Thomas Abrahamson, Chairman
Managing Director & Principal
Lipman Hearne, Inc.

www.lipmanhearne.com

Tom Abrahamson is known for innovation in nonprofit marketing.  He brings more than 25 years of success and leadership in the field to Lipman Hearne.  At Lipman Hearne, Tom has served more than 100 organizations, including foundations and community-based agencies, global membership-based organizations, small and mid-sized private colleges, and large multi-campus public universities.

As a college administrator, Tom was instrumental in repositioning two major universities, both of which became recognized as #1 in their categories by U.S. News & World Report.  Prior to joining Lipman Hearne he served as Associate Vice President for Enrollment Management and Dean of Admissions at DePaul University in Chicago.

Tom has served numerous institutions, including Amherst College, Illinois Institute of Technology, Louisiana State University, University of Chicago, University of Cincinnati, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, University of Kansas, University of Maine, University of Michigan, University of Missouri, Columbia, University of Pennsylvania, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, University of Southern California, The College Board, National Association of Secondary School Principals, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and Lions Clubs International.

A leading speaker and author in the field, Tom has given more than 75 conference presentations, written numerous articles for professional journals, and contributed to two books: The Strategic Management of College Enrollment and The Admission Practitioner.  He has created research instruments such as the Market Positioning Questionnaire©, Pricing Sensitivity Study©, and the Web Site Effectiveness Study©.

As an active leader in the nonprofit community, Tom was the Chair of AMA's 2006 Non-Profit Marketing Conference and is a Chair of the 2007 Non-Profit Marketing Conferences, a member of the Board of Trustees of Archeworks, an interdisciplinary design school, Vice President of the Board of Directors Urban Gateways of Chicago, a member of the Blue Ribbon Committee of Prevent Child Abuse America and has served as President of Big Brothers/Big Sisters of Metropolitan Chicago.

Tom holds an M.A. in higher education administration from Bowling Green State University and a B.S. from Southern Illinois University.

Jay Aldous
Chief Marketing and Communications Officer
United States Fund for UNICEF
http://www.unicefusa.org

Jay Aldous is the Vice President of Marketing, Communications and Corporate Partnerships for the United States Fund for UNICEF. Jay is responsible for all marketing and communications for UNICEF within the United States. He is responsible for overseeing the U.S. Fund’s Ambassador Program, and celebrity and sports relationships.

Previous to the U.S. Fund for UNICEF, Jay was Senior Partner of The Brighton Group, a consultancy providing marketing and development services to non-profit organizations. The Brighton Group works with a number of leading non-profits to develop alliances between corporations and non-profit organizations. While with The Brighton Group, Jay developed corporate partnership and celebrity programs for organizations including Make-A-Wish Foundation, Special Olympics, Heifer Project International, The Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Children’s Miracle Network and America’s Second Harvest.

Before founding The Brighton Group, Jay spent 9 years with Children’s Miracle Network (CMN) developing innovative programs with corporate partners. As the Senior Vice President of Marketing, Jay was responsible for Children’s Miracle Network’s international corporate partnership initiatives that raised over 150 million dollars (U.S.) annually for children’s hospitals.

Prior to Children’s Miracle Network, Jay taught marketing and related subjects at Montana College. He also directed a regional business development program.

Jay holds a B.S. in marketing and an M.B.A. from the University of
Utah.

Outside interests include skiing, snowboarding, cycling and travel. Jay holds the world record for bicycling around the world (14,290 miles in 106 days) as well as a national age record for running 100 miles.

Alan R. Andreasen
Professor of Marketing

McDonough School of Business

Georgetown University

www.msb.edu

Alan R. Andreasen is Professor of Marketing at the McDonough School of Business of Georgetown University and Executive Director of the Social Marketing Institute. Dr. Andreasen is a specialist in consumer behavior and a world leader in the application of marketing to nonprofit organizations, social marketing, and the market problems of disadvantaged consumers. He is the author or editor of seventeen books and numerous monographs. His most recent books are: Social Marketing in the 21st Century (Sage 2006); Marketing Social Change (Jossey Bass, 1995); Strategic Marketing in Nonprofit Organizations (7th ed. forthcoming 2007) coauthored with Philip Kotler of Northwestern University (Prentice-Hall 2003); Marketing Research That Won’t Break the Bank (Jossey-Bass 2003); and Ethics in Social Marketing (Georgetown University Press 2001). He has also published over 120 articles and conference papers on a variety of topics.

