Brandi Starr is an impact-focused marketing executive and Chief Experience Officer at Tegrita (pronounced: TEH-grit-uh), a consultancy that helps $100M+ B2B companies build revenue engines that scale. With over 24 years of experience, Brandi transforms marketing operations from tactical execution into strategic revenue drivers by aligning people, platforms, and processes. Named one of the Top 50 Women in Martech, she is co-author of CMO to CRO: The Revenue Takeover by the Next Generation Executive and host of the Revenue Rehab podcast. Brandi’s process-first approach optimizes existing investments to deliver measurable, scalable growth for enterprise organizations.
Anne is the founder of Emails Y'all, a bespoke email coding company dedicated to crafting cutting-edge, responsive emails, and the genius behind Email Coding Fundamentals, an email development course. With over 15 years of experience, Anne has a client roster that includes big names like Expedia, NPR, and Zillow. She is recognized for her staunch commitment to best practices, accessibility, and pixel-perfect renderings that ensure her code exceeds industry benchmarks. Her knowledge extends to interactive emails, dynamic content, and innovative techniques, making her a go-to resource for all things related to email development.
Alicia Mintz is the CEO of Hemlock Creatives, creating and producing the podcasts Done and Dunne, Swiftory, Trashy Divorces and Trashy Royals. With 35 years of previous instructional design and training experience in to contribute the business side of each keynote, she has also survived an accident which included six near death experiences to round out the personal side. Always engaging and fun, the audience will be left with time well spent in an environment where you don’t know how time went so quickly, and where you picked up the key points along the way.
Stafford Sumner is the Founder and CEO of Jarrang, one of the UK and Europe’s longest-established email marketing & CRM agencies. Since launching the agency in 2003, he has spent over 20 years helping global brands navigate the complexities of communicating with diverse audiences across the UK and European markets. Stafford is known for his pragmatic, human-centred approach to email marketing: combining strategic clarity, strong governance, and an appreciation of how different regions solve problems differently. His perspective bridges the gap between brand-side teams, agency partners and C-suite decision-makers - making him a trusted voice for organisations operating across multiple markets.
Bob Sybydlo is a senior CRM and MarTech strategist with more than 20 years of experience helping Fortune 500 companies, global brands, and high-growth organizations solve complex business challenges through technology. Over his career, he has designed, implemented, and led high-impact digital and marketing transformation initiatives—driving automation, modernization, and scaled capability across global teams. His expertise spans CRM, marketing automation, mobile engagement, and cross-channel orchestration, with deep platform knowledge across Salesforce, Adobe, Braze, and Oracle. He has also led programs in deliverability optimization, business intelligence, database transformation, and international digital compliance. Known for his energy, positivity, and strong client partnership, Bob excels at connecting technology capabilities with business objectives and is currently engaged in delivering CRM and AI-enablement initiatives to help organizations not only adopt the right tools but unlock meaningful, measurable value from them.
Tricia Babischkin is an email and CRM strategist with over a decade of experience helping brands build smarter, more human lifecycle programs. She specializes in turning complex challenges—like AI adoption, deliverability, and personalization at scale—into practical strategies teams can actually use. A frequent speaker and industry collaborator, Tricia is known for cutting through hype, asking better questions, and reminding teams that just because something can be automated doesn’t mean it should be. She firmly believes good email strategy still requires human judgment—and occasionally the courage to hit “send” knowing someone will still reply-all.
Matthew Vernhout is a leading expert in email marketing and deliverability with over 25 years of hands-on experience helping brands improve inbox placement and build trusted email programs. He currently serves as Principal Email Advisor at Email Industries, where he partners with organizations to solve complex deliverability challenges and strengthen long-term sender performance. Matthew is also deeply involved in advancing the email ecosystem. He serves as Director-at-Large for CAUCE, Brand Special Interest Group Leader for M3AAWG, Communications Chair for the BIMI Group, and an Advisory Board Member for the RISE Information Security Foundation. He is the founder of EmailKarma.net and the Canadian Email Summit, established in 2019, and was recognized as the ANA Email Thought Leader of the Year.
