Event Agenda — Friday,
October 9, 2026.

Breakfast + Networking

Join us prior to the start of the Salon for breakfast and networking with old and new friends.

Welcome & Introductions

The 3rd Annual Athena Project NYC Leadership Salon kicks off with an official welcome from Co-Founders Drew Ianni and Rishad Tobaccowala and BCG Partner and Senior Managing Director, Lauren Wiener.

Lauren Wiener

Managing Director & Senior Partner

BCG

Rishad Tobaccowala

Co-Founder

The Athena Project

Drew Ianni

Co-Founder

The Athena Project

Sculpting in Resiliency Across the Enterprise

Few operators have navigated change from as many vantage points as Lisa Caputo, from the White House to Disney, Citigroup and now Travelers. In a moment defined by AI and accelerating disruption, Lisa explores what she has learned about leading people through change, why curiosity and adaptability matter more than ever, and what happens when empathy meets innovation. Drawing on an extraordinary career spanning politics, entertainment, retail and financial services, she makes the case that lasting transformation isn't ultimately about technology or strategy, but the people capable of bringing both to life.

Lisa Caputo

Chief Marketing, Communications
& Customer Experience Officer

Travelers

The Growth Mandate: Leadership, Marketing & the AI-Ready Enterprise

Growth increasingly demands more than great marketing. It requires leaders who can build new capabilities, reshape workflows and create cultures ready for constant change. AI raises the stakes—creating new possibilities for creativity and productivity while making judgment, critical thinking and domain expertise even more valuable. This conversation explores what modern marketing leadership requires to harness new capabilities without losing the craft, people and principles that drive performance.

Janet Balis

Managing Director
& Partner

BCG

Denise Campbell

VP & Head of Marketing,
US Oncology

Novartis

Modern Governance as the Stakes Grow Higher

As AI accelerates innovation while introducing new questions around risk, accountability, compliance, data, talent and trust, boards and leaders face a harder mandate: creating the guardrails that protect the enterprise without constraining its ability to compete. This session explores a new model of governance built not simply to manage risk, but to make smarter decisions, move responsibly at speed and create long-term enterprise value.

Ryan McManus

Founder, Techtonic.io & President, National Association of Corporate Directors (NACD), New York Chapter

Torrence Boone

VP, Global Client Partnerships, Co-Lead, Google New York & Board Director, Macy's Inc.

Kay Madati

President, KM Media, Board Director, Wingstop & Allspring Global Investments

Jamie Barnard

CEO, Compliant & Former General Counsel — Global Marketing, Media & eCommerce, Unilever

Capability: The Foundation of
Performance & Reinvention

In an era of continuous reinvention, competitive advantage increasingly comes down to capability: what organizations and their people are actually able to do, learn and adapt. Drawing on insights from the new ANA Marketing Capabilities Framework, this session will explore what capabilities marketers need now and why AI is making the fundamentals more important, not less. Most importantly, they'll examine how leaders turn those capabilities into measurable performance gains today while preparing their organizations for what comes next.

Jerusha Harvey

EVP, Talent Practice — Program Lead, Global CMO Growth Council, ANA

Veronika Kryuchkova

Global Head of Capability Building

Reckitt

Homi Battiwalla

Vice President - Global Marketing & Insights Excellence

PepsiCo

10 Good Minutes: The Agentic Future of Media

Andrew Mole

Co-Founder & CEO

pubX

Programmatic promised to take advertising from fax machines and spreadsheets to real-time, data-driven buying—and it did. But it also relied on identifiers that tracked people across the web, while transparency issues, privacy breaches and misaligned incentives eroded trust and left publishers with less than 50 cents of every advertising dollar. The first wave of AI brought better automation to programmatic pipes; agents are the next wave, and they need infrastructure of their own. Andrew Mole, CEO and co-founder of pubX, has built advertising infrastructure through both eras. He’ll set out where agentic media stands in 2026, what the shift beyond programmatic offers brands, agencies and publishers, and why this time, trust must be earned before the money moves.

The End of Audience?

For decades, marketing has been organized around audiences—segments and identities that serve as proxies for what people might do next. AI is beginning to make those approximations less necessary, allowing marketers to act on live signals of belief, intent and behavior—and increasingly anticipate what happens next. This session examines the shift from audience to signal, and what it means for the future of marketing, media, brands and agencies.

