November 1, 2022
The Pace of Change is Upping Our Game
Back in the 6th Century BC, Greek philosopher Heraclitus said, “There is nothing permanent but change.” Although he certainly didn’t have product development in mind, no better statement has ever been made about the tech industry. This year Agile Day Twin Cities will focusing on all things change.
Twenty-five centuries later, change is our greatest friend and sometimes our worst enemy. Not only does change remain inevitable, but the pace of change is increasing exponentially. Markets are changing; businesses are changing, and user expectations are changing. And what’s more – these changes are happening at an ever-accelerating pace. In order to survive and, ideally, thrive in this climate, businesses, products, and people must be adaptable and resilient.
Agile Day Twin Cities 2022 explores all things change. Learn from industry experts and practitioners how they are adapting to change in their day-to-day work. Explore the impact of change on various disciplines such as design, product management, technology and tooling, and most importantly how change impacts the people in our product ecosystems.
We invite you to join Agile Day Twin Cities 2022 to share and learn concepts and ideas that help make change your competitive advantage.
Speakers
David Edgerton Jr. is the managing principal for The DEJ Group, an executive search and recruiting firm that focuses on finding and connecting exceptional diverse talent with inclusive companies. The firm also provides executive coaching and custom training services for minority entrepreneurs and business professionals.
David has over twenty-four years of corporate experience and also has served as an adjunct professor for over eleven years – teaching information technology, project management and business analytics. With his passion in minority business development, David was recently appointed an executive-in-residence at the University of Minnesota to assist and coach startups as a part of the Discovery Launchpad MN program and also facilitates content for the Ascend Twin Cities program in partnership with JPMorgan Chase, the Metropolitan Economic Development Association, and the Carlson School of Management. David has a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from North Carolina A&T State University and an MBA from the Carlson School of Management. During his corporate career he has worked for several companies in the Twin Cities including Andersen Windows and Doors, Be The Match, Best Buy, Imation Corporation, Smead Manufacturing, and Ambient Consulting.
David currently volunteers as a member of the board of directors for the Walker West Music Academy in St. Paul. He also serves on the Diversity Equity and Inclusion Advisory Board to the Dean for the Carlson School of Management. He is an active member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity Inc. and serves as a church musician and worship leader at his church. David is married to Michelle and has three children.
Jennifer O’Neill is a technology executive with 25+ years experience in technology across many industries and is currently VP of Program Delivery and Operations at the NBA responsible for leading delivery of Direct to Consumer products and technology solutions.
She is a driven and passionate transformational leader and for the past 15 years has helped businesses evolve the way they think and work through embracing business agility as a means to delivering business outcomes. She guides organizations, leaders and teams on their journey to better ways of working helping to shift focus toward innovation and maximizing the delivery of value in a collaborative, engaging and dynamic way.
Jennifer is most passionate about working with leaders, teams and individuals adapt to the ever changing landscape, empower them to experiment, learn, and grow, and to create a healthy, happy environment for everyone to be successful.
Kelley Hedley is a senior director of learning at Travelers in Hartford, Conn. She has been with the company for more than 31 years and is a graduate of the Travelers Technology Leadership Development Program.
Kelley has been responsible for the successful planning and execution of many technology and business initiatives across several disciplines including software engineering, DevOps, infrastructure, sourcing and operations.
Currently, she is responsible for upskilling and reskilling the technology workforce in the areas of cloud, Salesforce, software engineering and other strategic focus areas. She earned her degree in Management Information Systems from Central Connecticut State University and serves on its Alumni Association Board of Directors, School of Business Advisory Council and School of Engineering Industrial Board.
Kurt Christensen is a Senior Staff Software Engineer at Nubank, but he’s not doing any engineering! He’s currently working as a program manager, helping to promote cross-team collaborations. Kurt has been employed for over 25 years as a programmer and a coach, for efforts ranging from small startup companies all the way to corporate-wide agile transformations.
He lives in St. Paul, Minnesota with his family: one wife, three kids, two cats, and a century-old house which needs constant love and attention.
Milinda Rambel Stone is an executive security leader with extensive experience building & leading security programs teams. She has more than 20 years of experience in creating and managing large-scale information security programs in technology, healthcare, and financial services. Most recently Milinda is the Vice President & CISO at Bremer Bank. Her focus is the enhancement and operational oversight of a enterprise security program for this financial organization.
