Meet ISBM

Stefan is a marketing strategy expert with an interest in collaboration and innovation in B2B markets. Specifically, he studies how firms can balance value creation (e.g., in collaboration with buyers, suppliers, industry peers, employees) with value appropriation. He also studies how technology transforms marketing (e.g., digitalized business solutions, platforms, emerging technologies, licensing).

Stefan Wuyts is Professor of Marketing and Director of the Institute for the Study of Business Markets at the Smeal College of Business, Penn State.

Prior to joining Penn State in 2018, he was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Erasmus University Rotterdam (2003-2004), and member of the faculty at Tilburg University (the Netherlands, 2005-2010) and Koç University (Turkey, 2010-2018). At Koç University, he also served as Director of the Graduate School of Business.

Stefan’s research interests include B2B marketing, innovation, interorganizational relationships, and networks. He is intrigued by the management and governance of complex organizational forms (platforms, alliance portfolios, multilateral alliances, marketing ecosystems), and the impact of digital technology and sustainability on business markets. He coauthored Social Networks and Marketing (MSI, 2007) and coedited The Connected Customer – The Changing Nature of Consumer and Business Markets (Routledge, 2010) and the Handbook of Business-to-Business Marketing (Elgar, 2022). His research was published in Journal of Marketing (JM), Journal of Marketing Research, International Journal of Research in Marketing (IJRM), Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS), Journal of Operations Management, and Journal of Management, among others. Stefan serves as Associate Editor for JM, JAMS, and IJRM, and received several Outstanding Reviewer and Area Editor Awards.

In his research, which is essentially phenomenon-driven, Stefan loves interacting and working with B2B marketing practitioners to identify and address managerially relevant research questions. In his role as ISBM Director, his two top priorities are to (1) stimulate more doctoral students and junior faculty to focus on B2B marketing problems and (2) bridge the worlds of B2B marketing practice and academia.

Associate Professor of Marketing in Smeal College at Penn State, Andrew directs the ISBM PhD Seminar Series (IPSS), B2B Pulse, and doctoral support award competition and programs.

Since 1997, Ralph has worked with firms to build more profitable business marketing practices by connecting practitioners to researchers through educational programs, and counsel. A small sample of the companies he has worked with: DuPont, Deloitte, Honeywell, Timken, Dow, Arkema, IBM, GE, National Starch and Chemical, Parker Hannifin, Swagelok, PPG.

Before joining Penn State, Ralph spent 23 years in B-to-B and consumer marketing, and established a “Virtual University” for marketing at Texas Instruments. He has served as V.P. of Market Communications and Design for TI worldwide, and leader of the TI.com web Team.

Ralph has written for Marketing Management magazine, is active in Executive Education, and the Smeal College MBA program, where he received 11 teaching awards from his students. He teaches B-to-B Marketing, Strategic Brand Management, and Integrated Market Communications. His research focus is on tracking the trends shaping business markets, Business-to-Business brands and ingredient brands.

Specialties: Business-to-Business Marketing, Strategic Brand Management, Integrated Market Communications, Executive Education, Coaching, Networking with thought leaders in academia and business, B2B, B-to-B marketing. His current focus areas are in brand strategy and Integrated Strategic Communications, with a special focus on Ingredient Branding.

One of the foremost experts in B2B innovation, Dan has trained tens of thousands of global marketing, technical and sales professionals across every conceivable B2B industry. Dan uses these in-depth workshops and annual coaching web-conferences to continue refining his methods, as project teams apply them in the crucible of real-world practice.

In recent years, Dan Adams and his team have conducted significant original research into the behaviors that drive B2B organic growth. Because he regularly works with the largest B2B firms in the world, he can help your leadership team establish a dependable roadmap to profitable, sustainable organic growth.

He helps firms understand what customers want in a new product, launch their new product explosively and critically, avoid “landmines” that blow up high-stakes projects (de-risking).

Dan is the author of “New Product Blueprinting: The Handbook for B2B Organic Growth.” An award-winning speaker, he has lectured at Wharton’s Executive MBA program and other American & European universities and is a popular industry keynote speaker.

