Meet the WORKTECH 16 New York Speakers

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Chair of the Month

Natalie Grasso Cockrell
Natalie Grasso Cockrell
Natalie is a Workplace Consultant at Herman Miller and the former Editor of Work Design Magazine. She’s currently based in Pittsburgh.

WORKTECH 16 New York will draw industry movers and shakers to the Big Apple to debate and discuss the future of work.

Image via unwired.eu.com.
Image via unwired.eu.com.

We’re proud to support WORKTECH 16 New York. The conference will take place on Thursday, May 26 at Convene’s Midtown East location; speakers and guests will explore workplace themes including the future of work and the workplace as well as real estate, technology, and innovation.

Read more and register for the event here, and scroll to get to know the all-star lineup of speakers.

Michelle Bodick
Managing Director, Americas, The Instant Group

Michelle is an experienced marketing and business development professional who has worked with a number of leading brands, including many Fortune 500 companies. Her experience spans both commercial property and business process outsourcing, and she has spent the past couple of years leading the Americas region for The Instant Group, a global flexible workspace specialist. Before joining The Instant Group, Michelle spent 8 years with Williams Lea, a global BPO provider, in marketing leadership roles, and more than 10 years with Gartner, a leading technology, research, and consulting provider.

Bernice Boucher
Managing Director, Head of Workplace Strategy, Americas, JLL

With over 18 years of experience in workplace strategy and change management, Bernice currently leads JLL’s Workplace Strategy Practice in the Americas and is a senior leader in the Workplace Solutions practice globally. Her specialty is in helping organizations discover the value of place in a virtual world. She builds workplace strategies that, when closely aligned to business goals, can lead to reduced real estate costs and higher employee productivity, engagement and satisfaction. Prior to JLL, Bernice served as director of the New York office of DEGW, and as the global practice leader for the financial services sector. She has also served as the workplace strategist for Deutsche Bank in the Americas.

Matthew Claudel
Product Manager, Beco

Matthew is a designer, researcher, and writer and the product manager at Beco, a location analytics technology startup. He studied architecture at Yale, where he received the Sudler Prize, the institution’s highest award for the arts. He has continued to work on projects, startups, and research in the fields of architecture, innovation science, technology, and art. He has been published widely, writing and co-authoring several books, articles, and op-ed pieces. Matthew has co- taught at MIT and the Politecnico di Torino, lectured at Harvard Business school, and was featured in the BBC Future series. He has presented widely as a critic, speaker and artist inresidence. Matthew is currently working as a researcher at MIT’s Senseable City Lab and the MIT Lab for Innovation Science and Policy.

Bethany Davis Swanson
Workplace Strategy Director (Global), The Boston Consulting Group

Bethany joined The Boston Consulting Group as the global workplace strategy director in January 2012. Her charge is to understand the organization’s culture, work patterns, and emerging talent needs, and align the workplace experience to support business performance. Prior to joining BCG, Bethany held workplace strategy roles at Nokia and at Andersen Worldwide/Arthur Andersen. Her passion for understanding people and their relationship to the environment started at Cornell University, where she received B.S. in Human-Environment Relations and an M.S. in Facilities Planning and Management.

Pedro Domingos
Professor of Computer Science, University of Washington

Pedro is a professor of computer science at the University of Washington and the author of The Master Algorithm. He is a winner of the SIGKDD Innovation Award, the highest honor in data science, and a Fellow of the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence. He has held visiting positions at Stanford, Carnegie Mellon, and MIT. His research spans a wide variety of topics in machine learning, artificial intelligence, and data science, including scaling learning algorithms to big data, maximizing word of mouth in social networks, unifying logic, probability, and deep learning.

Bill Dowzer
Principal, BVN

Bill is a principal of BVN, an award-winning Australian architectural practice with an international footprint and a global reputation for design leadership and innovation. As an agile design studio with a unique ability to apply “translational” thinking across sectors, BVN’s broad portfolio is testament to the practice’s ability to constantly evolve to suit contemporary needs and expectations. Bill is a leader in workplace design and a champion of BVN’s “collective creation” approach, underpinned by a belief that great workplaces are not about the space alone, but about people and the making of “place”.

Benjamin Dyett
Co-founder, Grind LLC

Benjamin was a mild-mannered lawyer who woke up one day and, together with some partners, decided, Hey, let’s change the future of work. So, along with his friends, Stuart and Karina, and Co:, Cool Hunting, Behance, Magic + Might, and Breakfast, he created Grind, a platform for working in a whole new way, outside the system but within a strong community. Built for free-range humans who carry their offices in their backpacks, Grind is the antidote to everything you knew about work. It’s dedicated to taking all of the frustrations of the old work experience and pulverizing them to a dust so fine it actually oils the wheels of the machine (sorry, old work experience, but you had it coming).

