Featured Speaker(s)

Kristin Kranias is the Vice President of Global Professional Services at ShopperTrak, a retail data and analytics company with the world's largest shopper visit database. In this role Kristin leads ShopperTrak's client engagement, change management and analytics teams serving over 1200+ retail customers. Prior to joining ShopperTrak, Kristin was the co-founder of SaleTally, a marketing data company that aggregates and analyzes retailer promotion data. She sold SaleTally to ShopperTrak in 2014 and moved from San Francisco to Chicago with the acquisition. Before starting SaleTally, Kristin was Principal at Bain & Company where she focused on retail, consumer, technology and ecommerce clients. She received her MBA from Stanford and her AB in economics from Harvard.

Lisa Collings is Vice President of Client Development with Conversant, the leader in creating intelligent connections between consumers and brands through personalized digital media. At Conversant, Lisa is responsible for the strategic development of key accounts in the luxury and fashion verticals. Prior to joining the company in 2011, Lisa spent the majority of her career in the “agency world” with DDB Worldwide and Ogilvy, where she fine-tuned her skills in developing marketing and branding strategies for Fortune 500 companies and translating them into digital environments. A graduate of Northern Illinois University, Lisa lives in Chicago with her husband, Will and their two children, Lili and Pierce, and their dog, Cash.

Jennifer Farver is Director of Engineering at Civis Analytics, a data analytics consultancy and software company. There she leads Civis' software development team of 20 engineers. She is also an Adjunct Professor of Data Analytics at Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

Prior to joining Civis, Farver was a software developer at Boston-based Ab Initio Software, an industry pioneer in parallel enterprise ETL (extract-transform-load) platforms. She was also previously on the faculty at the University of Virginia in the department of Systems and Information Engineering. She earned her BS in Civil Engineering from UC Berkeley. At MIT, she earned a masters and PhD in transportation network optimization.

Nicole Toth is a Business Development Manager at Beacon Hill Technology, an IT staffing firm with a unique approach. By utilizing innovative technologies and developing industry leading recruitment processes, we are able to deploy the best project managers, business analysts and technologists in the ever evolving spaces of mobile technology, network design, cloud and application development. Nicole has over 10 years of accomplished sales and account management experience within software, B2B and staffing. Proven success in business development, account management and building strong relationships with executives of small to large accounts. Skilled in identifying and attracting quality talent in the market and provide successful outcomes by procuring top IT talent to help support a companies growth.

Smiti Sharma is a Principal Engineer working in the areas of Analytics, Hadoop and Emerging technologies at EMC. She architects solutions for customers and works with EMC engineering in emerging NoSQL/NewSQL product portfolio as well as traditional database technologies. Over the past 12 years, Smiti has managed and built complex critical enterprise solutions. She has focused on distributed computing, High transaction processing, Analytics & Data warehousing, ERP applications, Security and Business continuance among others.

Prior to joining EMC, Smiti was the Field CTO for Greenplum for 4 years where she had responsibility of building new solutions across Global customers and alliances. She has most notably contributed to building vertical Utilities Analytics solution and legal Compliance e-discovery platforms that have been implemented globally. Smiti also spent 6 years at Oracle, where she was a member of SWAT team for Oracle Exadata and other Oracle’s Technology products.

She has extensive experience in the field and Product Management. She holds a graduate degree in Electrical Engineering and an MBA in Information Management. A regular speaker at technical conferences and User groups, she is passionate about solving customer’s business problems, with technology.

Jennifer K. Spicher is currently engaged as Vice President for KellyOCG's Managed Service Provider (MSP) practice. Ms. Spicher is responsible for the architecture and design, implementation, delivery and overall customer satisfaction of Kelly's integrated solutions including: MSP, RPO, IC, SOW and Talent Pools. She is a Subject Matter Expert having managed numerous accounts with increasing global complexities. In addition to this role, Ms. Spicher has served as our Channel Partner liaison, managing relationships with KellyOCG's Vendor Management System partners.

Ms. Spicher joined KellyOCG in 2009 to help accelerate the company's growth in strategic accounts. She brings a wealth of experience and demonstrated accomplishments from her 18 years in the human capital solutions industry. Most recently Ms. Spicher served as Vice President for a national provider of human capital solutions. She has also held positions as Market Director at a national staffing firm and Regional Director for a global provider of contingent workforce solutions.

Ms. Spicher holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Public Affairs from Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. In 2013, Ms. Spicher was named to Supply & Demand Chain Executive's annual "Pros to Know" list, a ranking of supply chain providers and practitioners.