He is a member of several academic and professional associations and serves on the Editorial Boards of the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Consumer Policy, Social Marketing Quarterly, and the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing. He is Past President of the Association for Consumer Research and Honorary Editor of the International Journal of Non Profit Marketing. He is the winner of the 2007 Richard W. Pollay Prize for Intellectual Excellence in Research on Marketing in the Public Interest.

Dr. Andreasen is an internationally known educator and marketing consultant. He has advised, carried out research, and conducted executive seminars for a widely diversified set of nonprofit and private sector organizations and several government agencies around the world including: the World Bank, American Cancer Society, AARP, the USAID, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, American Red Cross, United Way of America, Boys and Girls Clubs of America, National Endowment for the Arts, National Cancer Institute, Habitat for Humanity International, PBS, and public health programs in Egypt, Thailand, Colombia, Jamaica, Mexico, Indonesia and Bangladesh.

William Cron
J. Vaughn and Evelyne H. Wilson Professor in Business
Associate Dean, Graduate Programs

M. J. Neeley School of Business, Texas Christian University

www.neeley.tcu.edu

William Cron is Associate Dean of Graduate Programs and the J. Vaughn and Evelyne H. Wilson Professor in Business at the M. J. Neeley School of Business, Texas Christian University. Professor Cron received a BSBA from Xavier University in Cincinnati and an MBA and DBA from Indiana University, Bloomington.

Professor Cron’s teaching and research interests lie in sales and sales management, career stages, motivation research, and marketing channels. He has served on four editorial review boards including the Journal of Marketing and the Academy of Marketing Science. He has published over 80 marketing and sales management articles in such journals as the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Applied Psychology, Harvard Business Review, and the Journal of Classifications. He has also co-authored one of the leading sales management texts in the U.S. and Canada, Sales Management: Concepts and Cases, 9th ed. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.) and Selling: Building Relationships and Achieving Results, 1st ed. (John Wiley & Sons, Inc.).

He has been invited to speak through-out the world at universities such as Erasmus University in Rotterdam, the University of Bern in Switzerland, Bacconni University in Italy, Wuhan University in China, Dijon University in France, Universidad Mayor in Chile, and at Technologico de Monterey in Mexico.

Professor Cron serves as President of the Academic Council of the American Marketing Association; the board of Midmark Corporation, the Advisory Board of the Midmark Diagnostics Group, the Healthcare Education Foundation of the Health Industry Distributors Association. In the health care industry he has worked with Johnson and Johnson Medical, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Physician Sales & Service, Inc., VHA Inc., and the Baylor Health System. Non-healthcare companies with which he has worked include GTE, Samsung Electronic America, Haggar Apparel Company, and Safeguard Business Systems.

Dennis L. Dunlap
Chief Executive Officer

American Marketing Association

www.marketingpower.com

Dennis Dunlap is the Chief Executive Officer of the American Marketing Association (AMA), the largest and most comprehensive professional organization of marketers in North America with 40,000+ individual members worldwide.

Mr. Dunlap’s career began in 1965 with Leo Burnett Company, the largest advertising agency in Chicago and among the top global agencies.

Burnett is renowned for its long term client relationships, operating as a marketing partner with clients and creating many enduring brands and advertising campaigns.  Mr. Dunlap spent 25 years with Burnett and worked with many of the agency’s global consumer goods clients including Philip Morris, Procter & Gamble, Kellogg, Kraft, Johnson Wax, RCA, Maytag and others.  During his last ten years at Burnett, Dennis was part of the agency’s senior management group and held several senior positions including: Senior Vice President/Client Service Director; President/CEO, Leo Burnett Canada; and Executive Vice President, Leo Burnett USA.

In 1990, Dennis joined RR Donnelley & Sons Company as a Senior Vice President in the Information Services Group.  RR Donnelley is an integrated communications services company, and the world’s largest U.S. based printer with sales of $8 billion.  At Donnelley, Mr. Dunlap was responsible for leading and managing several business units: Mobium, a wholly owned subsidiary and business to business marketing communications firm; Intervisual Communications, a subsidiary company which created and produced specialty print advertising products; Database Technology Services, a division providing information and content management products and professional services; and Graphics Management, a division providing packaging and print production managing services.

