Leadership:
WHITNEY VOSBURGH, Co-Founder His purpose is to maximize shared value for brands and all stakeholders. His mission is to elevate people, organizations, and communities to a brand new sense of purpose, possibility, and plenty. He focuses on inspiring and leading short-term innovation and long-term transformation, so we can share our gifts and passions with the world to make a lasting difference. Whitney works to promote doing well by doing good and doing the right thing. As an International Speaker and Leading Brand Expert, his work is featured in numerous media outlets including ABC, BBC, Conscious Company, Newsweek, Time, US News & World Report, Venture, and The Wall Street Journal.
As consulting Chief Marketing Officer for Fortune 20 companies and game changing Silicon Valley start ups, he creates results quickly. He has guided over $20 billion and counting in value creation. He brings a market-based POV to crystalize brand and marketing strategy, and leads implementation including creative that makes all the difference. He pinpoints and optimizes key windows of opportunity, such as liquidity events, re/positionings, and global re/launches.
He graduated with a M.A. in Social Change from the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, and with a B.F.A. in Communication Design from Parsons School of Design in New York. Whitney has a world of experience—he has lived, studied, and worked all over Europe, Asia, and America. His expertise is featured in four books on the Future of Work, including a NYT bestseller by Dan Pink. He co-authored two books with Charlie: “WORK THE FUTURE! TODAY: Finding your path to purpose, passion and profit", and “WTF! 2019 POCKET PAL: A faster path to purpose, passion and profit”, now on Amazon. @brandguru
HEATHER MERRIAM, Leadership and Search Her extensive experience as a global nonprofit executive, and organizational leadership, board and search consultant led her to the conclusion that, "it's is all about leadership." Humanity has intelligence, creativity, innovation, wisdom, spirituality, and curiosity. There are so many brilliant leaders, yet most are not where they need to be in order to effect positive change. She is committed to identify, cultivate, support, promote, and follow leaders who are able to take risks, foster collaboration, and participation in order to make this world a better place.
As a ‘third culture child’ and grandchild of a U.S. ambassador and an international university dean, her family has been in international service for three generations. As a child, Heather commuted with her family back and forth between suburban Ohio and downtown Cairo, with pit stops in England and Morocco. As a young adult, she had a transformative experience with the Peace Corps in rural Nepal, studied in Jordan, worked in Egypt, and graduated with a M.B.A. from Thunderbird School of Global Management. When she was with International Planned Parenthood, she conducted business in English and Spanish, and had clients all over Latin America and the Caribbean.
With Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Heather consulted with clients on board, leadership and organizational development all over the U.S. west of the Mississippi. With Robert Half and M Squared, she consulted for and placed consultants for-profit clients all over the Bay Area ranging from start ups to Fortune 50 companies. With Venture Strategies, she consulted with non-profit, NGOs and government clients globally, including Madagascar, Nepal, India, and Bangladesh. As Executive Director of Rotaplast, Heather sent medical missions all over the world, including Asia, Africa, Middle East, and Latin America. As Senior Search Partner at Leadership Search Partners and its successor Blakely Briscoe, she recruited leaders for and advised non-profits on leadership issues across the Western U.S.
DR. CHARLES GRANTHAM has a rich multi-disciplinary background, and pursues his passion for helping leaders, organizations, and communities realize their true potential for effective performance, governance, and sustainability. After serving in the Special Forces—no, he can’t tell you about it—he enjoyed successful careers in academia and with multi-national technology companies as an Executive Director of R&D.
Charlie received his Ph.D. in Sociology from the University of Maryland. He has published nine books and several dozen technical papers. His last book was “ForeSight 2025,” a practical guide on how to navigate the change process to prosper in the coming decade. He recently co-authored two books with Whitney. Charlie actually worked with the original prototypes for Dilbert and the Gang... yes, all true!
BEN GIOIA is a speaker, consultant, and bestselling author of Influence With A Heart. He shows people how to make a bigger impact by inspiring their clients, customers, or audience to say “yes”.
Ben helped transform culture at a Fortune 100 company, trained millionaire business leaders at Stanford, created a Mindfulness & Empathy video game for 16,000 customer experience representatives, won an award from The ALS Association (Lou Gehrig's disease), and served 32 million people by helping launch one of the biggest magazines in the world.
Almost dying on a hike in India gave Ben a gift: a fire inside to make a massive impact. So today, he shows people how to influence and create positive transformation for the customers, clients, and the organizations they are serving.
JEANETTE KARTHAUS has the Dutch touch—her design DNA informs everything she does. She has a background in brand business development, account management, design implementation, and team consensus building. Jeanette provides a unique perspective that is valuable to clients undertaking significant brand identity change at every stage.
Jeanette received her BFA in Graphic Design at the Academy of Art in San Francisco. Working both in-house the Apollo Group and Chronicle Books, and as an independent design consultant for brand agencies, Jeanette has been thoroughly immersed in the development of integrated design systems for significant brands. Her versatile background and senior level experience allows her to make sound design decisions, and manage projects from inception to completion.
MICHAEL COLLINS makes the invisible visible—giving tangible form to concepts and ideas that spring from the brand strategy phase—distilling them into dynamic logos that communicate at first glance the very essence of a company’s vision and enterprise.
Supporting his logo design expertise for such brands as LG and the University of Phoenix, is his wealth of experience on national and global brand identity systems at world-class brand consultancies and as an independent design consultant—ensuring that the logo is consistently well staged across a wide variety of print, digital, and environmental applications.
Michael’s approach is distinctly hands-on, intuitive as it is thoughtful, and he finds fulfillment in working with his clients on a personal level, gratified as their brand vision is richly arrived at and beautifully implemented. He received his BFA at the Art Center College of Design with Honors, worked at Landor Associates in San Francisco and London, Luxon Carrà and TrueBrand, and independently on significant brand identity projects in America, Europe and Asia.