With over fifteen years of experience in email marketing, deliverability and multi-variant testing, Priya has worked for a range of notable companies including Premier Inn, Digital River, and IBM Silverpop as well as some of the worlds leading agencies in the space. Priya’s expertise in email marketing, email strategy, eCRM strategy, and content optimization has helped numerous clients improve their systems, products, and overall quality while increasing revenue and customer satisfaction. Her work focuses on cutting-edge approaches and in-depth knowledge of multiple platforms in the market. Throughout her career, Priya has managed teams in high-performing environments and written strategic business plans that deliver results. Since 2006, Priya has been actively working in the email space, building a reputation as an industry expert.
Embracing the "email geek" persona, Jennifer has been a champion of email best practices, fighting abuse & helping good senders navigate the often choppy waters of email for almost 20 years. Before coming to Kickbox, she ran the deliverability team at Zeta where she managed client setups, authentication, remediation, & deliverability strategy. Now she's running deliverability consulting at Kickbox and is co-chair of the Technical committee and vice-chair of the Program committee at M3AAWG.
Scott Cohen is CEO of InboxArmy, a full-service email marketing and lifecycle marketing agency. He's also an award-winning email marketing veteran with 20 years of experience as a brand-side marketer and agency executive who has worked with both small and enterprise companies alike across multiple industries. He's pressed the "Send" a few thousand too many times, has the scars to prove it, and loves to talk about email.
Pierre Pignault is the CEO and founder of MailSoar, an email deliverability consultancy dedicated to helping businesses worldwide achieve high-performing and sustainable inbox placement. With a strong focus on deliverability, Pierre and his team support global brands across e-commerce, SaaS, publishing, and other data-driven industries, ensuring their emails consistently reach the inbox and drive engagement at scale. MailSoar works closely with both marketing and technical teams to optimize sender reputation, improve inbox placement, and maximize overall email marketing performance.
Rebecca Wallace is a CRM and content strategist with 13+ years of experience shaping lifecycle communications, content systems, and brand storytelling for high-growth global brands. Her work spans email, SMS, push, in-app messaging, and emerging channels including RCS – with a focus on scalable, behaviour-led customer journeys that reduce friction, build trust, and drive measurable action. A passionate advocate for diversity and representation in digital marketing, Rebecca is committed to pushing the industry forward – toward smarter experiences, more inclusive thinking, and content that empowers rather than overwhelms.
Following a degree in music, Kieran worked in marketing for various UK cultural organisations with a particular interest in technology. Like many people, he fell into the world of email in 2005 and has been there ever since - firstly at Lyris, then at SparkPost / Bird. Since 2025 he has been part of the team at Halon, looking after customers of both their sending and receiving on-premise MTA software. He has many years of hands-on deliverability experience, and has been a frequent conference speaker in the US and Europe. He is passionate about the email ecosystem and in particular about ensuring senders and receivers continue to work together against spam and abuse.
Kevin A. McGrail aka KAM, is the Cloud Fellow for Dito helping organizations migrate and manage their Cloud Cybersecurity. He founded and leads Dito's Cyber Security practice, awarded Google's Cloud Security partner of the year in June 2022. He is a Google Developer Expert for AI/ML, Cloud, and Google Workspace as well as a member expert in the U.S. Marine Corps Cyber Auxiliary. KAM enjoys working with Open Source Software and is a proud member of the Apache Software Foundation. He has battled spammers for decades and his research protects hundreds of millions of Internet users every day. In February 2025, he was awarded the Mary Litynski lifetime achievement award for keeping the internet safe from M3AAWG.org. KAM is a Center for Innovative Technology MACH37 Cyber Security Incubator Graduate and a member of the board of advisors for Virtru.com & SecurityUniversity.edu. He is also named a Distinguished Senior Fellow as a thought leader in the field of Cyber Security at Thomas University's Armed Services Institute in the Center for Military Life. KAM also lives with a rare disease and has been a volunteer Board Member of the DysautonomiaSupport.org as well as an Officer and Board member of POAC-NoVA.org helping other people improve their lives.
