Reimagine the Advisor Client Journey

Hearsay Summit 2020 | April 21-22 | Virtual Conference

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ABOUT

Hearsay Summit

Hearsay Summit brings together top financial services leaders to solve the challenges of digital transformation together. For two days, interact with and learn from your peers and tech industry leaders as we all work to empower advisors and agents to thrive in a customer-centric world.

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2020

Speakers

This year’s Summit will feature wealth management and insurance industry veterans on the leading edge of compliant digital communications. Walk away with new strategies and actionable best practices, and new conviction for your mission.

Clara

Shih

Founder & CEO
Hearsay Systems

Naveen

Agarwal

Chief Marketing Officer
Prudential

Jeremy

Balkin

Head of Innovation, Retail Banking and Wealth Management
HSBC USA

Amanda

Bradford

Founder & CEO
The League

Brady

Brewer

Executive Vice President
Chief Marketing Officer
Starbucks

Josh

Feyen

Digital and Social Media Administrator
American Family Insurance

Brooke

Forbes

Head of Technology
Fidelity Personal Investing

Timothy

Henry

Head of Sales Operations and Agency Experience
Farmers Insurance

Leslie

Leach

Vice President of Marketing
Hearsay Systems

Leyla

Lesina

Senior Vice President
Head of Agency Distribution
Guardian

Melissa

MacGregor

Managing Director and
Associate General Counsel
SIFMA

Jim

McCarthy

Head of National Sales
Morgan Stanley

Gloria R.

McRae

Regional Director
Hearsay Systems

Glenn

Shapiro

President of Allstate, Esurance, Encompass and SquareTrade

Bill

Tester

Vice President, Supervision
Ameriprise Financial

William

Trout

Head of Wealth Management
Celent

Amy

Webber

President & CEO
Cambridge Investment
Research, Inc

Dontá L.

Wilson

Chief Digital and Client Experience Officer
Truist Financial Corporation

Clara Shih

CEO & Founder, Hearsay Systems

Clara Shih is CEO and founder of Hearsay Systems, the leading Advisor Cloud company used by over 150,000 advisors and agents to deliver personalized relationships at scale with AI-assisted automation. Marketing and Distribution leaders at the world’s leading financial services companies including Morgan Stanley, New York Life, Allstate, American Family Insurance, Goldman Sachs, Prudential and Allianz partner with Hearsay to get a real-time pulse of field conversations and trigger timely client outreach during moments that matter.

A digital pioneer, Clara developed the first social business application in 2007 and subsequently authored the New York Times-featured best-seller, The Facebook Era, and sequel, The Social Business Imperative. Clara has been named one of Fortune’s “Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs,” Fast Company’s “Most Influential People in Technology,” and a “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum. She also has been listed in both Fortune’s and Ad Age’s “40 Under 40,” as well as InvestmentNews’ “40 Under 40” and ThinkAdvisor‘s 25 Industry Influencers.

Clara is a member of the Starbucks board of directors and previously served in a variety of technical, product and marketing roles at Google, Microsoft and Salesforce.com. She graduated #1 in computer science at Stanford University, where she also received an M.S. in computer science. She also holds an M.S. in internet studies from Oxford University, where she studied as a U.S. Marshall Scholar.

Naveen Agarwal

CMO, Prudential Financial

Naveen Agarwal is responsible for driving Prudential’s global brand, advertising, customer marketing, customer experience and digital solutions, including LINK by Prudential, research and data insights, and deep predictive data analytics. He also leads a set of key strategic opportunities identified to drive income growth and operational efficiencies across Prudential’s U.S. and international businesses.

Agarwal’s role encompasses stewardship of the Prudential brand, customer engagement and acquisition, and connecting the company’s customers and prospects to needs-driven solutions in their channel of choice. He leads a diverse team of marketers, strategists, creatives, researchers, product managers, technologists and data scientists who all work collaboratively to serve various customers – institutions, employers, advisors and consumers.

Prior to Prudential, Agarwal worked for 20 years as a senior executive in several companies in Silicon Valley. He has deep experience in financial services business and marketing. As president of E*TRADE Capital Management, he ran E*TRADE’s retirement, mutual fund, investment, wealth management, lending and corporate stock plan businesses. Agarwal also served as vice president at SunGard, driving its institutional interest rate and FX derivatives trading and risk management systems business.

