Speakers

Rob Bell
President, Focus Consulting
Rob Bell began teaching his customer service and communication techniques early in his tenure as Personnel Development and Education & Training Director for Dick's Supermarkets, Inc. Drawing on 25+ years of experience in leadership roles, customer service, and training, Rob makes it simple, clear and FUN to improve customer service and gain leadership skills. Before becoming Dick's Supermarkets' go-to-guy for training, as a recovering CPA, Rob worked as the accounting manager for a large trucking company, an auditor, and an adjunct instructor at the University of Wisconsin - Platteville.

Thomas Blischok
President, Global Retail
Information Resources, Inc. A recognized futurist and retail thought leader, Blischok is known around the globe for his innovative thinking and strategies to help retailers fundamentally transform their go-to-market economic models using innovative approaches to understanding the consumer with new forms of marketplace information. Blischok has been frequently published and speaks around the world on the future of retailing.

Dr. Stephen R. Covey
Author, The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People
Recognized as one of Time magazine's 25 most influential Americans, Stephen R. Covey has dedicated his life to demonstrating how every person can truly control their destiny with profound, yet straightforward guidance.

As an internationally respected leadership authority, family expert, teacher, organizational consultant, and author, his advice has given insight to millions.

Tamara Erickson
Author, Consultant and Workforce Futurist
An award-winning expert on the business value of people, Tamara Erickson stimulates organizations to sustain their competitive edge through innovative and actionable techniques. A successful researcher and writer, Erickson contributes a regular column to Harvard Business Online. Her award-winning book, Workforce Crisis: How to Beat the Coming Shortage of Skills and Talent co-authored with Ken Dychtwald, Erickson explores the changing workforce demographic.

Gudron Granholm
Founder and CEO, Box One, Inc.
Gudrun's industry experience includes positions as the CFO of Hanna Anderson, including operational responsibility for all retail stores. Previously she served as Controller/Assistant Director for the Smithsonian Institution's retail stores and mail order activities. For 7 years she worked in different financial roles at large, multi-national organizations, and for another 15 years served as an interim CFO for a variety of companies.

Beverly A. Grant
Chief Channel Officer, U.S. CBD Grocery Channel
The Procter & Gamble Company
Beverly Grant is Chief Channel Officer, US CBD Grocery Channel for the Procter & Gamble Company. Beverly is responsible for strategic development and volume objectives for the P&G Food Channel business in the U.S. and Puerto Rico. In this role she manages over 600 P&G employees, which is one of the largest organizations at P&G, and controls an $82 million annual budget. Dollar volume represented in this Channel is over $4.6 Billion Sales and is growing over the past 12 months. This position reports directly to the US V.P. of Customer Business Development. Recently, she initiated and recommended a corporate redesign effort and cost-savings plan that was adopted by the Company. This plan will save the Company over $25MM.

Beverly has been with P&G for over 20 years. Previously, she spent six years at Standard Oil. Since joining P&G, she has been in a wide variety of broadening assignments. She began her career in traditional P&G sales management positions - Sales Representative and Unit Manager in the Health & Beauty Care business. She then worked on the P&G Kroger team as Corporate Operations Manager where she worked on in-store systemic opportunities with one of P&G's largest retailers. She then assumed greater levels of responsibility and experience at P&G as Human Resource Manger, North America Market Strategy & Planning for Snacks; Beverage and Iams and Global Beauty/Feminine Care Sales Manager (Geneva). In this International assignment, she owned Global sales volume responsibilities for these two important categories.

Beverly Co-Chair's the FMI Advisory Board. In this position, she is charged with identifying and addressing issues of common interest between retailers and manufacturers in the food channel. Some examples of common collaborative efforts include: improving supply chain effectiveness; building enhanced partnerships between retailers and manufacturers; in-store marketing; and sharing best practices.

Beverly is extremely active in her community and believes strongly in giving back to others in need. She has worked with the Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce Women Leadership Foundation 2006 and Big Brothers-Big Sisters of Cincinnati. Beverly has also served on the board of directors for OneCity Foundation Cincinnati and ProKids and the Board of Trustees for Montgomery Community Church in Cincinnati. Beverly has also served as mentor to several P&G executives.

Beverly holds a BA in Business Education & Accounting from Tennessee State University and an MBA in Marketing from Webster University.

Todd Hale
Senior Vice President, Consumer and Shopper Insights
The Nielsen Company
Todd Hale has over 29 years of experience in the area of consumer panel analysis. He currently holds the title of Senior Vice President, Consumer & Shopper Insights. Todd has been with Nielsen for over 23 years and has held various marketing and sales management positions. He has been heavily involved in the development of innovative consumer panel applications for both manufacturers and retailers. He prepares topical presentations using consumer shopping/buying behavior and attitudes to provide strategic insight to facilitate brand, category, and retail sales growth.

