Audrey Mitchell is Founder and CEO of Maude, The Brand Love Company. She brings more than 20 years of experience as a senior agency leader, including serving as Senior Vice President at Wunderman Thompson (WPP). Over her career, Audrey has partnered with global brands including Microsoft, Starbucks, Amazon, Target, Gap Brands, and Verizon, helping them navigate moments where scale, technology, and culture collide. Audrey founded Maude to challenge the growing gap between brands and the people they serve, with a focus on identity, belonging, and long-term relationship building rather than the short-term, transactional engagement. Her work centers on audiences that traditional models misunderstand or flatten, and on rebuilding trust where it has quietly eroded. Her perspective sits at the intersection of human behavior and emerging technology, including how tools like AI can be adopted responsibly without stripping meaning or authenticity from brand–consumer relationships. She is a Stanford University alumna and a proud mom to her son, Hendrix.

Jill Smith has 15+ years of experience working with start-ups, ad agencies and world-class brands in North America, Europe and China. When Jill became CEO of Iris North America, she recognized the key need for proprietary AI tools in the industry and thus created the role, Director of Applied AI to implement AI into workflows and improve proprietary AI Products. Thanks to Jill, Iris North America now uses the Participation Brand AI Index — a bespoke capability from Iris harnessing artificial intelligence to measure how brands are participating in culture. In the past year, Jill’s exp led Iris North America to 100% client retention, 3 major AOR wins, and 80% pitch conversion rate. The agency also achieved 10% revenue growth and 15% organic growth, while reducing talent churn to below 3%.

Cupid Hayes is the Founder & CEO of Arrow Advising, a bespoke brand and strategy firm helping leaders and organizations bring clarity to identity and direction before momentum, visibility, or scale take over. She has served as VP & CBO of Missing Channel Media Group and brings more than three decades of experience as a Telly Award–winning Hollywood casting director and SAG-AFTRA actress. Known as The Guardian Angel of Brand™, Cupid is trusted by founders and executives across entertainment, media, technology, finance, and the public sector. She frequently speaks to senior audiences on the implications of AI, oversaturation, and fragmented audience attention, working upstream of marketing and execution to ensure what's being built matches what's being seen—so decisions hold and progress is sustainable.

Albert Thompson,  Managing Director, Digital Innovation, Walton Isaacson: While carrying the “ethos” of a Marketing Technologist, as the Managing Director, Digital Innovation at Walton Isaacson Albert Thompson has always possessed a firm understanding of how technology has continued to transform the discipline of Marketing while disrupting today’s conventional consumer engagement models. Over that past 20+ years his cross-cultural communications experience ranges from African American, Hispanic, LGBTQ, AAPI, Arab American, South Asian, Boomers, Millennials, Urban, GM to International. His work involves Digital Marketing for Lexus, AMAZON, NYPD, Medline, State Fair, Spalding, HBO, MCD, LA Sparks, Game Show Network, Verizon Wireless, Unilever, Ford Division, Lincoln Mercury, Burger King, Toyota, Colgate, HSBC, Time Warner Cable, Home Depot, AstraZeneca, US Marines, Pfizer, Novartis, Merck, and Hyatt Resorts. Prior to Walton Isaacson he served as the Director, Interactive Services for UniWorld Group and Director of New Media and Technology at Prime Access where he introduced the Digital capabilities for both multicultural agencies. Albert continues to guide early stages companies on a series of topics related to Market Positioning, Go-to Market Strategy, Brand Identity, Consumer Psychology, and Growth Marketing. As a product and business advisor to Ai powered technologies such as Cache.ai, SCOUT.io, and Brand MentalityTM he serves as a Marketing Technologist to help organizations visualize and "operationalize" the use of their platforms.

Matt Epstein, CEO & Founder, Shown Media: Matt Epstein is the CEO and Founder of Shown Media, a launch and distribution company that manufactures millions of views, and 10's of millions in pipeline for every company they work with. Shown Media does one thing extremely well: turning launches into engineered viral events that drive pipeline, users, and market narrative. The firm operates a 400+ creator distribution network across X and LinkedIn — including founders, operators, and niche industry voices — and coordinates them like a media engine to push a single story into the market simultaneously. This creates algorithmic lift, earned media, and inbound demand within days of launch.Matt’s work is highly tactical and execution-driven. Shown Media:  • Crafts the core launch narrative (the one sentence that spreads) • Produces the hero launch video + supporting content system  • Seeds the story through 400 aligned creators posting in coordination • Engineers algorithmic momentum to dominate feeds and conversation • Converts attention into inbound demos, users, and revenue The company has executed launches and narrative campaigns for hyper-growth software, fintech, and AI companies — including venture-backed businesses valued from hundreds of millions to billions — generating millions of organic views, large spikes in inbound pipeline, and category-level market awareness. Matt started building distribution early, scaling social communities to over 2 million followers before exiting his first digital venture. He later co-founded a direct-to-consumer company that surpassed $10M in lifetime sales, where he developed deep expertise in performance marketing, conversion, and creative testing at scale.