North America

Silke Bochat is a Design Executive with more than 20 years of experience leading in-house design teams and creating award-winning work at global organizations including PepsiCo, Colgate, Mars, and Beiersdorf.
Her career has consistently centered on transformation - helping organizations reinvent how they operate, evolve their design capabilities, and create new forms of value. Spanning Brand Design, Experience Design, Design Strategy, Enterprise Design and DesignOps, her work connects creativity, business strategy, and organizational transformation as AI reshapes businesses, operating models, and human experiences.

Today, Silke serves as Chair of Service Design at the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), where she is reimagining design education and pioneering new industry-integrated university blueprints while advancing Service Design toward converging ecosystems, enterprise design, and AI fluency - ensuring human agency, care and meaningful human experiences remain at the heart of increasingly complex AI-enabled organizations, products and societies.

Anthony Bonamassa is a senior marketing executive leading global brand transformation and activation at Citi, where he shapes visual identity systems, brand governance, and global integrated marketing campaigns. He brings deep expertise in global brand management, creative operations, and multi-channel marketing from previous leadership roles at MetLife, Estée Lauder, Interbrand, and Viacom. Throughout his career, Anthony has successfully aligned cross-functional teams to deliver cohesive, customer-centric brand experiences while advancing organizational capabilities through scalable tools, streamlined processes, and enhanced creative standards.

DJ is a Los Angeles–based creative executive with 20 years of experience. He is currently Head of Creative at OnePay, one of the fastest-growing financial platforms in the U.S., where he has built the in-house creative team from the ground up and leads creative across the brand.

Over the course of his career, DJ has developed work for brands including Apple, Beats by Dre, Nike and TaylorMade, spanning global campaigns, brand identities, digital experiences and cultural storytelling. His work has been recognized by the Clio Awards, ADC and The One Show, and he is an ADWEEK Creative 100 honoree. He brings a multidisciplinary perspective grounded in the belief that the strongest brands live at the intersection of craft and culture.

Bio to follow soon...

I'm a global executive creative director — Rio-born, Brooklyn-based with 15+ years 
of agency and in-house experience building global brands. I currently lead creative and brand at Strava, previously at Vimeo and Uber. 
I live in Brooklyn with my wife Paula and our 
4yo daughter, Matilda.

Ivan joined Moody's as senior vice president of brand in 2023. Prior to Moody's, he was the head of global brand management for Morgan Stanley, where he led the firm’s brand strategy, engagement and visual identity initiatives. He was a Senior Global Brand Manager at Yahoo, leading the rollout of a new logo and identity system. Prior to Yahoo, Ivan spent six years at GE Corporate, helping to grow GE’s image as one of the world’s most innovative B2B brands, and two years at Sterling Brands, where he managed a number of strategic and design projects for iconic brands such as Target, Disney, IBM and Ben & Jerry’s.

Regina is a seasoned marketing leader with over 16 years of experience driving brand growth and strategy. She currently serves as a senior marketing manager on the Global Marketing Team at Pizza Hut.

In addition to her core role, Regina was selected to serve on Pizza Hut’s Rapid Impact Team (RIT)—a cross-functional, leadership-sanctioned taskforce charged with cracking high-priority business challenges and developing test-and-learn strategies to unlock growth across the brand’s global footprint.  

Throughout her career, Regina has led impactful work across iconic brands including Dr Pepper Snapple (now Keurig Dr Pepper), PepsiCo/Frito-Lay, JCPenney, and Toyota. Her expertise spans brand management, shopper marketing, and customer strategy. She’s especially proud of work that involved repositioning legacy brands, launching new products, and shaping global marketing strategies.

Regina is known as a consumer-obsessed marketer with a passion for brand building and innovation. She holds a B.S.S. in Psychology from Southern Methodist University and an MBA from Texas A&M University – Commerce.

Brian Fiore-Silfvast is a brand builder and creative leader with nearly two decades of experience shaping brands, launching products, and leading creative and marketing teams. He is currently Head of Marketing at Integrate, where he leads marketing, brand, creative, and communications.

His career spans New York agencies, global technology companies, and early-stage startups through unicorn scale, including helping reinvent Google I/O. A multidisciplinary strategist and systems thinker, Brian sees brands as interconnected experiences rather than isolated outputs. His leadership is grounded in I–Thou thinking: treating people as whole individuals, valuing different perspectives, and creating the trust teams need to challenge convention and make meaningful work.