Simon Elliot
Director Business Development, LifeWorks Restaurant Group

Simon is a thought leader on the future of the workplace and specifically how employee amenities can drive employee convenience and collaboration, create a sense of community, and ultimately contribute to high levels of employee engagement. He has worked across a broad range of sectors including government, military, healthcare, education, and business and industry, providing onsite service solutions in the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia, Asia and North America. Simon is currently based in San Francisco and services Fortune 500 companies headquartered in the western United States.

Randy Fiser
CEO, ASID

Randy leads the American Society of Interior Designers as chief executive officer, overseeing the strategic planning, financial management, and national operations for the Society’s more than 25,000 members who work across all sectors of residential and commercial interior design. He leads the network of 48 ASID chapters throughout the U.S. and Canada to advance the profession and communicate the impact of interior design on human experience and transforming lives. Dedicated to advancing community and economic development, Fiser brings a unique point of view about the capacity of design to make a positive impact on health, well-being, and productivity.

Richard Golding
International Director, Head of Global Occupier Services, Cushman & Wakefield

Richard works within the Global Occupier Services Team (GOS) at Cushman & Wakefield, working with clients across EMEA and Asia Pacific. In addition, he also takes responsibility for all UK and Ireland occupier activity, and is Sector Lead for Cushman & Wakefield’s Global TMT group, coordinating capabilities and expertise, and delivering research and sector trends. Richard sits on both the GOS EMEA and UK and Ireland executive committees and seeks to drive creative, innovative, and integrated solutions to current (and future) real estate and operational challenges.

Michael Gresty
CEO & Chairman, Rifiniti, Inc.

As CEO and co-founder of Rifiniti, Inc., Michael is a passionate advocate for using data-driven decisions to optimize the world’s workplaces saving time, space, and money while improving collaboration, engagement, and profitability. With more than 25 years of experience working with Fortune 500 companies across multiple sectors, Michael is also a frequent speaker on the science behind workplace optimization. Previously, Michael was Managing Partner at Altanova Energy+Sustainability and a co-founder of Kinetix, two leading boutique sustainability consultancies in NYC. Michael received his Architecte DPLG from the Ecole d’Architecture de Paris-Belleville. He also holds a Bachelor of Architectural Studies from the University of Cape Town.

Pam Jack
Senior Partner, MinterEllison

Pam Jack is a senior partner at the leading Australian legal firm MinterEllison and is the business unit leader of the Projects, Infrastructure, and Construction team. Pam has been a practicing lawyer for more than 35 years and had previously only worked in conventional office based work places. Pam was a founding member of the Premises Committee for MinterEllison’s recent workplace project completed last year. The firm made the decision in 2014 to relocate from Aurora Place, a prestigious high-rise building by Renzo Piano with magnificent views over the Sydney Opera House and the Botanical Gardens to the top eighth floors of nearby Governor Macquarie Tower, a late ‘80s building that needed a significant upgrade in amenities and services.

Daniel B. Johnson
Workplace Innovation Lead, Accenture

Dan is the lead of Workplace Innovation for Accenture. He joined Accenture in 1998 with initial responsibilities for supporting and implementing new workplace concepts in Accenture’s North and South American offices. In his current capacity, Dan directs a global team who are responsible to define, implement and provide ongoing analysis for Accenture’s current and emerging workplace, technology, and service delivery strategies. His expertise in occupancy and workplace strategies, benchmarking, and cultural integration provides a strong base for creating and analyzing strategic planning options.

Christopher Kelly
Co-Founder and President, Convene

Co-Founder and president of the real estate industry’s first workplace-hospitality platform, Convene, Chris is the only person to have ever been twice recognized on Inc. Magazine’s “30 Under 30” list of Most Promising Young Entrepreneurs.  In 2009, Chris co-founded Convene with his friend and business partner, Ryan Simonetti, with the intention to transform the workplace experience and capitalize on converging trends in real estate, hospitality, and technology. Their vision of infusing hotel-style services into commercial office buildings proved to be successful as Convene quickly became the foremost provider of amenities to institutional landlords and their enterprise tenants.

Sarah Liu
Head of Relationships, Gemini3 Pty Ltd

Named the 2014 Young Female Entrepreneur of the Year at International Stevie Awards and 2015 Women of Style Finalist; Sarah has led an impressive portfolio career as a branding strategist, senior marketer, author, speaker and entrepreneur. Founded her own business at the age of 24, The Dream Collective develops high calibre young professional woman in business. Simultaneously Sarah has led marketing strategies for the world’s top FMCG and cosmetic companies including Revlon, P&G and Coca-Cola. Sarah’s passion is to see more women in leadership and to transform the way we work.