Tim Hammonds
President and CEO, Food Marketing Institute
Prior to joining FMI in 1975, Dr. Hammonds was a tenured member of the Department of Agricultural Economics at Oregon State University in Corvallis, Oregon where he served from 1970-1975. While there, he taught courses in agricultural economics, managerial economics, and advanced statistics and was named the outstanding teacher in the School of Agriculture for 1972-73. He was the founding Chairman of the Board of the Partnership for Food Safety Education. He has been a member of the Editorial Board of The American Journal of Agricultural Economics, a member of the National Academy of Science Board on Agriculture, a member of The Bretton Woods Committee, and has served as an editor of the Agribusiness Journal, a professional journal published by John Wiley & Sons. In addition, he serves or has served on numerous boards including the Uniform Code Council (renamed GS1-US in 2005); Advisory Boards of the National Minority Supplier Development Council, the Sloan Foundation Center for the Study of the Retail Food Industry at the University of Minnesota, Cornell University's School of Agricultural Economics, the Academy of Food Marketing at Saint Joseph's University, the Trade Policy Advisory Committee for Consumer Goods reporting to the Secretary of the US Department of Commerce and the US Trade Representative, and the Food Industry Crusade Against Hunger. In 1998, he received the Rainbow/Push Coalition Partners Award.

He received his BS, MBA, Ph.D from Cornell University and grew up on a family dairy farm in the Finger Lakes region of New York State. Dr. Hammonds now resides in Virginia with Karen, his wife of 40 years. They have one daughter, Lynn, two granddaughters and one grandson.

Richard N. Jurgens
Chairman, CEO and President, Hy-Vee, Inc.
Ric Jurgens was born and raised in Des Moines, Iowa. He is a graduate of Des Moines North High School and Iowa State University where he received a Bachelor of Science degree. He has spent his entire business career with Hy-Vee, Inc. serving as a store manager, district manager, regional manager, President of Perishable Distributors of Iowa, Ltd. (PDI), Sr. Vice President, Executive Vice President and Chief Administrative Officer, President, and his current capacity as Chief Executive Officer and President of Hy-Vee, Inc.

Ric presently serves on the board of Hy-Vee, Inc. and on the boards of its subsidiaries: Perishable Distributors of Iowa, Lomar, Florist Distributing, The Meyocks Group, D&D Foods and Hy-Vee/Weitz. He also serves as Trustee of the Hy-Vee Employees Profit Sharing Trust. He serves on the Board of Directors for Topco Associates, LLC and the Food Marketing Institute. He is a member of the Iowa State University Foundation Board of Governors, the Iowa State Business College Dean's Advisory Council and the Iowa State University Order of the Knoll. Ric is also a member of the Iowa Business Council, serves on the Greater Des Moines Committee and is on the Executive Committee of the Civic Center of Greater Des Moines. Ric has received the Governor's Volunteerism Award, and the Citation of Achievement Award and John D. DeVries Service Award from Iowa State University's College of Business, as well as the Heart Award, which is Variety the Children's Charity's highest honor.

In the past, Ric has served on the boards of the Food Bank of Iowa, the Variety Club of Iowa, Iowa Prison Industries, the Ankeny Industrial Development Corporation, Food Distributors International, the Iowa Games, and the YMCA of Greater Des Moines.

Ric's hobbies include golf, skiing, bicycling, reading, and playing guitar. He and his wife, Carol, have two children: son, Michael, and daughter, Kate, who are both married. They also have two grandsons, Ben and Sam.

Knight Kiplinger
Editor in Chief
Kiplinger's Personal Finance magazine, Kiplinger.com and the Kiplinger Letter Knight Kiplinger is one of America's most respected economic journalists and business forecasters.

Knight has covered business, economic and political trends for nearly three decades, as a newspaper reporter, Washington bureau chief and editor. He is the author of several books, most recently World Boom Ahead, and is a frequent guest on major television and radio programs.

Knight is a graduate of Cornell University, and he studied international affairs at Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School.

Mel Kleiman
Principal, Kleiman Company
Mel is recognized as today's most influential expert on how to hire and retain the best hourly employees. Mel captivates convention and corporate training audiences throughout the world with specific ways to attract, select and retain the employees who comprise 70% of the U.S. workforce. After successfully owning and operating three businesses and being the largest holder of Hertz franchises in the country, Mel founded Humetrics, LP, in 1976 when he realized that while there were an abundance of books, tests, tools, and systems on the market to help business owners and hiring managers recruit and select professional staff, there was a dearth of resources for those who hire hourly workers.

