Regarded as the “CEO-Maker,” “DEI Professor,” and the “Cubicle to Corner Office Empress,” Dethra Giles is a workplace and career optimizer who advises organizations and individuals on how to chart their unique paths to success. She is a four-time TEDx speaker who has been named a “Top 100 HR Influencer” by Engagedly, and was selected by HR Gazette’s “HRchat” podcast as one of the “Top 22 Most Influential Figures in HR.” With clients including Kaiser Permanente, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), The Army Corp of Engineers, Louis Vuitton Moët Hennessy, the National Basketball Association (NBA), and the Salvation Army, Giles shares a unique blend of advanced education and industry experience that has been described as “university-tested and industry-approved,” and can be implemented by organizations of any size, and across industries.

Lisa Sun, founder and CEO of GRAVITAS, seamlessly blends stories from her data-driven insights from 11 years at McKinsey & Company and from her experience as an entrepreneur launching an innovative retail brand to offer talks that encourage audiences to choose self-confidence, work to harness their “superpower,” and use gravitas to advance personally and professionally. Sun explores why it’s vital to push past your potential, how to transform an idea into a movement, and why you’ve got to bet on yourself every single day. Sun has always had a passion for style, for inclusivity, and for helping people look and feel their best and was named one of Washingtonian Magazine's Best Dressed Women.

Cassandra “Cassi” Chandler is an innovator, strategist, investigator, and leader who has broken barriers, led diverse teams, and built cultures of motivational leadership and inclusivity at some of the world’s most important organizations, including Bank of America and the FBI. In a career that has included many “firsts” across the U.S. government and financial services industries, she served as the FBI’s first African American female special agent assistant director as well as the Bureau’s first female national spokesperson and director of public and community affairs. In addition to defining the tools motivational leaders need to mindfully build more high-performing cultures, Chandler provides actionable insights on how to move the needle while leading with empathy.

Dr. Hakeem Oluseyi has three degrees, 8 U.S. patents, four E.U. patents and has hosted shows on the Science Channel and on Discovery. But more impressive is his life story. Oluseyi grew up in the roughest neighborhoods of America, learned to survive on the street, and still taught himself Einstein’s theory of relativity from an old set of encyclopedias. At every turn he was presented with a compelling option to quit and yet he persevered. Today, he is a NASA astrophysicist, a global educator, and the author of the highly-anticipated memoir A Quantum Life: My Unlikely Journey from the Streets to the Stars where he recounts his journey from the streets to the stars. Dr. Oluseyi is exclusively represented by Leading Authorities.

A NASA astronaut, Joan Higginbotham is a trailblazing electrical engineer who in December 2006, flew aboard Space Shuttle Discovery to become the third African American woman to travel into space. Over the nearly 13-day mission, she joined the seven-member crew to continue construction of the International Space Station (ISS), embarking on four space walks and operating the station’s robotic arm. Sharing captivating insights from her 20-year distinguished career with NASA, Higginbotham inspires audiences with her personal journey of breaking barriers into space and beyond. Taking groups aboard the International Space Station and sharing her lessons-learned along the way, she highlights the keys to succeeding in her missions – including preparation, perseverance, and never giving up – and how these tactics can be applied to any endeavor.

Jessica Kriegel (KREE-GL) is a workplace culture strategist. She is a Doctor of Leadership & Management and Fortune 100 Thought Leader. She is a dynamic speaker, consultant, Co-Active coach, and is author of Unfairly Labeled: How Your Workplace Can Benefit from Ditching Generational Stereotypes and upcoming book, The Culture Equation. For 15+ years, Jessica has been guiding global, national, Fortune 100 and other organizations on how to create intentional cultures that power your strategy and accelerate performance.

One of only a handful of African Americans to earn a PhD in entomology, Dr. Sammy Ramsey is an inspirational science leader and communicator who has defied the odds to achieve his dreams and is a testament to the power of grit, determination, and an unwavering commitment to one’s purpose. When people said he didn’t have what it took to make his mark in entomology, he proved them wrong by making a breakthrough discovery in the field of bee research — one that could potentially reverse a devastating pandemic in bee populations. And when people told him he didn’t “look” like a scientist, he remained true to himself and redefined what a scientist could look like. Dr. Ramsey has mastered the art of unconventional thinking to arrive at innovative solutions to some of the most significant challenges shaping the future of our society and teaches organizations and individuals how they can do the same as they address their most-pressing challenges in business and life head-on.

Co-author of the best-selling book When Generations Collide, David Stillman provides a comical and intuitive perspective on recruiting and managing four generations. True to his own Boomer and Xer personalities, Stillman offers strategies for marketing and selling to customers of each generation.

What makes Mark Bryan one of the world’s leading futurists is his proven mastery advising organizations on the trends and tech that will disrupt their industries, and his inventive approaches for adapting to an ever-evolving business environment. He is the senior foresight manager at the Future Today Institute, a leading foresight and strategy firm founded by world renowned futurist Amy Webb. In his role, he supports leaders and their organizations in developing and implementing customized, forward-looking strategies that position them years ahead of their competitors and expedite their journeys to their desired futures. Bryan’s expertise spans across industries — having worked alongside national retail brands, higher education institutions, nonprofits, multi-family developers, and large corporate clients to evolve them from market leaders to market innovators.  

A passionate advocate for a more human way of working, Melissa Swift is a seasoned HR thought leader and consultant who serves as VP of workforce and organizational change acceleration at Capgemini Invent. Her work helping clients power their workforces for more innovative, higher-performing futures spans across industries and geographies and tackles issues ranging from attracting and retaining top talent to reshaping organizations for greater nimbleness and building futuristic capabilities among today’s employees. She leverages thoughtful data analytics, a humanist view, and a healthy dose of pragmatism to create extraordinary outcomes for organizations. She is the author of the book Work Here Now: Think Like a Human and Build a Powerhouse Workplace, which explores practical strategies to get to a more human future of work. Her research has been published in Harvard Business Review and The Wall Street Journal, and her insights have been quoted in Newsweek, The Washington Post, The Economist, Axios, and more. She has been featured as one of Twitter’s “20 Digital Transformation Leaders to Follow” and named a “Top Influencer on the Future of Work” by Onalytica.

With more than a decade working at the heart of the technology industry, Dex Hunter-Torricke has managed communications for some of the most-influential and admired Silicon Valley leaders and corporations of our day. In his daily work, Dex plays a critical role in writing the next chapter on science, tech, the economy, and society across the globe, and spearheads efforts to bring the stories of how the world is being moved forward to light. From 2012-2016, he led the executive communications team at Facebook and served as personal speechwriter for Mark Zuckerberg. He then went on to join SpaceX as senior director of communications. He later served as the VP Global Communications & Public Engagement for the Oversight Board for Meta, the independent body that makes decisions on Facebook and Instagram’s most challenging content issues. Dex takes audiences into Facebook’s boardroom, Musk’s open-concept cubicle, the famed Googleplex, and finally to the UN itself to share lessons on what it takes in today’s environment to build highly effective internal teams, how to use storytelling in modern communications, and what to make of the steady transition from local to global that’s unfolded over the past decade.

Mark Penn’s career spans 40 years in market-research, advertising, public relations, polling, and consulting, and he has advised top world leaders, led companies, and written best-selling books. Currently, Penn is the president and managing partner of The Stagwell Group, a private equity fund that invests in marketing services companies and reinvents the traditional holding company model. Before founding The Stagwell Group, he served in senior executive positions at Microsoft, where as executive vice president and chief strategy officer, he was responsible for working on core strategic issues across the company, blending data-analytics with creativity to help set the company on a new course.