Tiankai Feng
Tiankai Feng - a data leader by day and a passionate musician by night - manages to demystify the world of data while making this space more inclusive and less scary. How? He sings about it. Tiankai strikes a unique combination of his musical talents as a pianist and a signer with his subject matter expertise. A digital analytics anthem he authored and rapped during COVID quickly spread through the community and beyond. He has since amassed a nice following on social media and tapped into an exciting niche. Still, Tiankai is among the most humble and genuine people we’ve encountered.
Sanja Komljenovic
An immigrant and refugee from Bosnia, Sanja is the Founder and CEO of ONA Creative, a boutique, female-driven brand strategy and creative agency based in Los Angeles. Sanja founded ONA (meaning “Her” in Bosnia) after leaving her role at Nike in 2015.
She began her career as a Marketing Assistant at UCLA Athletics and spent a good chunk of her career leading digital marketing for men’s basketball - first at LA Clippers, then at Nike. Since then, her agency has worked with global brands like Nike, Nordstrom, and Snapchat and well-funded startups, including Zooey Deschanel’s Lettuce Grow and JLo’s Niyama Sol.
Most recently, she successfully launched a new campaign for Nike’s basketball at the All-Star Weekend in Salt Lake City.
Eric Liedtke
Eric Liedtke is a 26-year adidas veteran and the company's former CMO. Today, he's the mastermind behind one of streetwear's hottest startup brand names. Unless Collective is the world's first regenerative fashion platform that makes 100% plant-and-mineral-based clothing and footwear, during his time at the three stripes. Eric amassed several successes: re-energized the brand by unleashing a culture of collaboration and creativity, brought in billion-dollar celebrity partnerships, scaled com to 4B, and launched innovations like Boost and Futurecraft 4D, to name a few. Yet, as a former competitive swimmer and Oceans Advocate, his greatest passion has been to fight against plastic waste. At adidas, Eric has merged his love for the water with his open-source approach to business, catalyzing a company-wide commitment to sustainability. With Unless Collective, he's taking his purpose to another level.
Antonio Lucio
Antonio Lucio is a recognized thought leader and global influencer in marketing transformation. In his 40-year corporate tenure, he held C-level roles at some of the most recognized companies and iconic brands, including Facebook, HP Inc, Visa, and PepsiCo Inc. He has also been a regular feature in the Forbes Most Influential CMOs. In 2020, Antonio was inducted into the American Marketing Association Hall of Fame.
Antonio is also known for his inclusive leadership philosophy of driving meaningful results through diversity, inclusion and equity. In all his roles, he delivered business results while significantly increasing the representation of women and people of color across senior levels in the entire marketing ecosystem.
Today, he leads his company 5S aimed at advancing the marketing practice through marketing transformation and Diversity and Inclusion. He is also an Executive Fellow at Yale SOM. Antonio was born in Spain, raised in Puerto Rico, and resides with his wife, Ashley, in San Francisco. He is the proud father of five daughters.
Jeff Altman
People hire Jeff Altman for No BS coaching and career advice globally. He functions as a trusted adviser and coach, helping people with their job search, hiring more effectively, managing and leading better, or with support around career issues. He is the host of JobSearchTV.com with more than 7000 videos on YouTube and elsewhere and No BS Job Search Advice Radio, the OG of job search podcasts, #1 in Apple Podcasts for job search with more than 2500 episodes over more than 12 years. He helps make complicated situations easy.
Jenny Rooney
As the Chief Experience Officer, Jenny Rooney oversees the experience of engaging with Adweek. Most recently, she served as Managing Director at Black Glass, a marketing consultancy supporting chief marketers. At Black Glass, she co-founded CMO House, a membership-only platform providing tailored advisory services for CMOs. Prior to that, she spent ten years at Forbes as Assistant Managing Editor, Communities Director, and Chair of the CMO Network, where she managed the Forbes CMO Summit; Forbes CMO Next; the Forbes 30 Under 30 in Marketing & Advertising, and more. She was co-host of Wharton Business Radio’s monthly “CMO Spotlight” show on SiriusXM. She received the Jesse H. Neal National Business Journalism Award and the American Society of Business Publication Editors National Editorial Award for her work as a journalist.
Tobi Gblie
Tobi Gbile's goal is simple — to inspire the youth through pop culture. How is she getting there? She's an entertainment obsessed storyteller who combines her individuality with her experience in the fashion, TV, and music industries. Tobi is currently based in Los Angeles.
She was recently featured on TED.com for her TEDxSanDiego Talk, and is the Global Senior Campaign Manager for fashion and pop culture partnerships at Disney, co-host of the pop culture podcast The Weekly Baecay, Creative Director for rising multi-hyphenate artist TGBEAM, published teen fiction novelist of the "The Stunnerz", and the editor behind Girl With Purple Gucci's. Stay close to see what she adds to her story next.