Agarwal remains actively involved with several Silicon Valley technology and venture capital firms, applying his entrepreneurial mindset to solve problems at scale. He regularly advises startups in marketing platforms, retail e-commerce, customer acquisition at scale, finance, data analytics, real estate, education and health care industries. Agarwal leverages his broad expertise to seamlessly connect the dots between traditional and new digital economies, modern marketing and customer engagement at scale. He is also a frequent public and keynote speaker on these topics.

Agarwal holds an MBA from Haas School of Business, University of California, Berkeley, and a bachelor’s degree in computer science and engineering from IIT-BHU, Varanasi, India. Follow him on Twitter @naveenbasically.

Jeremy Balkin

Head of Innovation, Retail Banking and Wealth Management, HSBC USA

Jeremy K. Balkin is regarded as an international thought leader on ethics in banking, innovation and the strategic engagement of Millennials in financial services. He is the author of Millennialization of Everything: How to Win When Millennials Rule the World, and is the award-winning author of Investing with Impact: Why Finance is a Force for Good. In 2016, the book received the Gold Medal in Business Ethics in the Axiom Business Book Awards, and also won the Business category in the International Books Awards.​ The books have received praise from luminaries including Arianna Huffington, Frances Hesselbein, Lynn Schusterman, Professor Emil Pitkin and Pope Francis.

Jeremy K. Balkin serves as the Head of Innovation in North America for a major international bank and he is also an adviser to the leading global accelerator program StartUpBootCamp FinTech in New York City. He also previously worked for the Hon. Malcolm Turnbull, Australia’s 29th Prime Minister.

In 2008, Jeremy K. Balkin survived a life-changing extreme sports injury that shaped his purpose to deploy financial resources to improve the state of the world, and The Huffington Post described Jeremy K. Balkin as the “Anti-Wolf of Wall Street” for his work making the case that banking and finance are forces for good. His popular TED talk, “The Noble Cause: Positively influencing the allocation of capital” has been viewed over a quarter million times, and he has been invited to speak at the likes of Davos, the United Nations, Harvard Business School and the London School of Economics.

Jeremy K. Balkin has run six marathons, received the prestigious UNSW Alumni Award for Achievement, and is designated as a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum. In 2017, he was named in the Top 35 Millennial Influencers in USA and received the Advance Global Australian Award. He has studied at the UNSW Business School, Financial Services Institute of Australasia, and Harvard Kennedy School.

Brady Brewer

Executive Vice President, Chief Marketing Officer for Starbucks

Brady and his team are leading us to a future that will make the Starbucks Experience continually more effortless and delightful for customers – from product discovery to ordering, from payment to pick-up, delivery and beyond.

Most recently, Brady served as chief operating officer for Starbucks Japan, one of Starbucks largest markets. In this Tokyo-based role, Brady led store operations for the more than 30,000 Starbucks partners who wear the green apron, as well as brand and marketing strategy, product innovation and digital experiences in one of the company’s most innovative and dynamic markets.

Prior roles included leadership as senior vice president, Marketing and Product for the company’s China and Asia Pacific region. Based in Hong Kong, Brady led brand, marketing, product and digital innovation for Starbucks in its fastest growing region. From Shanghai to Seoul, Mumbai to Melbourne, Tokyo to Thailand and everywhere in between, Brady has had the responsibility and thrill of introducing tens of millions of new customers to the extraordinary experience and values of Starbucks Coffee Company.

Melissa MacGregor

Managing Director and Associate General Counsel, SIFMA

Melissa MacGregor is a Managing Director and Associate General Counsel at SIFMA in Washington, D.C. Her responsibilities at SIFMA include advising the advocacy and policy activities of the SIFMA General Counsels Committee and the Technology and Regulation Committee, along with several specialized working groups.

Most recently, Ms. MacGregor handles issues relating to electronic communications and records, financial technology, data aggregation, social media, privacy, and data protection. Ms. MacGregor is a member of the board of directors of the Financial Data Exchange. Prior to joining SIFMA in 2005, Ms. MacGregor practiced securities regulation at Crowell & Moring LLP and Clifford Chance LLP.

