Traci Fenton is the Founder and CEO of WorldBlu®, as well as a globally recognized researcher, speaker, author, and transformational coach. WorldBlu has a vision of seeing one billion people living, leading, and working in freedom worldwide. Traci has been recognized in Inc. Magazine as a “Top 50 Leadership Thinker,” along with other world-class leaders such as Dan Pink, Brené Brown, Simon Sinek, and Marshall Goldsmith. She has also received the “Game Changer” award for “Outstanding Results in Shaping the World” and was named a “2020 Woman in Conscious Business” winner.  She is also the author of the forthcoming book, Freedom at Work.

Traci founded WorldBlu in 1997 and has helped spark and lead the global conversation around reinventing workplaces using freedom and organization democracy rather than fear and control. Her vision has built the largest global membership network of organizations committed to freedom and democracy in the workplace, with clients in over 80 countries globally representing over $30 billion in annual revenue.

Traci developed the groundbreaking and proven Freedom at Work™ model as well as the Fearless Purpose™, Fearless Mindset™, Freedom-Centered Leader™, and Freedom-Centered Cultures™ courses on the cutting-edge WorldBlu gamification platform, BluSpark™. Traci regularly coaches and consults with top leaders of companies worldwide.

Traci frequently addresses audiences globally and has shared her message with individuals from over 100 countries at diverse conferences and organizations such as South by Southwest, Harvard University, Yale University, the CIA, Yahoo, Virgin Unite, the US Naval Academy, and at TEDx.

Traci and WorldBlu’s work has been featured in Fortune, Forbes, Fast Company, the Wall Street Journal, The Christian Science Monitor, The New York Times, Inc., BusinessWeek, US News & World Report, BBC, NPR and dozens of other media outlets around the world as well as in over three dozen books. Traci has also written for numerous publications and textbooks.

Previously in her career, Traci worked for the Nasdaq Stock Market. Traci has traveled to 42 countries has lived in San Francisco, Washington, DC, Atlanta, Austin, and the St. Louis area and currently resides in Boulder, Colorado. In her free time, she loves traveling, yoga, watching documentaries, cooking, hiking with her beloved Australian Shepherd, Joey, and spending time with friends and family. She holds a BA with honors in Global Studies and Entrepreneurship from Principia College and an MA in International Development from American University in Washington, DC.

A true patriot, raised on the farmlands of Kansas, early on Dan knew he wanted to serve his country.  Upon graduating high school, he was accepted at the U.S. Naval Academy and spent the next four years relentlessly pursuing selection for SEAL training.  One of only 16 members of his class given the opportunity to enter Basic Underwater Demolition / SEAL training as officers, Dan successfully completed the grueling process in the fall of 2003.

Over the next six years, Dan was deployed multiple times to Iraq and Afghanistan and rose in rank to become the officer-in-charge of an 18-man SEAL platoon.

In 2009, Dan was deployed to Afghanistan, into an area of heavy combat.  There, on a night mission in the mountains, he stepped on an IED, losing both legs in the blast.  He would later be awarded a Purple Heart and Bronze Star with Valor.

For the next two years, Dan fought for his life, enduring over 40 different surgeries while readjusting to civilian life.  It was during this time, as part of his rehab, that he was introduced to the sports of cross-country skiing and biathlon.  Never one to shy from a challenge, he eventually earned a spot on the 2014 U.S. Paralympic Team.

In 2015, Dan returned to graduate school, earning two degrees from Harvard University.

At the 2018 Paralympic Games, Dan stole the show, remarkably winning one gold, four silver, and one bronze medal over a period of eight days earning the honor of Best Male Athlete of the Games.

For more than two decades, widely admired leadership expert, author, and keynote speaker Cindy Solomon has helped Fortune 1000 companies all over the world cultivate Courageous Leaders™ and customer-focused cultures.

With her signature razor-sharp wit, Cindy goes beyond today’s business headlines to deliver provocative and game-changing strategies to create exceptional customer service and exceptional leaders in today’s crazy, customer-driven economy. Keynote attendees and workshop participants praise Cindy for providing new and relevant information that can be immediately applied to their daily work routines. Business leaders consistently express amazement at the fast and lasting results they see both in their corporate cultures and on the bottom line.

