SPEAKER: Kristi Mark

President/Founder of Symbolon Partners

Kristi Mark has a BS degree in Business Administration and has been in the technology staffing and recruiting industry for 12 years.  Kristi started in the industry while living in the Bay Area as an Account Manager and then moved into recruiting.  After moving to Boulder, she was a consultant at a local technology company for a year and helped them grow from 18 to 64 employees in 7 months.  While working with a professional staffing company to open a Boulder office, Kristi has become a mainstay in the front range technology community and is passionate about helping companies find the right people. She formed Symbolon Partners in 2009 to achieve that goal. 

SPEAKER: Patricia Sikora

Social Psychologist and owner of Sikora Associates, LLC

Dr. Pat Sikora has spent years investigating what makes people tick.  As a social psychologist with decades of corporate research experience, Pat lifts up the rock of obvious answers and delves underneath to better understand why customers and employees behave the way they do.  

 Blending rock solid research methods with street smarts, Pat helps Fortune 100’s, major non-profits, and start-ups get a handle on what’s happening inside and outside of their organization.  Passionate about the voice of the customer and the employee, Pat provides insights into how to transform those voices into coherent, creative, and future-oriented strategies for growth.  

Her publications have appeared in peer-reviewed journals and a co-authored book “Turbulence: Boeing and the State of American Workers and Managers” (Yale University Press, 2010) was noted by the New York Times as “required reading for anyone at a major American corporation, especially in top management.”

HOST: Thomas Frey

Executive Director and Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute

Thomas Frey is Executive Director and Senior Futurist at the DaVinci Institute as well as Google top rated futurist speaker.

As part of the celebrity speaking circuit, Tom continually pushes the envelope of understanding, creating fascinating images of the world to come.  His keynote talks on futurist topics have captivated people ranging from high level government officials to executives in Fortune 500 companies including NASA, IBM, AT&T, Hewlett-Packard, Lucent Technologies, First Data, Boeing, Capital One, Bell Canada, Visa, Ford Motor Company, Qwest, Allied Signal, Hunter Douglas, Direct TV, International Council of Shopping Centers, National Association of Federal Credit Unions, Times of India, Leaders in Dubai, and many more.

Because of his work inspiring inventors and other revolutionary thinkers, Tom has been referred to as the modern "Father of Invention" and the "Dean of Futurists."  Before launching the DaVinci Institute, Tom spent 15 years at IBM as an engineer and designer where he received over 270 awards, more than any other IBM engineer.