About our Advisors

Jo'Ann Alderson

In a world of send, reply and you've got mail, Jo'Ann Alderson is one of the few specialists in communicating in a faceless and a face-to-face world. Through her innovative work and hands-on approach her client have measurably exceeded their sales targets, attained the highest levels of customer satisfaction in their industry and reduced costs. On the Board of Governors and Patient Care Quality Committee of Mt. Sinai Hospital Alderson's professional career is enhanced with a Performers Certification from Trinity College, University of Toronto; studies with Second City; Certification in Leadership and Sales Effectiveness from Management Resource Group, Boston and The McQuaig Institute in Toronto. She is also a Professional Member of the Canadian Speakers' Association.

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Tripp Babbitt

Tripp Babbitt is a systems thinking interventionist who helps service executives discover better ways to make the work work. His 15-year-old company Bryce Harrison Inc. conducts interventions with service organizations (public and private and the service side of manufacturing) and leverages the Vanguard Method to improve service and cut costs.

Before partnering with Vanguard, Babbitt consulted with service organizations using Continual Improvement (Deming-based transformation) and Lean Six Sigma as a Black Belt and Master Black Belt. He has also served as a senior executive in a technology company (Fortune 500), state government (CIO) and mid-sized industrial distributor. Babbitt served as president of the largest Deming Users group in the United States, IQPIC (Indy Quality Productivity and Improvement Council).

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Mark Ballard

Mark Ballard is Co-Founder and Co-CEO of Sugardaddy's Sumptuous Sweeties®, the award-winning, luxe brownie gifting company. In its fourth year of operation and through its multi-channel business: Sugardaddys.com, 1.888.4. I want 1, and Sugardaddy's Flagship Store, Sugardaddy's has received unprecedented recognition which has fueled Sugardaddy's customer-base. This includes editor's picks in more than 40 national publications; partnerships with NeimanMarcus.com and Saks.com; and TV features including Rachael Ray, Ellen, and Food Network's Throwdown with Bobby Flay where Sugardaddy's was crowned Throwdown winner. Prior to Sugardaddy's, Ballard was a corporate VP and an executive founding team member of Ann Taylor's Direct division which launched AnnTaylor.com and AnnTaylorLOFT.com. Additionally, Ballard conceptualized, designed, and led Ann Taylor's two other direct businesses: 1 800 DIAL ANN and styleFINDER. Prior to Ann Taylor, Ballard was a founding leader of Gap Inc. Direct. His first direct experiences and skills were gained at Victoria's Secret Catalogue.

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Roy Barnes

Roy Barnes has more than 25 years of experience leading work teams and delivering world-class results in both the profit and non-profit sectors. As Senior Vice President for Strategic Planning and later as Senior Vice President for Customer Experience Development, Barnes managed the introduction and execution of process and strategy management tools, which focused Marriott Vacation Club on building a sustainable operating and strategic infrastructure. In the non-profit sector, he helped several of the nation's oldest conservation organizations with operation and development strategic planning, leadership team alignment and goal-setting. During his multi-discipline career, Barnes worked directly with many of the leading business authorities including: Martha Rogers (Customer Relationship Management), Michael Hammer (Process Re-Engineering), Daryl Conner (Change Management), James Gilmore (Customer Experience Design), Robert Kaplan and David Norton (Balanced Scorecard) and C.K. Prahalad (Strategic Organizational Design). Roy Barnes has experienced it all as he worked his way up through the ranks. Starting as a front desk manager, he led his hotel to the highest guest satisfaction scores in the Marriott system worldwide for two years in a row. Years later, as a member of Marriott Vacation Club International's (MVCI) Executive Team, Barnes spearheaded the customer-focused strategic reorganization and business process redesign effort that helped MVCI achieve an exponential revenue increase from $400 million to over $2.8 billion over eight years.