Over the past decade, Ralph has mentored and trained thousands of B2B marketers, leading global growth initiatives for GE, DuPont, Pioneer, Axalta, Samsung, Pfizer and others, and most recently through strategic workshops in collaboration with ISBM.

Ralph began his career in agency management where he developed his passion for brands working on big brands like Kellogg’s, Del Monte, Nestle, Pizza Hut, Mattel, and Coca-Cola. A long-time collaborator with ISBM, he frequently lectures at the VCU Brand Center, the University of Richmond, the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, Northwestern University and other institutions.

Ralph is a strategic thought leader focused on helping companies optimize go-to-market, brand and experience strategies for growth.

Gerry Katz is a recognized authority in the fields of marketing, market research and new product development.

Gerry joined AMS in 1992 and pioneered the field now known as Voice of the Customer market research. For many years, Gerry has taught practical, hands-on methods for gathering and using Voice of the Customer (VOC) information to both individuals and teams. He has taught thousands of professionals around the globe about the theory and practice of VOC and other state-of-the-art innovation research methods.

If you are seriously looking to get a more rigorous, in-depth understanding of customer needs regarding your organization’s products and services, Gerry can help. During his time at AMS, he served dozens of clients across many diverse B2B industries including, industrial products, financial services, medical devices, and many others. His company’s most recent work identifying product improvement insights from customer-generated content such as product reviews and customer chat, has opened a new source of innovation ideas for businesses.

Katz has been a perennial contributor to the market research and innovation industries. Over the years, he has participated in nearly 100 industry conferences—most notably as chair of the Product Development and Management Association’s (PDMA) annual Voice of the Customer conference—offering workshops, presenting new methods, and highlighting client successes. For 9 years he served on the PDMA board, chairing its Body of Knowledge committee. He has written numerous articles for PDMA Visions, Quirk’s Marketing Research Review, and other industry and academic publications, and has contributed important chapters to textbooks on product development, cementing reputation as a respected and influential leader in the world of market research and innovation.

With over 35 years of experience in B2B Sales AND Marketing, Vince offers a unique and solid perspective of how they should work together to maximize your customer experience.

Additionally, when serving as a Virtual Chief Marketing Officer (VCMO), he can assess your marketing methodologies and provide recommendations for improving your overall approach. He has saved his clients thousands of dollars in wasted execution by assessing and making valuable adjustments to their tactical design.

Laura Patterson is a growth strategy consultant to business leaders. Obsessed with helping companies take a customer-centric, data-to-insights, performance management approach to growth and to making business decisions with more confidence. She is a trusted advisor with global customers within the technology, cybersecurity, financial services, life sciences, and manufacturing industries.

Laura collaborates with firms to accelerate profitable customer-centric growth by mobilizing leading-edge analytics, leveraging proven frameworks and processes, and integrating lessons from best practices. Her clients tap this expertise to foster faster, more confident decisions, organizational alignment, operational excellence and to build critical skills. As a trusted partner with scores of firms since 1999, she works side-by-side in creating and driving strategies that produce results.

Laura co-founded VisionEdge Marketing in 1999, serving customers like Cisco, Elsevier, Howden, Kennametal, Tektronix, Southwest Airlines Cargo, and over 200 more worldwide. Her expertise is regularly tapped by business associations such as the 4As, ANA, Direct Marketing Association (DMA), Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM); academic institutions like Dartmouth, Oklahoma State, Truman State; and, publishers such as CEO Refresher, MarketingProfs, Nimble and academic journals; Marketing Technology companies such as Allocadia, Engagio, Hive9, and Marketo.

Joanne is best known for her practical, pragmatic approach and her ability to build courage, confidence, and conviction for businesses to take bold pricing actions.

She is the author of The Price Negotiation Playbook, The Pricing and Profit Playbook, and Pricing in a Crisis Playbook. Joanne is on the faculty of the Professional Pricing Society (PPS) and The Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM).

She is an expert in pricing and profit management and transformation, product management and development, cross-functional collaboration and leadership, business transformation and change management, customer loyalty initiatives, B2B marketing strategies, marketing and customer segmentation, and team leadership.

