“The State of Custom Content” SOLD OUT

At the age of 24, Tara Giuliano was appointed into a Director level role at Nationwide Insurance. By 26, she was recruited to head Marketing & Communications for Allianz Global Corporate & Specialty in the Americas.  At 32, Tara Giuliano was elected to serve as President of the American Marketing Association in Chicago while working as Director, Marketing at Morningstar.  In 2015 she was selected to lead one of Chicago's fastest growing companies, Sikich, as Chief Marketing Officer. Today at 35, she is the Global Head of Institutional Marketing as well as Head of Americas Marketing for UBS Asset Management, where she is helping to spearhead growth into a once stagnant business area of the largest Swiss bank in the world. Tara has a Bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from The Ohio State University where she graduated cum laude, with honors and with distinction in International Business. She has a Master’s degree in Communications from DePaul University and was awarded Outstanding Graduate Student of the year upon completion of her degree.  

As editorial director for Flipboard Josh Quittner works with publishers to help create great editorial experiences that take full advantage of the personal magazine. Additionally, his editorial thinking guides the evolution of Flipboard itself. Josh joined Flipboard from Time. Inc., where he worked for many years, most recently as editorial director digital for Time Inc.’s News, Sports and Business Group and wrote about consumer technology in Fortune and Time magazine. Besides editing and writing, he worked with a variety of titles to create digital magazine prototypes for tablet computers. He oversaw development of Time’s iPad version, which debuted with the launch of the tablet in April, 2010, then helped with the launch of the tablet versions of Sports Illustrated, Fortune and others. Previously, he was managing editor of Business 2.0 and Time Digital, executive editor and writer for FORTUNE and editor at large and senior editor at TIME. He first had a byline in TIME in 1994 as a staff writer covering technology, back at the very beginning of the commercial Internet.  Prior to coming to Time Inc., Quittner worked at Newsday in the early ‘90s, where he wrote a pioneering column called “Life in Cyberspace,” and wrote numerous features for Wired Magazine. Quittner received an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia University and is based in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife, journalist Michelle Slatalla (with whom he has co-written five books), and their three daughters.

Jennifer Larson, VP, Director of Global Brand Management & Governance at BMO Financial Group, was appointed to ensure the bank’s brand strategy remained well articulated and consistently communicated throughout the organization, with a focus on building equity and an eye for customer experience. She was instrumental in BMO’s 2014 brand refresh, continues to shape the brand management strategy and evolve the creative platform today. In her current role she also leads a number of corporate initiatives, the most significant being BMO’s bicentennial celebration. To celebrate the bank’s 200th anniversary, she developed an unprecedented, year-long multi-faceted experiential program aimed at engagement through events and activations, digital, social and custom content. She leads the program management office and continues to oversee execution through to the culmination at the end of the year. Prior to her current post, she was responsible for overseeing the strategy, execution and continuous improvement of U.S. advertising and brand management. In this role she led a team that significantly enhanced the digital, search and social marketing efforts for the organization, evolving the campaign approach for direct response, awareness and engagement-based programs. In 2011, she led the rebranding and subsequent brand launch of BMO Harris Bank as part of an acquisition that doubled the bank’s size in the U.S.  The integrated campaign resulted in increased unaided awareness across the footprint and exceeded norms on favorability, consideration and recall. Beginning her tenure at BMO (then Harris Bank), she was responsible for regional marketing, where she worked to centralize the bank’s marketing practice to ensure a unified brand voice and consistent creative platform.  She then moved on to develop a marketing strategy for the newly created retail small business division at the bank before taking on the acquisition assignment. She holds a bachelor’s degree with a double major in Public Relations and French from Illinois State University and an MBA in Marketing Management from DePaul University.

Lindy Hood is the Head of Marketing for Zurich North America. In this role, she is responsible for all aspects of marketing, including strategy, research, proposition development, content marketing, digital marketing and advertising. She is an advocate for the customer and brings years of experience building long-term partnerships to deliver products and services that exceed expectations in B2B and B2C environments. Lindy has been with Zurich since 2012. During her tenure at Zurich, Lindy has led Zurich North America’s effort to build customer-focused capabilities, including the use of the Net Promoter Score system to capture customer insights and develop multi-lens customer segmentation to drive Zurich’s value propositions. Before joining Zurich, she held Marketing leadership roles at HSBC North America, where she led the Marketing team in profitably sourcing new customers and improving the cross-sell and retention of existing customers. Prior to HSBC, she worked for The Boston Consulting Group and Accenture, where she led client engagements across a variety of industries. Lindy holds an MBA from the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business and a bachelor’s degree in mathematics from the University of California in Los Angeles.

Erin Vogel is a passionate marketer who loves big, bold, creative ideas—especially in the digital sphere. She joined Mediavest | Spark in 2010 as an SVP/Content Strategist, and has gained extensive experience working with clients such as Valspar, Red Lobster, Hanes, Ari by Ariana Grande, and Kao. Before assuming her current role, she oversaw the strategic process from initial ideation to final execution on a diverse range of clients including Wrigley, Pedigree, LEGO, Sara Lee, McDonald's, Sony, Walgreens and Allstate. Erin’s expertise stems from her 15+ year tenure within Publicis Groupe, where she has worked across an array of functions that include Experience, Creative, Digital Development, Social Media, and Strategy. Throughout her career, her work has been recognized with some of the industry’s highest honors, including the Cannes Lions, The Effies, FWA, Festival of Media, Internationalist, Facebook Studio and OMMA awards. She was also named to the 2017 Broadcast & Cable’s 20 under 40 Next Wave of Leaders. Her progressive approach and keen eye for digital are what bring projects Erin works on to the next level. She loves to share her ideas and develop solutions while mentoring her team, but as a Michigan native and graduate of Northwood University in Saginaw, MI, she is always ready to drop the gloves if she hears anything bad about her beloved Detroit Red Wings!