Milinda is passionate about leading and mentoring others on the importance of transforming security and the many benefits of incorporating DevSecOps into the organization.
David Laribee is a coach, developer, teacher, international speaker, and co-founder of Nerd/Noir and Dojo Academy. David also serves as the Head of Dojos and Strategic Advisor for Cprime, which has the longest-running and largest dojo practice in the industry.
Over the last 20 years, he’s helped develop digital product development teams and organizations in a wide variety of industries, including banking, retail, technology, insurance, defense, and higher education.
A seasoned IT professional with over 15 years experience as an Agile practitioner helping teams, organizations and executive leadership implement and improve their Agile adoption and delivery. Experience coaching and leading Agile teams in Finance, Telecommunications-Wireless, Medical, Supply Chain Solutions and Hospitality companies. Harness passion for Agile across multiple areas of an organization including Human Resources, Sales, and Marketing to deliver business value and improve employee satisfaction. A proven leader committed to motivating and coaching employees to be their ‘best selves’ to ensure company success.
A result oriented Agile Professional Leader with over 18 years experience in leading product development and architecture in adaptive, iterative and phase-based development methods. Angela has a wealth of experiences from different walks of life. With a proven track record: with over 15,000 hours coaching business and IT along in their Agile journey and Leadership development. Driven from diverse sectors, Angela worked with the Top 10 Fortunes Companies among others to transform their organization to Agile. Angela has a Master in Organizational Leadership and is ICF Master Certified Transformation Leadership Coach. Angela is a fixer; she builds strong customer relationships by delivering customer-centric solutions. It’s her determination and no-nonsense attitude that has led her to successful Organization transformations.
David Annis is the COO and co-founder of Parallax, a professional services automation software company helping digital services companies grow with confidence and purpose. David is responsible for various functional areas of the business, including marketing, HR, operations, and customer success. Before starting Parallax, David held leadership roles at creative agencies and consultancies. Most recently, he was a partner and managing director of Zeus Jones, a strategy, brand, and design agency. David started Parallax to help professional services organizations of any size grow their businesses with confidence in a way that supports their people and culture. David is passionate about personal evolution, growth, and learning. He brings these passions to Parallax every day with a commitment to build the company culture in a way that helps employees understand their value and enjoy their work.
Mr. Judd has been a leader in high tech for over 20 years, specializing in high growth phase companies.
At SoundHound, he is the head of the Solutions Architecture and Engineering department. In this role, he works with major accounts around the world to find an agile way to implement voice AI solutions in verticals such as enterprise, IoT, robotics, automotive, aerospace, healthcare, hospitality, food service, and more.
In previous companies, he helped define the Storage Area Networking and hyperscale storage industries. He “wrote the book” on SAN storage, with over a dozen published editions on several technical topics — many were best sellers in their categories. He has written and co-authored dozens of patents and product specifications for best-selling storage and file network products. He has also been involved in dozens of other tech startups and traditional businesses with roles including department head, CxO, investor, or board member.
Ken Robinson is currently a Technical Coach for CPrime. Ken has 20+ years of software development, product management, leadership, and coaching experience, and leverages those experiences helping organizations and teams discover new and innovative ways of delivering valuable software. He is a proud graduate of Howard University in Washington, DC and regularly travels the planet speaking to and training teams on software development and agile processes.
Tara Scott is a product, UX and organizational behavior coach who has worked for over a decade with teams, leaders and organizations of all shapes and sizes. She is passionate about helping individuals collaboratively invest in a psychologically safe culture that allows them to thrive, innovate and pour their authentic selves into the products they create for others.
Tara has vast experience as a product development coach to help build pragmatic agility practices and help others understand the art of progress over process. Tara believes in a “human first” approach to creating software, and has spent years within a variety of industries (Ford, Disney, Target) to help create UX and UI practices that allows organizations to keep the pulse on both users and competitors. She has created UX research programs at organizations such as CH Robinson and Leadpages and has used tools such as the Design Studio Method to build better product experiences. Tara is also a certified Fearless Organization™ practitioner and believes that diversity, equity, and inclusion need to be at the forefront of conversations around building dynamic teams.
Tom O’Neill is the CEO and co-founder of Parallax, where his primary role is to build a great team positioned to help digital services companies grow profitably. Before starting Parallax, Tom spent 20 years at technology consulting companies — first writing code before stepping into leadership roles.
