.png?width=200&height=200&name=Webinar%20Speaker%20headshots%20(1).png)
Webinar Moderator
Dr. Cindy Childress
The Expert's Ghostwriter
Dr. Cindy Childress is a ghostwriter and book coach for trailblazers and leaders that want to write books that make money and make an impact. She's finished 21 story-driven, self-help books in the last four years with authors who achieve bestseller status, give TEDx Talks, win book awards, and more.
She presented a story writing workshop for Hewlett-Packard Enterprise and delivered a keynote address on "Be Your Main Character" for Western Kentucky University. Her storytelling masterclass for the Titanides Mentoring Collective was the most-attended live workshop ever, and in 2020 she launched Success Story, a six-week story writing program, where students write multi-purpose stories that become successful email and social media content, as well as book material. Cindy has been interviewed for stories published in U.S. News and World Report and Thrive Global on how to build authority and succeed as a writer.
She holds a Ph. D. in English with a creative dissertation from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. In addition, she’s on the Advisory Board for Women Helping Women 2 Network and is a foster mom with Citizens for Animal Protection in Houston, TX.
Martha Hooper
Founder, Hooper Consulting International
Martha Hooper has an extensive background in public relations, marketing, and advertising. As part of her practice in international awards, she has served as Turkey Country Representative for all the Stevie Awards.
Martha has spent more than 30 years in Central Asia and Turkey, where she served as Director of Marketing and PR for Accenture, leading the firm’s rebranding program. She has conducted several market potential studies and PR programs for multinational companies in Central Asia and the Caucasus, including Sun Microsystems, Goodyear, Tetra Pak and Caterpillar.
In the wake of the economic crisis of 2008, Martha launched her international awards consultancy. She boasts a 75% success rate with awards entries she prepares for dozens of clients.
Mario Martinez Jr.
CEO, Founder, and Modern Sales Evangelist, Vengreso
Mario is the CEO and Co-founder of Vengreso. He spent 87 consecutive quarters in B2B Sales and Leadership roles growing hundreds of millions of dollars in revenue annually.
Mario is one of 20 sales influencers invited to appear in the Salesforce.com documentary film “The Story of Sales”. He was named one of the Top 10 Sales Influencers by The Modern Sales Magazine, Top 25 Most Influential Inside Sales Professional, Selling Power Magazine’s Top Sales Training and Coaching Consultant, and was recognized as one of the top Social Media Leaders by The Social Shake Up.
As a renowned digital sales evangelist, Mario teaches marketing and sales professionals how to develop an engaging personal brand to attract today’s modern buyers using the digital sales ecosystem. Mario is the host of the popular The Modern Selling Podcast. He’s been featured in Forbes, INC., Entrepreneur and was formerly a contributor to the Huffington Post.
Miri Rodriguez
Head of Global Internships, Microsoft
Miri Rodriguez is a globally recognized Storyteller, Head of Global Internship Program at Microsoft, and author of Brand Storytelling. She is a creative journalist and content strategist, evangelizing brand narrative and showcasing how thought leaders can leverage storytelling techniques for culture activation and influence in the digital age.
Miri has earned several awards in digital marketing and customer experience and is ranked as top in-demand speaker at leading industry conferences around the world. Miri brings 15+ years of expertise, valuable industry and consulting insights matched with a lighthearted and connected delivery approach.
Her social advocacy and philanthropic work include volunteering to train social enterprise leaders in Southeast Africa, coaching students at Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship in the U.S., and mentoring men and women of all walks of life to build their personal brand with empathy, passion and purpose. Her biggest accomplishment to date is being a mother of 2 boys and an American Bulldog.
Susan Turkell
Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Pairelations, LLC
Susan J. Turkell, a seasoned public and investor relations specialist with 30+ years of experience, serves as founder and chief executive officer at PAIRELATIONS, LLC, a Denver-based corporate communications consulting firm. She has both an agency and corporate background, serving clients spanning a broad range of industries.
Turkell has created a market niche for clients in the awards arena. She has been continually recognized across various Stevie Awards® programs for securing the most wins on behalf of clients. As a result, PAIRELATIONS is a five-time Grand Stevie® Award winner.
