Alexander Group

EXECUTIVE FORUM

Speakers

Continuing the 25-Year Tradition

We’re proud to offer timely insights, powerful ideas, and innovative journeys from some of the world’s top revenue, sales, marketing, customer success, operations, and HR/Talent leaders.

Hear what Global 2000 leaders (VP and above), and their companies, are doing to plan, refine, and implement innovative Go-To-Market Strategies for Relentless Growth.  

Cindy Ballard

Chief Future of Work
Universal Music & Publishing Group

Bio is forthcoming.

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Jim Blum

Chief Operating Officer
Dialpad

Bio is forthcoming.

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Ed Elkins

EVP & Chief Commercial Officer
Norfolk Southern

Ed Elkins is EVP and Chief Commercial Officer at Norfolk Southern Corporation. Since 1827, Norfolk Southern has safely moved the goods and materials that drive the U.S. economy. Today, it operates a customer-centric and operations-driven freight transportation network that serves a majority of the country's population and manufacturing base, with connections to more than 54 inland, lake, river, and sea ports. Committed to furthering sustainability, Norfolk Southern helps its customers avoid approximately 15 million tons of yearly carbon emissions by shipping via rail. The railroad’s dedicated team members deliver more than 7 million carloads annually, from agriculture to consumer goods, operate the most extensive intermodal network in the eastern US, and originate more automotive traffic than any other Class I Railroad.

Appointed Chief Commercial Officer in 2021, Elkins leads the company’s Intermodal, Automotive, and Industrial Products business divisions. He also manages the Real Estate, Industrial Development, Short Line Marketing, Field Sales, and Customer Logistics business groups.

After serving in the United States Marine Corps, Elkins was hired by Norfolk Southern as a Road Brakeman in 1988. He then served as a Conductor, Locomotive Engineer, and a Relief Yardmaster. Following his time in Operations, Elkins spent two decades in Intermodal Marketing. In 2016, Elkins was named Group Vice President of Chemicals Marketing, and in 2018, he was promoted to Vice President of Industrial Products.

Currently, Elkins serves as the Vice Chair of the Georgia Chamber of Commerce and sits on the boards of directors of the East Lake Foundation, National Association of Manufacturers, and TTX Company. Elkins also serves on the Georgia State University Marketing RoundTable and is a member of The Conference Board, Inc. on the Council for CMOs.

Elkins is a native of Southwest Virginia. He earned a bachelor’s degree in English from the University of Virginia’s College at Wise and an MBA from Old Dominion University with a concentration in Port & Maritime Economics.

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Executive Forum - Keynote Speaker - John Gucci Foley

John Foley

Blue Angel Lead Solo Pilot, Stanford Fellow, Best-Selling Author & “Gratitude Guru”

Since 2015, John Foley has been recognized as one of the top 10 most in-demand speakers. John has spoken to some of the highest performing organizations in the world.

His experience as a Blue Angel allows him to provide invaluable insight into cultivating trust, leadership, and teamwork under challenging environments—something he has put to use by inspiring audiences to reach for their highest potential and sustain excellence through dynamic change.

John employs the intense realities of his aviation career as a metaphor to inspire—breathe life into—teams to reach for their highest potential and sustain excellence under dynamic change.

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Kevin Hardage

EVP & President of Global Interventional Urology
Coloplast

Bio is forthcoming.

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Renae Leary

Chief Commercial Officer
W.L. Gore

Bio is forthcoming.

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Tim McGee

VP, Revenue Operations & Chief of Staff
Clarivate Analytics

Tim McGee is Vice President of Revenue Operations for Clarivate's Academic & Government business, where he leads a global organization responsible for Revenue Operations, Pricing, Bids & Tenders, Forecasting, Analytics, Sales Enablement, Sales Training, and Data Governance. His team supports more than 400 sales professionals worldwide by delivering processes, systems, insights, and commercial infrastructure that enable revenue growth and operational excellence.

Tim leads the strategy, processes, technology, and analytics that underpin Clarivate's commercial organization. His focus is on simplifying how sales teams operate, improving forecasting and business visibility, modernizing commercial processes, and leveraging AI and technology to increase productivity. Working across Sales, Customer Success, Marketing, Finance, Product, IT, and Legal, he helps align strategy with execution while enabling teams to focus more time on customers and less on administrative work.

In addition to leading Revenue Operations, Tim serves as Chief of Staff to the Revenue leadership team, partnering with senior executives on strategic initiatives, organizational design, commercial transformation, and operational planning. He has led numerous global initiatives spanning sales systems, commercial process redesign, pricing transformation, data governance, AI adoption, and sales productivity, consistently delivering scalable solutions that improve business performance.

