Len Burnett
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Alexandra Kennedy
Alexandra
Kennedy
Speaker
Alexandra Kennedy is an accomplished leader with experience scaling and operationalizing businesses, leading commercial teams, and driving digital transformation journeys. Alex is the Executive Vice President of Commercial Strategy at My Code. In this role, she leads teams accountable for driving revenue, sales operations, and M&A strategy and integration efforts. Prior to My Code, Alex spent five years at Twitter. First as the Global Head of Partnership Strategy and Operations and later as Director of Client Solutions focused on Retail and Travel companies. Prior to Twitter, Alex spent nearly a decade at Under Armour (UA) in a variety of roles that shaped how UA approached their digital strategy.
Alex is a nationally sought after thought-leader, featured at events including Advertising Week, Association of National Advertisers (ANA), Business Today, Black in Tech, The Corporate Directors Podcast, Princeton University, among others.
Alex is a graduate of Princeton University and proud native of Washington, DC. She currently resides in
Oakland, California.
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Celessa Baker
Celessa
Baker
Speaker
Celessa Baker is the Vice President, Marketing Partnerships for Sephora. She is responsible for identifying, planning, and developing unique, first-to-market, and culturally relevant partnerships that are closely aligned with Sephora’s values and will shape the next chapter in the retailer’s storytelling.
Since joining Sephora in 2014, Celessa has held various leadership positions on the Brand Marketing team. In her previous role as the Vice President, Brand Marketing, Makeup & Hair, she and her team specialized in creating and leveraging unique, cohesive brand narratives to drive revenue across a diverse portfolio of more than 90 brands. Notably, Celessa led the global launch of Fenty Beauty at Sephora, and has helped to bring on various other breakout brands including Pattern by Tracee Ellis Ross, Makeup by Mario, Bread Beauty Supply, One/Size by Patrick Starr, Danessa Myricks, Glossier, Patrick Ta, Vegamour, and Rare Beauty. She was also a pivotal component in driving the retailer’s far reaching and dynamic multi-brand campaigns, such as the “Black Owned Beauty” campaign, which spotlights the exceptional array of products from Black-owned and founded brands available at Sephora. Her team also oversaw brand participation in the TikTok x Sephora Accelerate incubator program, an initiative dedicated to assisting beauty entrepreneurs and TikTok creators, with a special focus on people of color, in growing their businesses and expanding their reach to a broader audience. Additionally, Celessa pioneered the development of co-op programs leveraging first-party data, delivering a powerful competitive advantage that fueled growth for both Sephora and its brand partners. She is also the executive sponsor for SephoraNoir, an employee resource group fostering connections, mentorship, and networking for Black and African American employees, allies and external partners.
Prior to joining Sephora, Celessa held marketing roles for organizations like the Los Angeles Lakers, Sony Music, Radio One, and Men’s Wearhouse. She has contributed to tailored marketing strategies for music industry icons like Beyonce, Jennifer Lopez, John Legend, and more. Her exceptional contributions have also been recognized in Essence’s Black Women in Beauty digital edition. Celessa attended Chapman University where she received her bachelor’s degree in business communications and organizational communications. She currently resides in the Bay Area with her husband and two daughters.
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Maisha Gray-Diggs
Maisha
Gray-Diggs
Speaker
Dr. Maisha Gray-Diggs (Dr. MGD) stands out as a rare example of an engineering leader who successfully transitioned into talent acquisition leadership. She leverages her deep expertise in engineering, research, development and human resources to deliver tangible results to organizations on a global scale. Dr. MGD contributes to company success and organization health by driving growth, advancing and enabling innovation and executing winning approaches to develop and retain people, enhance organizational capability, build capacity, and optimize processes and systems. Her approach and work is a result of her extensive experience inside of several Fortune 500 companies across the CPG and tech sectors.
Dr. MGD recently joined LiveRamp as the Vice President of Talent, Diversity, and Enablement. In her current role, she will lead an organization focused on talent and workforce planning; employee experience & engagement; DEIB integration and tracking; and HR/TA technology. Prior to LiveRamp, she held talent, inclusion, and employee experience roles of increasing responsibility at Microsoft, Twitter, and Eventbrite. She pivoted her time and talents into an advisory role at 8genC, where she is partnering to build a community of trusted advisors and fractional leaders to support startups, creators, and brands.
