Douglas Conant served as President and CEO of the Campbell Soup Company until July 31, 2011. Early in his career, Conant worked in marketing at General Mills, before moving to management positions at Kraft. He was appointed President of Nabisco in 1995, and served there until 2000. Conant was appointed President and CEO of Campbell in January 2001, at which time he was also elected to its board of directors. Conant was born in Evanston, Illinois, and grew up in Glencoe, Illinois. Conant earned his bachelor's of arts degree and his MBA from Northwestern.
Gerald Lema is corporate vice president and president of Baxter's Asia Pacific region. He has responsibility for the company's operations in Japan, Australia/New Zealand, China/Hong Kong, India, North Asia and South East Asia. Lema has more than 20 years of pharmaceutical, diagnostics and healthcare experience in Asia, Japan, Europe, North and South America and the Middle East/Africa. Prior to joining Baxter in 2005, Lema held several management positions in strategy, sales, marketing and business development at Abbott Laboratories. His last position with Abbott was corporate vice president, Asia Pacific, and chairman and representative director, Abbott Japan based in Tokyo. Gerald Lema earned a Bachelor of Science in engineering from Universidad del Valle, Colombia and a master's degree in business administration from the Freeman School of Business, Tulane University, New Orleans.
Jim Turley is Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Ernst & Young, a leading global professional services organization providing assurance, tax, transaction and advisory services. With approximately 141,000 people in 140 countries, Ernst & Young is one of the largest professional services organizations in the world. Jim began his career with Ernst & Young in 1977 in the US firm's Houston office. Over the years, he has held a series of leadership positions throughout Ernst & Young. Jim was named Metropolitan New York Area Managing Partner of Ernst & Young LLP in 1998 and was appointed Deputy Chairman in 2000. In July 2001, he became Chairman and CEO. Based in New York and London, Jim serves as senior advisory partner for many of Ernst & Young's largest global clients. Jim Turley holds a Master's and a BA in Accounting from Rice University.
Harvey Kinzelberg has been Founder and President of Sequel Capital LLC & Corporation since 1992. Mr. Kinzelberg continues a successful tradition in capital equipment leasing and financial services. Sequel specialized in strategic bridge and mezzanine lending, private equity investing as well as lease financing for companies who seek cash flow and accounting advantages for their capital asset investments. Sequel, through it's 7-year partner Resource Finance Company, provided working capital loans to independent sales organizations (ISO's) who sell credit-card processing services to merchants nations-wide. Sequel has also recently expanded to provide financing directly to such merchants in the merchant-processing cash advance space, with a close affiliation with Rapid Capital Funding. In 1979 Kinzelberg founded Meridian Leasing Corporation. Under his twelve year leadership, Kinzelberg grew Meridian in more than $650 million in annual sales and a lease portfolio approaching $4 billion. Meridian grew to become the second largest independent computer equipment lessor in the United States. Prior to starting Meridian, Kinzelberg was a top salesman form IBM and was the top lease finance salesman for Itel Leasing Corporation before founding Meridian. In 1992, after selling Meridian he established Sequel Capital Corporation. Kinzelberg has been recognized nationally as "Entrepreneur of the Year", by such prestigious organizations as Ernst & Young, Inc. Magazine, Cornell University, and The University of Illinois-Chicago & Arthur Andersen. These comments are from the Roundtable session entitled "Engagement with Cornell Entrepreneurs of the Year" from the 2012 Celebration gathering. Harvey Kinzelberg holds a bachelor's degree in Operations Research/Industrial Engineering from Cornell University, and a master's degree in Economic Planning from Stanford University.
Tom Fuerst is the VP and Chief Scientific Officer at PharmAthene. Prior to joining PharmAthene in April 2010, Dr. Fuerst served as Director, Vaccines and Biologics (2004-2007), and Senior Science and Technology Advisor (2007-2010) for the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS). In these positions, he led the development and acquisition of vaccines and biotherapeutic products for biodefense and other emerging public health threats, including anthrax, smallpox, botulism, and pandemic flu. During his tenure at HHS, Dr. Fuerst helped establish the Biomedical Advanced Research and Development Authority (BARDA) and oversaw the planning, implementation, and monitoring of medical countermeasure development and acquisition, while managing a budget of approximately $3.0 billion. Previously, Dr. Fuerst served as Executive Director of Corporate Development at Sanofi Pasteur, Inc., where he oversaw the scientific and business transactions for vaccines and immunotherapeutic products for infectious diseases and cancer, and played a key role in establishing the company's biodefense initiative post 9/11. He also led a collaborative R&D group to develop a next generation anthrax vaccine in response to the National Institute of Health's Request for Proposal. Prior thereto, he was Vice President, Research and Development at Genelabs Technologies, and a scientific founder and Director of Molecular Genetics at MedImmune. He also served as a senior fellow at the National Institutes of Health, NIAID in Bethesda, MD. Dr. Fuerst holds a B.A. in Biochemistry from the University of California at Berkeley, a Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics from Cornell University, and a MBA in Science, Technology, and Innovation from the George Washington University.
Charlotte Dieroff works in the area of Business Development at the International Food Network (IFN)in Ithaca, NY.
Her early career at IFN included product development in the areas of frozen desserts, weight-loss and dry mix beverages. She later joined Tastemaker (acquired by Givaudan) and worked in food flavor applications. Upon returning to IFN Charlotte's efforts morphed into the areas of business development including sales and behind the scenes marketing.
Charlotte Dieroff holds a B.S. in Food Science from Cornell University and an MBA from Xavier University.
Robert Abrams is the Chief Executive Officer of C.V. Holdings. He has worked in the family business, founded by his father in 1915, since 1953 and has been President/Chief Operating Officer since 1957. A substantial part of his activity was related to agri-business where the company had numerous entities predominantly in all phases of the dairy industry including all forms of processing, sales, production, etc. It has also been involved in the plastic industry since 1962.
CV Holdings operates CSP Technologies, Inc., Capital Plastic Products, Capital Cups, CMD and SiO2 Medical Products, Inc. which is a new corporation being partially funded by the Retirement System of Alabama. CSP Technologies manufactures products for the medical industry with focus in the diabetic market. Capital Plastic Products makes testing vials for the dairy industry and containers for M&M Mars and other miscellaneous laboratory and commercial products. Capital Cups makes children's sippy cups and insulated coffee cups for stores such as Dunkin Donuts, 7-11, etc.
Robert Abrams is a graduate of Cornell University.
Sarah Mayo-Evans is the owner of Peach Recruitment. Peach Recruitment is an independently owned agency specializing in the provision of temporary, contract and permanent office staff. Sarah took up her first recruitment consultant role in 1999 and set up Peach Recruitment in 2002. Sarah also owns and runs Peach Legal. Sarah Mayo-Evans has a degree in law from London Guildhall University
Jacqueline Robinson is the owner of PR Crowd Ltd.
Previously, with her husband, Robinson owned Gems Agency, an event staffing agency. Their clients in the UK and Europe included BBC, Mattel UK Ltd, Brother, Hewlett Packard, Renault, Kodak and Pirelli Tyres.
In addition, Robinson worked with The Financial Times as an event coordinator to pull together their Exhibition and conferences in London.