Speakers

Zena Arnold is a general manager forged in tech and CPG marketing.

The formative years of her career were at Procter and Gamble and Kellogg, where she held a series of brand and portfolio management roles covering going business, upstream design and shopper marketing in the beauty and food and beverage categories.

Arnold joined Google to run Go To Market for Google Play in the Americas, accelerating sales via growth marketing, brand building initiatives, and performance media and partnerships. She then moved to head up all Global Marketing for Chromebooks, overseeing Product Marketing, Brand Marketing, Partnerships, Go To Market and International expansion, resulting in double digit share growth.

Most recently Arnold left marketing for general management and currently runs business and operations for Chromebooks in the US, the largest market. She has grown the business +30% year-on-year in a declining category, recently surpassing Apple's Mac share for the first time in the PC category.

When not working or riding a shuttle from San Francisco to Mountain View, Arnold is attempting to get into San Francisco's newest restaurants, travelling to new countries or being ordered around by her cats.

Geoff Cottrill joined The Coca-Cola Company on March 1, 2018 as Senior Vice President Strategic Marketing. Cottrill leads integrated marketing strategy across creative content, media planning and investment, marketing capability, digital, marketing assets and entertainment, music and gaming in the United States. He is also responsible for building and maintaining partnerships while leading communications programs that drive integrating messaging across portfolio of brands.

He rejoined The Coca-Cola Company after most recently serving as President of the advertising and media agency MullenLowe in Boston.

Prior to that, Cottrill spent eight years as the General Manager and Chief Marketing Officer at Converse (Nike Inc.) where he and his team led the brand during a period of unprecedented growth, resulting in the Chuck Taylor All Star becoming the #1 selling sneaker in the world. He also spent three years at Starbucks, as Vice President, Product Development & Marketing for Starbucks Entertainment.

This is Cottrill’s second term with Coca-Cola. He worked for the company from 1996 to 2005 and was Group Director, Worldwide, Entertainment Marketing.

He has had a personal passion for music since the age of 13 when he used to sell fountain Cokes at Tampa Stadium so he could see rock concerts. He is Chair of the Grammy Foundation, an organization dedicated to improving music education and music preservation.

He earned a Bachelor of Science Degree in Economics from Florida State University.

Cottrill, his wife, Allie, and their two daughters, Abby and Claire, reside in Atlanta.

Dave is a partner in McKinsey’s Marketing & Sales Practice with 30 years of experience in marketing, advertising and brand strategy development. His work with leading companies includes developing growth strategies, marketing organization/capabilities, brand positioning and consumer insights. Elzinga developed the Consumer Decision Journey (CDJ) knowledge initiative for McKinsey in order to understand the fundamental shifts in decision-making in a digital world and help marketers align with the changing CDJ.

His experience includes the creation of the Customer Growth Indicator (CGI), a new metric that helps clients understand their growth prospects relative to competition in the next purchase cycle. This metric is based on data from more than 125,000 consumers in 30 categories on 350 brands. The CGI has greater than 60% R-squared in explaining the variance in future growth.

Elzinga has directed Consumer Decision Journey initiatives across industries and geographies to identify growth opportunities leading to 5-10% performance improvement through new product/service innovations (smartphones, credit cards), new brand communications (travel, appliances) and budget reallocation to highest impact touchpoints (auto insurance, beverages).

He has led Global Marketing Excellence programs for multiple clients across industries (e.g. pharmaceuticals, consumer and industrial goods) with the objective of upgrading capabilities across foundational marketing dimensions such as customer insights, marketing planning and brand positioning, resulting in 3-10% business performance improvement.

Additionally, he has developed market segmentation/global brand positioning on $1B+ brands across industries including pharmaceuticals, cars, credit cards, beverages, travel and retail fashion. He has also developed consumer brand strategy for green industry, seeking to dramatically accelerate consumer adoption of environmentally friendly, energy-efficient technology through defining consumer target, industry positioning, and core consumer requirements to deliver on the new strategy.

Prior to McKinsey, Elzinga was a Director of Marketing at the Quaker Oats Company. During his 11 years in brand management, he worked on a variety of businesses in both beverages (Gatorade) and Foods (Quaker Chewy). He began his career in media planning at Grey Advertising in New York. Elzinga holds his MBA from Kellogg School of Management and his Bachelor of Arts degree in International Economics and Politics from Northwestern University. He is based in Chicago.

Jason leads the work in the area of digital marketing operations and personalization at McKinsey & Company, working closely with global chief marketing officers (CMOs) and other executives to transform marketing organizations in response to rapidly changing consumer behavior, the proliferation of multichannel touchpoints, and the opportunities created by innovations in agile marketing, big data, advanced analytics, and machine learning.

His skills in digital marketing have been honed over the past twenty years at the epicenter of the industry’s explosive growth. As CEO and founder of Agiliti, a boutique consultancy focused on digital marketing operations,he worked closely with marketing leaders to transform their digital marketing organizations and partnership ecosystems.