Shanah McGrady is a lifecycle marketing strategist with over a decade of experience building data-driven lifecycle programs for high-growth companies and Fortune 500 brands. She has led lifecycle and engagement efforts for companies such as Uber and Twitter, and consulted for brands including Ancestry, Audible, Pinterest, and Walmart. Shanah specializes in using customer research to inform marketing strategy, segmentation, and messaging, with proven results. Most recently: $2.2M in pipeline and 37% faster conversion rates in 6 months. She is a proud mom of 2-year-old, Ellie, always rooting on the Kansas Jayhawks, holds an MBA from Vanderbilt University, and currently runs McGrady Marketing, a lifecycle marketing consultancy based in Denver, CO.
Kath is an email marketing consultant, tutor, and bestselling author with a long-standing obsession for what makes people click, convert, and stay loyal. Over the past 27+ years, she’s helped brands around the world rethink their email programmes using her Holistic Approach — a blend of psychology, smart testing, and practical strategy that cuts through the noise and gets results. She created the Holistic Testing Methodology, wrote Holistic Email Marketing, and has spoken at more than 200 conferences, from Atlanta to Amsterdam. Kath has taught thousands of marketers, written hundreds of articles, and remains one of the industry’s go-to voices on deliverability, buyer psychology, and strategic experimentation. She now leads Holistic Email and is building the Holistic Email Academy, a dedicated learning hub designed to level up marketers with real-world, in-depth training.
Chad S. White is the author of four editions of "Email Marketing Rules" and nearly 4,000 posts and articles about email and digital marketing trends and best practices. He has served as lead email marketing researcher at five of the largest email service providers—Zeta Global, Oracle, Responsys, Salesforce, and ExactTarget—as well as at Litmus and the Direct Marketing Association. A former journalist, Chad was named the ANA's 2018 Email Marketer Thought Leader of the Year.
Jake is our Chief Revenue Officer and leads our overall business development, sales and client services/support team based in Charleston, SC. He has been with OPTIZMO for over 12 years and was the first person to join the team with our co-founders. Over the course of his career prior to OPTIZMO, Jake has experience in everything from service industry positions to technical recruiting and staffing to sales and on-site activation of interactive campaigns at sporting and music events for brands such as Porsche, Mercedes-Benz and Spirit Airlines.
For the last 10 years, Emily has been focused on traveler marketing communications at Expedia Group. With nearly 15 years of marketing experience, she brings a vast knowledge of testing roadmap development, customer journey building and strategic planning. Outside of work, she likes to spend time with her family - including her 2 sets of twins, partner and 2 pups.
Maggie Rose Stover is a Senior Business Strategist at Stitch, a Braze focused consultancy that partners with brands to elevate their customer engagement, lifecycle strategy, and marketing technology operations. With over 12 years of marketing experience, and the last decade dedicated to email. she brings deep expertise in email operations, lifecycle marketing, MarTech, and deliverability, with a strong focus on making data-driven strategic decisions, A/B testing and personalization. Her background spans both agency and brand-side roles supporting companies such as American Express, Neutrogena.com, The Salvation Army, ACUVUE, Travel + Leisure, and TD Retail Card Services.
Matt Hayes is the co-founder of EmailStack, a brand that buys and builds email marketing products to help marketers succeed. He has been obsessing over email marketing products for 20 years, building products, agencies, and teams focused on design, deliverability, and lifecycle execution. Previously, Matt was a founder of Kickdynamic, an email personalization platform that was bootstrapped and later acquired by Litmus. He has worked across a wide range of email platforms and industries, and remains obsessed with building practical tools that help teams ship better email at scale.
Urvashi Lad, known as Ush, is a Client Success Manager with 10+ years in ecommerce and hands-on experience in email strategy. She also works as an Identity and Embodiment Coach in the wellness space, blending business insight with embodied self-leadership to help people show up more fully and authentically.