Most recently, he was CEO of The Nerdery, a digital consultancy that grew under his leadership from 50 to 500 Nerds with offices across four U.S. cities. Tom started Parallax to help agencies and consultancies use data and insights — not emotion or gut instinct — to inform strategic business planning and encourage positive collaboration between teams.
Tom is deeply committed to building a product that can make a real, demonstrable impact on businesses and, more importantly, on the lives of the people who run them. He’s passionate about helping people reach their full potential — positioning them to succeed beyond even their wildest expectations.
Ken France is an executive enterprise coach cultivating transformational organizations, a recognized and highly-rated trainer, and one of the first US minted SPCT. Ken France has worked with SAFe since its inception, contributing actively to the framework, including SAFe LSE/4.0.
With 25+ years’ experience in Information Technology, Ken has successfully supported multiple Fortune 100 enterprises tackling large and complex scaled agile transformations across numerous verticals, including Retail, Healthcare, Insurance, Government and Finance. Ken’s passion is to help empower all levels of the organization in their journey and drive sustainable improvements and meaningful change. He has taught and certified over 500 SPCs and continues to bring his expert hands-on experience as a legacy for the future.
Fernanda Carapinha is a serial media/tech entrepreneur, former senior entertainment executive, executive producer and writer, with over 20 years of experience in the entertainment/technology business. Fernanda’s deep experience and insight both in the creative entertainment/media business of content development, production, distribution, and promotion, as well as in the data science/software business, has afforded her a unique perspective that has enabled her to be ahead of the curve in the convergence of the entertainment and technology industries. Carapinha’s new venture, WE Global Studios, is a full-stack Innovation Venture Studio and members-only Startup Founderverse™ Ai-driven Platform that powers the success of women entrepreneurs around the world.
WE Global Studios is dedicated to powering the life-cycle success of female-led startups from ideation to IPO by focusing on excellence in startup building and scaling through training & coaching, driving revenue and partnership opportunities, as well elevating founder talent & teams. As founder and CEO, Carapinha re-architected and designed a new one-stop shop startup ecosystem that addresses the key disparity problems for women by feeding the top of the funnel pipeline through its a-synchronistic, startup-lifecycle and comprehensive program focused on WE’s five pillars of excellence designed to support all founders through the growth of their companies. Carapinha also designed a proprietary and cutting edge Founder DNA™ training program and AI-driven accreditation software that prepares founders for the changing demands of their companies’ success.
Carapinha was the founder and CEO of 4Digital and 4Digital Entertainment, two Los Angeles based companies at the heart of the content/technology movement. 4Digital is an AI/Machine Learning driven technology company focused on the development of behavior data analytics software applications that straddle the media and cybersecurity sectors, such as social media metrics fraud detection, human verification software, social media content sentiment analysis, and predictive audience behavioral modeling.
Carapinha founded 4Digital’s sister company, 4Digital Entertainment, a Los Angeles-based multiplatform digital content company, that develops high impact narrative content that challenges traditional boundaries of storytelling, production, and distribution by simultaneously developing organic cross-platform tech driven proprietary software developed in order to fully exploit the 360-content experience.
Previously, as senior vice president of television at Brillstein Grey Communications, Carapinha coran all aspects of the television development and production process with a focus on developing star-driven vehicles. She developed series for Jim Belushi, Tea Leoni, Elizabeth Perkins, Brian Benben, and Steve Harvey among others, and also oversaw an elite roster of showrunners. As the executive director of development at Paramount Studios, Carapinha developed numerous award winning comedy series (Frasier), drama series (Deep Space Nine), and many television movies. She developed series with the studio’s premier roster of show runners with overall deals at Paramount. Prior to that, Carapinha was Lifetime Television’s (NYC) vice president of program planning and scheduling.
Carapinha is a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, with a BA in Communications and Marketing minor from the Wharton School. Carapinha also holds a Masters degree from Pepperdine University, in Psychology. Carapinha is a published author of young adult science fiction/fantasy graphic novels. Originally from Portugal, Fernanda resides in Los Angeles, California with her family.
Meenakshi Iyer is a T-shaped leader and community builder with a 25-year non-linear, interdisciplinary career in enterprise systems implementation, product development, agile/business process transformation, international healthcare, HR, and training, in India and the USA. “Stop, breathe, think, act” is her motto.