A born entrepreneur—he started his own recording studio and independent record label at 18 and left it to pursue the potential of new media and the Internet—Heller understands the nature and complexity of the challenges companies face in transitioning to digital, from data-driven decision-making and customer acquisition to the development of new marketing roles and management of talent in the digital age. He has worked with leaders in industries as diverse as retail, CPG, telecom, media, publishing, and financial services, aiding them to tailor a structured approach to assessing, developing, and refining their marketing strategies, capabilities, culture, organization, technology, and partner ecosystems.

Prior to his stewardship of Agiliti, Heller co-founded one of the first digital media and relationship marketing agencies in 1998. When it was acquired in 2005 by Horizon Media, the largest independent media agency in the world, he then headed Horizon’s digital group for several years. He is a frequent speaker at industry events and has contributed to industry and mainstream-media publications, including The Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fortune, Ad Week, Advertising Age, and MediaPost.

Betsy D. Holden is a Senior Advisor to McKinsey & Company, working with clients across industries on strategy, marketing, innovation and board effectiveness initiatives. Holden was formerly Co-CEO of Kraft Foods and CEO of Kraft Foods North America. At the time, Kraft Foods was the largest food company in North America and the second largest in the world.

She has 35 years of experience in consumer goods.In addition to her CEO role at Kraft, Holden also held the positions of President, Global Marketing and Category Development; Executive Vice President with responsibility for Operations, IT, Procurement, R&D, and Consumer Insights and Communications; President of the Kraft Cheese Division; President of the Pizza Division; plus multiple line brand management assignments. She developed and launched new products generating over $2 billion in revenue.

Holden graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a Bachelor of Arts degree from Duke University.Holden received a Masters of Management in Marketing and Finance from Kellogg School of Management. She has been named one of FORTUNE’s Most Powerful Women multiple times and was inducted into the Chicago Business Hall of Fame in 2016.

Holden currently serves on the boards of Dentsply Sirona, Diageo PLC, Western Union, and Lyons-Magnus. She has served on 8 corporate boards over the last 19 years and was named a 2015 NACD Directorship 100 honoree. She also serves on the Executive Committees of Duke University’s Board of Trustees and Kellogg School of Management’s Global Advisory Board. Holden is President of the Board of the Off the Street Club and Treasurer of the Board of the Chicago High School for the Arts.

A leader of McKinsey's category growth strategy and marketing procurement groups, Jeff brings 20 years of experience in global line marketing and sales, brand strategy, end-to-end transformations, and innovation. He also has deep expertise in agency management, particularly how companies need to evolve their agency relationships in the digital age.

His recent experience includes working with a client on the marketing transformation of a leading packaged goods company to counter a competitive threat. Jacobs helped identify gaps in the brand equities, incremental growth opportunities within specific regions, channels, and consumer targets, consumption occasions, and optimal marketing spend levels.

He also developed a marketing planning process and skill development program for a leading consumer company, which included workshops—such as helping people turn data into practical insights—creating strategic priorities, improving below-the-line promotions, and enhancing marketing efficiency and effectiveness. He helped a global packaged goods company redesign their global marketing organization, including identifying which processes belonged at a global vs. regional vs local level. In addition, he led an agency selection process across five global marketing services for a leading consumer packaged goods company. The work included identifying agencies best suited for the client, and developing detailed ‘should cost’ models. Working closely with the client, he translated the analysis into detailed bid-sheets and developed a successful negotiations strategy.

Jacobs is deeply involved in developing new thinking about and insights into marketing and sales topics, and was one of the creators of the Consumer Decision Journey framework.

Benjamin F. Jones is the Gordon and Llura Gund Family Professor of Entrepreneurship, a Professor of Strategy, and the faculty director of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Kellogg. An economist by training, his research focuses largely on innovation and creativity, with recent work investigating the role of teamwork in innovation and the relationship between age and invention. Professor Jones also studies global economic development, including the roles of education, climate, and national leadership in explaining the wealth and poverty of nations. His research has appeared in journals such as Science, the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the American Economic Review, and has been profiled in media outlets such as the Wall Street Journal, the Economist, and The New Yorker.

A former Rhodes Scholar, Professor Jones served in 2010-2011 as the senior economist for macroeconomics for the White House Council of Economic Advisers and earlier served in the U.S. Department of the Treasury. In 2011, he was awarded the Stanley Reiter Best Paper Award for the best academic article written by a Kellogg faculty member in the prior four years. Professor Jones is a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Sergio Rebelo is the Tokai Bank Chair in International Finance at the Kellogg School of Management, where he has served as Chair of the Finance Department.

Professor Rebelo does research on macroeconomics and international finance. He has studied the causes of business cycles, the impact of economic policy on economic growth, and the sources of exchange rate fluctuations. His research has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the World Bank, the Sloan Foundation, and the Olin Foundation.

He is a fellow of the Econometric Society, the National Bureau of Economic Research, and the Center for Economic Policy Research. He has been a member of the editorial board of various academic journals, including the American Economic Review, the European Economic Review, the Journal of Monetary Economics, and the Journal of Economic Growth.

He has won numerous teaching awards at the Kellogg School of Management, including the Executive Masters Program Outstanding Professor Award and the Professor of the Year Award.

Professor Rebelo has served as a consultant to the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, the Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System, the European Central Bank, the McKinsey Global Institute, the Global Markets Institute at Goldman Sachs, and other organizations. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the University of Rochester.