Michael Ahearne is a Professor of Marketing and C.T. Bauer Chair in Marketing at the University of Houston, where he also serves as the Research Director of the Stagner Sales Excellence Institute. Mike’s research focuses on enhancing the performance of salespeople and sales organizations. He has authored over 50 articles in prestigious journals such as Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, and Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes. Recognized by the American Marketing Association as one of the most research-productive scholars in marketing, his work has been featured in major publications, including the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, Fortune, and INC Magazine.

Sundar Bharadwaj is the Coca-Cola Company Chair of Marketing and Professor, Department of Marketing in the Terry College of Business at the University of Georgia.

Sundar’s Research Interests Include:

• Marketing Strategy, Performance and Metrics
• Customer Management
• Innovation
• Marketing-Finance Interface
• Branding and Brand Management & Strategy

Robert G. Cooper is one of the most influential innovation thought-leaders in the business world today. He pioneered many ground-breaking discoveries in product innovation, including the Stage-Gate® Idea-to-Launch Process, now implemented by almost 80% of North American companies. Having spent 40+ years studying the practices and pitfalls of 3000+ new product projects in thousands of companies, he has assembled the world’s most comprehensive research in the field of product innovation management.
A prolific author, Dr. Cooper has published 100+ academic articles and thirteen books, including the best-selling Winning at New Products, now in its 5th edition. He is the recipient of numerous prestigious awards including the Crawford Fellow from the Product Development and Management Association (PDMA) and the Maurice Holland Award from the Industrial Research Institute (IRI). He is also Professor Emeritus of Marketing and Technology Management at the DeGroote School of Business at McMaster University.
The “batting average” for managers in picking winning projects for Development is about 25%.

A toss of a coin would be better: 50%!

Cooper’s Value Based Scorecard, based on the NewProd model, is even better, closer to 80%.

Dr. Liam Fahey has an extensive academic background and 30 years of practical experience in a variety of industries around the world. His corporate clients include AT&T, Baxter, Bausch & Lomb, Corn Products, DaimlerChrysler, DuPont, Emerson Electric, GE, GM, Hartmarx, Honeywell, IBM, J&J, Lucent, 3M, Marriott Hotels, Motorola, National Starch and Chemical, Nortel, P&G, Pfizer, Schering‐Plough, Texas Instruments, The Saint Paul Companies, Unisys, USG, US West, and Whirlpool. He has delivered executive education for more than 10 universities around the globe.

Dr. Liam Fahey’s consulting, teaching, research and writing focus on enabling organizations to win in the marketplace through enhanced marketplace intelligence and insight. His custom-designed intelligence and insight workshops have enabled organizations to develop a deeper understanding of their emerging and potential competitive environments; understanding that makes a real difference in their thinking, decisions, and action. The difference is reflected in the development of new points of view about the future, new strategy options, new modes of strategy execution, and new organization-wide capabilities.

He is also the founder and leader of LFI’s Intelligence Leadership Forum. The Forum allows intelligence and insight practitioners to learn from each other, to hone their personal and professional skills and to augment their organizations’ thinking and decision capabilities. Liam is the author or editor of eight books and more than fifty articles or book chapters, including Competitors: Outwitting, Outmaneuvering, and Outperforming and The Insight Discipline: Crafting New Marketplace Understanding that Makes a Difference.

Prior to co‐founding LFE, he taught at Northwestern University’s J.L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management and at Boston University. He serves as Professor of Management Practice at Babson College. He holds a Ph.D. degree from the University of Pittsburgh.

Bio-Science:
Competitive Analysis – The firm was concerned its competitive future might be radically different than its prevailing competitive context. Liam Fahey developed an education experience, using scenarios, to craft alternative competitive futures and derive contingent strategies.
Chemical Products:
End-to-End Marketing Strategy – The firm decided to correct some obvious deficiencies in marketing. Liam Fahey co-developed a multi-year four-day program focused on end-to-end strategic marketing – from analyzing competitive market trends to the details of strategy execution.
Industrial Technology:
Increasing Value to Customers – The firm’s market diagnostics indicated that customers unexpectedly rated its products and services poor compared to rivals. Liam Fahey co-developed a two-day workshop that enabled intact teams to develop and take to market new customer value propositions for several of the firm’s major products.
Professional Services:
Attaining Deeper Insight – The firm established a stretch goal for its analysis teams: to extract greater value from its client analysis projects. Liam Fahey developed a two-day program that walked the analysis teams through all the phases of crafting and leveraging insight and enabled the teams through a series of breakout sessions to apply the learning to specific analysis projects.

