Meet this year's speakers

Todd Michaud, VP of Information Technology, FOCUS Brands

Todd Michaud is the Vice President of Information Technology for FOCUS Brands, the franchisor and operator of over 3,300 ice cream stores, bakeries, restaurants, and cafes under the brand names Carvel®, Cinnabon®, Schlotzsky’s®, Moe’s Southwest Grill®, Auntie Anne’s® Pretzels and Seattle’s Best Coffee®. With the ultimate goal of helping Franchise Partners improve their operations and marketing efforts through technology, Todd oversees the IT service delivery for FOCUS Brands as a whole, as well as each brand’s retail technology system. In addition, he is a columnist for www.storefrontbacktalk.com, a website that provides techniques and tools about retail technology and e-commerce.

Prior to joining FOCUS Brands, Todd was Director of Retail Technology for Dunkin’ Brands where he supported the technology platform for over 7,000 U.S.-based Dunkin’ Donuts and Baskin Robbins locations. He also served as Director of Solutions Development at NaviSite, Inc., as well as Chief Information Officer at Channels/Conserv.

James Canton, Ph.D. Futurist, Author and Visionary Business Advisor

Dr. James Canton is a renowned global futurist, social scientist, keynote presenter, author, and visionary business advisor. For over 30 years, he has been insightfully predicting the key trends that have shaped our world. He is a leading authority on future trends in innovation. He is the author of The Extreme Future: The Top Trends That Will Reshape the World in the 21st Century, Dutton 2006, and Technofutures: How Leading-Edge Innovations Will Transform Business in the 21st Century, Next Millennium Press, 2004.

Dr. Canton is CEO and Chairman of the Institute for Global Futures, a leading think tank he founded in 1990 that advises business and government on future trends. He advises the Global Fortune 1000 on trends in innovation, financial services, health care, population, life sciences, energy, security, workforce, climate change and globalization. From a broad range of industries, clients include: IBM, BP, Intel, Philips, General Electric, Hewlett Packard, Boeing, FedEx, and Proctor & Gamble. He is a Senior Fellow at the Center for Research in Innovation at the Kellogg School of Management. He has advised three White House Administrations, the National Science Foundation and MIT's Media Lab, Europe.

Recognized as “one of the top presenters in the 21st century” by Successful Meetings Magazine, Dr. Canton is a highly sought-after keynote presenter. He has spoken to thousands of organizations on five continents. He is noted for his fascinating, informative, dynamic and entertaining keynotes.

A frequent guest of the media, Dr. Canton is a commentator on CNN. He was named "the Digital Guru” by CNN and “Dr. Future” by Yahoo. Dr. Canton’s media coverage has included CNBC, Fox, PBS, ABC, Fortune, The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg Report, The New York Times, US News and World Report, CEO, CIO and CFO Magazines. His Global Futurist blog is followed by a world-wide audience.

Scott Sanford, Director, Investigations & Training, Barnes & Noble, Inc.

Scott is the Director of Investigations & Training for Barnes & Noble, Inc. (New York, NY). While at Barnes & Noble, Scott developed a highly effective strategy for investigating e-Commerce and organized retail crime activities impacting the book industry; a strategy that has produced amazing results. This efficient and cost effective method has been used repeatedly to identify, locate and address prolific shop lifters throughout the United States. 

Over the previous 20-years Scott has held various positions in a cross-section of retail to include home improvement, sporting goods, pharmacy, soft-lines and grocery.

Sandeep Bhanote, Co-founder and CEO, brings broad experience in delivering critical engineering solutions to multinational enterprises including leading investment banks, such as Waterhouse Securities, Goldman Sachs, DLJ, and JP Morgan. Sandeep co-founded Global Bay to deliver high-impact solutions in a cost effective manner to clients in a cross-section of vertical industries. As CEO, Sandeep's time is split between cultivating strategic relationships with clients, partners, advisors and investors as well as driving the technical direction of Global Bay's products and services.  Sandeep was a semi-finalist in the Entrepreneur of the Year awards held by the Harvard Business School in 2002 and also sits on the Board of Directors.