In 1999, Mr. Dunlap was selected to be the Chief Executive Officer of the American Marketing Association.  At the AMA, he has spearheaded significant change and focused on enhancing the associations’ visibility and leadership position in the marketing profession and on providing AMA members with products and services addressing their needs in the changing marketing environment.

Mr. Dunlap currently serves on the National Volunteer Board for the American Red Cross and has served as a board member for several for profit and non-profit organizations including: Arnowitz Studios, a developer of education/entertainment CD ROM’s; Urban Gateways, a non-profit for children interested in the arts; and the Chicago Convention and Tourism Bureau.

Roger A. Kerin, Vice Chairman and Treasurer
Harold C. Simmons Distinguished Professor of Marketing
Edwin L. Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University

www.cox.smu.edu/home

Roger A. Kerin is the Harold C. Simmons Distinguished Professor of Marketing at the Edwin L. Cox School of Business, Southern Methodist University.  Professor Kerin holds a BA (magna cum laude), MBA and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.

Professor Kerin has published five books, including Marketing, 8th ed. (McGraw-Hill/Irwin 2006), which has been translated into six languages, and Strategic Marketing Problems: Cases and Comments, 11th ed. (Prentice Hall 2007) which has been translated into three languages.  He has authored over 75 scholarly articles in such journals as the Journal of Marketing, Journal of Marketing Research, Management Science, Strategic Management Journal, Journal of Product Innovation Management, and Journal of Public Policy & Marketing.  He also serves on numerous journal editorial review boards.  Professor Kerin served as Editor of the Journal of Marketing (1988-1990) and as Vice-President of Publications and a member of the American Marketing Association Board of Directors (1991-1994).  He became a member of the American Marketing Association Foundation Board of Trustees in 2004 and will assume the position as Treasurer in 2007.

Robert J. Lavidge
President Emeritus

Elrick & Lavidge

Robert J. Lavidge is the former president, then president emeritus, of Elrick and Lavidge, on of the nation’s leading custom marketing research firms with more than 40 offices and over 1,000 employees. He served as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the American Marketing Association Foundation for 7 years following its establishment in 1992. Previously, he served as President of the AMA, as Vice-President in charge of the Marketing Research Division, as President of the Chicago Chapter, as General Chairman of the Association’s National Conference, as Chairman of the Association’s Planning Committee, as Chairman of the AMA Census Advisory Committee, as a member of the AMA Board of Directors and as a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal of Marketing Research.

He was a member of the Executive Committee of the National Marketing Advisory Committee named by the Secretary of Commerce and chaired the National Task Force on the marketing of goods and services to people in low-income areas.

Mr. Lavidge is the author of articles which have appeared in the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Marketing Research which have been reproduced throughout the world. He is the co-editor of the readings book entitled Marketing and Society: the Challenge. He has been called upon as a marketing expert in more than 200 legal cases involving trademark/tradedress, anti-trust and advertising issues. He is the author of Survey Research in Trademark Cases and was a member of the Board of Directors of the Intellectual Lawyers Foundation.

He served as an adjunct member of the faculty of Northwestern University for 30 years and on the Board of Trustees of McCormick Theological Seminary.

Mr. Lavidge has received the AMA Lemburg Award, the Parlin Award of AMA and the Wharton School of Business and the Naples Award of the Advertising Research Foundation.

He earned an undergraduate degree from DePauw University with highest honors, including election to Phi Beta Kappa, and served as National President of the DePauw Alumni Association. He is an honorary lifetime member of the Council of the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business, from which he received his graduate degree, also with highest honors.

Mr. Lavidge served as President of the Board of Trustees of the Chicago suburb where he lived with his wife and four children, and was elected Chairman of the Cook County Council of Governments, which was composed of the chief elected officials of more than 150 governmental organizations including the City of Chicago.

He now lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, where he continues to work with non-profit organizations.

