Agenda

Chris Malone is Founder and Managing Partner of Fidelum Partners, a firm that specializes in customer loyalty insights, strategies and results.

Chris has over 25 years of sales, marketing, consulting and organizational leadership experience, and a track record of driving growth and profitability.  He held senior marketing positions at leading organizations such as Choice Hotels, ARAMARK, Coca-Cola, the National Basketball Association, and Procter & Gamble and has consulted to a broad range of Fortune 500 companies.

As Chief Marketing Officer of Choice Hotels, one of the largest hotel companies in the world, with over 6,000 hotels open worldwide, Chris led the company’s 800 person global consumer marketing, worldwide travel industry sales, e-commerce and reservations organization. Previously he served as Senior Vice President, Marketing for ARAMARK Corporation, a multinational food, facility and uniform services enterprise with over $12 billion in revenue annually.

Chris is also co-author of the award-winning book, The HUMAN Brand: How We Relate to People, Products & Companies, which was published by the Jossey-Bass division of Wiley Publishing.  He has delivered over 100 keynote speeches on the insights from his book around the world.

He is also a frequent guest and contributor to CNBC, FOX Business, Bloomberg TV, Wall Street Journal Live, Forbes and Businessweek. 

Chris holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Maryland at College Park and an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Jimmy Budnik, Overstock.com’s Vice President of Customer Care, began his  career  with  the  online  retailer  in  2008  as  a  Senior  Process  Improvement  Engineer  after  half  a  decade  working  as  an  Industrial  Engineer,  first  with  UPS,  then  with  Homeshield.  
 
Budnik  has  held  several  positions  in  his  time  at  Overstock,  where  he  developed  strategies  and  executed  improvements  initiatives  to  drive  growth  and  improve  the  customer  experience.  These  roles  included  transitioning  between  multiple  departments  as  a  Chief  of  Staff,  including  Customer  Care,  Marketing,  Merchandising,  and  the  Office  of  the  President.  Also  during  this  time,  he  was  a  Senior  Director  of  the  Product  Content  Teams,  worked  in  Overstock’s  technology  incubator,  OLabs,  and  most  recently  he  served  in  a  dual  role  as  the  General  Manager  of  Marketplace  and  the  General  Merchandising  Manager  for  Home  Essentials  and  Apparel. 
 
In  his  current  role  as  VP  of  Customer  Care,  Budnik  leads  a  workforce  of  hundreds  of  associates  that  consistently  deliver  a  world-class  customer  experience,  while  promoting  the  customer-centric  culture  that  has  given  Overstock  the  reputation  as  an  award-winning  leader  in  online  retail  customer  service  for  nearly  two  decades.

Eliot Hamlisch serves as senior vice president, worldwide loyalty and partnerships at Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, one of the world’s leading hotel brand franchisors and hotel management services providers with more than 9,000 hotels across 80 countries under 20 hotel brands. In his role, Hamlisch oversees Wyndham Rewards, the company’s award-winning guest loyalty program, as well as its co-branded credit card, loyalty partnerships & sponsorships, rewards program marketing, and customer acquisition and retention efforts.
 
Previously, Hamlisch served as Wyndham’s head of global sales, overseeing a team of over 100 sales professionals tasked with generating more than $1B in annual revenue across the company’s worldwide hotel portfolio. He joined the organization in 2016 as vice president of sales innovation.
Prior to Wyndham, Hamlisch spent three years leading sales strategy and operations at Starwood Hotels and Resorts, where he was responsible for developing, executing and supporting strategic initiatives to drive profitable growth across the company’s North American portfolio.
Earlier in his career, Hamlisch held a number of strategic planning, business development and customer engagement positions with Deloitte Consulting and American Express Company. He graduated magna cum laude from Harvard College and received his Master's in Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

Michelle Musgrove has more than 15 years of specialized marketing experience including strategy, product development, segmentation, multi-cultural marketing, loyalty program management, relationship management and customer experience management.  

Currently, Michelle serves as Vice President, AARP Experience Strategy & Governance at AARP.  In this role, Michelle has supported the launch of the customer experience management function with a focus on strategy, change management, communications and generating early wins.  Prior to joining AARP, Michelle led successful engagement and loyalty programs at AOL, American Express and JP Morgan Chase. 

Michelle graduated with a MBA and concentration in Marketing from the University of California at Berkeley as well as a BA in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania. 

Josh Margolis is the Vice President of Customer Journey for Caesars Entertainment. His team leads loyalty, national promotions, and digital products for the enterprise.  Prior to his current role, Josh was responsible for integrating Caesar’s Total Rewards loyalty program with Playtika’s chart topping social casino games and real money online gaming in New Jersey and Nevada.  His work helped create one of the first social loyalty programs spanning multiple games and an 8 figure cross-marketing revenue stream.  He has marketing experience across multiple verticals including time with category leaders in legal services, financial services, media, gaming and hospitality.  Josh holds a BS in marketing from Lehigh University and a JD/MBA from Temple University. He splits time between Vegas and Los Angeles.
 

Jeff Sopko co-founder and President, Baesman Insights & Marketing, has established himself within technology and agency ecosystems as both a visionary leader and growth advisor.
 
Jeff’s career is highlighted by his extensive work with entrepreneurs and rapidly growing companies in the SaaS, technology, consulting, and big data agency space.
 
Through Jeff’s leadership Baesman Insights & Marketing has established itself as a highly responsive, yet boutique provider of fact-based marketing strategy and execution services for the retail, fashion and home services brands.
 
Prior to founding the Baesman agency Jeff served as a senior executive and advisor to companies in Toronto, Ontario, Los Angeles and as CEO of eVisons.com a business and technology consultancy supporting both Fortune 1000 and dot.com brands.

As CEO & CMO of Loyalty360, Mark is committed to bringing loyalty to the forefront as a critical marketing strategy. To further this goal, he has created an unbiased, market-driven clearinghouse and think tank through which users and loyalty providers can interact and collaborate with. His finger on the pulse of what’s happening in loyalty, Mark is driven to give members the expert insight and guidance they need to develop strategies and implement programs that effectively engage their customers and employees and build stronger relationships with them.

Mark has significant experience in selling, designing and administering prepaid, loyalty/CRM programs, as well as data-driven marketing communication programs. He received his start in loyalty program design while at Fifth Third Bank in Cincinnati, OH where he developed the bank’s open (merchant-based gift card) and closed (MasterCard) system stored value programs (Premiere Issue).

Following, Mark was Vice President of Product Development at Stored Value Systems. Through efforts, SVS designed the gift card mall product and wrote its first comprehensive market evaluation on loyalty. He was also responsible for the recommendation to acquire the assets of DataMark Technologies and their loyalty processing clients. At Size Technologies, Mark sold loyalty and CRM programs to Alliance Data Systems (Dynamic Value), Carlson Marketing Group (Gold Points Replacement), National Processing Company/Bank of America, Blackhawk Marketing/Safeway and First Data Resources.

Mark has his undergraduate degree in mass communications (media management) from Miami University, an M.B.A from the University of Cincinnati, and is currently pursuing an M.B.A. in Business Information - Statistics from Xavier University. A recognized thought leader in loyalty marketing, Mark shares his expert insights with media worldwide. He is a regular contributor to Hotel Executive and 21st Century Business and has been featured in FoxBusiness, NBC News, ABC News, New York Times, Washington Post, 1to1 Magazine, MarketingSherpa, CRM Magazine and The PrePaid Press.