Visionary Headliners, Rockstars &
Fab Facilitators

Jen is the Chief Futurist at Ford where she leads discussions on long-term thinking, planning and strategic development. By researching demographic shifts, identifying market outliers and developing data driven scenarios for the future, she challenges her colleagues to think through a broad range of possible narratives before settling on a plan of action.

Kelsi leads Sustainability Strategy and Business Architecture at Cisco, a role that puts her at the intersection of sustainability and technology. She recently led the development of the company’s next-generation environmental strategy, and her team works across the Cisco ecosystem to accelerate its strategic priorities and to integrate the company’s sustainability goals with its culture of ongoing innovation.

Maria-Alkistis (Alki) is the Innovation Strategist for InterSystems, with expertise in blending behavioral science with emerging technologies. With a diverse background spanning public, private, and social sectors, she has held leadership roles at Harvard, Fortune 500, and startup companies. Alki holds graduate degrees from Harvard and Thunderbird. She is the host of the popular Behavioral Science Series, and as an ex-professional basketball player, she finds joy making things that matter, fun.

Vishnu has led product strategy and innovation teams both in the physical and software worlds in 3 different Fortune 500 companies. His multi-disciplinary experience in engineering, manufacturing, program management and marketing worlds helps him convince organizations cross-functionally to embrace new innovations with a customer-first mindset. He believes finding a balance between a collaborative, startup-like mindset within his teams against the backdrop of established corporate expectations can lead to high employee satisfaction and real customer value.

Rebecca has over 17 years’ experience in the sustainability field, having served in a wide range of roles within media, non-profit, consulting and corporate in-house teams. She has advised Fortune 500 companies on stakeholder engagement on sustainability, helping them to drive strategy via stakeholder dialogue and collaboration. As Head of Sustainability for the global semiconductor company Marvell, she leads the firm’s sustainability strategy and engagement with investors, customers and employees on environmental and social issues.

Kevin is a rising leader in MilliporeSigma’s Sustainability and Social Business Innovation group. He is spearheading the strategic development of a supply chain sustainability program aiming to reach climate neutrality by 2040. His challenge to revolutionize supply chain sustainability is not unique, but he aims to accomplish these milestones through partnerships and co-innovations with engaged suppliers.

Dr. Roben oversees the Office of Innovation & Commercialization to establish a campus-wide innovation platform in service of three goals- 1) build a systemic and sustainable innovation culture, 2) create a vibrant regional ecosystem, and 3) accelerate the commercialization of UC San Diego inventions. Working with the Vice Chancellor for Research in this position since June 2015, Dr. Roben is transforming the functions provided by the Technology Transfer Office, Industry Research Alliances, and Industry Contracting into an integrated organization to include patenting, strategic corporate research partnering and industry contracts.

Fred is one of the leading thought leaders in the sustainability field with more than two decades of experience focused on water and resource management. He is able to bring together a system thinking and data driven approach to tackling some of the complex sustainability challenges.

David leads Wells Fargo Securities’ sustainable finance cross-product origination and structuring practice. He focuses on advising companies in the diversified industrials, energy, power, and infrastructure sectors.

Kevin has been a thought leader in Sustainability for over a quarter century for Fortune 500 Companies. His experience in the development and implementation of sustainability processes and practices give him an informed perspective on the business value of sustainable practices. Kevin was named to the inaugural list of the Purposeful 50 ESG influencers who are driving change and received the Wisconsin Sustainability Champion Award. Under his leadership, Oshkosh Corporation has been on the DJSI World Sustainability Index for 5 consecutive years and recognized as One of the World’s Most Ethical Companies” for the ninth consecutive year.

Cassie has spent the last 19 years rising as an innovation thought leader with world’s largest private brand development company, where she has partnered with some of the world’s leading grocery retailers to help them build their strategy, talent, structure, and processes to stay competitive and become more innovative in their brand & product development efforts. Globally she has been invited to consult and share on her experience as an innovation leader by leading retailers, suppliers and government trade associations across North America, Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and Africa.