Srinath Gopalakrishna is a Professor of Marketing, David and Judy O’Neal MBA Professor and Faculty Director of the execMBA at the Robert J. Trulaske, Sr. College of Business, University of Missouri. He is a dedicated scholar with a focus on business-to-business marketing and sales management. Specifically, his research has examined the integration of marketing communication elements, measuring the economic returns from marketing expenditures, analyzing sales motivation/incentive programs and assessing the drivers of intermediate and overall sales outcomes. Several of his research projects have been funded by the Marketing Science Institute. His publications include articles in the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, and International Journal of Research in Marketing, among other journals. He also serves on the editorial review board of the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing and Journal of Personal Selling and Sales Management.

Gopalakrishna has been the recipient of the College’s Distinguished Research Fellowship Award, the O’Brien Award for Teaching Excellence and our University’s William T. Kemper Fellowship for Teaching Excellence. He has taught in several of Trulaske’s Study Abroad programs and has consulted with industry partners on research and teaching.

Sandy Jap is the Sarah Beth Brown Endowed Professor of Marketing at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University. Her research focuses on strategic partnering, business-to-business management, channels of distribution, and go-to-market strategies. She has published widely across the top academic journals in marketing and management science. She is among the top 2% of most cited scholars and scientists worldwide across 22 scientific fields and 176 subfields.

She has received numerous awards, including a Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Marketing Association (AMA) Interorganizational Special Interest Group, the Innovative Marketing Award from the Marketing Management Association, and many paper awards for her contributions and service to the academy. She is an AMA and Marketing Science Institute (MSI) fellow as well as at the Institute for the Study of Business Markets (ISBM) at the Pennsylvania State University and the Direct Selling Education Foundation (DSEF). She is currently an MSI board member, and a former editor-in-chief at Marketing Letters.

She is the author of Partnering with the Frenemy, and co-author of A Field Guide to Channel Strategy; both are how-to books on going to market strategy. She is a former faculty member at the MIT Sloan School of Management and the Wharton School. Her PhD is from the University of Florida (Go Gators!).

Wes Johnston is the CBIM RoundTable Professor of Marketing in the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University. He is also the director of the Center for Business and Industrial Marketing at GSU. He is the editor of the Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing.
Professor Johnston is also a consultant to Ascension Management Consulting Company in the areas of strategic marketing and sales enablement.

Ajay K. Kohli is the Gary T. and Elizabeth R. Jones Chair, and Regents Professor (Marketing) at the Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology.
His research focuses on customer centricity, sales management, B2B marketing, and brand management.

Dr. Kohli has served as Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Marketing, the premier broad-based academic journal in Marketing. He currently is Associate Editor, Journal of Marketing and Area Editor, International Journal of Research in Marketing.

Dr. Lilien is Distinguished Research Professor Emeritus of Management Science and former Chairman of the Management Science Department. He is also co-founder and Former Research Director of the Institute for the Study of Business Markets, the world’s leading institution focusing on fostering research in non consumer markets. Dr. Lilien is the author or co-author of more than 20 books (including Marketing Models with Phil Kotler and Marketing Engineering with Arvind Rangaswamy) and over 120 professional articles primarily in the areas of industrial marketing, new product development, marketing models, and bargaining theory.

Dr. Lilien’s research interests are in marketing decision support, marketing engineering, market segmentation, new product modeling and marketing-mix issues for business products, bargaining and negotiations in business markets, modeling the industrial buying process, and innovation diffusion modeling.