Drago Dzerve, Director, Channel Development, Global Security Solutions Group, VeriFone Systems

With over ten years in payment processing and data security, Drago Dzerve, from VeriFone’s Business Development group, provides a practical perspective on PCI and Payment System Security.  His experience in payment system development, transaction acquiring and card issuing results in a very broad understanding of the issues and challenges presented to merchants in this space.  More recently Drago has been active in bringing NFC, EMV, End to End Encryption, and Tokenization to the US market.  
 
Drago has an BS in Biology from Indiana University and graduated with honors from the Crummer Business School at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida.

Greg Buzek, Founder and President of IHL Consulting Group

Greg Buzek is the Founder and President of IHL Consulting Group and one of the Founders of the Retail Orphan Initiative (www.retailROI.org), a charitable foundation that seeks to help the 400 million orphaned and vulnerable children in the world. Noted by RIS News as one of the 25 Most Influential People in Retail, he has a Masters Degree in Business Administration (MBA) from The Ohio State University, and 20 years of experience in market analysis, business planning, product development, and consulting with Fortune 500 companies. He is frequently quoted in RIS News, StorefrontBacktalk, CIO Information Network, Information Week, Supermarket News, Vertical Systems Reseller, Kiosk Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, and the Washington Post and has been used as a retail technology analyst on NBC Nightly News, CBS News, and CNBC. In addition Greg has been a guest lecturer for the Wharton School of Business' Global Consulting Practicum and at Belmont University. Before starting IHL, Greg worked with NCR Corporation and Sensormatic Electronics as a marketing and development executive on hardware, software, and electronic security products for the Retail Industry. 

Gary Schwartz, CEO Impact Mobile and Chair of MEF North America

Over the past nine years, Gary has played a leadership role in the mobile industry, founded Impact Mobile in 2002 running the first cross-carrier short code campaign in North America. In 2006, Gary founded the mobile committee for the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) (www.iab.net) (for which he received an IAB award for industry excellence in 2009).

In 2010, Gary was elected as the Chair of MEF North America (www.m-e-f.org) with a remit to develop mobile commerce best practices and advance commerce security and privacy (for which he received a MEF award for industry excellence). In 2011, in partnership with MEF and a number of industry groups including the X9.org security standards body, Gary is working to develop m-commerce security and privacy guidelines.

Gary it the recipient of the Asia and Japan Foundation Fellowship as well as the Macromedia People Choice Award and Dodge Foundation award for innovation. Gary is the author of the mobile industry book, The Impulse Economy, published by Simon & Schuster, Aria Imprint. www.theimpulseeconomy.com.

Mike Tippets, Vice President, Hughes Solutions Group

Mike Tippets is vice president of the HughesSolutions Group, a product and solution division of Hughes. Mr. Tippets assumed this position in January of 2010 and in this capacity he is responsible for the development of managed services, software applications and other solutions based on Hughes products and technologies.

Previously, Mr. Tippets served as president ofHelius, which was acquired by Hughes in 2008 and became fully integrated into the Hughes family in January 2010. As a leading provider of business-class IP video solutions, the former Helius provides solutions for training and learning, digital signage, and corporate communications to business customers around the world.

Mr. Tippets is a 20-year veteran of the high-tech industry and brings a dynamic and passionate vision of what IP solutions can provide for businesses in the 21st century.

John Pruban. President and CEO, tekservePOS

John Pruban, President and CEO of tekservePOS, has over 20 years of experience in retail point-of-sale. From its inception in 2001, Pruban has taken tekservePOS from a refurbished hardware company to a complete, end-to-end solutions company, serving retailers of all sizes across North and South America. Prior to forming tekservePOS, John worked at R2 Corporation invarious roles including IBM Business Director, Division Vice President and VPof Sales. Before that, John served in various systems analyst and project management roles at Moore Business Forms. John graduated from DeVry University in 1987 with a Bachelor of Science Degree in Computer Science.