The best and brightest from the customer experience community and beyond.
Featured Speakers
As the former Executive Director and CTO of Lonely Planet, Gus led one of the most loved brands in the world through significant disruption. Easier said than done. Gus remains heavily involved with the startup scene around the world as a founder, investor and advisor. In his spare time, he’s the Entrepreneur in Residence at Victoria University.
Called a “musical force of nature,” Jade Simmons is easily one of the most exciting and versatile artists on the scene today. She delivers stunning Main Stage keynote presentations that potently combine music, virtuoso performance and riveting storytelling to speak into the hearts, minds and goals of a company’s most valuable resource…their people.
Jesse is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Living with a Seal, and co-founder Marquis Jet, the world’s largest private jet card company. Jesse also partnered with Zico coconut water, which he and his partner sold to The Coca-Cola Company. When he’s not running ultra-marathons, eating vegan food or being a dad to his four kids, Jesse can be found at the NBA’s Atlanta Hawks games, where he’s an owner of the team.
Sarah Robb O’Hagan is an executive, activist, entrepreneur, and now the founder and CEO of Extreme Living—a company designed to help individuals, teams, and organizations play to their highest potential. She is now the CEO of EXOS, the world leader in elite performance training that helps people reach higher and achieve more.
Carl Bass is a former president and chief executive officer of Autodesk, Inc., a maker of professional 3D design software and consumer applications, and was a co-founder of Ithaca Software, which commercialized HOOPS, a 3D graphics system.
When she’s not packing suitcases or unpacking boxes, Sarah Stealey Reed guides the content for Zendesk’s events. Before grabbing the Relate helm, Sarah ran contact centers and customer service teams around the world.
As chief marketing officer and coach at Radical Candor, Amy Sandler has trained tens of thousands around the world, from CEOs to individual contributors. Amy has over 20 years of experience in senior roles. A professional speaker, corporate mindfulness trainer, and certified teacher of the Search Inside Yourself leadership program developed at Google, Amy has also walked on fire 5 times.
Abby Wambach became a champion because of her incredible talent as a soccer player. She became an icon because of her remarkable wisdom as a leader. As the co-captain of the 2015 Women’s World Cup Champion Team, she created a culture not just of excellence, but of honor, commitment, resilience, and sisterhood.
Jeff currently leads Zendesk’s marketing organization. He brings 18 years of experience leading marketing, product marketing, and conversion and retention optimization from early-stage startups to enterprise companies.
A current LinkedIn Author and Director of Training and Content for ICMI and HDI- Fancy brings over twenty years of experience specializing in consulting, training and human resource development. Her main focus has been working with support centers and contact centers across industries to optimize their performance. As a consultant, she has certified thousands of service and support professionals around the world in virtual and classroom environments.
High Growth Customer Success leader rapidly scaling process, technology, and people, by investing time to build open and honest relationships, forming communities and creating the environment for technical competence and organizational clarity.
Cynthia loves to automate and dislikes copy-pasting. Combining her background in behavioural sciences with over 13 years work experience in technical support and customer service, her main focus is to enable her department to grow and develop where it really matters: improving customer experience through happy human interactions.
Born in NC, raised in VA, lived in Chicago, San Diego, and now SF. Formerly of the Seattle Mariners, Impact Basketball, SteelSeries, Razer, Skullcandy, and now with Logitech through the acquisition of ASTRO Gaming.
Glennon Doyle is the #1 New York Times Bestselling author of Love Warrior, a 2016 Oprah’s Book Club selection, as well as the hilarious New York Times Bestseller Carry On, Warrior. She is an activist, speaker and founder of Together Rising, a non-profit organization that has raised over seven million dollars for women, families and children in crisis.
Jeff Toister helps companies get their employees obsessed with customer service. He’s the author of three books, including Getting Service Right.
Diane Hagglund is the founder of Dimensional Research. Her passion is making data approachable, actionable, and (ideally) even fun.
Adrian McDermott has served as Zendesk’s President of Products since October 2016. Mr. McDermott served as Zendesk’s Senior Vice President, Product Development from July 2010 until October 2016. Mr. McDermott holds a B.Sc. in computer science from De Montfort University.