Aleksey Lukyanov-Cherny
Partner, SITU Studio

Aleksey is a founding partner and director of design at SITU Studio. He received his Bachelors of Architecture from the Cooper Union School of Architecture. Aleksey has served as a guest critic at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and at the New York Institute of Technology. He lectures frequently, presenting SITU’s business model.

Melissa Marsh
Founder & CEO, PLASTARC

Melissa is founder and CEO of PLASTARC, a social research, workplace innovation, and real estate strategy firm dedicated to shifting the metrics associated with workplace from “square feet and inches” to “occupant satisfaction and performance.” With a background in social science and a Master of Architecture from MIT, Melissa defined an early career in workplace innovation with projects in design, architecture, and master planning around the world. Melissa and her team have worked with international clients on the forefront of leveraging workplace to inform corporate culture, employee experience, and business strategy.

Peter Miscovich
Managing Director, Strategy + Innovation, JLL

Peter develops corporate strategies and workplace transformation solutions for global client organizations. He serves on the Accenture Technology Vision Board, the CERES Presidents Advisory Board, and the Board of the Regional Plan Association (RPA), leading global organizations focused upon innovation and systems transformation. Peter earned his Executive Credentials from the MIT Sloan Business School and his Civil Engineering Degrees from the University of Arizona.

Jeremy Myerson
Director, Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design

Jeremy is an academic researcher, author, and activist in people-centered design and innovation. He has joined Unwired to set up The WORKTECH Academy, a global knowledge network. He has published several influential books on workplace design and holds the Helen Hamlyn Chair of Design at the Royal College of Art, London. His most recent titles include Time & Motion (2013) and Life of Work (2014). A former journalist and editor on such titles as Design, Creative Review, and World Architecture, he founded Design Week magazine in 1986 and later co-founded the Helen Hamlyn Centre for Design at the RCA in 1999, which he directed for 16 years until September 2015. He has advised businesses and governments around the world and sits on the advisory boards of design institutes in Korea, Switzerland, and Hong Kong. He was recently named by Wired as one of Britain’s 100 most influential people in digital technology.

Philip Ross
Futurologist & CEO, Cordless Group & UNWORK

Philip is an author, consultant, and commentator specializing in the future of work. He predicts the way that new trends and forces such as emerging technology will shape how we work, live, learn, and enjoy leisure. He has written a number of books on the future of cities, work, and workplace including The Creative Office, The 21st Century Office, and Space to Work (all co-authored with Jeremy Myerson). He has also contributed to a number of other books including The Corporate Fool and The Responsible Workplace.

Jonathan Sheh
Director of Workplace Experience, Johnson & Johnson

Johnson & Johnson has been hard at work refining its global workplace strategy, piloting and refining new design standards, and assessing outcomes. Jonathan profiles new design guidelines for activity-based work including collaborative and personal work environments for a variety of functions and global locations, and what they mean for improved space utilization, functionality, and flexibility. He reports on workplace transformation initiatives around the world and illustrates project results and user satisfaction feedback. He also makes the case that the cost saving proposition for new work environments must be simple to communicate.

Jim Taylour
Head of Design & Wellbeing, Orangebox

Jim Taylour is the head of design and wellbeing at Orangebox. A chartered ergonomist with over 20 years of experience in workplace design, Jim has daily exposure to success and failings within the contemporary workplace. His most recent research, “Mobile Generations”, published by Orangebox, explores agile smartworking and our emerging health and productivity challenges. Jim also created “Wireless Well Working” (WWW), a strategic Orangebox workplace tool, designed to help organizations achieve a successful and beneficial workplace. Through this program, Jim has gained invaluable knowledge and insight of what’s required to realize a successful and dynamic workplace, where employee wellbeing is center stage.

Cecilia Vigil
Project Manager & Interior Designer, Spotify USA

Cecilia works as project manager and interior designer within Spotify’s facilities department. She’s been with the company since 2008 and has seen Spotify grow from fewer than 100 employees to more than 1,000. Cecilia has led office build-outs and expansions in more than 10 countries across Europe, the Americas, and Asia.

Sophie Wade
Founder & Workforce Innovation Specialist, Flexcel Network

Sophie is the founder and workforce innovation specialist at Flexcel Network. She is an authority on the wide-ranging “future of work” issues impacting companies and workers’ new demands, such as attracting, engaging, and retaining talent, workplace flexibility, millennial demands, and more. Flexcel provides consulting services to corporations to maximize the benefits and minimize the disruption in their transition to the new work environment. Flexcel Network also helps employees and independent workers adapt and start proactively managing their new, latticed corporate, or diversified, independent careers.

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