Most widely recognized for her service on September 11, Heather “Lucky” Penney is a renowned speaker on topics ranging from personal courage; decision-making under stress; leadership; organizational transformation; inclusivity; high performance teams; national defense issues; and aviation. She grew up around aviation and warbirds, but women couldn’t be fighter pilots when she went to college; congressional statute excluded women from combat. Pursuing her love of aviation, she stood up the first collegiate team to race in the Air Race Classic at Purdue University, where she earned her B.A. and M.A. She was in graduate school when she learned that Congress had opened combat aviation to women.

Kerry Hannon is a nationally recognized expert and strategist on career transitions, entrepreneurship, personal finance and retirement. She is a frequent TV and radio commentator and is a sought-after keynote speaker at conferences across the country.

Leslie Ireland served as the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Assistant Secretary for Intelligence and Analysis. In this role, Ireland lead the Office of Intelligence and Analysis, which is responsible for the receipt, analysis, and dissemination of intelligence related to the Department's mission to safeguard the international financial system from abuse and to combat threats to U.S. national security. Ireland was a career intelligence officer for 25 years and has held a variety of positions in the analytical, collection, interagency and policy communities. Most recently she was intelligence briefer to President Obama.

Cy Wakeman is a dynamic international keynote speaker, drama researcher, New York Times best-selling author, and global thought leader and business consultant with over 25 years of unparalleled experience who is recognized for cultivating a counter-intuitive, reality-based approach to leadership. Grounded in reality, Wakeman’s philosophy has helped organizations and individuals all over the world learn to ditch the drama and turn excuses into results. Named one of the “Top 100 Leadership Experts to Follow” on Twitter for seven years in a row, Wakeman’s influence continues to build. She was also recognized as #23 on the Global Gurus 2019 list of the World’s Top 30 Leadership Professionals around the world for 2019. Her programs are consistently ranked by participants as the single most impactful training they have ever received.

Samuel Sanders Visner is a Technical Fellow at the Aerospace Corporation. Sam served previously as a MITRE Tech Fellow and the Director of the National Cybersecurity Federally Funded Research and Development Center (MITRE), sponsored by the National Institute of Science and Technology. Sam was appointed in 2020 as a member of the Board of Directors of the Oak Ridge Associated Universities and serves Vice Chair of the Board of Directors of the Space Information Sharing and Analysis Center.

Chris Gibson brings with him over 34 years military and leadership experience. He has held leadership roles and key appointments throughout his career, serving on specialist military operations all over the world. Named International Innovator of the Year 2017-2018 by Ideas UK, Chris is currently serving as a special advisor to the Ministry of Justice as a Leadership and Cultural Advisor and speaks with various groups on applying his first-hand military practice and innovation into business leadership to formulate wining strategies.

When Ciaran was appointed to GCHQ’s board in 2013, the UK was ranked joint eighth in the world for cyber security by the International Telecommunications Union. When he stepped down in mid-2020, the country was ranked first. Opened in 2016 and launched officially by Her Majesty The Queen, the UK NCSC has attracted worldwide acclaim as the leading authority in cyber security across the globe. In 2020 alone, the UK’s NCSC launched the first national suspicious email reporting system for citizens, released technical details of attempts by hostile states to access vaccine research and outlined plans for comprehensive reforms of telecommunications and commodity Internet security.

Cory Gardner is focused on empowering people to better lives through innovation and creativity in public policy, diplomacy and the economy. He is a fifth-generation Coloradan, and was born and raised in Yuma, a tiny town on the Eastern Plains of Colorado where his family owned a farm implement dealership for over 106 years. He lives in the same prairie house his great-grandparents lived in and that his grandfather called home. He believes in common sense solutions and making institutions throughout government and the economy more accountable to the people of this country.

Kenton Cool is one of the world’s leading high-altitude climbers and also a highly engaging and inspiring motivational speaker. He has successfully climbed Mount Everest fifteen times. Kenton was first introduced to mountaineering when he read about Hillary and Norgay’s first ascent on Mount Everest in 1953. An obsession with rock climbing developed at university and, on graduating, Kenton moved to Sheffield to pursue this further. In 1996 he suffered a fall from a rock face and shattered both heel bones. A year of surgery and therapy saw him become determined to regain his climbing form and he joined the British Mountain Guides scheme. Since then, Kenton hasn’t looked back. He has climbed extensively all over the world – establishing new routes and first ascents on peaks in Alaska, France and India. In 2003, he was nominated for a Piolet d’Or award (the equivalent of the Oscars for mountaineers) for a route on Annapurna III. Kenton is also one of the world’s most sought-after guides, his track record on Everest is the best of any leader. In 2007, Kenton successfully guided Sir Ranulph Fiennes up the North Face of the Eiger before leading him to a successful Everest summit in 2009.

Driven by president and CEO John Sileo’s experience as a victim of identity theft, insider espionage and fraud, The Sileo Group is dedicated to helping organizations protect their profits, privacy and reputation. We specialize in online privacy, social media privacy, digital reputation, cyber data security, identity theft detection and prevention, and business fraud detection and prevention that empowers our clients to take control of their digital footprint and data exposure before it’s too late.

Ken Schmidt is the legendary former director of communications strategy for Harley-Davidson Motor Company. He played an active role in one of the most celebrated turnarounds in corporate history, and his vision helped transform Harley into one of the world’s most dominant brands. He is widely known as a provocative and engaging thought leader. Funny and energetic, he shares stories of how to compete with weapons stronger than price, build a fanatically vocal customer base, create a passionately loyal corporate culture, and develop leaders who inspire and motivate.

As a cognitive neuroscientist specializing in music perception and cognition, he is credited for fundamentally changing the way that scientists think about auditory memory, showing through the Levitin Effect, that long-term memory preserves many of the details of musical experience that previous theorists regarded as lost during the encoding process. He has consulted on audio sound source separation for the U.S. Navy, and worked for two years at Paul Allen’s Interval Research Corporation, a Silicon Valley computer firm where he worked on issues in Human-Computer Interaction, and Applications of Cognitive Psychology.