Maggie Nichols President & CEO of the Innovation Engineering Institute kicked off the conference with the ‘State of Innovation Engineering’ address and announced the Erick James Make a Difference Award winner.  

Maggie has spent over 15 years working alongside Doug Hall helping C-Level Executives around the world guide their employees and teams through innovation. She has served as an innovation coach and educator to some of the world’s largest companies and non-profits including American Express, Humana, March of Dimes, and P&G. In 2018 she was named President & CEO of Eureka! Ranch.

Maggie Pfeifer & Suzy DeYoung

Radical Business Model Change

A conversation about how a trained chef who has cooked for presidents, royalty & celebrities now saves 20,000 lbs of perishables a week and serves over 15,000 meals.

Chef Suzy DeYoung started La Soupe in 2014 after a very successful 25-year career as a restaurateur and caterer. La Soupe is a 501 c(3) food rescue organization that bridges the gap between food waste and hunger.  La Soupe’s unique chef-driven “Rescue, Transform, Share” model that Suzy created gives chefs, like herself, the opportunity to bring their culinary talents to those experiencing food insecurity. The chef team at La Soupe creates highly nutritious, restaurant-quality ready-to-eat food using food that is rescued from distributors all across Cincinnati, which La Soupe’s 300+ volunteers pick up and deliver every single day of the week. By rerouting quality food doomed for the dumpster to those experiencing food insecurity, thousands of pounds of food are kept out of landfills and people’s lives are changed for the better.

Tessa Westermeyer

Customer & Team Experience Post-Covid

As the world finds itself emerging gradually, from some 18 months of COVID-19 restrictions, the realization of the personal, psychological cost of sensory and social deprivation is so clear that it is on everyone’s lips. And what you and your brand can do about it.

Tessa is a Creative strategist with over 30 years of brand building experience for some of the world’s most iconic brands.

Spending over 14 years at Landor as a global and regional Executive Creative Director, Tessa has led creative teams in Paris, Geneva, Hamburg, Cincinnati, and New York, developing global iconic brand identities, visual toolboxes, brand architecture, and brand redesigns for global businesses with an emphasis on Beauty.

Tessa’s leadership style enables her to collaborate and unleash the creative potential of wide multidisciplinary design teams (architects, interior designers, graphic designers, digital designers, and brand strategists). From Asia to Latin America and Europe, her understanding of regions, cultures, and consumers, combined with a rich understanding of brand strategy, is instrumental in delivering intuitive brand experiences.

For those who don’t already know Doug Hall, he is an inventor, author, TV & radio host, and craft whiskey maker. He is the award-winning founder of Eureka! Ranch International & the Innovation Engineering Institute and Co-Founder of Brain Brew Custom Whiskey.

Unlike others who “preach but don’t practice,” Doug applies the principles of the Innovation Engineering System that he teaches other corporate leaders to his award-winning Brain Brew Custom Whiskey Company.

For his pioneering work creating the Innovation Engineering curriculum that took innovation from an art to a reproducible science, Doug was awarded an honorary Doctor of Laws from the University of Prince Edward Island and an honorary Doctor of Engineering from the University of Maine.