Bio to follow soon...

Avery Gross is Head of Creative Campaigns and Storytelling at BNY, where he leads teams across a broad range of brand and strategy work for the global bank. 

He began his career agency side, rising to executive creative director at Publicis on the global Citi account. He went on to lead creative at both brand and strategic consultancies, building on his creative background with deep design and brand strategy experience.

His work for brands including Citi, McDonald’s, Allstate, Kellogg’s, and Nintendo has won most major creative awards, including Cannes Lions for Film, Innovative Media, and Out-of-home.

He received a B.A. from the University of Richmond where he studied English, economics and classics, and currently resides at the Jersey Shore with his wife and two children.

Kelley is a highly experienced brand and marketing professional with 20 years of experience in the industry. She is currently the global brand strategy Leader at PwC.  Additionally, she is a part time faculty member at the Rutgers’s School of Communication and Information where she both teaches and has authored a new course on Creative Operations for Everyday Workflow in Digital Asset Management. 

Hamza Iqbal is a Brooklyn based brand and product designer operating at the intersection of digital product architecture, brand identity, and design led growth strategy. Holding a Master’s in Communication Design from Parsons School of Design, and a BSc in International Politics from Georgetown University, Hamza rejects design as a static artifact, choosing instead to build storied systems of connection through visual acuity, verbal precision, and code.
Influenced by a global upbringing, having lived in five countries and traveled through dozens more, he brings a deeply nuanced, multilingual perspective to decoding visual and marketplace cultures. Hamza has partnered with over 35 startups and world class enterprise organizations, including Chanel, Scale AI, PayPal, and W Hotels. His work and research have been recognized by NYCxDesign, NY TechWeek, and the SEGD Academic Summit, making him a distinct voice in synthesizing culture, strategy, and design for the recently possible.

Jeanna is a sonic brander and sound strategist. She and her company, Dreamr Productions, also produce the Sound In Marketing Podcast, a podcast reflecting on today and tomorrow's sound strategy ideas and best practices. She's the editor and chief of sound in marketing learning, a resource site for sound strategy. Her mantra is ‘make sound on purpose’.

Steve Keller is the sonic strategy director for Studio Resonate, SiriusXM Media’s in-house audio-first creative consultancy, offering support to brands that advertise on the Pandora, SiriusXM, and Soundcloud platforms. He is recognized as one of the world’s leading authorities on sonic strategy and identity, blending art and science into award winning creative content and sonic experiences for a variety of global agencies and brands.

Margaret is an award-winning creative leader with over 25 years of experience leading brand strategy, design, digital innovation, and omnichannel marketing for globally recognized brands. As head of brand & marketing at the Toronto International Film Festival, she leads creative, content, digital, marketing, and retail teams, driving audience engagement and growth.  Previously, she was director of creative at Rogers Sports & Media and has collaborated with iconic brands like HBO and The New Yorker. Margaret is known for her bold vision and ability to transform brands through design, creativity, and strategy. 

Paul is a seasoned Creative director and UX/UI sound designer who brings innovative, emotionally engaging auditory experiences to life for visionary clients. Since 2016, he has developed AVAS, EV and UX sounds for leading automotive manufacturers, crafted distinctive sonic identities for global payment processors and luxury kitchen manufacturers, and shaped immersive sound environments for prominent financial institutions, online retailers and cutting-edge software and technology companies. His approach seamlessly integrates the strategic depth of audio branding with a holistic understanding of user experience design. His work continuously redefines possibilities, offering holistic, empathetic and forward-thinking perspectives on the future of sound design and audio branding.

Adam Pleiman is Creative Director at PLAY Audio Agency, where he helps brands build distinctive identities through sonic branding, original music, sound design, and strategic audio experiences. Over the past two decades, he has created award-winning work across advertising, entertainment, and branded experiences, helping organizations use sound as a strategic business and creative asset.

His client experience includes Disney, Walmart, Universal, Sport Clips, ADM, Febreze, Gillette, and Secret. A Grammy-nominated creative leader, Adam brings a unique perspective at the intersection of brand strategy, creativity, and audio, helping organizations use sound to strengthen identity, build recognition, and create lasting emotional connections.

Madison is a CLIO award-winning sports creative director and illustrator with a focus in the pro sports industry. Currently she is the creative director at the National Women’s Soccer League. Most recently her creative team designed the NWSL Championship identity hosted at CPKC Stadium in Kansas City, the first women’s dedicated sports arena in the United States. 