Sara leads sales and marketing at ChartMogul. If she’s busy not helping subscription businesses understand what net negative churn is, you can probably find her making a mess in the kitchen.
Elena Gomez is the Chief Financial Officer at Zendesk, bringing 25+ years of experience leading finance organizations for global companies, including Visa and Salesforce. Under her leadership, Zendesk has increased revenue from a run rate of $300M to more than $800M, positioning the organization on its path to become a multi-billion dollar company.
Brent leads Box’s North America Product Support Team. With over 15 years experience building support, knowledge management, and operations teams, he ensures that Box’s customers receive world-class support with a focus on scale, impact, and the customer experience.
Ms. Johnson has served as Zendesk’s Chief People Officer since June 2018 and assumed the role of Chief People & Diversity Officer in January 2020. Ms. Johnson has served as Senior Vice President and Chief Human Resources Officer for Plantronics, Inc., Chief Human Resources Officer at UTi Worldwide Inc., and several senior leadership roles at Honeywell International Inc.
Andrew Forbes is a Principle Product Marketing Manager at Zendesk who thinks there’s nothing more magical than pie, except pie charts, because he hates those.
Jamie has spent her entire career paving the way to improving the Client Experience in various industries. Jamie’s strong conviction that CX is more than just delivering support or service has allowed her to always think outside the box. Her passion for people, problem-solving, data, making an impact and delivering a WOW drive her efforts every day.
David Williams is the general manager for Zendesk’s flagship customer service software product. Zendesk Support is a beautifully simple system for tracking, prioritizing, and solving customer support tickets.
Jeanne Foley is a fashion industry expert and entrepreneur who co-founded The Groomsman Suit in 2016. Previously, Jeanne spent 12+ years in the fashion industry, engineering apparel fit & construction as a Technical Designer for Under Armour, Abercrombie & Fitch and Talbots. She earned her Bachelor of Arts Degree in Fashion Design from the Illinois Institute of Art. In 2019, Jeanne was listed on Inc.’s Female Founder 100 list.
Sean is an operations-centric leader overseeing the global support team at InVision, a design-focused company with over 5M global users. His expertise is in building scalable, efficient operations while maintaining a high quality of support.
Prior to co-founding The Groomsman Suit, Diana served as Chief Executive Officer for two different Boston based companies. In 2015, she was recognized as a top executive by winning the Boston Business Journal’s 40 Under 40 award. Diana her degree in Biopsychology from the University of Michigan and graduated with an MBA from the MIT Sloan School of Management.
I’ve spent the last 15 years in the Contact Center industry with varying leadership roles. At CCI Systems, I lead our Contact Center and Advanced Support Teams to provide technical support for customers staying in hotels, residential and business cable internet service, fiber internet, TV support, and internet support for apartment complexes. I’m also a United States Army Veteran and have been deployed to Iraq in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom & Operation New Dawn.
Teresa Haun leads Product Marketing for Zendesk Guide and AI. Her team focuses on helping businesses adopt better knowledge management practices to create the best self-service experiences for their customers and agents.
Tyler started his journey in Support in 2012 and have fallen in love! The things he loves most about his time on support teams are the client interaction, building teams, and working towards proving how valuable support teams are for their organizations. He has a 2-year-old daughter Winifred and his dog Lancelot is a bit of a Wealthsimple celebrity.
Talei is an innovative, creative and achievement-oriented leader who loves working in high growth Saas companies. She is an expert in running Customer Experience, Customer Success and Support functions with a proven track record in running high performing teams across the globe – from Seattle to Auckland. She is currently on a mission to provide a world-leading customer experience at Vend.
Brandon Tidd is a Customer Experience Champion and Zendesk Administrator at BrandMuscle. BrandMuscle helps brands scale their local channel marketing, spend more efficiently, and ensure brand compliance. Brandon is a proud alumnus of Kent State University, husband and father; Cleveland born & raised and the author of the book, “Simply Digital.”
Tiffany Apczynski is vice president of public policy and social impact at Zendesk and the executive director of the Zendesk Neighbor Foundation. She joined the company in 2010 as one of the company’s earliest hires.
Warren is passionate about helping brands build more meaningful relationships with customers. He founded and led multiple technology companies focused on CRM and messaging solutions, delivering next-gen solutions for global leaders including Verizon, Uber, Four Seasons, Harry’s and Betterment. Warren co-founded Smooch, acquired by Zendesk in 2019.