She holds a J.D. from American University Washington College of Law and a B.A. from St. Lawrence University.

Glenn Shapiro

President of Allstate, Esurance, Encompass and SquareTrade

Glenn Shapiro is President of Personal Property-Liability, leading the combined businesses of Allstate Personal Lines, Esurance, Encompass and Answer Financial. He is focused on implementing Allstate's Transformative Growth Plan, expanding customer access and improving customer value. From 2017 to 2019, Shapiro served as President of Allstate Personal Lines, and from 2016 to 2017, he served as Chief Claims Officer for the Allstate Insurance Company.

Prior to joining Allstate in 2016, Shapiro was Executive Vice President and Chief Claims Officer at Liberty Mutual Commercial Insurance. Shapiro has 30 years of experience in the insurance industry. He has held a number of senior leadership positions in strategy and operations and has been at the forefront of leveraging predictive modeling and digital capabilities in insurance.

Shapiro serves on the board of SitStayRead, a Chicago nonprofit dedicated to promoting a culture of reading in low-income communities. He received his bachelor's degree in business administration from Bryant University in Smithfield, R.I., and holds CPCU, CLU and ChFC designations.

Amy Webber

President and CEO, Cambridge Investment Research

Amy Webber is President and Chief Executive Officer of Cambridge Investment Research, Inc. and serves as a member of the Board of Directors and Executive Council. With over 25 years of experience, Webber’s accomplishments include the launch of a virtual office technology platform that is evolving into a comprehensive online business environment with robust mobile access, the introduction of one of the first independent broker-dealer social media options for advisors, the integration of continuous improvement throughout home office processes, and a ‘Be the Hero’ initiative focused on service excellence and empowerment among associates. Driven to continually refine the independent broker-dealer model to best support the future needs of financial professionals and their investing clients, she guides innovative programs such as the Cambridge Source outsourcing program and Cambridge’s New Century Council – a unique group of Next Gen advisors who provide insight on what advisors will need from their independent broker-dealer partner, and the industry, to continue serving their clients into the future.

Webber inspires and leads the New Century Council to think futuristically, assess research, and approach resolutions differently to target success in years to come. Having embraced compliance and operations early in her career, she holds the FINRA Series 6, 24, 62, 63, and 99 licenses. She was selected as a member of the IA 25 by Investment Advisor magazine in 2019, 2018, 2017, 2014, and 2012. Webber also served as Chair for the FSI Board of Directors in 2016 and was a member of the task force who planned the FSI Forum: Post DOL in the fall of 2016.

Dontá L. Wilson

Chief Digital and Client Experience Officer Truist Financial Corporation

Dontá Wilson is a member of the Executive Leadership Team for Truist Financial Corporation, the nation’s sixth largest bank and premier financial services company serving approximately 10 million households.

Wilson is responsible for leading digital transformation and ensuring a world-class, distinctive client experience for all Truist clients. In this role, he oversees Digital Banking, Digital Sales, Digital Strategy and Innovation, Experience Design, Intelligent Automation, Client Experience, Client Insights and Analytics, Marketing, Corporate Communications, Truist Ventures and the Truist Foundation.

He began working at Truist’s predecessor, BB&T, in Bank Operations in October 1995 while in college and has more than 20 years of experience in the financial services industry.

Wilson has always been active in his community, having served and currently serving on many not-for-profit, educational and community service boards. He is a member of Kappa Alpha Psi, Sigma Pi Phi (Boule) and ELC. Wilson earned his bachelor’s degree in management from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte and an MBA from the University of Maryland. He is also a T.E.P. graduate of the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Amanda Bradford

Founder & CEO of The League

Amanda Bradford is the Founder & CEO of The League, a dating app that combines data and social graphs from both Facebook and LinkedIn to offer more privacy (coworkers and connections are blocked), more context (Linkedin information is displayed), and a curated community of ambitious singles who desire an equally driven partner. After graduating from Carnegie Mellon with an engineering degree, Amanda worked at both Salesforce and Google in a variety of technical and product roles before attending Stanford Graduate School of business, where the idea for The League was born. The League raised $2.1M in seed funding in January 2015 and to date operates in 65 cities both nationally and internationally and is available on iOS and Android.