Mel's subsequent success is a result of his passion for helping employers minimize costly employee turnover, his extensive research work, and his development of simple, but effective tools and systems that solve common problems. His speaking, training, and consulting work with hundreds of clients over the years keeps him on the cutting-edge of today's best practices and procedures for hourly employee recruiting, selection, and retention.

Mel has authored five books including the bestselling Hire Tough, Manage Easy; 267 Hire Tough Interview Questions; Recruit Smarter, Not Harder; 180 Ways to Build a Magnetic Culture; and So, You Got the Job - Now What?

Edward Kuehnle
President, Catalina Marketing Corporation
Ed Kuehnle brings nearly 30 years of consumer packaged goods and pharmaceutical industry experience to Catalina. Prior to joining Catalina, he held the position of president, then group president, Client Solutions at Information Resources, Inc., North America where he spent six years as a key player in building the company. Kuehnle was also instrumental in managing the transition of ownership, communicating and implementing the organization's new vision and developing a financially sound reorganized structure.

Prior to that, Kuehnle served as vice president of Sales and Customer Marketing at Pharmacia Corporation, where he successfully upgraded the sales force with new selling practices, strategies and structure. Kuehnle's other executive leadership positions focused in the areas of sales and marketing, general management and business development for organizations such as Pharmacia, Bristol Myers Squibb, Wyeth Consumer Healthcare and Coopers & Lybrand.

Kuehnle earned his Bachelor of Science in Management/Marketing from St. Joseph's University.

Donald R. Knauss
Chairman and CEO, The Clorox Company
Donald R. Knauss was named chairman and chief executive officer of The Clorox Company in October 2006. As CEO, he has overall responsibility for directing the company's worldwide business, which generated revenues of $4.6 billion in fiscal year 2006.

Prior to joining Clorox, Knauss spent 12 years with The Coca-Cola Company. He joined the company in 1994 as senior vice president of marketing for The Minute Maid Company, and, in 1996, was promoted to senior vice president and general manager for Minute Maid's U.S. retail operations. Beginning in 1998, Knauss served nearly two years managing Coca-Cola's businesses in 10 countries of Southern Africa. In 2000, he was named president and chief executive officer of The Minute Maid Company. He became president and chief operating officer of Coca-Cola North America in 2004.

Knauss previously held a variety of positions in marketing and sales with the Frito-Lay and Tropicana divisions of PepsiCo, Inc. He began his business career as a brand manager in the paper products division at Procter & Gamble.

Prior to that, he served as an officer of the United States Marine Corps. Knauss currently serves on the dean's advisory board for the college of Arts and Sciences at Indiana University and on the board of directors of the NCAA.

A native of Highland, Ind., Knauss holds a bachelor's degree in history from Indiana University. He serves on the board of trustees for Morehouse College.

Harold Lloyd
President, Harold Lloyd & Associates
Harold Lloyd's practical solutions and dynamic presentation style have earned him a reputation as one of the top retail specialists in the United States. The proceeds of Harold's newest book, Am I the Leader I Need to Be? are donated to four national charities.

Harold graduated from the University of Pennsylvania with a BS in Economics. He went on to earn his MBA, with honors, in Marketing at the University of Chicago. He was President and CEO of a 14-unit retail operation in New York. Harold resides in Virginia Beach, Virginia, with his wife Dee, his daughters Deanna and Randee, and his son Alex.

Tim McGuire
Director, McKinsey&Company
Since joining McKinsey in 1989, Tim has worked extensively in Canada, the United States, and the United Kingdom, primarily on retailing, consumer marketing, and operations issues. Tim is a leader in McKinsey's North American Retail Practice and one of the founders of our Lean Retailing service line.

Before joining McKinsey, Tim worked for seven years in marketing management with Procter & Gamble, ultimately as marketing director for the Canadian food and beverage division. In this role, Tim had responsibility for several existing brands (e.g., Duncan Hines, Pringles) and the introduction of new brands to Canada (e.g., Folgers, Jif).

Tim is a graduate of the Richard Ivey School of Business at the University of Western Ontario in London, Canada, where he studied business administration.

Todd Morris
Senior Vice President, Business Development
Catalina Marketing Corporation

Peg Neuhauser
President of PCN Associates
Peg is a highly effective speaker on the subjects of team building, communication, negotiations, organizational conflict, managing change, and improving the culture and spirit of the workplace. She offers practical tips for action to create a more innovative and adaptive organization. Her focus is on increasing collaboration in cross-functional teams, improving relationships among work colleagues, and strengthening the organization's culture to focus on its goals more effectively. Her stories, case examples, and humor illustrate each idea in a way that is both entertaining and easy to remember.

