Speakers
Aaron Hoover
Aaron Hoover is an award-winning speechwriter and the director of executive communications at the University of Florida President’s Office, where he writes speeches and produces presentations, videos, social media content and other communications.
Amy Scarlino
As President and Chief Executive Officer, Amy Scarlino is responsible for the strategic direction and management of Scarlino Speaker Strategies, LLC. Prior to forming the agency, Ms. Scarlino was President and CEO of The Catchpole Corporation. She held several positions within Catchpole during her more than 13 years with the company, including Chief Operating Officer, Director of Client Services, and Senior Account Executive. Ms. Scarlino has managed the corporate speaker programs and executive visibility initiatives for companies such as VMware, PBS, BASF, Trend Micro, Microsoft, Verizon and The Weather Channel.
Anne Swanson
Anne Swanson is director of enterprise employee communications for Northrop Grumman. After beginning her career as a TV news reporter, producer and anchor, she later worked in the Press Office of former Texas Gov. George W. Bush, where she advanced events, traveled as press aide, served as spokesperson, and wrote talking points for the governor in the year prior to his formal run for the White House. Anne joined the 2000 Bush for President campaign as press secretary for Laura Bush, a job that included writing speeches, correspondence and editorials, as well as traveling with the first lady of Texas on the campaign trail. She later worked as speechwriter for Texas Comptroller Carole Keeton Rylander and as director of communication for the March of Dimes before joining Northrop Grumman in 2003.
Dain Dunston
For 30 years, Dain Dunston has provided leadership communication coaching to leaders in many of the world’s high-tech, health care, retail, automotive and hospitality companies. Dain frequently writes and speaks on businesses that are radically disrupting their industries with new ideas and cultures. He is the author of The Downside of Up: A Comic Novel of Outrageous Fortune, which offers a business fable as a leadership case study. Dain lives in the hills outside of Austin, Texas, with his wife, writer and art dealer Jean Compton.
Dan Gerstein
Dan Gerstein directs the Gotham Ghostwriters, which connects leaders with writers to create communications that connect with audiences. Gerstein draws on the experience he gained during a decade-long career as a speechwriter and communications strategist in the U.S. Senate and for two presidential campaigns.
David Murray
David Murray is editor and publisher of Vital Speeches of the Day, an 84-year-old collection of the best oral communication in the U.S. and the world. He’s the founder and executive director of the Professional Speechwriters Association. Murray co-wrote the New York Times-bestselling memoir Tell My Sons (Random House, 2013), and also a memoir about his advertising copywriter parents, Raised By Mad Men. His journalism has appeared in publications and media outlets including The New York Times, The Atlantic Monthly, the Chicago Tribune, Chicago Magazine, Advertising Age, and Chicago Public Radio. He blogs daily at writingboots.typepad.com, where he offers “unprofessional commentary on professional communication and professional commentary on unprofessional communication.”
Desson Thomson
Desson Thomson worked for 25 years at The Washington Post, one of the paper’s longest serving movie critics. After leaving the Post in 2008, he reinvented himself as a speechwriter. In 2010, he became a speechwriter in the administration of President Barack Obama. His jobs as a speechwriter have included writing for the U.S. Ambassador to the United Kingdom; working in the Policy Planning Office of the U.S. Department of State as a speechwriter for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton; and working for the Secretary of Commerce, an Undersecretary and Assistant Secretary of State. He is currently, Director of Executive Communications for the Motion Picture Association of America, writing speeches for Chairman and CEO Charles H. Rivkin. A communicator on many levels, Desson is also a longtime singer and musician, a screenwriter, and a music promoter.
Diane Suchetka
Diane Suchetka has been writing speeches for the CEO of The MetroHealth System, the public health system in Cleveland, since 2014. Before that, she wrote for the Charlotte Observer in North Carolina and The Plain Dealer in Cleveland. Her storytelling won the inaugural MOLLY National Journalism Prize and landed her on the finalists list for the 2009 Pulitzer Prize in Feature Writing. When she’s not working, she dabbles in documentary filmmaking.
James Clapper
James Clapper served as the fourth United States Director of National Intelligence—the United States' top intelligence officer and President Obama's senior intelligence advisor—from 2010 until 2017. Beginning his career as an enlisted Marine Corps reservist in 1961, Clapper eventually became a three-star Air Force lieutenant general and director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, retiring from uniformed service in 1995. In 2007 he was appointed the Pentagon's top intelligence official, serving under both the Bush and Obama administrations. In 2010, President Obama appointed Clapper to lead the US intelligence community as DNI.