Past and present clients include Oracle, Cisco, Google, Salesforce, Raytheon, Wells Fargo, UPS, PWC, The Ritz-Carlton, Pfizer, and hundreds more. Cindy is also a bestselling author on the topics of leadership and customer service.

Her current books include The Courage Challenge Workbook for corporate employees and The Rules Of Woo, the customer service guide for entrepreneurs and business owners that built a cult following among corporate managers.

Ezekiel Vicente is the COO and former CHRO and Chief Technology Officer of Mindvalley, a multi-million-dollar WorldBlu certified Freedom-Centered Workplace based in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

Mindvalley is the largest online personal growth platform in the world. They’re a learning experience company that publishes ideas and teachings by the best authors in personal growth, wellbeing, spirituality, productivity, mindfulness and more – and combines them with cutting-edge sophisticated learning technology within engaged and supportive communities. Mindvalley is creating a more conscious and connected world by teaching people how to become the greatest version of themselves while doing good for the planet and the human race. Through their education platforms, online academies, mobile apps, and both digital and live events, Mindvalley gives their customers access to an alternative curriculum that empowers them to kickstart their personal growth and lead extraordinary lives. Mindvalley’s ultimate goal is to launch a unified school for a billion people for all stages of life.

Ezekiel is also a consultant for organizations and leaders that aim to create teams and companies that are focused on freedom, responsibility, maximizing happiness and well-being at the workplace. He is working to expand Mindvalley’s DNA to as many organizations as possible, to create a world where work becomes the place where every individual experiences personal transformation and creates the best memories of its life.

Ezekiel is on a mission to raise the consciousness of 1 billion people through creating more conscious leaders, transforming organizations into oases of wellness and promoting organizations that serve to make the world a better place.  

Matthew Gonnering leads the highly-intelligent & playfully-engaged people of Widen, who are dedicated to unlocking human potential by navigating the next frontier of digital content.  Widen is a freedom-centered software company helping the most influential brands in the world organize their digital chaos. Widen aims to become the most admired organization in the world, setting an example for good growth, and is continuously featured as one of the best places to work in Madison. Widen also proudly represents a culture of organizational democracy, earning certification from WorldBlu as a Freedom-Centered Workplace for five consecutive years.

Matthew started at Widen in 2000 with a background in printing earning the CEO role in 2009.  He is a forever learner in pursuit of helping people realize their potential. With the help of 150+ colleagues last year, he earned Executive of the Year honors from Madison InBusiness Magazine. Matthew speaks throughout the year, with past speeches including a TEDx talk highlighting the need for more empathy in business by employing people with intellectual and developmental disabilities, a Disrupt HR presentation where he posed the question, “What if Mother Teresa Ran HR,” and various presentations drawing attention to a multidimensional wellness approach to integral human development.  His writings have been featured in prominent publications such as Forbes, Chief Executive, Entrepreneur, and Inc. Magazine.  

Matthew lives in Madison, Wisconsin with his wife and six children, is tremendously grateful to work with the best-of-the-best, is active in the Catholic Church, and is always thinking about what’s next!

Jennifer Briggs brings over two decades of practice in human resources, organizational development, and executive leadership from various industries. She served as VP of Human Resources with New Belgium Brewing, a WorldBlu certified Freedom-Centered Workplace for over 12 years and now serves as a corporate reconstructionist proving that business can be done different – purpose-centered, mission-driven, and values-powered using tenants of inclusive capitalism to attain success.

Building healthy, profitable, democratically-managed companies with shared capital ownership is Jenny’s passion. A mentor once taught her to never let a rule get in the way of making a good decision and she strives to make critical thinking, intention, and agile action her guiding principles. She brings a non-traditional HR viewpoint of relying primarily on values, communication, and community.

Jenny is the chairperson of the board for GIS, Inc., serves as an outside independent director for PFS Brands and Engineering Economics, and is a founding partner of GRITT Business Coaching. She is a Rutgers University Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit-Sharing Executive Fellow focusing on corporate governance and performance. She is a contributor to the Beyster Institute and the Democracy at Work Institute. She holds a Master of Science in Organizational Leadership and has done graduate studies in Enterprise Project Management and has a Bachelor of Science in Community Health Education.