A. Dawn Lesh, Chairperson-Elect
President
A. Dawn Lesh International

Dawn Lesh is a marketing executive with over 20 years of executive global management experience in a variety of industries with a focus on financial services.  Throughout her career, she has led the development and execution of major initiatives in marketing which have included: strategy development and implementation, product and service development and deployment, service quality and assessment and redesign and business competitor analysis.

In 1997, Dawn founded A. Dawn Lesh international, a management consulting practice providing deep expertise and broad executional capabilities and strategic marketing, business planning/implementation and market research.  In 1990, she joined JP Morgan, a global investment bank as Managing Director responsible for identifying and analyzing markets for products and services worldwide.  This included rationalizing, coordinating and managing all market research and marketing activities. From 1986-1990, she was Vice President with the New York Stock Exchange serving as the head of Strategic Planning and Marketing Research.

For the previous twelve years, Dawn successfully established and managed consumer, business-to-business and professional services market research within the global financial services industry for Bank of America and Wells Fargo Bank.

A graduate of the University of California, at Davis, BA in Rhetoric and California State University, Sacramento, MA Communications Research.  Dawn has completed executive education programs at MIT as well as facilitator training at Synectics Institute.  She is co-author of an award-winning article, “How To Make Research Actionable”.  Dawn is a frequent speaker.  She is active in the American Marketing Association, Advertising Foundation and the Financial Women’s Association.  She is currently on the Editorial Review Board of the Journal of Advertising Research.  She is also an adjunct professor at the Stern School of Business of New York University in the Marketing Department where she teaches Financial Services Marketing and Marketing Research.

Roseanne Luth
President

Luth Research

www.luthresearch.com

Roseanne Luth is president and CEO of the 29-year-old market research firm Luth Research lauded by the San Diego Book of Lists as one of the top 25 Women-Owned Businesses in San Diego. She founded the company in 1977, and has seen a 20 percent annual growth rate ever since.

Roseanne’s vigor and innovation made her the first woman to join the Executives’ Association in 1997 where she also served as the first female president in the organization’s history. She also acted as a five-year board member of the San Diego Better Business Bureau, and her customer-oriented philosophy contributed to her appointment as chair of the bureau in 1998. Luth was also instrumental in keeping the San Diego Junior Theatre thriving through a tough economic slump serving as its president for more than four years.

Currently, Roseanne serves on the Board of CASRO and is Chair of CASRO University, coordinating over 8 workshops per year to benefit members. She is also on the board for the AMA Foundation, the non-profit arm of the American Marketing Association.

With more than 35 years experience in research, Roseanne began to recognize the power of the Internet as a market research tool. As a result, she committed herself to advancing the research industry to its full potential by making SurveySavvy.com the most scientifically valid data-collection panel service on the Internet. Thanks to Luth’s patented viral sign-up system (Patent #6,446,044 B1), the panel boasts over 3 million members worldwide.

Leveraging the asset of the panel has led the Company President and CEO to add several well-known skilled associates to the roster early in 2006. This new team spearheaded the development of new products. The vision not only utilizes the past wealth of information in the panel, but also capitalizes on the need for trend and lifestyle data in the market research industry.

Roseanne has been married to Gene for 40 years and boasts 5 grandchildren.

Townes Lavidge Osborn
President
The LAMP Foundation

Born in Chicago, IL, Townes Lavidge Osborn moved to Knoxville, TN where she was raised after her father completed graduate school at Northwestern University.  Osborn graduated from Salem Academy in Winston-Salem, NC and the University of Tennessee and lived and worked in Asia, Europe, and New York.  She also lived in Washington, DC for 11 years where she was Executive Director of the National Communications Lobby.

In 1983, Osborn returned to Knoxville with her children and joined Lavidge & Associates, a Knoxville-based, full-service advertising and marketing company founded in 1950 by her father, Art Lavidge.  Now she is president of the agency whose client list includes Coca-Cola Fountain, North America; Link-Belt; TVA; Great Lakes Chemical Corp.; Biltmore Estates; Schutt Sports; and Schaad Companies.  Also, she is president of her family’s LAMP Foundation whose purpose is to support non-profit programs and projects that benefit society.

