Keynote Speaker - Day 1

Bob Johansen is a distinguished fellow with the Institute for the Future in Silicon Valley. For more than 30 years, Bob has helped organizations around the world prepare for and shape the future, including corporations such as Nestle and GlaxoSmithKline, as well as a range of major universities and nonprofits.

The author or co-author of twelve books, including the best-selling Get There Early: Sensing the Future to Compete in the Present, Leaders Make the Future, and The New Leadership Literacies: Thriving in a Future of Extreme Disruption and Distributed Everything. Bob’s books are used widely in corporations, universities, nonprofits, and at the Army War College.

Bob holds a B.S. from the University of Illinois, which he attended on a basketball scholarship, and a Ph.D. from Northwestern University, as well as a master’s degree that focused on world religions.

Keynote Speaker - Day 2

Mike Schindler is a US Navy veteran, author of two highly endorsed books, the national podcast host of The Military Wire, which features interviews with some of America’s most elite men and women who have served this country, and CoExecutive Producer of IT’S VUCA: The Secret to Living in the 21st Century documentary that features 15 of our nation’s top experts on how to navigate chaotic times. He has been featured in USA Today, CBS Radio, Entrepreneur Radio, the Lars Larson Show, the Boston Globe, Q13 FOX, Yahoo Finance, and others.

Mike is known throughout the US as a subject matter expert on leadership development, negotiation secrets, and veteran transition issues. Since 2012, he has helped local, state, federal agencies as well as Fortune 500 companies improve team morale and retention. His “Prepare, Plan, & Execute with Purpose and Passion” has helped well over 10,000 individuals realize their true mission, purpose, and identity in life, leading to happier families and more solid financial standings.

Mike is a guest writer for several national publications and the author of two books: “U.S. Veterans in the Workforce: Why the 7% are America’s Greatest Asset” and “Operation Military Family” - which is endorsed by retired General Tommy Franks and retired General Peter Chiarelli.

IT’S VUCA: The Secret to Living in the 21st Century.

Over the course of her 20-year corporate career, starting as an engineer, Nathalie was quickly recognized and promoted for her technical team-building expertise. As an executive in Silicon Valley, she led multiple functions to breakthrough levels of performance by transitioning off unwieldy, outdated infrastructures to cloud-based DevOps, launching eCommerce SAAS solutions, and designing big data customer-facing platforms with product health dashboards for informed strategic decision-making required for companies to win through mico-pivots.

In 2009 Nathalie made the decision to increase her impact by moving the focus of her career from digital system architecture to the people working to deliver them. Since then she became known for her ability to connect with leaders, from founders of start-ups to fortune 100 executives in designing their strategies and move from heavy outdated project management processes to innovative, effective, and team-based operating models attuned to win at the pace of the digital era.

Nathalie brings a unique blend of skills to support the success of her clients from her deep experience in digital engineering to her studies in Organizational Analysis at Stanford University, Executive Coaching, and a Master’s degree in Psychology from CIIS and in Science from the Technion.

Indubala is a product manager in web3 technologies. She believes a Japanese concept of Meraki, putting one's soul in one's work. This way she tries delivering quality work professionally and personally. She is a proud toastmaster and on her way to achieve the DTM (Distinguished ToastMaster) honor this year. She is an avid reader and a prolific writer. She writes on medium platforms in different genres with poetry being her favorite. On a personal level, she is an ESFJ type personality. In her spare time she does painting, sketching and gardening with her daughter.

Kimberly Wiefling has extensive experience in the R&D and manufacturing of complex systems of hardware, software, firmware, chemistry and physics. Her physics background has provided her an excellent framework for systems thinking, dealing effectively with complex challenges, and the insight that what seems “impossible” is often merely difficult. She’s held leadership positions ranging from NPI Program Manager to VP of Program Management at HP as well as several startups to Organizational Effectiveness for a Xerox Parc spinoff, and has helped companies from startups to Global 1000 successfully grow and – more importantly - SCALE. She enables leaders to avoid or fix the most common causes of failure in global teams, problems that damage or destroy companies, along with billions in shareholder value. Although a physicist by education, she has found that many of these are “human” problems that don’t require “rocket science”. All that’s required to achieve significant positive impact in many cases is to make common sense into common PRACTICE. This includes applying practical frameworks such as project management and design thinking, two areas of her expertise, that she has combined to create a predictable and repeatable process to “innovate on purpose”.

Michael specializes in helping professionals increase results by improving their ability to develop and leverage relationships. For the last twenty-plus years, he has been coaching business, corporate and sales professionals to achieve better results.

His client list includes the Project Management Institute, Association for Service Quality (ASQ), APICS Alcatel-Lucent, Dell, Sun Microsystems, Staples, RBC Royal Bank, Fannie Mae, Ball State University and the University of Ottawa’s Telfer Executive MBA program

Michael has done extensive research on, and is a specialist in, utilizing networking as a professional competency. His most unique characteristic is that he has built his company from an idea to a six-figure speaking and consulting practice annually using networking as his sole marketing strategy.