Dr. MGD is an experienced change agent who navigates ambiguity and wields an innate ability to “sense and respond” dynamically. She has earned the reputation as a quick study, a reflective thought leader and one who is uniquely positioned to deliver game changing results.
Dr. MGD believes that to whom much is given, much is expected. As such, she continues to share her time, talents, and treasures with organizations focused on topics close to her heart which include equity and access for the underrepresented and marginalized; eye, organ and tissue donation; youth empowerment; and STE[A]M.
Dr. MGD is an HR advisor with SemperVirens Venture Capital, Reach Capital, and A.Team, partnering with other senior HR leaders to innovate around the concept of “future of work”. She also serves as the President for the Oakland Bay Area Chapter of Jack and Jill of America, Inc. and is a devoted Soccer Mom with the Bay Oaks Soccer Club’s 2010 Premier Girls and 2010 Premier Boys Soccer Teams. Dr. MGD enjoys spending quality time with her 14 year old twins, William and Maya, and exploring new frontiers as a continuous learner.
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Eric Austin
Eric
Austin
Speaker
Eric Austin is a brand building marketing executive at Procter & Gamble with 20+ years of experience. He has developed some of the world’s most successful, global billion-dollar brands in the US and abroad in Europe including Pantene, Head & Shoulders, Wella Koleston, Braun, Olay and others.
Throughout his career, Eric has gained a broad range of experiences across the Marketing and IT landscape which includes initiative management, consumer insights, data & analytics, product design & market delivery, data & analytics, marketing strategy, digital & ecommerce systems, creative ad development, enterprise strategy and platform development.
Beyond marketing, Eric is a media maven with deep expertise in leading disruptive innovation, accelerating media productivity for the world’s largest advertiser. He’s a recognized expert in the media & AdTech industry and an advocate for driving equality and inclusion across the media ecosystem. Eric has developed industry award winning programs such as THE TALK, THE LOOK, #TalkAboutBias,THE CHOICE, Widen The Screen, Queen Collective, 846 Films, These Hands and others, which sheds light on systemic bias and facilitates equitable solutions for P&G, the media industry, and beyond.
Outside of work, you will find Eric cheering on his 2 boys, nurturing friendships, staying active, and enjoying life with his wife.
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Lela Coffey
Lela
Coffey
Speaker
Lela Coffey is Vice President, Multi-Cultural Business Acceleration for P&G N.A., helping P&G to serve multicultural consumers across P&G’s enterprise. In her prior role, Lela was VP for P&G’s N.A. Multicultural Hair Portfolio, which includes brands like Gold Series, My Black is Beautiful and Bevel.
With more than 20 years of brand-building experience, Lela has led some of P&G’s iconic brands including Cascade, Olay, and Tampax. Her passion for marketing and inclusivity sets a high bar for impact, challenging others to deliver products and programs that are meaningful for consumers and communities alike.
An advocate for developing talent and capability, Lela invests a substantial time supporting her teams, including fostering understanding of the impact diverse, inclusive teams can have on businesses and organizations. Lela also spearheaded the creation of P&G’s 4R Framework for Equality & Inclusivity, which is used across P&G to aid brands in more authentically connecting with traditionally underserved consumers. As a testament to her body of work, Lela was recently inducted into the P&G’s Brand Mastery society.
Lela resides in Cincinnati, Ohio with her husband, Maurice. They have two daughters, Mikaela, 22 and Mikenzi, 18. Outside of work, Lela serves as a board member for the Cincinnati Zoo and Botanical Gardens.
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Tope Ajala
Tope
Ajala
Speaker
Tope Ajala is a trailblazing DE&I advocate with over a decade of experience across marketing, operations, and change management. As an executive at Ogilvy, she champions initiatives such as the Modern Exchange and bespoke leadership programs, embedding inclusion at the core of both employee and client experiences. Renowned for her innovative approach, she has delivered many industry “firsts,” including the pioneering global leadership program for Black men. In her previous roles, she launched global “Belonging” trainings for over 100,000 individuals and established a global supplier diversity council. As a former Operations Director and Business Strategist, Tope oversaw mergers and acquisitions, streamlined business operations, and developed data-centered models for both finance and people functions. Co-founder of Levelset, Saif-Hands, and “To A Tee,” she remains deeply engaged in her communities through volunteering, proudly advocates for mental health as an Ally, and finds joy in traveling, surfing, literature, and yoga.