In 1987-88, Osborn was a founder of the Knoxville Chapter of the American Marketing Association (AMA) and served as its president in 1990-91 when it won Chapter-of-the-Year.  During that same time, she initiated and chaired what became the largest international project in AMA’s history, the East European Business Library Project.  When the project ended, there were 24 AMA Business Library Collections in place from Prague to Irkutz, Siberia, and over $4 million worth of goods and services had been donated.  During this project, Osborn received many honors including the Budapest University of Economics Leadership Medal; Alliance of Universities for Democracy Award; Czech Marketing Association International Award; and Romanian Marketing Association (AROMAR) Medal for Marketing Leadership.

In 1990, Osborn initiated and coordinated the first major permanent marketing scholarship endowment undertaken by an AMA Chapter, the Eagle Endowment.  To date, $250,000 has been raised and Osborn continues to serve as co-executor.  In 1994, she chaired the AMA’s Chapter Leadership Conference and the Leadership Summit.  Osborn also has served on AMA’s Board of Directors, as Vice-President of the AMA Marketing Management Council, and initiated the division’s Marketing Management Congress.  In addition, she has been involved with the AMA Collegiate Division and served for several years as a judge for its annual case competition.  In 1996, she received AMA’s Lemburg Award for Distinguished Service to the Association, and, in 1995, the Knoxville AMA Locander Award.  Since 1998, Osborn has served as a trustee of the AMA International Foundation and has been a member of the AMAF Leadership Circle since its inception.

Besides Osborn’s involvement in AMA, she has been on the board of directors of over 30 nonprofit organizations and served as president of many.  In the Knoxville community, she serves on the Helen Ross McNabb Center Board of Directors, Knoxville Museum of Art Board of Trustees, Knoxville Opera Company Board of Directors, Clarence Brown Theatre Advisory Board, University of Tennessee Library Executive Committee, University of Tennessee Chancellor’s Associates and she was the first, and to date, the only woman to serve as president of the Rotary Club of Knoxville (RCK) which was founded in 1915.  She has held many leadership roles in her Rotary District and Rotary International.  In 1999, Osborn was honored as the Rotarian of the Year by RCK and also received the club’s Great Communicator Award.  In 2000, she was the first District 6780 recipient of RI’s highest honor, the Service Above Self Award.  In 2001, she was honored by the citizens of Mátészalka, Hungary with the Mátészalka Citizenship – Leader Award and was made an Honorary Member of Rotary Club of Mátészalka (their first, and only, female member) In subsequent years she twice received the District 6780 Foundation Service Award, and the Zone 29-30 Eagle Award for Outstanding Leadership.  In 2002, she was honored as a Olympic Torchbearer for “being a person who has inspired many people.”

J. Walker Smith
President

Yankelovich, Inc.

www.yankelovich.com

J. Walker Smith is the president of Yankelovich, Inc., a marketing consultancy specializing in lifestyle trends, database services, and segmentation solutions.  He oversees the Yankelovich MONITOR service that track U.S. consumer value and lifestyle trends.

He is co-author of Rocking the Ages: The Yankelovich Report on Generational Marketing (1997), Life Is Not Work, Work Is Not Life: Simple Reminders for Finding Balance in a 24/7 World (2001), Coming to Concurrence: Addressable Attitudes and the New Model for Marketing Productivity (2005).  He is a columnist for Marketing Management and Media magazines and he does a weekly commentary for Smart City, a public radio show about community life.  Walker holds a doctorate in Mass Communication Research from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Jerome D. Williams, Vice Chairman
F.J. Centennial Professor

Department of Advertising

University of Texas at Austin

advertising.utexas.edu

F.J. Heyne Centennial Professor in Communication, and an appointment in the Center for African and African American Studies. Ph.D., University of Colorado (Business Administration/Marketing); M.S., Union College (Industrial Administration); B.A., University of Pennsylvania (English). 

Dr. Williams joined the Department of Advertising at The University of Texas at Austin in 2003.  His research interests cover a number of areas in the consumer marketing and advertising domains, with particular emphasis on issues related to multicultural advertising and marketing.  He has testified in a number of court cases as an expert witness on consumer response to advertising strategies.  His research has appeared in numerous journals and books.  He is co-editor of a soon-to-be published book on diversity in advertising.

