Carol Fishman Cohen

CEO and Co-founder, iRelaunch

Carol Fishman Cohen is the CEO and Co-founder of iRelaunch, a career reentry consulting, training and events company focused on bringing professionals back into the workforce after extended leave. iRelaunch works with employers to build and expand in-house return to work programs, produces the iRelaunch Return to Work Conferences, and leads a community of more than 100,000 relaunchers looking to return to work. Cohen, a relauncher herself, hosts the 3,2,1 iRelaunch podcast and writes regularly for Harvard Business Review. Her TED talk, "How to get back to work after a career break," has over 3.6 million views.

Patti Rittling, Ph.D., CHES

Patti is a Senior Health & Benefits Consultant located in Mercer’s Richmond, Virginia office. She is a member of the Total Health Management Specialty Practice Group with 13 years of consulting experience with Marsh & McLennan Companies.

Bridging the gap between research and practice, Patti works with employers on the design of holistic employee and organizational well-being strategies. Her passion is creating healthy environments and views employee well-being as a performance driver rather than a cost driver.

She holds a Ph.D. in Health Promotion, Education, and Behavior from the University of South Carolina’s Arnold School of Public Health, a Master’s degree in Exercise Physiology from the University of Virginia, and a Bachelor’s degree in Accounting from East Carolina University. She has completed training on Integrating Wellness and Occupational Safety and Health in the Workplace through the Harvard School of Public Health and has worked in a variety of settings including public accounting as a CPA, higher education as an Assistant Professor of Health Education, hospital-based fitness and wellness centers as an Executive Director, and employee health & benefits as a health and well-being consultant.

Patti is a Certified Health Education Specialist through the National Commission for Health Education Credentialing and a Certified Health Promotion Director through The Cooper Institute®. She has numerous fitness certifications, including Level 2 in the Functional Movement Screen. She is a Certified Intrinsic Coach®, a Certified Wellness Culture Coach®, and a subject matter expert and Master Trainer for the CDC Work@Health™ program.

She belongs to many organizations supporting health and serves on the Education Committee of HERO (Health Enhancement Research Organization) and is a former Board Member for the Virginia Business Coalition on Health.

Christopher D. Lee, Ph.D., SPHR

Managing Director, Storbeck Search
 

Chris Lee is the Managing Director at Storbeck Search. Prior to this role, he was Chief Human Resources officer for William & Mary, the nation’s second oldest university and Associate Vice Chancellor for Human Resources for the Virginia Community College System, a network of 23 colleges, serving over 200,000 students in the commonwealth. He has over 25 years of experience as a chief human resources officer in higher education having worked at both public and private institutions.

He is a consummate human resources professional having experience as an author, consultant, and lecturer in addition to being an accomplished practitioner. He is a former question writer for the PHR and SPHR examinations administered by the Human Resources Certification Institute (HRCI). He is the author of numerous human resources related articles and four books, including Performance Conversations: How to Use Questions to Coach Employees, Improve Productivity, and Boost Confidence (Without Appraisals).

He has presented at conferences and consulted with clients in the US, Canada, Australia and South Africa on HR related topics. He holds a master's degree in HR Management, a doctor of philosophy degree in HR Development, and he is a certified human resources professional. Chris is also a retired Lieutenant Colonel from the United States Marine Corps Reserves.

Matthew Freeman

Founder, Dialectix Consulting
 

Matthew Freeman’s passion for racial equity and social justice has led him across the United States and overseas, helping people connect across difference and begin to address the challenges that divide them. Matthew has worked with members of Congress, the Federal Reserve system, as well as organizations of all sizes, from Fortune 500’s to small non-profits. With degrees in the sciences and in the humanities, Matthew appreciates the opportunities to bring that diverse educational background to bear on topics like unconscious bias- exploring what we know about how the brain functions and how that impacts our human interactions. He is the author of the book Overcoming Bias: Building Authentic Relationships Across Differences.
 

Don Rheem

Speaker, Author, & CEO of E3 Solutions
 

Don Rheem is CEO of E3 Solutions, an employee engagement tech company which allows organizations to build engaged, high-performance cultures. Rheem focuses on using neuroscience and behavioral science-backed research to consult with leaders in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. His passion for delivering truly outstanding improvements in business performance conveys quickly to the CEOs and senior executives he works with.

A former science advisor to Congress and the Secretary of Health and Human Services, Rheem shares a grounded and empirically validated methodology to get employees more engaged and better positioned for success targeted at the bottom line.

Rheem and his team at E3 Solutions show business leaders how to create the workplace conditions that trigger hard-wired motivators that improve employee performance. These intrinsic drivers of human behavior increase engagement in ways that improve productivity, team alignment, morale, and retention.

Aaron Montgomery

Managing Partner, The Montgomery Development Group
 

Aaron Montgomery is the Managing Partner of The Montgomery Development Group, an investment firm. Prior to his current role Aaron was Chief Strategy Officer of Mission Lane, a Forbes Top 50 FinTech and Co-Founder of CarLotz (NASDAQ: LOTZ) a disruptive innovation in the used automotive retail market. And, prior to that, he was a consultant at McKinsey & Co. and a sales executive at Kiva Systems, a robotics company that was acquired by Amazon in 2012.

In addition to his work as an investor, Aaron is also an author, speaker, and instructor. He recently finished his first book Suspend Your Disbelief as a giveback to the next generation by sharing stories from his life and career. He also teaches Leadership and Strategy at The PowerMBA an online course platform that is designed to democratize access to executive education, and is a 3X Inc. 5000 honoree (2018, 2019, and 2020), and a 2X finalist in EY's Entrepreneur of the Year Program (2015, 2019). He was named Executive Partner of the Year by the Society of Human Resource Managers (SHRM) in 2013. Aaron holds an A.B. in Economics from Harvard University and an MBA from Harvard Business School.