For over sixteen years, Peg Neuhauser has worked as a management and organizational consultant, specializing in the areas of communication, conflict management, and organizational culture. As an internal consultant for the Hospital Corporation of America, she developed services and programs for corporate hospital clients.

In addition to working as a designer, trainer, and consultant, she also managed financial systems conversions, which involved training and consultation in the technical and accounting divisions. Ms. Neuhauser is president of PCN Associates, the management-consulting firm she established in 1984, which specializes in communications training.

Ms. Neuhauser is the author of Corporate Legends & Lore. No matter what size, specialty, or scope, every organization has its own unique legends and lore that become, over time, part of the fabric of its identity. Today managers at every level are starting to understand the tremendous power of using these stories to increase productivity, implement change, and motivate employees as no memo can. This thought provoking book spotlights the art of story telling in the workplace and suggests the many ways managers can use this overlooked tool to attain corporate and personal objectives. This subject is practical, insightful, and entertaining.

Ms. Neuhauser is also the author of the groundbreaking book, Tribal Warfare in Organizations. When the marketing staff constantly complains about the production staff, or the sales force makes promises customer service says it can't deliver, this is tribal warfare. Those interdepartmental conflicts form one of the biggest and most costly productivity problems in organizations, draining as much as a million dollars worth of management time annually from a medium-sized company.

Steven C. Smith
President and CEO, K-VA-T Food Stores, Inc.
Raised in Grundy, Virginia, where his father, Jack Smith, opened his first Piggly Wiggly store in 1955, Steve Smith "grew up" in and around his father's store, quickly learning the basics. As the company grew, acquiring Quality Foods, a 19 store chain, in 1984 and adopting the Food City name, followed by the acquisition of 37 White Stores in 1986, 11 Kennedy Piggly Wiggly locations in 1998, 7 Winn-Dixie stores in 1999 and finally 8 BI-Lo locations in 2006, so did Smith's interest and knowledge of store operations and the grocery industry. Now headquartered in Abingdon, Virginia, K-VA-T Food Stores, Inc. operates 92 Food City supermarkets throughout the tri-state regions of Southeast Kentucky, Southwest Virginia and Northeast Tennessee. The company also operates three Super Dollar Discount Foods limited assortment locations in Wytheville, Abingdon and Hillsville, Virginia.

Throughout his 27 years of employment with K-VA-T, Smith has served in numerous key positions, including district manager, director of meat operations, director of advertising, store operations divisional vice president, executive vice president of store operations, chief operating officer and finally his current position of president and chief executive officer.

Dedicated to serving the communities in which he lives and operates, Smith and Food City support countless organizations, including Boy Scouts, United Way, Big Brothers/Big Sisters, American Cancer Society, East Tennessee Children's Hospital, Santa Pals, YWCA, Boys & Girls Clubs, American Diabetes Association and numerous others.

Smith has served on the boards of Topco, Wellmont Health Care Systems, Bristol Chamber of Commerce and Weis Supermarkets and is a member of Sequoyah Council Boy Scouts of America, National Grocers Association, serving as Chairman from 2000 to 2002 and other organizations. In addition to his recent election to chairman for Food Marketing Institute, Smith also serves on FMI's Executive, Board Planning and Public Affairs Committees and as the 2006 Campaign Chairman for the United Way of Washington County.

Smith earned a bachelor's in business administration from James Madison University. He currently resides in Abingdon, Virginia with wife Debbie and their two daughters, Katie and Chloe.

Kevin Sneader
Director, McKinsey&Company
Kevin is a director in McKinsey's New Jersey office, having previously been based in London, Paris, and Hong Kong. Since joining McKinsey in 1989, Kevin has served numerous retail and packaged goods clients on a range of strategy, organization, and marketing topics. Kevin is a leader in McKinsey's Retail and Consumer/Packaged Goods Practices, and he is a frequent speaker at industry events.

Kevin holds a first-class law degree from the University of Glasgow and on graduation won a Kennedy Memorial Scholarship to Harvard University. At Harvard, Kevin received an M.B.A. with high distinction, was a Fulbright Scholar, was designated a Baker Scholar, and was awarded the Dean MacMillan Prize for Outstanding Leadership.

Robert A. Whitman
Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, FranklinCovey
Robert A. Whitman, has been a director of FranklinCovey since May 1997 and has served as Chairman of the Board of Directors since June 1999 and Chief Executive Officer of the Company since January 2000. Mr. Whitman served as a director of Covey from 1994 to 1997. Prior to joining the Company, Mr. Whitman served as President and Co-Chief Executive Officer of the Hampstead Group from 1992 to 2000. Mr. Whitman received his Bachelor of Arts degree in Finance from the University of Utah and his MBA from Harvard Business School.