Speaker

Garrett Polifka is a User Experience Team Lead with fifteen years experience in the creative industry; ranging from marketing to front-end development as well as software design.

As a renown Design Leader and agency CEO, Andy helps companies like Virgin Holidays, John Lewis and Penguin Random House with issues of customer experience, product strategy, and digital transformation.

Nicole Maynard is the Head of User Experience at Hyatt leading a team of researchers, interaction and visual designers, creating solutions that elevate Hyatt’s digital footprint and enhance the guest experience. She has taken the helm as president of the Chicago chapter of UXPA (User Experience Professionals Association).

Driven by a passion to make the workplace more human, Emily's work as a leadership coach and facilitator focuses on how strong leadership, process, and culture support teams to do their best work. She specializes in helping leaders navigate work with confidence by applying design skills such as creative thinking and an experiment-oriented mindset.

Jen Myers is a technologist, speaker and educator, and currently a Curriculum Director of Software Developer Content at Pluralsight.

Zeke is a UX designer and developer based in Chicago. He is the Director of UX Design at Table XI, a custom software development company in Chicago that delivers business value through mobile applications, UX design and web development.

Kevin Klos is a Senior Experience Designer (The Star Wars equivalent of a Jedi Master) with Best Buy, where he uses human centered design, testing and analytics to vanquish deceptive design and make easy-to-use experiences for Best Buy customers. For more, keep up with Kevin at klosencounters.com or on Twitter as @kevinklos.

Dani Nordin works for athenahealth as the Product Design Architect for athenaClinicals. There, she uses her superpowers in user research, pattern recognition, and snark to help the organization unpack big, gnarly problems related to EHR configuration, clinical content, and specialty support.

Veronica Naguib is the MD at ImpactSense, an insight company who are disrupting the way research and Experience Measurement is done today.

Janelle has led UX research at digital product companies, both as a founding lead and as a manager upskilling and growing existing research teams. She has a background in psychology and digital communication and spent 15 years in academia before transitioning to the tech world.