V. Kumar (VK) is the Professor of Marketing and the Goodman Academic-Industry Partnership Professor, Goodman School of Business, Brock University, ON, Canada. He has held/holds several Distinguished Endowed Faculty Positions in the U.S. and Distinguished Fellowships across universities worldwide, including being the Chang Jiang Scholar, HUST, Wuhan, China; and the Hagler Fellow, Texas A&M University, USA. VK has also been honored as a Legend in Marketing (along with Dr. Philip Kotler and Dr. Jagdish Sheth) through the 10-Volume Legends in Marketing series published by Sage Publications with commentaries from scholars worldwide. Professor Kumar has published over 300 papers in scholarly journals and over 30 books, received over 20 Lifetime Achievement Awards and over 25 Research and Teaching Excellence Awards. Professor Kumar has served as the Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Marketing (2014 to 2018) and serves/served as the Department Editor of POM, the Consulting Editor of JIBS, and the Senior Consulting Editor of Elsevier Marketing Journals. Global Fortune 500 firms have implemented many of VK’s ideas and models in multiple areas of marketing and operations, which have resulted in gains of over multi-billion dollars.

Das Narayandas is the Edsel Bryant Ford Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. His academic credentials include a Bachelor of Technology degree in Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay (IITB), a Post-Graduate Diploma in Management from the Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (IIMB), and a Ph.D. in Management from Purdue University.

Renowned Professor of Marketing Venkatesh “Venky” Shankar joined SMU Cox as the new Harold M. Brierley Endowed Professor with the Brierley Institute for Customer Engagement and also as a Professor of Marketing at the Cox School in January 2024. The Brierley Institute for Customer Engagement is the world’s first academic institute created to advance knowledge of and improve business practices in customer engagement. As part of the Brierley Institute’s leadership team, Shankar works closely with Institute Director Brad Harraman and Institute benefactor Hal Brierley, who serves as executive in residence of the Brierley Institute and continues to impart his many years of customer engagement expertise and thought leadership. The Brierley Institute enables MBA candidates studying marketing to specialize in customer engagement and then pursue successful careers that will shape the future of customer loyalty strategies.

Shrihari (Hari) Sridhar is the Senior Associate Dean of Mays Business School. He is a Professor of Marketing and holds the Joe Foster ’56 Chair in Business Leadership at Mays Business School.

Dr. Sridhar’s research focuses on the financial and socio-economic impact of marketing strategy, and the causal effects of marketing interventions. His research covers business-to-business/sales, healthcare, education, media markets, and online/mobile platforms.

Dr. Sridhar is currently serving as the Editor in Chief of the Journal of Marketing and has served as Associate Editor and Area Editor at Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Marketing Research. His work has appeared in Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Marketing Science, Quantitative Marketing and Economics. Dr. Sridhar’s research has won the Financial Times Responsible Business Education Award, AMA-EBSCO-RRBM Award for Responsible Research, and been a finalist for the Marketing Science Institute/H. Paul Root Award, the Paul Green Award. Dr. Sridhar’s research is also featured in Booz & Co., Forbes, Fox News, Harvard Business Review, Houston Chronicle, National Public Radio (NPR), Reuters Inc, and Sloan Management Review.

Dr. Sridhar was recognized with the Rajan Varadarajan Award for Early Career Contributions to Marketing Strategy Research in 2014. He was chosen as Marketing Science Institute (MSI) Young Scholar in 2013, MSI Scholar in 2020, and ISBM Distinguished Research Fellow in 2024. At Texas A&M University, he was recognized as a Presidential Impact Fellow in 2018, and a Chancellor’s EDGES Fellow in 2021 for his scholarly research impact. He is an award-winning teacher recognized by Texas A&M University and Poets and Quants and also co-author of two books titled Focus: How to Plan Strategy and Improve Execution to Achieve Growth, and Marketing Strategy: Based on First Principles and Data Analytics. He has advised numerous companies such as the ABS Group, Avery Dennison, DistributionNOW, Dow Chemicals, Microsoft, P-66, Schlumberger, SNC- Lavalin, Sodexo E&R, St. Gobain, Seattle Times, Sysco Foods and TEEX on strategy and data science.

Prior to Texas A&M, he worked at the Broad College of Business at Michigan State University and Smeal College of Business at Penn State University. He holds a B.E. in Mechanical Engineering from R.V. College of Engineering in Bangalore, India, an MS in Engineering Management from the University of Missouri- Rolla and Ph.D. from University of Missouri-Columbia.