An ICF-certified Personal Agility and Self-Leadership Coach, Meenakshi supports mid-career leaders shift FROM Transactional TO Transformational Leadership, as they find creative ways to thrive at the intersection of People, Process and Technology. She partners with them in unpacking the power of “slowing down to speed up”. She is the Founder and Principal of NorthStar Solutions and Services, where she provides virutal 1:1 and group coaching and mentoring services to individuals and teams; and bespoke leadership development and change leadership advisory services to small-medium businesses. Meenakshi is all about paying-it-forward, and is intentional about supporting the Women in Technology and Women in Agile communities, particularly those who speak English as an additional language.
She serves as a Career Coach with AnitaB.org, supporting their members globally, in their leadership development journeys. Notable annual events hosted by her include the Annual “Future of Work” Virtual Conference, and “Building My Runway” – a Global Mentorship program for mid-career Women in Agile/Tech. She is also the host of two livestream shows: “Exploring Intersections” and “The NorthStar Café”, available on LinkedIn, YouTube, and Facebook. Meenakshi is fluent in four languages, and has lived and worked in 10+ cities in India and the USA. She has a BS in Physics from Bharathiar University, India, and an Executive MBA with a concentration in Healthcare Management, from Virginia Commonwealth University. She and her husband live in Virginia, and have family in India, Thailand, and Australia.
Eve Psalti has been a tech leader for the past 20+ years and is currently the Senior Director at Microsoft’s Azure AI engineering organization responsible for scaling & commercializing the Azure AI platform portfolio. She was previously the Head of Strategic Platforms for Google Cloud where she worked with enterprise customers helping them grow their businesses through digital transformation initiatives.
Prior to joining Google in 2018, Eve held business development, sales and marketing leadership positions at Microsoft (for 17 years) and startups across the US and Europe. A native of Greece, she holds a Master’s degree and several technology and business certifications from London Business School and the University of Washington. She’s passionate about supporting female entrepreneurship and she serves on the board of WE Global Studios, a full-stack startup innovation studio.
*Live Illustrator
Stuart is a Certified Scrum Trainer and Visual Storyteller with a deep-rooted appreciation for methods of Design Thinking and Agile Ways of working.
As a Visual Thinking thought leader and practitioner within the Agile Community and beyond Stuart endorses the use of Visual Thinking and Visual Storytelling to engage stakeholders, address customer needs, enhance team collaboration and accelerate learning.
Facilitating a suite of Design Thinking, Visual Thinking and Product Agility working workshops Stuart encourages teams to work more visually, making the intangible tangible, catalysing customer centric creativity and driving product innovation.
Agenda
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Sessions
Speaker Lineup:
- Ken France – Planes, Trains, and Automobiles: Learnings From My Personal Agility Journey
- Kurt Christensen – Retrospective on 20 Years of Agile Methods: What Went Well, What Went Poorly, What’s Next
- David Edgerton, Jr. – Agile – Your Competitive Sustainable Advantage in A Chaotic World
Speaker Lineup:
- Meenakshi Iyer – Unpacking Leadership: Leading with Our Head, Heart, and Hands
- Eve Psalti – How Artificial Intelligence Is Changing the Way We Work & Live: A.I. Trends & Future Innovations
- Milinda Stone – Product Innovation: Accelerating with Security
Speaker Lineup:
- David Laribee – 5 Spicy Strategies for Change
- David Annis and Tom O’Neill – Design Better, Faster Products With the Help of a Product Advisory Council
- Josh Judd – Why Voice AI is the Next UX for Agilists
Speaker Lineup:
- Jackie Chambers & Angela Merricks – Leading Transformation Through A Post Pandemic World
- Kelley Hedley and Ken Robinson – Winning the Talent Race Takes a Village
- Tara Scott – Winning the Talent Race Takes a Village
Venue
Saint Paul River Center
Located in the heart of Saint Paul, the Saint Paul RiverCentre will offer generous space for collaboration.
175 West Kellogg Boulevard
Saint Paul, MN 55102
Agile Day Twin Cities is presented by:
Cprime is a global consulting firm helping transforming businesses get in sync. We help visionary business leaders compose solutions, execute implementations, and perform against business goals. As a leading global Agile, product, and technology solutions provider, our industry-leading software and talent solutions work together in synergy to deliver transformations.
8000 Regency Pkwy
Suite 675
Cary, North Carolina 27518