Cort Dial believes the only leader who needs to change is you. He has spent the last 30 years in a variety of environments ranging from corporate skyscrapers to South American jungles. Cort has honed a unique approach to developing coaches and business leaders founded in the core conviction: Leaders reach the summit of leadership when they can create extraordinary business performance while caring for people. Cort calls this new breed of 21st-century hero the All-In™ Leader.
Today, Cort is the President of Cort Dial Consulting, LLC where he has successfully guided business coaches and executives from organizations such as Chevron, Intel, U.S. Borax, Disney, and Apple to cultivate a new breed of leader. He guides individuals through frank self-evaluation, personal change, and the pursuit of extraordinary performance, he creates the All-In™ Leaders, high achievers who recognize the power of human connection.
Cort is also the author of the Globe and Mail’s 2016 #1 business book, Heretics to Heroes: A Memoir on Modern Leadership. His book introduces a new framework for inspiring and influencing others with his All-In™ Leadership. As provocative as it is practical, Heretics to Heroes reminds readers that history’s greatest men and women were once seen as heretics.
Prior to co-founding Meditation Studio, Cyd served as the COO and CDO of Gaiam Brands, where she led key growth initiatives including brand repositioning, category expansion and the evolution of Gaiam’s content strategy. In addition, she was heavily involved in the marketing and eventual sale of the Gaiam brand to the Sequential Brands Group. Previously, she held leadership roles at Whole Foods Market and Corporate Express. Cyd is on the Digital Advisory Board of the USO and serves as the Secretary of the Board of the STEPS Foundation. Cyd is committed to conscious commerce and strongly believes that most sustainable way to do good is via ethical commerce.
She has an undergraduate degree in Computer Science from Oklahoma State University, and when she isn’t working on Meditation Studio, she enjoys growing trees, raising longhorn cattle and listening to vinyl records at her micro-ranch in the sandhills of Nebraska.
Bill Troy is an Inc. 500 CEO and a natural-born contrarian who, for 25 years, has helped global brands like Sony, Disney and Nestle see the world from a different perspective.
As CEO of Civilis Marketing, Bill and his team help companies initiate and nurture REALationships™ that drive business growth using today’s digital communication tools without resorting to the high-pressure, high-volume automated techniques sold by online marketing pitchmen.
Bill’s crusade these days is to rid the world of the garbage that floods all of our inboxes garbage sent by businesses who have followed the advice of online marketing pitchmen and help business owners avoid or escape the CLICKSAND trap before it’s too late.
In CLICKSAND, Bill Troy compares giant firms like HubSpot, Google, and LinkedIn as well as local agencies and consultants in towns big and small to snake-oil pitchmen of the 1800s.
Bill details the unscrupulous techniques that online marketing pitchmen use to convince business owners, the societal factors that are unnaturally magnifying their success and how businesses who are caught in the trap can escape and get back to what really works.
Jeff McManus grows things. As the Director of Landscape Services at the University of Mississippi, he grows plants, he grows people, and he grows ideas. Jeff is a problem-solver, understanding that doing more with less is a 21st-century mandate. Faced with a multi-million dollar landscaping beautification project, a demand for excellence, high productivity, and with a stagnant budget, Jeff knew that growing the people was critical to growing the plants. Understanding that all humans either have or strive for the innate elements of Greatness, Resiliency, Opportunity, and Wisdom, Jeff developed his GROW-theory into an impactful management and professional development leadership program for his staff.
Andrew Roman Wells is the CEO of Aspirent, a management-consulting firm focused on analytics. He has extensive experience building Analytical Solutions for a wide range of companies, from Fortune 500s to small non-profits.
In addition to his role as an executive, Wells is a hands-on consultant. He refined his craft in Silicon Valley working for two successful startups focused on customer analytics and the use of predictive methods to drive performance. Wells has also held executive roles in industry as Director of Business Intelligence at Capital One and built solutions for a wide variety of industries and companies including Coca-Cola, IHG, The Home Depot, Capital One, Wells Fargo, HP, Time Warner, Merrill Lynch, Applied Materials, and many others.
Kathy Williams Chiang is an established Business Analytics practitioner with expertise in guided analytics, analytic data mart development, and business planning. Prior to her current position as VP, Business Insights, at Wunderman Data Management, Chiang consulted with Aspirent on numerous analytic projects for several multi-national clients including IHG and Coca-Cola, among others. She has also worked for multinational corporations including Telecommunications Systems of Trinidad and Tobago, Acuity Brands Lighting, BellSouth International and Portman Overseas.
Jody Foster, MD, MBA, Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in the Perelman School of Medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, Vice Chair for Clinical Operations in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Pennsylvania Hospital. She attained her MBA, with a concentration in finance, from the Wharton School.
Jason Forrest, the CEO and Chief Culture Officer at FPG (Forrest Performance Group), is a leading authority on culture change programs and an expert at creating high-performance, high-profit, and Best Place to Work cultures. As a sales professional, author, speaker, and management coach, Jason’s job is to empower professionals and executives to unleash their human performance and master their leadership skills in sales, management, culture, and service; for the purpose of increasing profit through people.
The winner of four international Stevie Awards for his Warrior Selling and Leadership Coaching training programs, Jason is also an award-winning author of six books, including Leadership Sales Coaching rated as one of Selling Power Magazine’s Top Sales Books. Additionally, Inc. Magazine has named FPG as one of the Nation’s Best Workplaces for 2017.
With a decade of coaching and speaking experience, Jason Forrest is a member of the acclaimed National Speaker Associations Million Dollar Speaker Group, as well as The Entrepreneurs Organization (EO), the world’s only peer-to-peer network exclusively for entrepreneurs. Every year, Jason delivers approximately 100 keynotes for sales teams, managers, and executives.
Jason Forrest’s new book, “WTF: Why Training Fails,” intends to change the behavior of how managers interact with their employees. $164.2 billion is spent annually on training, yet 70% of the training fails to produce a positive ROI; this book explains why the failure rate is so significant and how businesses can implement more effective training strategies.