Dr. Williams has been interviewed on numerous occasions by the national media, including CNN, Good Morning America, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Black Entertainment Television, etc., for his views on multicultural marketing, especially on topics dealing with target marketing and consumer racial profiling.  Dr. Williams has been a visiting professors at leading universities in countries around the globe, including Singapore, Hong Kong, New Zealand, and Jamaica.  In addition to his board work with the American Marketing Association Foundation, he also sits on the Executive Board of the Society for Consumer Psychology.  Dr. Williams is married, has five children, and is an avid runner.  Over the years he has completed over 20 marathons, trying to re-capture the youthful vitality he once had as captain of the track and cross country teams at the University of Pennsylvania where he set numerous records and trained in a research program sponsored by the U.S. Olympic Committee for the 1968 Olympic Games.

Kenneth Bernhardt
Regents Professor of Marketing and Assistant Dean Corporate Relations

Georgia State University Robinson College of Business

www.robinson.gsu.edu

Ken Bernhardt is Regents Professor of Marketing Department and Assistant Dean for Corporate Relations at Georgia State University's Robinson College of Business.   Previously, he was Chairman of the Marketing Department from 1989 to 1993 and 2003-2005.  He has served as Consumer Research Advisor for the Federal Trade Commission, Visiting Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School, and Visiting Research Professor at the Marketing Science Institute.   Ken is a Past Chair of the Board of the 45,000 member American Marketing Association and past President of the Association for Consumer Research.

Ken has co-authored two leading marketing textbooks and has won a number of outstanding teaching awards.  He serves on several corporate boards and his not for profit work includes serving on the Board of Directors and Executive Committee of Junior Achievement of Georgia and the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau (where he chairs the Marketing Committee).  He is also a life member of the Board and Past Chair of the Board of the Alliance Theatre Company, and a member of the Board of Directors for the Metro Atlanta Arts & Culture Coalition, the Community Foundation of Atlanta, Georgia State University Foundation, the Harvard Business School Alumni Club of Atlanta, and is an emeritus member of the Board of Trustees of the American Marketing Association Foundation.

Ken has won the Alumni Distinguished Professor Award as the best professor in the GSU Robinson College of Business.  He has also received the university's first Exceptional Service Award given for outstanding service to the community, the Arts and Business Council's ABBY Award for volunteerism in the arts, the Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau President’s Award for his contributions to the marketing of Atlanta, and the American Marketing Association’s Lemburg Award for outstanding contributions to the marketing profession.  He has served as a consultant to a number of major companies including Chick-fil-A, UPS, BellSouth, IBM, Southern Mills, Snapper, Coca-Cola, CheckFree, Century 21, and Web MD.  Ken received his MBA from the Harvard Business School and his Ph.D. from the University of Michigan.

Stephen W. Brown
Edwin M. Carson Chair in Services Marketing
Professor of Marketing and Executive Director

Center for Services Leadership

W.P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University

wpcarey.asu.edu

In his career as professor, researcher and founding director of the Center for Services Leadership in Arizona State University's W.P. Carey School of Business, Steve Brown has achieved international recognition for his work in services marketing and management, dealing with such issues as service quality, recovering from service failures and building services in product-dominated companies.  The field of services has enjoyed tremendous growth and recognition, thanks in part to Steve’s contributions, and its leaders acknowledge him as one of its instrumental founders and among its current thought leaders.

The Center for Services Leadership, created in 1986 behind Brown's vision and the support of the business community, is now considered the premier university location for research and education in services management and customer focus.  Intangibles magazine calls it "the Mecca" for those interested in services.  Over 40 leading companies are charter members of the Center, including Marriott, IBM and McKinsey & Company.

A prolific researcher and author, Steve has co-authored and co-edited 20 books and over 150 articles.  He is co-founder and co-chair of the International Quality in Services conferences held every other year in Sweden or North America, a past international president of the American Marketing Association and is a Winspear Visiting Scholar at the University of Victoria in Canada. He serves on the boards of directors of neoIT and The HSM Group and the advisory board of Vestor Partners.

Steve has earned numerous international and university-wide awards for distinguished contributions to his discipline and to the community such as American Marketing Association's prestigious Career Contributions to Services Marketing award and honorary doctorate degrees from the HANKEN School of Economics in Finland and recently from Karlstad University in Sweden. He has also been recognized by the Association for Service Management International as its Educator of the Year.