Raji Srinivasan is a professor in the Department of Marketing and a Jack R. Crosby Regents Chair in Business Administration at The University of Texas at Austin’s McCombs School of Business. Her expertise centers on organizational innovation and marketing metrics, including such topics as new product development, market entry and exit strategies, and the financial performance of companies.

Srinivasan has also served the school as associate dean for diversity and inclusion.

Rajendra Srivastava is the Former Dean of the Indian School of Business (ISB) and the Novartis Professor of Marketing strategy and Innovation. He comes with an experience of over 30 years as an academic and administrator. He has held several tenured faculty and administrative positions during his career. Before joining the ISB, he was Provost and Deputy President of Academic Affairs at Singapore Management University.

Gerard J Tellis (PhD Michigan) is Neely Chaired Professor of American Enterprise, Director of the Institute for Outlier Research in Marketing, Director of the Center for Global Innovation, at the USC Marshall School of Business. Dr. Tellis is an expert in innovation, advertising, social media, new product growth, and global market entry. He has published 7 books and over 200 papers (http://www.gtellis.net) that have won over 30,000 citations in Google Scholar. His publications have won over 25 awards. He is Past-President ISMS and was an Associate Editor of Marketing Science and Journal of Marketing Research.

In his role as Professor of Marketing at Georgetown University, Bob has taught courses in Strategic Market Segmentation, Marketing Research, New Product Development, Marketing Strategy, and the Customer Analytics Practicum. Bob has held a variety of leadership positions at Georgetown University including the School of Continuing Studies, the Georgetown Institute for Consumer Research, the Executive Master’s in leadership, a Master of Science in Business Analytics, and a Master of Science in the Environment and Sustainability Management.

Are you looking to optimize your go-to-market resources? Are you spending the right amount to keep your best customers – or too much? Do you know who your best customer are?

Bob has over 50 publications in the areas of new product development, market segmentation, organizational buying behavior, business-to-business marketing, and forecasting. His book, New Product Development: Managing and Forecasting for Strategic Success, was a featured selection of the Fortune Book Club and his book New Product Success Stories: Lessons from Leading Innovators has been published in several languages.

Dr. Robert J. Thomas is a Professor of Marketing at Georgetown University. He is also the Founder and Executive Director of the Center for Professional Development and Innovation; and Co-Founder and Executive Director of the Georgetown Institute for Consumer Research. Bob serves on the editorial boards and is an active member in numerous academic associations. He has designed and taught executive education seminars in the U.S. and several countries and has consulted with over 50 organizations in a wide variety of industries and cultures, including both consumer and B2B products and services.

David J. Bland is the founder and CEO of Precoil, an innovation consulting firm that helps leaders make better decisions when outcomes are uncertain. He is the co-author of Testing Business Ideas, an internationally bestselling book translated into more than 20 languages, and his work has been featured in Harvard Business Review. David has guest lectured at Harvard, Stanford, Yale, UC Berkeley, London Business School, and other leading institutions.

David works with leadership teams to reduce risk before committing significant capital. He created the Precoil EMT System (Extract–Map–Test), a decision readiness standard that helps organizations surface hidden risk, separate signal from noise, and make clear evidence backed decisions. This work has generated millions of dollars in new growth at DuPont and has been nominated for an industry award. Other clients include, but are not limited to, Adobe, Behr, GE, HP, IBM, Mazda, Toyota, and Walmart.

David also gives back to the community by teaching at several Silicon Valley accelerators, where he helps founders rapidly test new business models and avoid costly early stage mistakes.

Kristyn leads the AMS’s Insights for Innovation practice. With over 20 years of consulting experience, she helps B2B and consumer-facing companies use customer insights to develop more successful products, services, and experiences.

Kristyn is a recognized leader in advancing VOC methods, including pioneering the use of AI-powered techniques to uncover customer needs with greater speed, depth, and scale. She specializes in in-depth interviewing, ethnographic research, and helping teams prioritize what matters most to customers to fuel innovation.

She also trains and coaches organizations to build their own in-house VOC capabilities. Kristyn serves on the PDMA Executive Board of Directors and is a frequent speaker at leading industry conferences and podcasts. She has also guest lectured at institutions including MIT Sloan and the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.  