Before founding PAIRELATIONS 25 years ago, Turkell served as Director of Public and Investor Relations at Apria Healthcare Group, Inc., one of the nation’s largest home healthcare providers (formerly Abbey Healthcare Group Incorporated and Homedco Group, Inc.). She headed the company’s public and investor relations initiatives while also creating campaigns surrounding the billion-dollar merger that formed Apria.
.png?width=200&height=200&name=Webinar%20Speaker%20headshots%20(2).png)
Webinar Moderator
Anne White
Judging Coordinator, The Stevie® Awards
Anne has extensive experience in marketing and public relations, working in Europe and the United States in the fields of awards competitions, information technology, broadcast media, travel and leisure, and consumer products. From running her own PR agency in London, UK, Anne moved to the United States and joined the Stevie Awards in 2006, where she provided articles for the blog and online newsletter. She is now the Judging Coordinator, organizing and overseeing international judging committees for all Stevie Awards competitions. Anne holds a Certificate of Business Management from Baruch College, New York, and studied German, French, and Spanish at the University of Vienna. She speaks fluent German and French.
.png?width=200&height=200&name=Webinar%20Speaker%20headshots%20(3).png)
Ali Rıza Aksoy
Director – Human Resources, Ford Otosan
Judge for: The Stevie® Awards for Great Employers
Ali Rıza Aksoy began his career at Ford Otosan, the well-established and biggest automotive company in Turkey in 1996 as an Industrial Engineer, and moved up the career ladders in fast yet firm steps by experiencing multiple stages.
In order to enhance the company value in the field of HR, for 20 years he has led far-reaching projects and continued reflecting his leading, adventurous and innovative spirit to his team while he has been the HR Director centering the human in an ever-developing and changing company structure.
With the motto “Being the most preferred and most valuable industrial company and serving as being leading HR”, he plans each of his days differently from the previous one, improves it, and while doing all these he takes inspiration from the ideas of his team and the power of co-creation. He has taken to make the employees gain positive employee experience as a mission particularly with his Comprehensiveness, Equality, and People Centricity manner and believes that individual happiness is one of the most important components of reaching corporate success.
.png?width=200&height=200&name=Webinar%20Speaker%20headshots%20(17).png)
Jane Bryant
Director, Spire Communications
Judge for: The International Business Awards®, The American Business Awards®, and Stevie® Awards for Women in Business
Jane Bryant oversees public relations and marketing for government and commercial organizations with Virginia-based Spire Communications. She has more than 20 years’ experience in public relations, marketing and journalism.
Her experience spans high-tech public relations (PR), including telecommunications and healthcare. Bryant’s PR acumen has led to major award wins, high-profile speaking placements, key interviews with sought-after media, and prominent article placements in leading publications.
.png?width=200&height=200&name=Webinar%20Speaker%20headshots%20(4).png)
Jim Iyoob
Chief Customer Officer, Etech Global Services
Judge for: The Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service
Jim Iyoob is the Chief Customer Officer for Etech Global Services. He is responsible for Etech’s strategy, marketing, business development, IT, program implementation, operational excellence, and product development across all Etech’s existing lines of business – Etech, Etech Insights, ETS & Etech Social Media Solutions.
Jim has 30 years of experience in inbound, outbound, chat, analytics, AI, and social media. Jim has an impeccable track record of innovation and advanced business intelligence. Jim has an exceptional understanding of the customers’ products, their requirements & processes, and complete analysis to provide the right kind of solution. This has helped him develop, implement, and retain some of the most successful, award-winning programs that deliver consistent ROI.
Jim has been featured in numerous publications, including CIO Review, Contact Center Pipeline, Connections Magazine, and was also listed as one of the ‘Top 20 Influential People to Follow’ on Twitter by “Iwantitnow.”