Jessica has been working in the Fintech space for 4 years and has recently begun leading the Customer Connections function within GoCardless (recently named as one of the top Y Combinator companies of all time). She’s passionate about empowering employees to create and develop a truly customer-centric culture, across all teams within the organization.
Joanne has served in several senior leadership positions for multi-billion dollar companies. She’s built successful service center operations, client relationships, product & sales partnerships, that improved quality client retention, increased employee satisfaction & revenue growth. Motivated by a strong desire to help associates reach their full potential, she credits her accomplishments to identifying and getting the right people into the right role.
Raphael is a design expert with focus on strategy and storytelling. As Creative Director at Zendesk, he oversees all brand experiences, from events and trade shows to office design and print magazines. Previously, he worked at Winkreative, the sister company of Monocle magazine, where he was managing major agency clients such as BMW, Lexus and Wimbledon. He is also co-founder of The Retail Psychologist, a consultancy on consumer psychology.
Laurence works in our office in San Francisco. As part of his role on the Customer Education team, Laurence works with our customers to teach them all the different ways they can utilize our products.
Jenny Dempsey, CX Manager for NumberBarn, has 15 years of experience working on, building and leading customer service teams. She has been recognized for her thought leadership in wellness and customer service. She is the co-founder and writer for CustomerServiceLife.com and is on the board of CX Accelerator.
Brian is the Director of Customer Advocacy in AMER and has been at Zendesk for 4 years. He is passionate on finding ways to drive growth and engage employees through metrics.
Kathleen is the SVP of Enterprise and Head of Creator Success at Vimeo, the world’s leading professional video platform and community. She serves as the strategic leader of Enterprise efforts and overlooks Vimeo’s community, support, and solutions teams, responsible for delivering delightful and engaging customer experiences that help creators succeed and meet the standards of Vimeo’s brand and quality of service with every interaction.
JB is the SVP of BombBomb in Colorado Springs – one of INC’s best places to work – he has overseen 100x growth as one of the original members of the executive team and led Customer Success, Sales, Operations, Talent, Business Intelligence, and IT. BombBomb enables everyone in your organization to easily record, send, and track personal videos so that they can break through the digital noise, build human connection, and get a “yes” faster and more often.
Susan Chaika is a Product Marketing Director at Zendesk, where she helps define compelling value propositions to help more businesses be the company their customers want them to be.
Todd Caponi is author of the award-winning and international best-selling book, The Transparency Sale, Managing Director of Chicago’s VentureSCALE, and a speaker & workshop leader as Principal of Sales Melon LLC. He’s also a former multi-time C-Level sales leader and current behavioral science nerd.
Amanda joined the Zendesk team in January 2018 from a role as a Support Operations Director and Zendesk admin with 10+ years of experience in training, onboarding, and customer support & operations. As a Zendesk product expert and certified Support Admin, Guide Specialist and Explore Data Analyst, she believes the key to unlocking the most out of any tool is knowledge.
Laura Adams joined the Zendesk Customer Education team in 2018 as a Senior Trainer, and more recently has moved into the role of managing the EMEA based trainers. With 15 years experience delivering corporate training from cloud technologies to telecommunications and non-profit organisations, Laura’s passion for CX is at the forefront of everything she does.
Jon’s career has focused on operational aspects in the consumer space and enabling his organizations to deliver amazing customer experiences that ensure brand loyalty. Always focused on the customer looking to take the experience to the next level through process or technology advances, such as AI and RPA. Jon has been on several tech company’s customer advisory boards where he has been able to help drive innovation.
Cheryl is a product marketer at Zendesk who focuses on Gather for online communities. She also focuses on small businesses and loves helping SMBs identify how to do more with less.
Nicole has spent over 20 years challenging herself and her teams to deliver optimal customer outcomes through the use of technology and creativity. She is a passionate Customer Operations Leader who believes in reducing customer effort to build loyalty and foster retention, drives a company-wide culture centered around customer experience, and evangelizes the power of advocacy.
Matt has worked in the tech space for 8 years for a variety of companies. He has a passion for support operations and workflow automation.