What if your organization had an effective systematic approach for dealing with any problem? To get there, you have to understand that to find better solutions, you need to first ask better questions. Otherwise, the answers you seek will remain hidden.

Best-selling author and sought-after strategist, Stephen Shapiro, will teach you how to reframe any problem in multiple ways, using 25 lenses to help you gain critically different perspectives. He will help you discover why we are hardwired to ask ineffective questions, how to reframe any problem to help you find the optimal solution, and how to move from idea-based innovation to a question-based innovation that drives a higher ROI. In his talk on Invisible Solutions, which is also the title of his latest book, Stephen will help you quickly discover better solutions to solve any problem in business and in life.

Stephen is well-known for cultivating innovation by showing leaders and their teams how to approach, tackle and solve their business challenges. Applying the knowledge he has accrued over decades in the industry, Stephen is able to see what others can’t: opportunities to improve innovation models and the cultures that support them.

The first innovation opportunity Stephen spotted was the opportunity to innovate within his own life. Halfway through his 15-year tenure at Accenture, while co-leading the company’s business process reengineering practice, he realized he no longer wanted to be responsible for people losing their jobs. So he did exactly the opposite by building Accenture’s thriving 20,000-person process and innovation practice focused on growth and job creation.

In 2001, after publishing his first book, 24/7 Innovation, Stephen left Accenture to become a full-time innovation speaker and advisor to clients around the world. Since then he has published four more books – Goal-Free Living (2006), The Little Book of Big Innovation Ideas (2007), Personality Poker (2010) and Best Practices are Stupid (2011) — and spoken to audiences in 50 different countries. His sixth book, Invisible Solutions, came out in early 2020.

Today, Stephen continues to focus on transforming the way businesses like 3M, P&G, Marriott, Nike, and Microsoft improve innovation practices through customized keynote speeches, advisory engagements and other services. Passionate and captivating, Stephen’s high-energy approach to innovation gets audiences out of their seats and into new ways of thinking about their business challenges.

Stephen just finished serving a six-year term on the Board of Directors of National Speakers Association (NSA) and is the recipient of the Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) designation, NSA’s highest earned designation. In 2015 he was inducted into the Speaker Hall of Fame.

Stephen has a degree from Cornell University in Industrial Engineering, which has helped him optimize the entire innovation process using the engineering techniques he learned there.

He was also involved with Girl Starter, a movement that encourages and enables young women to launch their own businesses. He was a judge and mentor on the television show (TLC) and has supported the speaking tour and other endeavors.

Stephen is based in Orlando, Florida and loves traveling to meet his clients around the world. 

Kenny Gardner is the Chief People Officer (CPO) for DaVita, a Fortune 500 company that provides a variety of health care services to patients with end stage renal disease. As the CPO, Kenny overseas the entire human resources function, taking care of ~65,000 teammates across the world. He has been with DaVita for nearly a decade and most recently served the company as a group vice president (GVP), overseeing field operations in the Southeast as well as DaVita’s diagnostic laboratory.   

Prior to joining DaVita, Mr. Gardner previously worked as an investment banker at Morgan Stanley focused on Mergers and Acquisitions.

Mr. Gardner holds a Bachelor of Science degree from the Florida A&M University along with an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business where he was recognized as an Arbuckle Leadership Fellow. 

Kenny is committed to the broader South Florida community and is actively engaged with the 5000 Role Models of Excellence Project, Food for the Poor, Perez Art Museum, Frost Museum of Science and Golden Cane Society.  In his free time, Kenny enjoys travel, fitness, reading, food, wine and college and professional sports.  Originally from Miami, Kenny has lived in 7 states as well as Germany and currently lives in Denver, CO with his wife Alexandra, son Greyson and dog Jordy. 

John Niland is the founder and CEO of Self-Worth Academy, as well as an internationally recognized speaker, author, and business coach. The Self-Worth Academy has a vision of bringing a new understanding of self-worth to the world: to free millions of people from the hamster-wheel of self-esteem and open their eyes to the value they can create when they are not preoccupied with “proving themselves.”

