry focus). His clients include HSBC, Citigroup, UBS, Standard Chartered, Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, EmiratesNBD, BNP Paribas and many more.
King’s bestselling book Bank 2.0 examines how customer behavior and technology will change the future of financial services.
TAKE HOME: How to use engagement banking to attract new members, and build loyalty among current ones.
Do Something, Inc.
Nancy Lublin, CEO
Zilch: The Power of Zero in Business - How to Accomplish More with Less
Since August 2003, CEO and Chief Old Person Nancy Lublin has overseen DoSomething.org's growth and led the effort to begin awarding more grant money to young people who want to make a difference. She turned the organization from a debt-ridden, "old school" not-for-profit with offices in multiple cities nationwide, to a fast-moving internet-y company capturing the attention of a generation of doers.
Lublin is deeply passionate about DoSomething.org and the activist mission behind the organization. And it's not the only transformational initiative she's launched. Armed with a $5,000 inheritance from her immigrant great grandfather at the age of 23, she founded the organization Dress for Success, which to this day provides women with interview suits, career development training, and boosts in their self-confidence in more than 70 cities in four countries.
Lublin's first book, Zilch: The Power of Zero in Business was released in 2010. It offers insights into how those in the not-for-profit world manage to accomplish more with less.
TAKE HOME: How to optimize your business to provide a better customer experience and improve margins.
Jeff Manning's unique position at the intersection of brand and category marketing combines deep, consumer packaged goods experience with unmatched category marketing credentials.
Known as the Godfather of Got Milk?, Manning helped change the course of the $20-billion milk industry and transform Got Milk? from a local tag line into one of the best known, most beloved campaigns in advertising history. His marketing background also includes such major brands as P&G, Clorox, Pillsbury, Con Agra and Safeway.
In 2005, Manning launched Got Manning? Designed to reignite mature brands and categories, this marketing and branding consultancy has served clients ranging from Hewlett Packard and Jamba Juice to the California Milk Processor Board.
Manning's presentation, "Building Brand Potency," applies Got Milk? to a broad range of consumer branding issues. Audiences at top brands such as Clorox, Hewlett-Packard and Jamba Juice, as well as the American Marketing Association and conferences from the UK to Istanbul, have acclaimed his thought-provoking talent for merging enlightenment with entertainment.
TAKE HOME: How to first attract members, and then market and sell to them.
Valerie Morris, THINK 11 MC, Financial Journalist
This year's THINK MC, Valerie Coleman Morris, has a proven talent for guiding an audience through the latest thinking in business and finance. As a former CNN domestic and international correspondent/anchor, she delivered reports seen by more than 290 million viewers in households and businesses, as well as over airport networks. Morris currently appears on CNN as a personal finance guest expert and is a financial journalist/educator. Her unique point of view about money has been shaped by first-hand experiences with financial customs in cultures from Europe to Asia.
Morris's soon-to-be-released first book, MIND OVER MONEY MATTERS: It's Your Money So Take It Personally™ gives a multi-generation approach and mindset for a financial behavioral change to help families make a sustainable recovery from the recession.
TAKE HOME: How to connect the dots and put insights into action.
HGTV
Susan Packard, Co-Founder and Former COO
Growing Your Leadership Team to Optimize Operations
The visionary network executive behind HGTV and other popular cable channels, Susan Packard understands how to execute, innovate and bring to market big-concept ideas, and then maintain their brands.
As chief operating officer, Packard led HGTV to become one of the fastest-growing cable networks, now available in more than 98 million U.S. homes and distributed in 175 countries. Packard also was instrumental in the development of four additional powerhouse brands-Food Network, DIY Network, Fine Living TV Network and Great American Country (GAC)-that join HGTV to comprise Scripps Networks Interactive, today valued at over $7 billion. More than a brand builder, Packard understands how core values act as a blueprint for what a company stands for and, more importantly, how employees treat one another and balance their lives. Drawing on her experience as a founder and visionary media pioneer, Packard shares with audiences strategies for forging and promoting a brand while gaining customers who'll remain loyal to it.
TAKE HOME: How to build a winning and collaborative team, foster innovation, and instill the right principles to drive business success.
Sir Ken Robinson, Author and Internationally Acclaimed Expert on Creativity and Innovation
The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything in Your Business
Sir Ken Robinson, PhD, is an internationally recognized leader in the development of creativity, innovation, human potential and the people side of organizations, as well as one of the world's leading speakers on these topics. The video of his famous 2006 talk to the prestigious TED Conference has been downloaded more than 5 million times and has been seen by an estimated 200 million people in over 150 countries.
Robinson has worked with governments in Europe, Asia and the USA, with international agencies, Fortune 500 companies and some of the world's leading cultural organizations. He was the central figure in developing a strategy for creative and economic development as part of the Peace Process in Northern Ireland, and one of four international advisors to the Singapore Government for its strategy to become the creative hub of South East Asia.
His latest book, The Element: How Finding Your Passion Changes Everything (Penguin/Viking 2009), is a New York Times best seller and is being translated into eighteen different languages.
TAKE HOME: How to use visionary insights to grow and evolve your business.