His students consistently rate Steve as one of their most inspiring professors, and he is sought after as a speaker for conferences around the world.

Barbara Everitt Bryant
Research Scientist
National Quality Research Center

Ross School of Business, University of Michigan

www.bus.umich.edu

From 1993 to 2001 Dr. Bryant was managing director of the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), a cross-industry, national economic indicator, based on econometric modeling of survey data. She now serves as part-time consultant to this project. Bryant designed the survey methodology for ACSI, served as its administrator, and coordinated all report writing and liaison with funding sponsors. ACSI was launched in 1994 and currently measures customer satisfaction with 200 private sector companies, 70 customer segments of major federal agencies, two types of local government services and the U.S. Postal Service. Bryant lectures on customer satisfaction measurement, changing demographics of the nation, and is a marketing and survey consultant.

Appointed by President George H. W. Bush and confirmed by the Senate, Bryant was the first woman to be Director in 200 years of census taking for the Bureau of Census, U.S. Department of Commerce. She is the only woman to have ever directed a U.S. decennial census of population. During her tenure she oversaw the 1990 decennial census, 200 household and business surveys per year and the 1992 economic censuses. She was instrumental in moving the Census Bureau away from paper and pencil interviewing to computer-assisted survey information collection, and initiated research and activities to make major changes in census taking which were implemented for the 2000 census.

Dr. Bryant served as senior analyst to the vice president at Market Opinion Research, Detroit (now MORPACE international), in addition to serving as Senior Vice President her last 12 years with the company. While there she directed national research for three Presidential commissions: President Gerald Ford's Commission on Observance of International Women's Year (1975-77), President Jimmy Carter's Commission on World Hunger (1980) and President Ronald Reagan's Commission on Americans Outdoors (1986), as well as managing survey studies and consulting projects for media, transportation, education and health care organizations.

Michelle Elster
Vice President
Rabin Research

www.rabin-research.com

Ms. Elster is currently a Vice President at Rabin Research Company in Chicago. Her responsibilities include general management, new business development, and corporate communications.  The company’s clients represent blue chip organizations in both consumer and b2b industries such as packaged goods, financial, healthcare, foodservice, and new technologies.  She has been with Rabin Research since 1985. 

Before joining the research industry, she was in account management at Marsteller Advertising in Chicago.  While there, her duties included developing and executing strategic marketing communications programs, with ultimate budget responsibility for some of the agency’s clients -- including R.T. French, Oscar Mayer, Swiss Miss, and Stiffel lamps.

Michelle is currently serving as Chairperson of the Board for the American Marketing Association Foundation.  She recently served as Chairperson of the Board for the national American Marketing Association.  Starting in 1999, Ms. Elster began serving on the AMA board of directors and remains on the board today.  She is also a member of the U.S. Census Bureau’s Advisory Committee.

In 1992-93 Ms. Elster served as President of the Chicago Chapter of the AMA – the largest chapter in the country.  She also served as a Vice President of the marketing research and consumer marketing divisions of the Chicago Chapter.

Ms. Elster has a B.A. in advertising and an M.B.A. in marketing and international business.  Both degrees are from the University of Illinois, Urbana.

Calvin Hodock
Lecturer
New York University

Berkeley College

http://web.scps.nyu.edu/mcghee/

http://www.berkeleycollege.edu/

Calvin L. Hodock is the former Chairman of the Board of the American Marketing Association, the world’s largest professional marketing society. He created the prestigious AMA Edison Awards presented annually for innovation excellence. During a twelve-year period, he reviewed Edison submissions for over five thousand new product and services from America’s elite corporations. Some of this material, not available in the public domain, is used in his new book Why Smart Companies Do Dumb Things.

Hodock has appeared on CBS Evening News, CNN, CNBC and Bloomberg, numerous radio stations in local markets, and print media, including Wall Street Journal, New York Times, San Jose Mercury, Brandweek, Advertising Age, and Promo Magazine. Hodock is a nationally recognized authority on marketing and product innovation. His marketing credentials were earned at the Gillette Company, Bayer, and Johnson & Johnson in senior management positions. He was also a partner at Comart KLP, one of the country’s largest marketing service agencies at the time.