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Jon Blum

Jon Blum has 16 years of experience in a contact center background in the Fortune 500 arena (Best Buy, American Express Financial Advisors, Carlson Wagonlit Travel, State Farm Insurance, US Bank) resulting in key leadership responsibilities anchored in sales growth, channel marketing and strategic design, operational effectiveness and systems development. Blum was most recently responsible for portfolio growth strategy and execution through 800-GEEKSQUAD (Domestic and International) and 888-BESTBUY, while leveraging stores, Web and Geek Squad Services arms to differentiate in the consumer electronics industry. Over the past 16 years Blum has educated each company, and the clients within, on why customers use the phone and the Web more and more each year, while generating value at every touch point. Blum excels in taking "large scale" concepts and turning them into reality quickly. He is an expert in enterprise level finance and analytics, customer research modeling and desktop and network systems architecture. He also has experience in Customer Experience Blueprint creation and successful vendor/client relationships. Blum has experience in direct and indirect general management of in-house and outsourced contact centers across the world. Blum's column on the Customer Management IQ site is called Driving Strategies Through Improved Customer Experiences.

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David Cliche

David Cliche is Vice President, Global Interactive Marketing for Aon Corporation. He also manages marketing and communications for Aon's Canadian Risk Services division. His current responsibilities include managing the strategic development, planning and execution of the organization's global interactive marketing deployment across all online channels, including its corporate Internet, intranet and plays a key role in the integration of online marketing campaign activities. In addition, Cliche is a key driver in the organization's knowledge management and thought leadership strategies. In Canada, Cliche directs the company's Corporate Communications and Web Communications teams, as well as Sales Operations. He leads the organization's CEM strategies, directs marketing research and analysis, is a key driver of the organization's knowledge management initiatives and is a member of the company's senior management team.

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John Cushman

John Cushman is a 25-year veteran in the information technology field. His background includes extensive sales, marketing and operations experiences that span a number of major defining points in the industry, including the Bell System divestiture, 800 Number Portability, the expansion to new toll-free area codes such as 888, 877 and 866, Payphone Compensation legislation, the AT&T trivestiture, and the explosive use of the World Wide Web for everyday business and information needs. For the past several years, Cushman has been leading the creation of a comprehensive vision, an execution strategy, and the day-to-day field operations for electronic sales and service, a channel that has grown to represent more than $1.5B in annual revenue and over $350M in productivity savings. As Vice President of eSales & Service, he is responsible for all aspects of B2B eCommerce for AT&T.

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Darryl Flores

Darryl Flores is the Workforce Manager for Southwest Business Corporation, a recognized leader in the financial services industry. He has 14 years of experience in all aspects of Contact Center Operations with noted call centers such as USAA and The Scooter Store. He has run call centers from 40 to nearly 3000 agents in multiple sites and specializes in process and metric development. Flores has been published in Call Center Management Review and has delivered learning sessions on myriad of contact center topics. His company was rated number 13 on Insurance Journal's 2007 Top 100 Property Casualty Independent Agencies and the number one Fastest Growing Company by the San Antonio Business Journal.

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Violette R. Jacobson

Violette Jacobsen has spent 20 years in Marketing at the U.S. Postal Service at the operating and headquarters levels. Her field experience includes the top marketing and customer service position in Las Vegas and Washington, D.C. In this role, she introduced a synthesis of emotional intelligence and customer service process reengineering through such programs as Achieving Service Excellence!, which contributed to raising the Washington, D.C. external Customer Satisfaction Measurement score from the mid 50s to the mid 90s over three years. Among her Marketing experiences at USPS headquarters Jacobson has managed direct marketing for Expedited Package Services, selling Direct Mail as a strategic marketing medium and Global Express Guaranteed, the Postal Service's premier international co-branded product with FedEx Express.

