Speakers

Deborah has over 20 years standing up different types of PMOs across multiple industries. She started her PMO journey at Chevron, incorporating value realization and prioritization. Through multiple tech companies, she ended up overseeing the implementation of PMO at Walmart, the Fortune 1 company, where size alone made for interesting challenges. Since then she has focused in the food retail and distribution sector, helping more immature organizations build and value the capabilities of portfolio management. She has a PhD and Masters in Information Science and a BSc Computer Science.

Kevin D. Martin, USAA-Retired, University of Texas - San Antonio He is an award-winning leader, dedicated to the topics of high performance, value delivery and continuous improvements.

Luke Hohmann is Chief Innovation Officer of Applied Frameworks, a boutique consulting firm helping companies create more profitable software-enabled solutions. A serial entrepreneur, Luke founded, bootstrapped, and sold the SaaS B2B collaboration software company Conteneo to Scaled Agile, Inc. Conteneo’s Weave platform is now part of SAFe Studio.

Jonathan Brill writes, speaks and advises on how to create, manage and turn radical change to your advantage. Brill is an expert on strategic foresight and technology innovation. His warm style, compelling stories, and intellectual rigor inspire visionaries and open even the most hard-boiled executives to new ways of thinking and doing. Harvard Business Review recently called Brill, “The world’s leading transformation architect.” His visionary, yet pragmatic approach to the future is based on years as the Global Futurist at HP where he directed long-term strategy and planning. He is the Senior Fellow at HBR’s China New Growth Institute and Board Advisor at Frost & Sullivan, one of the world’s largest market intelligence firms, with offices in 46 countries. He is the author of Rogue Waves, Future-Proof Your Business to Survive and Profit from Radical Change (McGraw-Hill), the #2 selling economics book in China. The Economist called it, “A very important book for managers.” and Adam Grant called it, “An actionable framework for driving change instead of being blindsided by it.” He has taught the techniques in it to over 27,000 executives, ranging from startups to the Fortune 500 to the United States Secret Service. Inc. magazine called Brill “A Silicon Valley legend.” because his innovation consultancies developed over 350 products and generated over $27B USD for clients like Samsung, Microsoft, Verizon, PepsiCo and the US government. These projects have ranged from AI, search engines, and metaverse technologies to theme park rides and design of the US Pavilion at the 2015 World's Fair (Expo Milano) to Taco Bell’s Gordita. He is a frequent thought leader, speaker and contributor to HBR, TED, Global Peter Drucker Forum, SCMP, SXSW, J.P. Morgan, Singularity, Forbes, Korn Ferry, The Economist Global Business Report, Bloomberg, Sirius XM, Fast Company, The Project Management Institute, Brightline and Thinkers50. He has educated corporate leaders at Harvard and Stanford Universities. He holds a degree in industrial design from Pratt Institute, spent years as a research consultant to the MIT Media Lab and in management training at the Stanford University Graduate School of Business.

Skip Weisman, a former professional baseball executive and professional speaker, business coach, and author, works with organizations that want to create championship teams and work environments that increases productivity, performance and profits. Skip’s presentations provide inspiring stories with lessons from his leadership career offering practical, state-of-the-art tips, tools, and techniques, to transform communication that leads to championship performance. Skip served 5 baseball franchises as CEO starting at age 26 leading teams affiliated with the Boston Red Sox, Cincinnati Reds, New York Mets, Seattle Mariners, Tampa Bay Rays, and Texas Rangers. Since 2012 Skip has spoken as a keynote speaker to audiences as large as 1,500 at corporate and association conferences across North America, including 36 different PMI chapters, 16 PMI symposium keynotes, 45-session seminars and over 70 PMI presentations. In 2018 Skip published his first book Overcoming The 7 Deadliest Communication SINs: A New Standard for Workplace Communication, which is one of his signature talk topics.

Carolyn Smith has over 20 years of experience leading and managing PMO offices – ranging from large, cross-functional, multi-year projects to IT Program Offices. She has overseen the delivery of hundreds of projects and has repeated successes in building PMO organizations and transforming processes to accelerate delivery of business value.

Joel Albizo has more than 30 years of association management experience and is seen as an innovator within the association CEO community. In addition to original research and presentations on the competencies and development of future association CEOs, he is attuned to digital transformation and other trends impacting the nonprofit sector. Previously, he served as CEO for the Council of Landscape Architectural Registration Boards (CLARB), a regulatory body that works to protect the public’s health, safety, and welfare by establishing licensure standards for the practice of landscape architecture. Albizo earned his bachelor’s degree in mass communications at Towson University in Maryland. He is president of the Federation of Associations of Regulatory Boards, and a former board member and treasurer for the American Society of Association Executives.

Sachin Melwani gets problems solved through his ‘disruptive creativity’. Leveraging his strong knowledge of ERP transformation from the Client, Prime Integrator and Tier Supplier perspectives, through DADA he now aims to bring genuine innovation to the traditional consultancy model by offering a unique “Consultancy as a Subscription” service. The advantage over a traditional consultancy is that DADA provides an economical and responsive way to support any project by offering a “Consulting Service at Contractor prices”.

Curtis L. Jenkins, Author, Award-winning Project Management Professional, Keynote Speaker, Forbes contributor, and Philanthropist, is an innovative business advisor who focuses on servicing small to midsize companies. He specializes in enabling clients’ strategic growth by concentrating on the company vision, business strategy alignment, culture, operations, and key projects. Curtis’ approach is based on his trademarked – REALIZATION FRAMEWORK EXPERIENCE® His new book "Vision to Reality, Stop Working, Start Living" details this approach and serves as a guide to business leaders who want to grow their companies to 7 and 8 figures. Curtis’ career spans 20+ years as a Project Management Executive in Mergers & Acquisitions, Global Information Technology Projects, Lean, Six Sigma, and Management Consulting in many industries.

Lindsay has over 20 years of experience in project management and PMO. She is a Director at PMO Learning, a training company dedicated to PMO, and Co-Founder of the House of PMO, a professional membership organisation for PMO practitioners. Lindsay co-authored the PMO Competency Framework and edited the Handbook of People in Project Management. Lindsay frequently speaks on project management and PMO career topics and offers one-on-one coaching to those seeking to advance their careers in PMO. She loves walking her dog Reginald, an avid reader and collects gin, not necessarily at the same time!