For 20 seasons Madison has developed and designed team and event identities for the NFL, Major League Baseball, and the NHL. These projects ranged from the Super Bowl LVI cinematic identity and primary logo to the World Series, NHL Winter Classic and to the MLB All-Star Game. Beyond league operations, her rebrands include the Toronto Blue Jays, Houston Astros and the Miami Marlins under Derek Jeter’s ownership. In 2023 she collaborated with Tiffany’s & Co to design the NWSL Championship and MVP trophies.

Bio to follow soon...

Chloe Rhys is a visionary creative leader whose bold, system-driven ideas turn brand storytelling into business outcomes. Paris-raised, she began in television before leading 360° integrated campaigns at Sephora, building a deep foundation in brand rigor and retail execution. She then helped define modern paid-social video at TubeScience, operationalizing high-velocity testing and creator-led formats for market-shaping DTC brands. As VP of Creative at Power Digital, she guided multidisciplinary creative teams across global accounts. Most recently, as Head of Creative at OpenStore, she led creative across 40+ high-growth Shopify brands. Across roles, Chloe’s sweet spot is uniting brand and performance—human creativity and AI acceleration—to deliver outsized results. A frequent speaker and educator, and a faculty member at Ad Creative Academy, she champions creative intentionality and evidence-led storytelling that move culture and the P&L.

As director of global oral care design at Colgate since 2019, Gerard leads brand identity and brand expression executed with meticulous design implementation. With an extensive foundation of over 25 years as a creative director and designer on the agency side, he brings a wealth of expertise to shaping brand narratives that resonate powerfully across all consumer touchpoints. Gerard is passionate about creating compelling stories that not only define brands but also deeply engage and inspire audiences worldwide. His portfolio contains some of the world's most well-known brands such as Colgate, Coca-Cola, Kraft Heinz, Nestle, Pfizer and Kimberly-Clark.

Dante Romano is Chief Creative Officer at ROWE, bringing over 20 years of experience shaping design and strategy for leading names in retail, food service, and consumer goods. His work bridges deep industry insight with concept-driven creativity—helping brands connect meaningfully with modern audiences across physical and digital touchpoints.

Dante has partnered with national and global clients to develop brand identities, customer experiences, packaging systems, and retail environments that are both commercially effective and culturally resonant. With a foundation in communication arts and a sharp eye for execution, he brings both big-picture thinking and hands-on leadership to every project.

Phil Smith is an accomplished global brand and marketing leader with over 27 years of experience driving consumer-focused campaigns and breakthrough strategic initiatives. As Vice President of Global Branding for ISS SCAS and ISS LiquidMetrix, he directs global marketing efforts and drives market impact for key brands within the ISS STOXX portfolio.

Phil's extensive background spans leadership roles at agency giants like Ogilvy & Mather, ownership of Boone Oakley Advertising, and fractional CMO roles for innovative SaaS and IoT companies. A specialist in brand management, market trends, and audience development, he excels at forging deep stakeholder relationships and delivering high-ROI digital and traditional strategies.

Phil enjoys sharing his experience with the next generation of industry talent as an adjunct professor of advertising and marketing.

Björn Thorleifsson is Director of Research & Insights at amp sound branding (a WPP company). A consumer behaviourist with training in psychology and sound engineering, he specialises in how music and sound shape attention, emotion, memory, and decision-making, and how brands can apply those effects responsibly and measurably. At amp, Bjorn built and leads the research team, developed proprietary methodologies for evaluating sonic effectiveness, and oversees insight work across a global client portfolio. He is also responsible for amp’s annual Best Audio Brands ranking, a first-of-its-kind study benchmarking how effectively brands use sound across communications. Alongside industry work, Bjorn lectures on sonic branding and consumer psychology and maintains academic partnerships to strengthen evidence-led practice.

Raitis Velps is the Chief Marketing Officer at Corebook°, a platform built to help brands bring order to their brand systems. At Corebook°, he works with global brands, creative agencies, and marketing teams to rethink how brand guidelines, assets, and stakeholders are managed and shared across organizations.

Alongside his work, Raitis is an Adjunct Professor of marketing and brand communication, where he shares practical insights on how strong brand systems translate from design thinking into consistent execution across teams, markets, and partners.