Hodock currently teaches marketing courses at New York University and Berkeley College. He consults with blue chip corporations on how to revitalize their innovation process. He is also a board member of NuVim, Inc. a start-up company.

www.zli.bus.umich.edu

Thomas C. Kinnear is Eugene Applebaum Professor of Entrepreneurial Studies, Executive Director of the Samuel Zell and Robert H. Lurie Institute for Entrepreneurial Studies, and Professor of Marketing at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.  He was formally Senior Associate Dean of the Business School and former Vice President for Development and Executive Officer for the University.  He holds an undergraduate degree and an LLD (honoris causa) from Queen's University at Kingston, Ontario, an MBA from Harvard University, and a Ph.D. in Business Administration from the University of Michigan.

He has previously held a faculty appointment at the University of Western Ontario, and visiting appointments at Harvard University, Stanford University, and the European Management Institute (INSEAD) at Fontainebleau, France.  His teaching and research interests are in the areas of entrepreneurial studies, strategic marketing planning, marketing and public policy, and market-based management.  His research activity has resulted in publications in numerous scholarly journals including: the Journal of Marketing, the Journal of Marketing Research, the Journal of Consumer Research, the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, and the Journal of Business Research.  He is former editor of the Journal of Marketing and former founding editor of the Journal of Public Policy and Marketing.  He is co-author of several books including: Principles of Marketing (Harper Collins), Marketing Research: An Applied Approach, (McGraw-Hill), Promotional Strategy (Pinnaflex Educational Resources, Inc.), and Cases in Marketing Management (Richard D. Irwin).

He is President and Chair of the Board of Directors of the Venture Michigan Corporation, a $200 million venture capital fund of funds.  He is also a Director of a number corporations and of the American Marketing Association, and former Chair of the Board of the American Marketing Association Foundation.  He has previously served as an Academic Trustee of the Marketing Science Institute.

Jagdish Sheth
Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing

Goizueta Business School, Emory University

www.goizueta.emory.edu

Dr. Jagdish (Jag) N. Sheth is the Charles H. Kellstadt Professor of Marketing in the Goizueta Business School and the founder of the Center for Relationship Marketing (CRM) at Emory University.  Prior to his present position, he was at the University of Southern California (7 years) and the founder of the Center for Telecommunications Management (CTM); at the University of Illinois (15 years), and on the faculty of Columbia University (5 years), as well as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (2 years).  Dr. Sheth is nationally and internationally known for his scholarly contribution in Marketing, Customer Satisfaction, Global Competition, and Strategic Thinking.

Professor Sheth has worked for numerous industries and companies in the United States, Europe and Asia, both as an Advisor and as a Seminar Leader.  His clients include AT&T, BellSouth, Cox Communications, Delta, Ernst & Young, Ford, GE, Lucent Technologies, Motorola, Nortel, Pillsbury, Sprint, Square D, 3M, Whirlpool and many more.  He has offered more than 5,000 presentations in at least twenty countries.

In 1989, Dr. Sheth was given the Outstanding Marketing Educator award by the Academy of Marketing Science.  In 1991 and again in 1999, he was given the Outstanding Educator Award by the Sales and Marketing Executives International (SMEI).  Dr. Sheth was also awarded the P.D. Converse Award for his outstanding contributions to theory in marketing in 1992 by the American Marketing Association.  In 1996, Dr. Sheth was selected as the Distinguished Fellow of the Academy of Marketing Science.  In 1997, Dr. Sheth was awarded the Distinguished Fellow award from the International Engineering Consortium.  Dr. Sheth is also a Fellow of the American Psychological Association (APA).

Dr. Sheth has published over 200 books and research papers.  In 1999, Dr. Sheth coauthored a textbook with Banwari Mittal, Customer Behavior: Consumer Behavior and Beyond.  In 2000, Dr. Sheth and Andew Sobel published a best seller, Clients for Life and in 2001, the book Value Space, coauthored with Banwari Mittal was published.  In 2002 Dr. Sheth and Dr. Rajendra Sisodia co-authored The Rule of Three: Surviving and Thriving in Competitive Markets, and in 2006 they co-authored Tectonic Shift: The Geoeconomic Realignment of Globalizing Markets.