John Niland is the author of four books: The Self-Worth Safari, The Courage to Ask, Hidden Value and Opportunity Conversations.  Using his native Irish talent for story and humor, John is best known as a popular speaker at professional conferences, on topics of self-worth and value-creation.

Prior to founding Self-Worth Academy, John was the CEO of VCO Global: a coaching and training company that worked with thousands of individual professionals all over the world seeking to add more value to their professional life and be rewarded by higher fees.  John was also a co-founder of the European Forum of Independent Professionals.

In his early career, John worked as a pan-European project-manager (and later as a business owner) in information-technology: supplying expertise to large companies such as BP, Argos, Johnson & Johnson and a host of mid-market FMCG organizations. His initial passion for value-creation was formed during these years, as well as working with international teams.

John has two children and one grandchild, who live in London. John splits his time between the UK and Portugal, traveling extensively to speak at conferences. His leisure pursuits include scuba-diving, cycling, hiking, and good food. His favorite quote comes from Oscar Wilde, “Be yourself. Everybody else is already taken."

Kelly Wendorf, MCC, is an executive coach, published author, spiritual mentor, and socially responsible entrepreneur. She is the founding Partner of EQUUS, an experiential leadership development organization based in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Kelly's early experiences were vitally and deeply shaped by the natural and ancient world around her where she learned a way of listening to forces within people, nature and moments. This unconventional education grants her a gift of perception that liberates untapped potential and hidden gifts within individuals and organizations, helping them to solve problems differently through a wisdom-informed and wholeness approach.

Throughout her life she has lived and worked around the world, studying with many spiritual and Indigenous leaders in India, Africa, Indonesia and Australia. Such immersion in multi-cultural perspectives has honed a passion for creating a new narrative in the human condition, empowering high-performing individuals, organizations, and their leaders to wield meaningful change in their families, communities, and in the world through servant leadership and innovative business development. She has worked inside a spectrum of clientele – from Amazon, to Microsoft to some of the most underserved communities.

Kelly founded, edited and published Kindred magazine (Australia), an evidence-based publication that explores the social, cultural and biological underpinnings of a compassionate society. Here she spent 15 years immersed in the field of neuroscience and neuropsychology and its relationship to social justice and transformative cultural change. Kelly also authored and Edited Stories of Belonging (Finch), an anthology from authors around the world, including the often excluded Indigenous voices. Her upcoming book, Flying Lead Change: 56 Million Years of Wisdom for Leading and Living (Sounds True) will be released in October 2020.

As a master coach and facilitator at EQUUS she specializes in the liberation of robust leadership capacities in those who are most qualified — i.e., the empathetic, the conscientious, the accountable, the generous, and the kind.

As a gifted educator and facilitator, Kelly developed Wisdom Circles®, a group peer-learning and coaching model. An intuitive lifelong horsewoman, she also developed The EQUUS Experience® — an award-winning equine-assisted transformational learning process. Wisdom Circles and The EQUUS Experience are recognized as a powerful differentiators in organizational change circles. 

Andreas Flodström, named "Entrepreneur of the Year" in Sweden in 2018, is the co-founder and CEO of the Swedish-Ukrainian IT companies Beetroot & Beetroot Academy. Beetroot is a WorldBlu certified Freedom-Centered Workplace. 

Beetroot is a Swedish-Ukrainian IT company that specializes in building distributed teams of developers. Beetroot is currently helping 100+ product companies in 20 countries with tech expertise. It was initially founded in 2012 as a part of Andreas’ master thesis in social entrepreneurship, while he completed a degree in technical entrepreneurship at Chalmers University. The company now engages more than 300 people in Ukraine and Sweden.

Beetroot doesn’t only love software development, it also loves developing people. For this reason, Andreas Flodstrom created, in 2014, Beetroot Academy, a modern school that prepares graduates for successful careers in web development. The school has a highly relevant and growing list of courses, including Front-end and Back-end development, Web Design, Project Management, and Entrepreneurship.

Founded in Poltava, Beetroot Academy now operates in 16 large and mid-size cities and has graduated more than 2500 students. The results speak for themselves — roughly 70% of their graduates have been successfully placed in jobs after completing their studies. This equals 1% of all IT professionals in Ukraine.