Creators and Guests

Chris is a versatile Digital Community Strategist with several years of experience. He has owned community vision, strategy, and execution. He is responsible for leading the development and execution of community engagement programs, creating compelling content for customer communities and acts as the voice of the customer. He believes that data should drive decisions as it is the key element of any long-term successful strategy.

As Director of Community at Zendesk, she oversee the Community Team (part of the Global Digital Experiences team), set strategy, define policy and governance, develop and launch new community products, and engage our user community. Our programs include: an online community, virtual events, user groups, community champions, customer advocacy, and an annual global virtual community summit.

Adrian Speyer is an author, speaker and community builder. He is the author of “The Accidental Community Manager” a book helping guide those new to the community building on how to build successful B2B communities. He is also the head of community at Higher Logic Vanilla and has over 15 years experience in building communities, online marketing, eCommerce and product marketing. He brings his contagious passion to whatever he works on, and is known for his enthusiasm for learning, creating strong relationships and sharing his experiences.

Leads the strategy development and execution of Success at Scale initiatives, including Community, Digital Customer Engagement, and Education Services. An enthusiastic leader with 15+ years experience in B2B business, 6+ years of leading teams, and developing new leaders with an emphasis in telecommunications, healthcare, and SaaS markets. Focused on helping customers achieve business objectives, accelerate business results and realize differentiated value. Skilled in creating and growing relationships, always looking to drive innovation to create value and improve the overall customer experience, with a proven record of exceeding goals. Offers exceptional written, verbal, and presentation skills and the ability to communicate/collaborate effectively with all levels of the organization, management, and executives.

Community, events, and marketing professional accomplished in managing on and offline programs and campaigns. Experienced moderator and speaker. Specialties include community program strategy and operations, community team management, live events and webinars, product initiatives, email marketing, content creation, inbound lead generation and lead nurturing programs. Love cats, memes, fire hydrants, popcorn, sci-fi, and The Joy of Painting. Perpetually late returning my library books.

Community and collaboration strategy consultant enabling companies to build powerful, productive communities and teams. Author of 'People Powered: How communities can supercharge your business, brand, and teams' and 'The Art of Community' and author at Forbes, Harvard Business Review, Fortune, and elsewhere. Advisor and Investor with Coda, Mautic, AlienVault, Commsor, Moltin, HackerOne, Relate, Underscore.VC, and others.

Hi, I’m Lauren and I am passionate about building communities and lasting customer relationships. I have spent 10+ years strategically managing communities with a focus on programs to lower support costs, increase customer engagement, satisfaction, and retention. I take a data-driven approach and work cross-functionally to help companies engage and create champions within their community. I am currently the Global Head of Seller Community at Square. I am responsible for developing the vision, programs, and leading the team to deliver Square's global community strategy. My skills include customer and developer experience, social customer care, community monitoring, moderation, and engagement, content strategy and management, analytics, insights, and ROI, voice of customer programs (including NPS), contributor/advocate program management, virtual and in-person events, and people management.

Michael Burke is a Senior Director of AI/ML at Reltio with over a decade of professional experience consulting and managing data science teams at global organizations. He has a focus on operationalizing data science, distributed systems, and a passion for decentralized technology solutions. He has a MBA from Boston University and lives in Massachusetts.

Morgan is a dynamic and accomplished community engagement expert with a passion for developing and executing effective community strategies. With extensive experience working with communities throughout her career, she has a proven track record of developing innovative programs, recruiting new members, and increasing member retention.