Janet Stovall
Janet Stovall is Manager, Executive Communications at UPS, where she serves as speechwriter for the CEO and top leadership. Prior to joining UPS, she founded and ran for more than 20 years an independent writing consultancy, The Point Communications. She is a multiple Cicero-award winner, and TED speaker. Janet is committed to furthering open, culturally competent – and courageous – executive communications.
Jay Heinrichs
Jay Heinrichs is the author of the New York Times bestseller, Thank You for Arguing: What Aristotle, Lincoln, and Homer Simpson Can Teach Us About the Art of Persuasion. The book has been published in 11 languages and used in more than 3,000 colleges. It’s one of the top ten books assigned to students at Harvard. He is a professor of the practice of Rhetoric and Oratory at Middlebury College. A consultant specializing in persuasive engagement, he has led persuasion strategies for clients including Southwest Airlines, Kaiser Permanente, Walmart, and NASA. He has led workshops for the European Speechwriters Association, Ogilvy UK, and numerous others. His latest book, How to Argue with a Cat, will be published by Hearst this June.
Mark Thompson
Mark Thompson is President & Chief Executive Officer of The New York Times Company. He’s author of Enough Said: What’s Gone Wrong with the Language of Politics?, based on lectures he gave as a visiting professor of Rhetoric and the Art of Public Persuasion at the University of Oxford.
Patricia Fripp
Executives who want their message to be memorable and their presentations powerful call Patricia Fripp. For over 30 years she has helped executives, engineers, scientists, speechwriters, and ambitious professionals gain a competitive edge through their powerful, persuasive presentation skills. Meetings and Conventions magazine named her “One of the 10 most electrifying speakers in North America.” The National Speakers Association elected Patricia their first female president, and she has won the Cavett, NSA’s highest honor and considered the Oscar of the speaking world. Her clients include Genentech, Nutanix, Concur, First American, Cisco, Visa, Microsoft, SAP, American Payroll Association, and the Wounded Warrior Project. Patricia Fripp is now virtually everywhere with her online presentation-skills training at www.FrippVT.com.
Philip Collins
Philip Collins is a columnist on The Times, Associate Editor of Prospect magazine and Professor of Rhetoric at Middlesex University in London. He was, until 2007, Chief Speech Writer to the Prime Minister Tony Blair in 10 Downing Street and since then he has been Chief Executive of the speech writing agency High Windows which has a set of distinguished corporate and charitable clients. Mr. Collins is the author of two books on speeches. The Art of Speeches and Presentations is a manual for speaking well. His most recent book When They Go Low, We Go High is a defense of liberal democracy written through some of the greatest speeches ever given.
Stephen Krupin
Stephen Krupin helps leaders tell the authentic stories they need to tell in order to sell the ideas they want to sell. He served as a senior speechwriter to President Obama in the White House and as chief speechwriter to Secretary of State John Kerry and U.S. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. He leads the executive communications practice at SKDKnickerbocker and teaches speechwriting at the Harvard Kennedy School.
Tim Pollard
Tim Pollard is the founder and CEO of Oratium, the author of The Compelling Communicator: Mastering the Art and Science of Exceptional Presentation Design, and a regular columnist for Forbes, Entrepreneur, and other publications. Having designed and delivered thousands of complex presentations to boards, national conferences, and executive committees, Tim has always sought to understand and capture the underlying “science” of extraordinary communication. The result of this journey has been the development of the unique set of tools and processes employed by Oratium and provided in The Compelling Communicator.
Trey Brown
Trey Brown served as Speechwriter for the Director of National Intelligence and Principal Deputy DNI from 2010 until 2017. He wrote Cicero Speechwriting Award-winning speeches for Director James Clapper, and co-authored Clapper's memoir, Facts and Fears: Hard Truths from a Life of Intelligence. A graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy and St. John's College, Annapolis, Md., Trey was a Navy helicopter pilot and then a Naval Academy English instructor before embarking on a communications career.
Vincent Rhodes
Vincent Rhodes helps senior leaders distill compelling stories and deliver them (when needed) with evocative presentations. As an educator and national speaker, Rhodes speaks passionately about marrying carefully crafted words with powerful visuals. As Chief Communication & Marketing Officer for Eastern Virginia Medical School, Rhodes oversees executive and corporate communications, public and media relations, digital media, marketing and creative services. He works with a talented team to find innovative solutions to communication challenges and produce award-winning results. Previously, Rhodes served as Communications Manager and Clerk of the School Board for Norfolk Public Schools, the largest urban school system in Virginia and one of the 150 largest school systems nationwide.