Ingo Vauk
Ingo Vauk spent the first half of his professional life working in the music business. Composing, producing, recording, and mixing tracks for many artists, from the well-known to the lesser-known, he was always interested in personal growth. He trained in various therapeutic models before switching to working as a therapist full-time, over 15 years ago.
As a child of a nomadic family himself (Ingo spent his first ten years in Myanmar and Afghanistan and has lived and worked in multiple countries since), he is involved in therapeutic group facilitation internationally as well as running his practice for both the local and international community around his current home near Nürnberg/Germany.
Serving the international community working for numerous global companies is a special privilege, as it brings the world to its practice door.
Katie Klumper
Recognized by AdWeek as one of the Top 50 Most Indispensable Marketing, Media, and Tech Executives, Katie Klumper is a celebrated entrepreneur and expert in marketing. Drawing on an extensive career that spans senior roles at Deloitte and KBS, Katie sits at the helm of Black Glass – the first-ever dedicated CMO consultancy that serves the chief marketing role. Since 2019, she’s rapidly grown the business, working with some of the most recognizable brands, including Goldman Sachs, GM, and Walmart. Katie also co-founded and built out Black Glass extension CMO House – a unique executive membership platform with nearly 40 most innovative and transformational CMOs, from brands including Peloton, Pepsi, and the NHL. Throughout her career, she has earned a reputation as a consumer-centric marketer. She has been celebrated with award recognition, including being named amongst the Top 40 Under 40 for Direct Marketing News, She Runs It Mother of the Year, AWNY Game Changer, and BCIT Distinguished Alumni. A Vancouver native and mother of two, Katie also explores innovation outside of Black Glass. In addition to serving as an advisor to the female-founded VC fund Hannah Grey, she recently launched her own hot sauce business, Smaak.
Jordan Rogers
A husband, a father, an entrepreneur, a founder, a sports enthusiast…and formerly an incarcerated heroin addict. Our guest had his feet firmly planted in a prison cell and fancy conference rooms in Paris, London, and NYC. Jordan Rogers - who built a decade-long career in brand marketing at Nike - has been on a rebranding journey since his early 20s. Starting from the bottom taught him the importance of taking calculated risks and finding creative ways to make himself marketable.
At the Swoosh, he’s worked with some of the best athletes & artists in the world, including Ja Morant, Kevin Durant, Sabrina Ionescu, Odell Beckham Jr, Kyler Murray, Cristiano Ronaldo, Sanya Richards Ross, and Virgil Abloh. Yet, he doesn’t want his time at Nike to define his identity. Our chat discusses his belief that the best personal brands are built on serving others.
Connect with him to learn about Perseus Creative, a marketing consultancy Jordan founded to help college athletes navigate the new NIL landscape.
Molly Bruttomesso
Molly Bruttomesso is Senior Vice President of Customer Success at Wunderkind - a performance marketing channel that empowers brands to create meaningful interactions through one-to-one messages. She holds over 20 years of experience in client management in both customer success and at advertising agencies, including Saatchi & Saatchi and Publicis. Outside of her customer success career, she is an active champion for women, a world traveler to 78 countries but happy to come home to Brooklyn and her family, and founder of the rocker T and blazer wardrobe for tech execs (move over grey t-shirts).
Andreas "Anttu" Forsberg
Andreas “Anttu” Forsberg works as a leadership anthropologist, observer, and behavioral analyst. He is an experienced and engaging speaker, facilitator, and executive coach. He is also the author of The Black Book of Leadership, a book about leadership written as a suspense novel.
Through observation, behavioral analysis, and feedback, Andreas is devoted to helping executive teams understand how their behavior impacts the engagement of people around them – either increasing or decreasing the likelihood of High Performance.
His passion for creating an engaging and emotionally safe working environment where teams and individuals thrive has taken Andreas around the world to work with leaders and teams of different nationalities and with different cultural backgrounds, representing a wide variety of functional roles within global businesses.
When not contemplating leadership matters, Andreas enjoys spending time in the kitchen cooking for friends and family, listening to rock music (often played a little too loud), and spending time with his family.
Diego Borgo
Metaverse native, Web3 ambassador, NFT collector, and advisor to global brands sums up Diego Borgo and his mission to help mainstream adoption of blockchain and NFT technology. With over ten years of experience under his belt and as a brand & marketing strategist in the NFT & Metaverse space, his recent work includes helping adidas bring "Into the Metaverse" to life and assisting Salesforce in successfully launching their NFT Cloud platform. He advises major global brands such as Unilever, Porsche, and Shell, among others, and helps them enter the space correctly.