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Danny Robinson
Danny
Robinson
Speaker
Danny Robinson’s career is a testament to outside-the-box thinking. After all, it’s not common to find a chief executive officer, who was previously a chief creative officer, who was previously a chief client officer who never saw himself in any of these roles. Throughout his career, Danny has been both the tone setter for and champion of creativity, As CEO of Martin, he is responsible for the overall health, vision and growth of the agency. Danny’s blend of creative and business acumen leads to a big-picture perspective that results in breakthrough ideas. He brought this approach with him in 2004 and has since helped lead the agency to back-to-back Adweek Agency of Year wins in 2020 and 2021, Ad Age’s 2023 Agency of the Year and #5 on the A-List in 2024, and a spot on Fast Company’s Most Innovative List for 2023 and 2024.
Prior to becoming CEO in 2024, Danny was both the first Black chief creative officer in Martin’s history and one of the few leading a non-Black-owned agency. Over the course of his three-year tenure, he oversaw work from some of the world’s most beloved brands including UPS, GEICO, Walmart, TIAA, DoorDash and OREO.
Remember when Oprah gave away 276 Pontiac G6s? So does Danny. He was a big part of that history-making brand integration as the chief creative officer at Vigilante, an ad agency he co-founded. While at Vigilante, Danny was the creative leader and writer behind award-winning campaigns for national brands including Sprint, Major League Baseball, Heineken and Johnnie Walker Black Label.Danny is a Hampton University grad with an MBA from Atlanta University, an accomplished artist, a pop culture aficionado, a former DJ and standup comic, and was even once voted by the Stand Up NY Comedy Club as “one of the funniest men in advertising.”
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Iyinoluwa Aboyeji
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Randolph Wiggins
Randolph
Wiggins
Speaker
Randolph F. Wiggins (Randy) is the founder of Build for America (BFA), a consultancy focused on building tech ecosystems across America (highlights include contributing to the policy development of the Biden Administration’s $10 billion Tech Hubs initiative) and a scout with BLCK VC, Sequoia Capital and Lightspeed Venture Partners. Prior to founding BFA and taking on the scout role, Randy served as the Founding Managing Director of Build in Tulsa, the national multi-sector effort to rebuild Black Wall Street around technology, innovation, entrepreneurship, business and venture capital – and build the infrastructure for diverse wealth creation in America. In the role, Randy led the development of the Build in Tulsa brand, mission, vision and operations and engineered and built out Build in Tulsa’s structure and mechanics (ex: the nation’s only 3-stage accelerator pipeline and ecosystem focused on African-American entrepreneurs including operational partners like Techstars). You can learn more about Randy’s work engineering and building a diverse technology ecosystem in outlets like Forbes as well as the City of the Future Podcast (21:54) from Sidewalk Labs, the urban planning and infrastructure subsidiary of Google.
Prior to leading Build in Tulsa, Randy served as Executive Co-Lead of Princeton Alumni Angels (Bay Area), Princeton’s Silicon Valley angel investing community, and Investment Manager on the Tech and Society team at Omidyar Network, the founder of eBay’s impact investing and venture capital fund. There, he co-led the team’s efforts to prevent, mitigate, correct the societal downsides of technology – and maximize impact through investments in and strategic partnerships with ventures positively impacting Silicon Valley and its associated companies, teams and products. Randy’s significant contributions at Omidyar Network include the Ethical Operating System (ethicalos.org) covered in Wired Magazine.
Before joining Omidyar Network, Randy spent time in Shanghai and Beijing with leadership from KKR China and consulted on the promise and impact of artificial intelligence on labor, economies, education, and society in China. Prior to his move to Silicon Valley and the technology and venture capital sectors, Randy built a career in policy – a highlight of which was his work under Lawrence S. Summers in the United States National Economic Council in the Obama White House to help rebuild the American economy following The Great Recession.
Randy holds a B.A. from Princeton University, where he majored in public policy at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs, and a J.D. from the UCLA School of Law. Randy is a proud inaugural member of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation Millennium Scholarship Program – a $1.6 billion effort funded by Bill and Melinda Gates to promote academic excellence; increase diverse representation in areas like computer science and engineering; and develop a deep bench of future leaders to help build a stronger society and protect the future of the US economy.