.png?width=200&height=200&name=Webinar%20Speaker%20headshots%20(5).png)
Dennis Reno
Senior Vice President, Customer Experience, Cyara
Judge for: The American Business Awards®, International Business Awards®, Stevie® Awards for Women in Business, and Stevie® Awards for Sales & Customer Service
A Customer Success Executive with 20+ years of experience directing customer service, professional services, technical support, customer success, and account management programs to drive customer success and customer retention for enterprise and SaaS companies.
Dennis is Senior Vice President, Customer Experience for Cyara, a CX Assurance Platform that companies use to improve the experience they provide their customers and to achieve flawless customer experiences. Prior to Cyara, Dennis held executive leadership roles managing customer service and customer experience organizations at companies such as Oracle, Microsoft, Proofpoint, OneLogin, AT&T and Continental Airlines.
Dennis has been judging the Stevie Awards for Sales and Customer Service for many years and his team at OneLogin was the recipient of a Bronze award for Outstanding Customer Service in 2019.
.png?width=200&height=200&name=Webinar%20Speaker%20headshots%20(6).png)
Webinar Moderator
Michael Gallagher
Executive Chairman, The Stevie® Awards
Michael Gallagher’s career reflects his passion for recognizing achievement across the diverse spectrum of business.
To honor the millions of business executives and workers worldwide who quietly accomplish innovative and extraordinary things in the workplace every day, Michael founded the Stevie® Awards in 2002. The name Stevie comes from the Greek name Stefanos, which means "crowned."
Michael’s commitment to honoring excellence was sparked during his tenure as Vice President of The New York Festivals, organizer of some of the world’s largest international awards competitions for film, television, advertising, and other media. Under his leadership from 1982 to 1988, The New York Festivals significantly expanded its global influence by adding new awards competitions in fields such as radio and print advertising.
Michael holds a bachelor of arts from Fordham University in New York City and a master of business administration from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia.
.png?width=200&height=200&name=Webinar%20Speaker%20headshots%20(10).png)
William Bell
Sr. Manager, UPMC Health Plan
William's extensive background in successfully improving internal processes, as well as integrating new software applications and systems are just a few areas where he has established himself as a critical member of the sales and marketing leadership team for UPMC Health Plan. Not only has he identified growth opportunities within the market, but he has improved operational efficiencies to increase annual revenues and expand into new markets and demographic areas.
He has been recognized for outstanding sales accomplishments within his organization and his superior leadership that he has brought to the team.
.png?width=200&height=200&name=Webinar%20Speaker%20headshots%20(7).png)
Belen Gutierrez Gomez
Artificial Intelligence Squad Leader, IBM
Belen has 18 years of experience in Supply Chain/Quote to Cash Operations, leading Business Processes, Organizational Transformation, and AI - Data Science projects.
Her passion is to drive cross-border and cross-functional collaboration. With a client-centric, innovative mindset, she enjoys translating strategic priorities into tangible action plans and leading those through deployment.
.png?width=200&height=200&name=Webinar%20Speaker%20headshots%20(9).png)
Paula Kennedy
Vice President, Strategic Projects and Corporate Strategy, Concentrix
Paula Kennedy-Garcia is Vice President at Concentrix and is charged with Concentrix’s latest disruptive play in customer management, Solv™, a multi-award-winning innovative technology platform that creates an enhanced customer support ecosystem with crowdsourced support.
Paula has been in this CX solution industry for more than 20 years, building a career across many facets of business before her current role in the emerging digital space.
.png?width=200&height=200&name=Webinar%20Speaker%20headshots%20(8).png)
Vini Souza
Data Science Leader, IBM
Vini Souza is the Global Leader of the Data Science organization at IBM. He leads a multidisciplinary team composed of Data Engineers, Data Journalists, Cloud App developers, Machine Learning Engineers, and Data Scientists.
Vini is enthusiastic about applying Data Science to transform data into valuable actionable insights, decisions, and products. He is an accomplished Business Operations Executive with more than 15 years of experience in leading large global multidisciplinary organizations.