Kelly Cahill
Passionate about delivering consumer experiences that inspire and enhance a consumer journey, Kelly Cahill is a digital marketer through and through. In her 15+ years of experience, she's led digital evolution at some of the largest global brands like Nike, adidas, and Victoria's Secret. Her expertise spans .com, Apps, User Experience, Omni-Channel, Targeted Comm Channels, Social Platforms, and overall Brand Marketing, including Brand Comms and Media oversight.
Equipped with a great understanding of the consumer commerce experience, membership value, and the digital/physical relationship, we chatted about her views on audience-led strategies, why quality over quantity resonates more than ever, and how an unpolished brand effect fits within the reality of real life happening through a device. PS: we get to talk about some marriage stuff as well :).
Dave Paulus
After graduating from Clemson University in 1987, Dave began a career rooted in consumer data and marketing. As part of Merkle's Executive Team, Dave led global sales and client growth initiatives. Today Dave splits time between Colorado and Montana while spending as much time as possible with family and friends. In addition, Dave works with several startups in an advisory and coaching capacity.
Ziad Ahmed
Ziad Ahmed is a 23-year-old entrepreneur. He is the CEO of JUV Consulting, a Generation Z consultancy that works with clients to help them understand young people. JUV has worked with over 20 Fortune 500 companies, profiled by the New York Times, and launched significant purpose-driven TikTok campaigns. Because of JUV, Ziad was named to the 2019 Forbes #30Under30 list when he was 19. He also just graduated from Yale.
Additionally, Ziad is the Founder of Redefy, a youth-run non-profit committed to furthering equality. He often speaks on the power of his generation, and he seeks to use his voice to push the envelope forward wherever/however possible. Overwhelmingly, he’s just another Gen Zer spending too much time on TikTok.
Alyx Wynn
Alyx Wynn, known as the self-appointed ambassador of fun and full bellies among her coworkers and friends, lives in Chicago, IL, with her wife Mary and their cat Bü. She spent the last decade in Portland, OR at Nike in marketing, where she touched everything from World Cups to Be True. Now, at the U.S. Soccer Federation, her love for the sport influences her professional and personal life as her wife Mary is a former professional soccer player.
Jason Faustino
Simply put, Jason Faustino is cool! (Though, to be honest, he dislikes that word). Jason doesn’t talk about street culture; he is part of it. With genuine and deep ties within the sneaker community. He embodies the OG nature of that scene before the hype, and countless collaborations commercialized it.
In 2007, he co-founded one of NYC’s best footwear accounts, Extra Butter, to cultivate a lifestyle and community that emphasized fun and creativity. He now leads collaborations and energy for Saucony products. He is behind some of the partnerships with Trinidad James, Tombogo, Diet Starts Monday, and a project with Maybe Tomorrow dropping soon.
Earlier in his journey as a social worker, he helped kids escape trouble through breakdancing, which continues to be one of his many hobbies. In their free time, Jason pursues his other passions, including cinema and ice hockey. You can follow Jason on IG @um.jf13.
Barbara Soalheiro
Barbara Soalheiro is the founder of Mesa Company and the creator of Mesa Method, a team-based work system designed to solve complex challenges by unleashing human potential to process more and execute faster. She is also a partner at FLAGCX, an ecosystem of companies accelerating change in the creative industry, with offices in NY, LA, and São Paulo.
Her daily work consists of working side by side with some of the most extraordinary professionals of our time (people like Marc Ecko, Cindy Gallop, Naomi Watts, Kobe Bryant, and Fernando Meirelles) and some of the final decision makers inside the largest organizations in the world (Google, Facebook, Coca-Cola, Bayer) helping them move forward in a world of constant change.
Barbara was a former journalist-in-chief of Colors, the groundbreaking magazine founded by Tibor Kalman and Oliviero Toscani. She is also a writer. Her book Como Fazíamos Sem... won a Jabuti, Brazil’s most prestigious literary prize, and is present at libraries in every public school in the country.
Shawn Hoy
Professionally, Shawn is a self-described stand-up comedian and youth soccer coach trapped in the career trajectory of a product and merchandising professional. He’s been fortunate enough to have traveled on the dimes of McKinsey, Bain, Nike, Saucony, and now DSW. Shawn’s singular professional motivation: doing things that have never been done before.
Cory Hansen
Cory Hansen spent the first ten years of his career working in advertising before joining Nike, where he worked on pretty much anything that needed writing, led the Brand Writing Department, and steered the voice of the Nike Brand. He is a lifelong resident of Portland, Oregon.