Carrie Seifer

Global Revenue & GTM Executive

Domenic Venuto

Chief Product & Data Officer

Horizon Media

Paul Palmieri

Managing Partner

Grit Capital Partners

Owning Growth: The New Forces Shaping Choice & Commerce

For generations, marketers could separate the business of being discovered, building a brand and closing a sale. Those boundaries are disappearing as answers replace links, commerce becomes influence, and machines join humans in deciding what gets considered and bought. Pete Blackshaw, Ethelbert Williams and Doug Chavez explore the new architecture of growth and what it demands from the next generation of marketing leadership.

Pete Blackshaw

Founder & CEO

brandrank.ai

Ethelbert Williams

Digital Commerce Lead, Instacart | Uber | DoorDash

PepsiCo

Doug Chavez

EVP, Global Retail Strategy

OneMars United Commerce

Employer Brand: Where Culture Competes

The strongest employer brands aren’t built through advertising; they’re built from the inside out by creating cultures where people genuinely want to work—and by the people who live that culture every day. As employer brand becomes a bigger driver of reputation, talent, and growth, building a great workplace and telling its story are increasingly inseparable. Marketing shapes the story; HR shapes the experience; leadership creates the culture that makes both credible. The strongest employer brands emerge when all three align—turning a great culture into a reputation that attracts, inspires and retains the best talent.

Kristien Turner

Founder & CEO, TK Talent Group & Former Head of Employer Branding, HSBC

Taylor Meadows

Principal, Brand & Talent

Glassdoor

Paul Woolmington

Chief Executive Officer
Canvas Worldwide

Human Transformation: The Ultimate Growth Driver

Why do some leaders continue to improve while others plateau—or decline? Drawing on decades of leadership, talent, and organizational experience, Brian Fetherstonhaugh explores the habits, mindsets, and deliberate choices that enable people to continuously reinvent themselves, proving that human transformation is the foundation of organizational transformation.

Brian Fetherstonhaugh

CEO The Long View Talent Group & Former Global Chairman & CEO, OgilvyOne and Global Chief Talent Officer, Ogilvy

The HOW of High Performance

High-stakes moments used to be rare: the crisis, the takeover, the boardroom showdown. Now a pricing call becomes a headline, a memo goes viral and a routine decision turns political. For senior leaders, high stakes are the operating environment, yet most still lead as if the stakes were normal. Sally Henderson, High-Stakes Leadership Mentor and author of The HOW of High Performance, shows what it takes to protect judgement under sustained pressure, manage energy as a strategic asset and lead teams through defining moments. Not a pep talk. A playbook for leaders whose every move is now on the record.

Sally Henderson

High-Stakes Leadership Mentor

The Growth Multiplier: Connecting EX, CX & Enterprise Value

Great customer experiences start with the employees who deliver them. Yet most enterprises still separate EX and CX, missing the direct line from employee experience to customer loyalty, brand strength and growth. This session explores how leaders can connect the two, measure what matters and turn that connection into a provable driver of enterprise value.

Matthew Quint

Content Director

The Athena Project

Tamar Cohen

Founder & CEO

Halo Effect Management

Doug Kramon

Head of Customer Care & Fan Support, ESPN & EDTC, The Walt Disney Company

The Modern Leader: Who We Hire. How We Lead.

What if the people who got you here aren't necessarily the people who get you there? AI is changing how companies find talent, what they value in people and how leaders build and lead teams. As curiosity, adaptability and judgment rise in value, leaders must rethink how they identify potential, develop people and get the best from human + AI collaboration. Companies don't transform, people do.

Kristien Turner

Founder & CEO, TK Talent Group & Former Head of Employer Branding, HSBC

Javier O'Neil-Ortiz

Entrepreneur-in-Residence

Opportunity@Work

Anna Goldberg

VP, AI Product Management

Cornerstone

Profiles in Courage: Adjust the Narrative, Double Down on the Mission

In an era of cultural flashpoints, political polarization, and AI-driven misinformation, the modern leader must balance conviction with communication. This session explores how executives can uphold values, sustain trust and integrity, and guide their organizations through moments of external pressure — reframing narratives, protecting culture, and doubling down on purpose when the public square turns volatile.

Kim Sample

President

PR Council

Robyn Streisand

Founder & CEO

The MIXX & Titanium Worldwide

Renetta McCann

Chief Inclusion Experiences Officer

Publicis Groupe

Sheryl Dajia

Founder & CEO, BRIDGE

What's The Story? A Conversation with Suzanne Vranica

Athena Project Co-Founder Rishad Tobaccowala sits down with the veteran Wall Street Journal Advertising Editor, Suzanne Vranica, to discuss modern advertising and her perspectives on this latest technology revolution, the traits of great leaders and what makes a great story today.

Rishad Tobaccowala

Co-Founder

The Athena Project

Suzanne Vranica

Advertising Editor

The Wall Street Journal