Kari Aakre is senior director in the Global Communications Group at Intel. She leads the team responsible for developing and maintaining the company’s corporate narrative, and CEO and C-suite executive communications, thought leadership programs, and production to advance the narrative across all audiences. She has more than 20 years of experience spanning corporate, technology, employee, and consumer communications and events. Most recently, she led the Global Events organization. She also was the executive communications senior director for Intel’s Chief Engineering Officer. Prior to that, Kari served as senior director of technology communications. In that role, she led the team responsible for Intel’s product and technology communications strategy and execution for the company’s full product portfolio.

Trebor Banstetter is Director – Enterprise & Leader Communications at Delta Air Lines. He began his career in journalism, working as a newspaper reporter in markets including St. Louis, Nashville, Florida and Dallas/Fort Worth, as well as the Florida edition of the Wall Street Journal. In the years following 9-11, he covered the bankruptcies and consolidation of the airline industry as a business reporter for the Star-Telegram in Dallas/Fort Worth. In 2009 he accepted an opportunity to join Delta’s corporate communications department. Today Trebor leads a team that manages internal and external communications for Delta CEO Ed Bastian, as well as Government Affairs/Policy Communications, ESG and Financial/Investor Communications. Based in Atlanta, he is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

As Senior Director of the Executive and Functional Communications COE at VMWare, Rosemary Cassie is leading a large team of professional communicators to deliver employee, executive and program communications that drive business value and strengthen community. Previously, Cassie was Sr. Director of Marketing and Communications at Dell where she led a team driving the efforts to message and communicate a transformational narrative for IT, called the Dell Digital Way. She also took on the role of Director of the Employee Communications, People and Culture function at Cisco where she was responsible for the strategy and execution of the company’s culture narrative. Cassie has also held senior executive communication roles at Juniper and Hewlett Packard.

Brian Forest is the Founder of Arboreal Communications LLC. He is a seasoned speechwriting, messaging, and public affairs veteran who has worked on nearly every major policy issue of the last decade. He has years of experience providing strategic messaging counsel to leaders at the highest levels of business and government—from Fortune 100 CEOs to several of Time’s 100 Most Influential People including congressional leaders, presidents, and prime ministers. Forest, who led the Senate Majority Leader’s speechwriting team and before that wrote for the Senate Minority Whip, has crafted messages and strategies that shaped national conversations and helped secure important bipartisan legislative achievements. He also led strategic messaging for a major Washington trade association where he managed public affairs campaigns and provided executive communications support to senior leaders and CEOs. He previously worked in a variety of roles spanning campaigns, journalism, academia, international institutions, state government, the White House, and PR agencies such as Edelman. He has worked on thousands of remarks and opinion pieces over his career including high profile national addresses, State of the Union responses, and opeds that have appeared in The Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, USA Today, and nearly every other major newspaper.

Maureen Kasper is the Senior Director, Corporate Messaging and Thought Leadership, at Intuitive. Maureen has more than 25 years as a practitioner of executive communication best practices and global corporate communication strategies. Prior to joining Intuitive, Maureen has held executive communication leadership positions at Hewlett-Packard Corporation, Amdahl Corporation, McGrath Power/West Public Relations, LifeScan, a division of Johnson and Johnson, Cisco Systems and ROI Communication. She has spent the last seven years building a Communication Practice for SolomonEdwards Group, customizing partnerships with clients and overseeing the delivery of work to these clients. Maureen is a sought-out speaker herself at industry events and conferences. She lives in Cambria, CA, with her spouse and two sons and their Siberian Huskies. This Fall, her oldest son will be a freshman at Gonzaga University in Spokane, WA, and the other a senior in high school.

Ryan Lowry is Senior Director, Executive Communications at Workday. Lowry created Workday’s Executive Communications program in 2016, and today leads the team responsible for supporting and partnering with the company’s most senior executives on their external and internal communications. This includes defining and executing on each executive’s holistic communications strategy with a goal to drive external thought leadership and brand awareness, while enabling them to effectively communicate and connect with employees. Prior to moving into executive communications, Lowry held various PR roles, both in-house and at agencies. He led Corporate PR for his first two years at Workday and before that held Product and Corporate PR roles at NetApp for more than six years. Before NetApp, he spent time at Porter Novelli and Weber Shandwick, with a focus on working with technology clients. Lowry holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from Santa Clara University and spends his weekends shuttling two daughters to their soccer, baseball and basketball games while trying to find a little time in between to listen to the Grateful Dead or play drums in his garage.

Kari Matalone is senior director, corporate and executive communications at Splunk, a $2 billion software company based in San Francisco that produces data analysis software. Prior to Splunk, Kari managed executive communications for four years at Cisco. Born and raised in San Jose, Calif., Kari attended university in Brussels, Belgium, and began her career there, before returning to the Bay Area.

Sharon McIntosh is Member Advisor for the Executive Communication Council. She founded And Then Communications, an executive communication and employee communication consultancy that draws on Sharon’s experience in top communications roles at Pepsico, Sears and Waste Management.

After nine years as a news editor on The Times (of London) Lech Mintowt-Czyz left journalism to become speechwriter for the CEO of Shell. He won five Cicero Awards in three years before moving on to write for another oil and gas CEO (who also happens to be his nation’s climate change envoy). He is now about to launch into his next adventure in speechwriting…

Sally Montgomery is the Executive Director of Executive Communications at CVS Health of CVS Health, a diversified health services company that is transforming healthcare to be more simple, convenient and personalized. Sally has nearly two decades of experience serving in increasingly senior executive and employee communications roles for Fortune 100 companies, across a variety of complex, highly-regulated industries—including biopharmaceutical, energy, healthcare, and financial services. During this time, she has worked to create thought leadership platforms for six Fortune 500 CEOs, serving as both a strategic consultant and in a speechwriting capacity for executives at Chevron, Merrill Lynch, MetLife, Pfizer, TIAA and more. Additionally, she has helped lead communications and change management for multi-billion dollar mergers and acquisitions; supported the roll-out of major brand changes; assisted senior executives as they navigated through crisis communications; worked to support the launch of new products; and created robust communications and business readiness plans in support of significant organizational transformations.

David Murray is executive director of the Executive Communication Council and the Professional Speechwriters Association. He’s also editor and publisher of Vital Speeches of the Day magazine, and author of the communicator’s manifesto, An Effort to Understand: Hearing One Another (and Ourselves) in a Nation Cracked in Half (Disruption Books, 2021).

Tim Pollard is the founder and CEO of Oratium, the author of The Compelling Communicator: Mastering the Art and Science of Exceptional Presentation Design, and Mastering the Moment: Perfecting the Skills and Processes of Exceptional Presentation Delivery, and a regular columnist for Forbes, Entrepreneur, and other publications. Each year Tim and his team consult on the design and delivery of hundreds of critical messages in fields as varied as for-profit sales, non-profit donor messaging, and project proposals for corporate or government leaders.

Jim Reische is Chief Communications Officer at Williams College. Jim previously served in similar roles at St. John’s College and Grinnell College. Before that he was, successively, executive editor of the University of Michigan Press and senior editor and assistant campaign director at Michigan’s Office of University Development. In addition to his writing support for college officers, Jim has published under his own byline in Call to Action, Inside Higher Ed’s blog for communications professionals, and in The New York Times. He has co-chaired CASE’s national conference for media relations professionals several times and co-facilitates a higher education speechwriters’ group affiliated with the Professional Speechwriters’ Association.