With more than two decades of commercial operations leadership experience, Tim has built a reputation for developing high-performing teams, modernizing revenue operations, and driving meaningful business transformation. Prior to joining Clarivate, he held senior leadership positions at Elsevier and IMS Health (now IQVIA), where he led global Sales Operations, Pricing, Compensation, Forecasting, and Commercial Excellence organizations. Throughout his career, he has successfully built scalable operating models, strengthened commercial execution, improved forecasting accuracy, and enhanced sales effectiveness across global organizations.

Tim is passionate about building strong teams and developing future leaders. He believes the best Revenue Operations organizations remove complexity, provide actionable insights, and create an environment where customer-facing teams can spend more time selling and serving customers.

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Shonodeep Modak

Chief Marketing Officer, Energy Management
Schneider Electric

It's not easy to be daring in Global 500 B2B, B2C, and D2C enterprises. Shonodeep’s strengths lie in enhancing customer value, leading organizational transformation, and driving AI adoption to realize exponential growth and profitable business expansion in energy technology, retail, aftermarket services and distribution industries.

 

Early in his career at ExxonMobil he brought the world's first fuel economy improving motor oil brand to market and then continued to drive commercial impact at GE by doubling the company’s distributed energy market position through data-driven, disruptive demand generation strategy. 

After GE, Shonodeep joined Schneider Electric as Chief Marketing Officer for North America and propelled portfolio expansion through end market and channel brand building and advanced digital marketing. Today he is the Chief Marketing Officer for Schneider’s $30B Energy Management business. His scope extends to more than 200 industry-leading brands in energy technology products, software, services that are transforming AI infrastructure and the energy landscape.

 

Shonodeep also serves on the board of S&S Holdings, the largest wholesale supplier of promotional apparel in North America and a $4B portfolio company of Clayton, Dubilier & Rice (CD&R) and is a board advisor of UniGroup a $1.5B transportation company and the parent company of United Van Lines and Mayflower Transit. 

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Saket Pradhan

Vice President, Worldwide GTM Operations
dbt Labs

Bio is forthcoming.

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Anand Rao

Chief Marketing Officer
CDW

Anand Rao is senior vice president, Chief Marketing Officer at CDW, a global provider of full-stack technology solutions and services. His mandate is to drive brand awareness, demand generation, category growth, customer loyalty and retention across corporate, small business, and government entities.

Anand is sharply focused on MarTech automation, and an AI driven approach towards propensity modeling, audience segmentation, creative and content generation, campaign delivery, and measurement.

Before joining CDW in 2022, Anand served as senior vice president of marketing at AutoNation, the largest automotive retailer in the US. As a management consultant at McKinsey, IBM Consulting, and PwC, he has helped several companies transform digitally and modernize their marketing capabilities.

Anand earned a bachelor’s and master’s degree in engineering and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business. He currently serves on the board of directors of Compudopt and formerly served on the board of directors for Vroom.

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Ross Shuster

Chief Executive Officer
Copeland

Ross Shuster joined Copeland in June 2023 as the chief executive officer upon it becoming a standalone company after its divestiture by Emerson and acquisition by private equity firm Blackstone.

Ross is a veteran global executive with more than 25 years of leadership experience having lived and worked in the United States, United Kingdom, China and Singapore. His expertise ranges across leadership, strategy, mergers & acquisitions and corporate board participation. 

Prior to joining Copeland, Ross served as the chief executive officer of Howden, a leading global provider of mission critical air and gas handling products and services headquartered in Glasgow, Scotland. Ross joined Howden in October 2019 upon the acquisition of Howden by private equity firm KPS Capital Partners and led the company through its carve-out from a United States headquartered conglomerate and Howden’s eventual sale in March 2023 to Chart Industries. During his tenure he drove significant growth through repositioning the business and entering new markets.

Prior to Howden, Ross spent 12 years with United Technologies, holding several senior executive leadership positions across the Carrier, Otis and Fire & Security business units. He also spent 17 years with Johnson Controls, holding various executive level roles in the company’s San Francisco, Los Angeles, Singapore and Shanghai offices.

Ross is currently a non-executive director on the Board of Flowserve (NYSE: FLS). He also previously served as a non-executive director on the Board of Beijer Ref, a publicly traded company based in Sweden.

Ross earned a Master of Business Administration from the University of San Francisco and a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of California, Davis.

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Jennifer Swem

VP, Operational Excellence & AI
Schneider Electric

Bio is forthcoming.

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Lisa Wilding-Brown

Chief Executive Officer
InnovateMR

Bio is forthcoming.

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