Jen started her career in CS at Amazon, back when the entire department fit in a single building in downtown Seattle. Over the past 20 years, she’s created service strategies for user-generated content, SAAS products, and massive online communities. She is now leading support at Digit, a fintech company making financial health effortless for everyone.
Max Yoder is CEO and co-founder of Lessonly, the powerfully simple training software that helps millions of people learn, practice, and Do Better Work. Every day, he is grateful that he got cut from the basketball team two years in a row. His first book, Do Better Work, was published in February 2019. Max lives in Indianapolis with his wife, Jess.
Giselle Hernandez is the Supervisor of Global Casino Services. She has been apart of this department for over 3 years. She oversees 23 agents who communicate with our casino guests that sail within their 9 brands. Our team makes sure our casino guests are happy and excited to set sail towards their vacation.
Elisabeth Zornes has served as our Chief Customer Officer since February 2019. She leads the teams responsible for helping customers onboard and maximize the benefits of our growing product portfolio. She brings 20 years of experience as a leader in customer support, operations, and services, most recently leading global customer support for Microsoft Office consumers, enterprise customers, and partners.
Polomi Batra is a Senior Product Marketing Manager for the Zendesk Support Suite. Her team builds products like live chat and messaging to connect with customers in a fast and responsive way, through their favorite messaging apps like WhatsApp.
Mark has worked at Zendesk for the past 4 years. He joined Zendesk as part of the IT department and after one year joined the Customer Education team as a trainer. In his words, “I teach customers how to use Zendesk!”
Rachel Palad is a Senior Product Marketing Manager for Zendesk Support, helping growing businesses scale intelligently to deliver the best support experiences for their agents and customers.
Dana is a native Wisconsinite who has been with Zendesk for over a year and a half. Her professional career has always included people from Leadership and Employee Development, Employee Engagement, Process Improvement and Performance Management. Eventually, she pivoted to focus on Change Management because like many others, she experienced many changes that were not managed well.
Fernanda Chouza is a Senior Product Marketing Manager for Zendesk Guide. Her team focuses on helping businesses adopt better knowledge management practices to create the best self-service experiences for their customers and agents.
Jason oversees Peloton’s Member Support technology, processes, and service design. Jason ensures the Member Support team has easy to use and well-integrated tools that drive outcomes to delight our Members.
Michelle Is an Arizona Native operating out of Turo’s Phoenix headquarters as their Operations QA Manager. She has 9 years of experience working within business operation units, in both start-up organizations and fortune 500 companies. Her current focus is on the creation, implementation, and maintenance of Quality Assurance programs for 3 Turo operation units and their respective BPO partners.
With over 10 years experience in operations, Manu is the Head of Shared Operations Services at Turo, the world’s largest car sharing marketplace. The Shared Services organization’s goal is to improve the customer experience while monitoring internal compliance through scalable content, training, QA and tools.
Madison has been with Zendesk since 2015 and loves helping others solve problems. Her team creates & curates content that answers questions and provides guidance for people using or implementing Zendesk products.
Tonni has years of experience in several senior leadership positions focused on building, automating and scaling global service organizations. Driven by a desire to inspire people to grow and develop their careers, he prides himself on finding the right people and mentoring them to deliver their best performances. Tonni loves building strong, dynamic teams that share his passion for delivering value, improving the customer experience, and making an impact.
Proud leader of the non-selling operational functions for Heritage British brand Liberty London. Responsible for all non-selling functions including inventory control, central purchasing and customer services.
As SVP Client Services at Mediaocean, Stephanie Dorman oversees global customer support, knowledge and project services, and focuses on providing a superior level of service to Mediaocean clients across all products and services. Stephanie’s deep experience encompasses every aspect of business management and customer support.
Emily Vince is a Senior Product Marketing Manager at Zendesk, focused on the newest product in the Zendesk portfolio: Zendesk Sell. When she’s not helping teams deliver the best possible customer experiences, you can find her running, cycling, or enjoying absurdly strong espresso drinks.
Neil Weldon is the Director of Product for Zendesk Talk responsible for the Zendesk Talk product offering as well as the integration points for partner telephony solutions.
Monica White is a customer service portal expert living in the Bay Area. In her day job she loves focusing on process improvement and in her personal life she’s passionate about youth civic engagement.