.png?width=200&height=200&name=Webinar%20Speaker%20headshots%20(13).png)
Webinar Moderator
Denise O'Leary
Founder, Purpol Marketing
Denise O’Leary is 12x Stevie® Winner and founder of UK-based Purpol Marketing, a specialist marketing, awards and Bid writing agency recently voted People’s Choice Worlds Favourite Marketing Agency. Denise is the author of Amazon No1 bestseller and Stevie® Gold Award recognised Best Business Book “WINNER – How to WIN Business Awards” available on Amazon.
Purpol Marketing bid writing and marketing strategy experts hold an impressive 95% win rate with £3.6bn opportunities secured to date. Denise engages with the UK government at No10, the Cabinet Office, and the House of Lords to share knowledge on how SME businesses can win critical bids as well as marketing their brands to win business. Denise speaks internationally to showcase how effective marketing principles are key to deliver value. She measures her success by how much her clients win.
.png?width=200&height=200&name=Webinar%20Speaker%20headshots%20(11).png)
KT Moore
Vice President - Custom IC, IC packaging, PCB and Multi-physics Analysis (CPG), Cadence Design Systems, Inc.
KT Moore joined Cadence in August 2012 and is currently responsible for business development and product marketing for the CPG covering Cadence’s full product suite. This encompasses several key technology areas including custom IC layout and automation, circuit-level simulation, PCB design, and multi-physics analysis and simulation.
Prior to joining Cadence, KT spent 12 years with Magma Design Automation. During that time he served several years as a Global Account Director, and several years as a Vice President of Product Marketing, where he was responsible for business development and marketing for all Magma products. Before joining Magma KT also held various sales positions with EPIC Design Technology and Valid Logic Systems. Prior to his career in EDA, KT spent several years as a logic designer for Texas Instruments.
.png?width=200&height=200&name=Webinar%20Speaker%20headshots%20(12).png)
Elizabeth Nordquest
Director of Creative Services, Luma Brighter Learning
Elizabeth Nordquest is a digital illustrator and user interface designer, with 15 years of experience in educational software and online training for K–12, higher education, and corporate clients. She has been a part of award-winning teams, receiving CODiE, Best in Biz, and Stevie Awards for their work.
She is a graduate of Ohio University’s School of Visual Communication with a Bachelor of Science in interactive multimedia and holds a specialization in art history. Elizabeth started her design career at the Kennedy Museum of Art, designing in-person and digital exhibitions, then transitioned to educational software and online training at an interactive agency. She is now the director of creative services at Luma.
In her spare time, Elizabeth enjoys traveling, running, reading, and hiking. Originally from Columbus, Ohio, she currently resides in Bozeman, Montana.
.png?width=200&height=200&name=Webinar%20Speaker%20headshots%20(15).png)
Roger Perry
Leader, Intellectual Capital Digitization, Cisco Systems, Inc.
Roger Perry serves as Leader for the Intellectual Capital Digitization Group inside of the Customer Experience Organization at Cisco Systems, Inc. Mr. Perry focuses transforming organizational knowledge into a machine consumable format for broad consumption. He also drives initiatives that use digitization and AI/ML to increase the efficiency and consistency of the service experience Cisco delivers to customer and partners.
Mr. Perry is a 12-year veteran of Cisco and has held various Management and Marketing roles in Service Logistics and the Wireless Networking Business Unit (WNBU).
Before joining Cisco in 2008, Mr. Perry was a Product Line Manager at Commscope Corporation, responsible for a variety of filter and tower-top amplifier products for 3G service providers.
.png?width=200&height=200&name=Webinar%20Speaker%20headshots%20(16).png)
Chris Robinson
Founder and CEO, Boost Awards
Chris Robinson, a Chartered Marketer, is the founder and Managing Director of Boost Awards, Managing Director of Boost Evaluation, and co-founder of the Awards Trust Mark scheme.
Founded in 2006, and with over 1,500 awards won, Boost is the world’s first and largest award entry consultancy. Its 22-strong, mostly-in-house, team provides hundreds of businesses around the world with help in three areas: choosing which awards to enter (from their database of over 4,000); writing compelling well designed entries; and running research and surveys to evidence these entries.
They won a Silver Award for ‘Most Innovative Company in EMEA’ a few years back, and have written over 50 other winning Stevie Awards entries for other businesses over the years.