2020 Keynote Speakers
We are excited to announce this year’s keynote speaker lineup! More to come….
Lydia Gilbert, Co-Founder and President
Dia&Co
Lydia Gilbert is the Co-Founder and President of Dia&Co, the leading retail service dedicated to serving women who wear sizes 14+.
Lydia and her co-founder, Nadia Boujarwah, were driven to found Dia&Co by the belief that style can act as a catalyst for self-love. Over the past three years, Dia&Co has worked with millions of women, attracting a dedicated and diverse customer base crossing all 50 states and more than 90% of ZIP codes. Dia&Co has been named one of New York City’s 15 hottest startups by Business Insider and featured on CNBC’s inaugural Upstart 25 list.
Prior to founding Dia&Co, Lydia was a Director at the Clinton Global Initiative and most recently an account executive at Google in San Francisco. Lydia holds a BA in History from Cornell University and an MBA from Harvard Business School. She grew up in Oak Park, Illinois, and is currently based in New York.
Carine Clark, Three-time CEO & President
Carine Clark is a three-time President and CEO of high-growth tech companies, specializing in helping companies scale from $10 million to $100 million or more. Her reputation as a data-driven marketing executive at Novell, Altiris and Symantec opened doors to lead Allegiance, MartizCX and Banyan as president and CEO. She attributes her success to building an abundant team culture, demonstrating that companies accelerate their growth when they multiply their people.
As a cancer survivor, Clark channels her deep appreciation for life and relationships into advocating that tech professionals pay it forward by mentoring young people. In addition, Clark serves on the executive boards of GOED (The Utah Governor’s Office of Economic Development), Silicon Slopes, a non-profit helping Utah’s tech community thrive and a few public company boards. She has received numerous awards including the EY Entrepreneur of the Year Award in the Utah Region and Utah Business Magazine’s CEO of the Year. Clark earned a bachelor’s degree in organizational communications and an MBA from Brigham Young University and enjoys traveling, exploring and doing hard things with her family.
Deborah Singer, Chief Marketing Officer
Girls Who Code
Deborah Singer is the Chief Marketing Officer at Girls Who Code, an international non-profit organization dedicated to closing the gender gap in technology. In her role as CMO, Deborah is responsible for growing Girls Who Code into a household name and ensuring the organization has the resources to impact millions of girls around the world. She oversees the marketing. advocacy and public policy, and communications teams, in addition to the organization’s fundraising efforts. In her time at Girls Who Code, Deborah’s created award-winning content and campaigns seen by more than 100M people.
Prior to Girls Who Code, Deborah was the VP of Marketing at Lulu, a mobile app for women to research and review men. She helped grow the Lulu user base 10X in 2 years and reach 1 in 4 US college women and launched the app in dozens of countries. Deborah started her career at Google, where she worked on the communications team in New York and Sydney, Australia.
Deborah received an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she served as the co-President of the Women’s Student Association. She received a BA in Intellectual History from the University of Pennsylvania.
Deborah lives in Brooklyn with her husband, daughter, and mini goldendoodle.
Emmanuelle Skala, Senior Vice President of Customer Success
Toast
Emmanuelle Skala is currently the Senior Vice President of Customer Success at Toast, a restaurant technology platform. At Toast, she manages all post-sales customer facing teams. From 2008 to 2013, Emmanuelle held positions of increasing seniority at Sophos Group PLC. From 2014 to 2016, Emmanuelle served as the Vice President of Sales for Influitive, and from 2016 to 2017, she served as the Vice President of Sales and Customer Success at DigitalOcean. Emmanuelle serves on the advisory boards of multiple SaaS startups, is a Limited Partner in Stage2 Ventures and is an independent Director and member of the Compensation Committee at Emerald Expositions Events (NYSE EEX). She is a frequent industry speaker and blogger on sales and customer success.
Emmanuelle holds an M.B.A. in Marketing and Finance from New York University’s Stern School of Business and a B.S. in Industrial Management from Carnegie Mellon University. She lives outside of Boston with her husband, 3 daughters and dog. When not working, she can be found doing hot yoga, Spartan races, paddle boarding, skiing or hiking.
Tracey Zhen, President
Zipcar
Tracey Zhen is president of Zipcar, the world’s leading car-sharing network, where she leads all facets of the business. As president, Tracey is focused on innovation and leveraging technology to grow Zipcar’s position as a key player in the mobility industry.
Tracey has 20 years of experience in leadership roles at consumer technology companies, including senior management roles at TripAdvisor and Expedia where she oversaw business strategy, finance, operations, product development, and marketing.
Prior to Zipcar, Tracey held vice president roles at Tripadvisor, where she oversaw the company’s vacation rental brands, scaling business and growing revenue through strategic acquisitions and the restructuring of its vacation rental business models. At Expedia, Tracey served as general manager for emerging markets and strategy, leading international business growth in Europe and Latin America. At Expedia, Tracey launched new markets, built a European strategy team, and scaled the business to multi-million-dollar growth. Tracey has a proven track record of scaling start-up businesses through product innovation, technology platform development, and consumer marketing.
Tracey started her career in investment banking at Bear, Stearns & Co., Inc., and she held senior roles at IAC where she built and oversaw a finance and analytics team, was responsible for new business development and subsequent wind-down and aided corporate restructurings and capital financings.
Tracey is a graduate of New York University’s Leonard N. Stern School of Business holding dual B.S. degrees in Finance and Information Systems. She is a resident of Boston and a native of New York City.
Francesca Gino, HBS Professor (Keynote Fireside Chat Moderator)
Harvard Business School
Francesca Gino is an award-winning researcher and teacher, and a tenured professor at Harvard Business School. Her consulting and speaking clients include Bacardi, Akamai, Disney, Goldman Sachs, Honeywell, Novartis, P&G, and the U.S. Air Force, Army, and Navy. She has been honored as one of the world’s Top 40 Business Professors under 40 and one of the world’s 50 most influential management thinkers. Her work has been featured on CNN and NPR, as well as in the Economist, Financial Times, New York Times, Newsweek, Scientific American, and Psychology Today. She is the author, most recently, of “Rebel Talent: Why it Pays to Break the Rules in Work and Life.”