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Jeff Lionz

Jeff Lionz started his sales career in 1976 when Silicon Valley was still in its infancy. Throughout his tenure in sales he has worked for small technology start-ups through large, publicly traded global enterprise software firms. Lionz has held various positions ranging from Account Manager, Senior Account Executive, Manager/Director of Business Development, Inside Sales Director, and most recently was the CRM and Lead Operations Director with Fair Isaac Corporation. In April of 2008 in the midst of the largest and most profound change in the technology sector and financial services meltdown, Lionz decided it was time to leave the formal corporate world and launched LionzForce Consulting, a full service Salesforce.com and CRM practice. Lionz focuses on how to leverage various CRM automation applications to achieve optimal results including lead generation campaigns, customer satisfaction initiatives, inside sales, up-sell/Cross Sell campaigns, teams-based sales (inside and field sales organizations) and software maintenance and renewals programs. He works on the development of a new way of seeing CRM called 3D/CRM, which Lionz asserts is a paradigm shift in how to think about CRM Essentials. His talk will focus on some these essentials and will describe what 3D/CRM means.

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Dr. Brooks Mitchell

Dr. Brooks Mitchell is a professor of management at The University of Wyoming and the founder of Snowfly Incentives. He has written and published extensively in the field of turnover and human motivation in the contact center environment. Mitchell is a popular speaker and has been featured in over 100 national publications. He has also been selected numerous times as a "Top Prof" at the University of Wyoming. Dr. Mitchell's column on Customer Management IQ is called Unorthodox Wisdom for the Uncommon Call Center.

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Lisa Schulman

Lisa Schulman is the Sector Leader and Director of Product Development for the Customer Management and Marketing IQ Portfolio at the International Quality & Productivity Center (www.iqpc.com).

First joining IQPC in 1995, Schulman continues to build a strong portfolio of large-scale branded events, including: Call Center Week, Call Center Summit, Customer Feedback Week, Customer Experience Summit, Customer Loyalty/Retention and a legal show E Discovery.

Her contribution to the company was recognized by her peers, and in 2008, Schulman was honored as IQPC's Most Profitable Conference Producer.

Schulman conducts industry research, identifies and secures speakers, writes promotional materials, helps secure sponsorship commitment, conducts on-site interviews, and plays a strategic role in internal marketing/telesales functions.

Schulman also creates and leads Customer Advisory Boards to ensure content quality, relevancy and value for attendees. Her aim is to respond to customer feedback and to provide customers, speakers and sponsors with the best possible customer experience. Schulman has also co-hosted numerous business radio shows, conducting live speaker interviews.

Schulman is on the Advisory Boards for the CMO Council's Customer Experience. Schulman has an MBA in Marketing and Management from Columbia Business School.

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Robert Spector

Robert Spector is the bestselling author and international speaker on world-class customer service. He is the author of The Nordstrom Way: The Inside Story of America's #1 Customer Service Company. Spector is the first and only journalist ever allowed into the inner sanctum of Nordstrom, and wrote The Nordstrom Way to offer insight into how this company became the gold standard of customer service. His other business books include Amazon.com: Get Big Fast and Anytime, Anywhere: How the Best Bricks-and-clicks Businesses Deliver Seamless Service to Their Customers and his newest book The Mom & Pop Store: How the Unsung Heroes of the American Economy are Surviving and Thriving (September 2009).

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Emily Yellin

Emily Yellin is the author of Your Call Is (Not That) Important to Us (Free Press 2009) and Our Mothers' War (Free Press 2004), and was a longtime contributor to The New York Times. She has also written for Time, The Washington Post, The International Herald Tribune, Newsweek, Smithsonian Magazine, and other publications.

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Harsh Zadoo

Harsh Zadoo is enjoying a fulfilling career at Dell, which spans roles in Business Operations, Product group, Process Re-engineering, Data/Product/Services Quality and IT. His recent efforts continue to drive optimization of the company's Services and end-to-end processes. Zadoo's present role extends the wins in the Contact quality space, over to Services Quality in the field. Zadoo's prior work in contact quality provided an unprecedented opportunity to impact quality for Dell's newly formed Small & Medium business segment. His team created a benchmarked Contact Quality Audit program touching Voice, Chat and E-mail agents in several global call centers. Included in this effort was the proposition to base audits on sound statistical principles resulting in a best practice and a universal approach within the Services business.

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