Bob gained his insights in the school of experience which included 15 years as a project engineer, engineering manager and project manager for Bechtel, General Electric and FMC.

At Bechtel he was a lead project engineer. At General Electric for 10 years, he was a project engineering manager on numerous nuclear reactor design projects, including the national prototype breeder reactor project. At FMC he managed a 250-person department responsible for systems integration and project engineering on numerous projects.

For 12 years Bob was an engineering professor at San Jose State University teaching students, and courses at companies in the USA and overseas including New Delhi, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Shanghai and Beijing. 

For the last 25 years, Bob has been a partner in the Organizational Learning Center, helping organizations achieve improved project performance and employee engagement. Bob has a Masters, and Ph.D. degrees in Engineering and a Master’s degree in Organizational Development.

Rudy Wilson is a certified PMP, healthcare professional (MHA), and a certified behavior designer and coach who values navigating change and uncertainty while pursuing excellence. As a project manager and behavior designer, Rudy brings unique perspectives gained from his experiences working in healthcare, social work, the criminal justice system, and the mental health field collaborating with leaders on projects promoting social justice and equality. As a passionate learner and practitioner of change management principles at the individual and community levels, Rudy sheds a light on how to use the innovative and novel ‘Sense Making’ and Complexity theory-based method known as the Cynefin framework to manage change in a VUCA world and how using this method can positively impact your mission.

Rudy learned the value of dealing with uncertainty at an early age growing up in San Francisco, CA, as the second of 9 children in a single-parent home. Rudy’s dedication, hard work, and determination to avoid a life of poverty instilled a purpose and passion in him to be the first person in his family to get a college degree and a Master’s degree on a very limited budget. Rudy is an alumnus of the prestigious leadership in public affairs program called the CORO foundation where he learned various project management and leadership skills within the public and private sectors. Rudy’s career has been a model of navigating changes and uncertainty at the individual and project scales and he is delighted to talk to you about how the Cynefin framework could be a great tool in your project management toolkit to enable you to navigate change in a VUCA world. 

Jenifer is a Big Data Program Manager, Digital and Analytics Business Solution Architect, Product Evangelist, and Agile Leader with over 20 years in the Digital Transformation industry. She creates roadmaps, drives portfolio and program management of B2B, B2C, CMS, SaaS and DaaS products, marketing channel integration strategies and digital business solutions.

She earned two engineering degrees from NC State University in Mechanical Engineering and Biological Engineering. It was here that the ‘automotive industry’ principles of Kaizen and Kanban were embedded into each of us, one line of Fortran code at a time. The wolfpack teaches that together we can do anything. Together, we can and do change the world.

Jayne has a BS degree in Chemical Engineering, MBA, PMP certified (since 2015), Scrum Product Owner certified, Advanced Program Management certificates from Stanford, and George Washington University. Recently, she completed the certification for Transformative Leadership in Times of Uncertainty, California State University, East Bay. Learning and continuously growing is part of her DNA.

Jayne has over 25 years experience in the technology industry and has held several roles across different organizations. One common theme is her service toward enabling people to step into their next career as well as inspiring girls to imagine themselves in a STEM career. Jayne is a Global Lead for Women in Science and Engineering, an employee resource organization, which is a platform to serve technical women at Cisco, grow the talent pipeline and forge strategic partnerships with Industry, Education, and Technical (technology for good) and Philanthropic (leading a conscious culture) organizations.

Tom is a consultant, educator, and author.  He spent 20 years with Hewlett Packard in its Project Management Initiative and a variety of other project, program and other management responsibilities. He has over 40 years of worldwide project management experience, including work for Visa Inc, DuPont, General Electric, and as an independent consultant.

Tom retired in 2017 as Program Director for the UC Berkeley Extension Project Management Curriculum. He is the author of How to Manage Complex Programs (AMACOM, 2016), Identifying and Managing Project Risk, Third Edition (AMACOM, 2015), and three other popular books on project management.

Tom has a BSEE from Princeton University, an MSEE from the University of Pennsylvania, and an MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is past president of the Project Management Institute Silicon Valley Chapter and frequent PMI project volunteer.

Elie is co-founder and CEO of Interpro, a Project Knowledge Management corporation based in the Silicon Valley. Elie has extensive experience in developing and implementing strategic initiatives for global organizations in the semiconductor, information technology and bio-pharma industries.

Elie leads seminars and courses in Leadership, Project Management, Business Ethics and Corporate Social Responsibility and Negotiation. He teaches at the University of San Francisco and at the University of California Berkeley extension where he was Honored Instructor for 2005.

Elie is a past president of the Project Management Institute, Northern California Chapter, and is a member of the Alliance of CEO’s. He is on the Board of Directors of the French American Chamber of Commerce and has served on the panels of mediators and arbitrators of the American Arbitration Association.

Elie graduated with a Master’s degree in Engineering from Lyon, France. He has completed Biotech Management Programs at UC Berkeley Extension and Executive Management Programs at Stanford University.