Co-founder and President of Aperture.ai, a data analytics company with the mission of helping innovators better connect their unique technologies with unmet market needs.  Prior to founding Aperture in 2019, Jonathan spent 15 years consulting on innovation and organic growth with senior executives at some of the most sophisticated technology organizations in the world – from startups to universities to Fortune 500 manufacturers. 

Frustrated by the lack of meaningful, data-driven insight informing strategic growth, Jonathan and the Aperture team set out to create a new approach built on novel data, software, and processes that have been field tested to deliver real, measurable success.   They are working at the cutting edge of data mining, natural language processing, distributed architecture, and innovation using AI-powered analytics for identifying and analyzing unmet needs, market disruptions, technologies, and company capabilities to provide novel and powerful perspective to guide sales and marketing teams and innovation and R&D leaders. 

Christopher demystifies complex AI concepts, providing practical strategies that empower marketers to achieve breakthrough results. Christopher’s insights on leveraging AI for data analysis, content creation, and strategic decision-making have shaped five key trends in the marketing industry: Google Analytics adoption, data-driven marketing and PR, modern email marketing, marketing data science, and AI/machine learning in marketing. His journey in AI began in 2013, a decade before tools like ChatGPT brought the technology into the mainstream, giving him a deep understanding of its potential and practical applications. 

As co-founder and Chief Data Scientist of Trust Insights, Christopher leads a team of experts dedicated to helping businesses unlock the full potential of their data using cutting-edge AI solutions. His proven track record of success includes building AI-powered systems that have delivered double-digit ROI for prominent brands such as Cisco Systems, T-Mobile, Citrix Systems, GoDaddy, AAA, McDonald’s, Twitter, and many others. He is a 2025, eight-time IBM Champion in IBM Data and AI and co-host of the award-winning Marketing Over Coffee marketing podcast. He is a published author in the Journal of Applied Marketing Analytics, and his work is also reflected in over two dozen marketing books, including the bestselling “Almost Timeless: 48 Foundation Principles of Generative AI“.

Bernhard Ritz is a results-driven business and technology executive with a distinguished track record in corporate strategy, business development, and operations. As the founder and CEO of Ainzel, an Enterprise AI platform that integrates Virtual AI Agents into businesses, he is at the forefront of AI innovation.  Bernhard and Ainzel are leading the future of AI in ACM (AI Capability Management).  Based in Berwyn, PA, Bernhard combines strategic vision with technical expertise to drive impactful change. With 22 years at SAP in key roles and as President of Palturai Inc., he has successfully navigated both large corporations and startups, excelling in strategic partnerships, market penetration, and team building. Fluent in German and English, he holds a Master’s degree in Business Information Science from the University of Mannheim, Germany. Known for his exceptional team-building and executive communication skills, Bernhard consistently drives strategic change and innovation.

Stacy Whisel is President of Godfrey Advertising and has more than 25 years of marketing and agency experience. Her background in market research and media shapes her approach to marketing, ensuring programs are grounded in insight and built to deliver measurable results. During her career at Godfrey, she helped establish and lead the agency’s analytics, digital media, and search services.  

Godfrey is a B2B marketing agency that works with industrial companies in complex industries. The agency’s experienced team helps clients build strong brands, enter new markets, launch new products, and create sales opportunities. Its integrated services span research and strategy, branding, creative, content, public relations, and demand generation. The result is marketing that aligns brand and demand, addresses real challenges, and drives impactful business outcomes.

JT Mudge is an award-winning futurist passionate about sustainability, ethics, and ancestral futures. He has a master’s of science in Foresight from the University of Houston, where he is also an adjunct professor teaching foresight and change theory. 

Foresight and futures studies allows us to explore what is possible. It gives us the vision to anticipate what could be around the next corner. Most importantly, it gives us the tools to not just anticipate, but to create better futures that are more sustainable, inclusive, equitable, and resilient. 

As an award-winning futurist and strategist, JT has over 25 years of consulting experience.  JT advises organizations on strategy and foresight.  He has worked with numerous NGO’s governments, and corporations including the US CDC, UNDP, U.S. CDC, The Nature Conservancy, Pew, Apple, and Samsung.