Brooke Forbes

Head of Technology for Fidelity Personal Investing

Brooke Forbes is Head of Technology for Fidelity Personal Investing, which provides a full range of investment and financial planning services to millions of individual investors including wealth management, retirement planning, and brokerage.

Ms. Forbes has more than 25 years of experience in large-scale technology platform and development management, extensive leadership of global teams, and transformational program leadership. In her current role, she leads Personal Investing’s technology agenda of driving continuous improvements to both Fidelity’s customer and associate experience and accelerating engineering excellence and digital leadership. She also sits on the Advisory Board for Fidelity’s Women’s Leadership Group, the firm’s largest employee resource group.

Previously, Ms. Forbes was Senior Vice President, Digital Planning and Advice, running both robo and hybrid advisory offerings. She led efforts to re-imagine and drastically simplify the omni-channel digital experience and deliver personalized education, financial planning, investment and savings solutions to help our younger investor and emerging wealth accumulators achieve their financial goals. She was also Senior Vice President, Omni-Channel Solutions and Associate Technology Platforms. In this role, she oversaw the voice, email and chat channels for Fidelity’s customers as well as the technology management, development and integration of the platforms that serve more than 20,000 customer-facing associates.

Prior to joining Fidelity in 2010, Ms. Forbes was Director of Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Platforms and International Technology for Bank of America – Merrill Lynch Wealth Management, where she was responsible for the design, development, deployment and support of enterprise CRM platforms for Merrill Lynch worldwide for a user community of more than 30,000 users in more than 20 countries.

Ms. Forbes received her Bachelor of Arts degree in international relations from Colgate University. She lives in the Boston area and is the proud mother to four children.

Leyla Lesina

Senior Vice President, Head of Agency Distribution for Guardian

Leyla’s primary role is to build distribution strategies to increase agency productivity and profitability. This includes leading practice management, life wholesaling, life brokerage expansion, and Innovative Underwriters, Guardian's Brokerage General Agency.

Before joining Guardian in 2009, Leyla was VP, Sr. Account Manager at Lincoln Financial Distributors, where she provided key account management for 9 Marketing General Agencies across product lines: life insurance, fixed annuities and long-term care. She started in the life insurance business as an agent for MetLife.

Leyla received her BS in Economics and Finance from the Institute of Political Sciences in Strasbourg, France and her MBA in Finance from the State University of New York at Albany. She holds her Series 6, 63, 7, 24 as well as the CLU and ChFC designations.

William Trout

Head of Wealth Management at Celent

William Trout is Head of Wealth Management at Celent, a global research and advisory firm. He is an industry thought leader on North American technology strategy and innovation in the wealth and asset management industries, with particular expertise on platform technology, portfolio management, analysis and optimization tools; data capture, storage and analytics; and robotic process automation and AI.

Will is also an authority on digital advice and has been widely quoted in publications such as Bloomberg, CNBC, Financial Times, New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

Prior to joining Celent, William was head of product and segment development for affluent at BBVA USA and a member of BBVA Group’s Global Private Banking management team. He holds an AB from Harvard College.

Timothy Henry

Head of Sales Operations and Agency Experience, Farmers Insurance

Tim Henry is the Head of Sales Operations and Agency Experience at Farmers Insurance. In his role, Tim leads our efforts to better position Farmers agencies to win in the marketplace. This includes overseeing our Voice of the Agent (VoA) efforts, using data and analytics to better understand and respond to feedback from Farmers agents. He also leads Farmers’ agency compensation, recognition, and agency-facing technology implementation efforts.

Before joining Farmers in 2019, Tim was senior vice president of product management at San Diego-based data and analytics firm Teradata. Prior to Teradata, he was a principal at the consulting firm Bain & Company, where he provided valuable guidance and insight for many corporations in the technology, media, and financial services sectors.

Tim holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Economics and German Studies from Brown University and a Master in Business Administration from Harvard Business School.

Josh Feyen

Digital and Social Media Administrator, American Family Insurance

Josh Feyen is a digital and social media administrator at American Family Insurance. He leads the field social marketing program for 2,474 agents across the company’s 19-state footprint. Josh and his team provide both strategic and tactical support so agents can compliantly use social media to market their small businesses and build relationships with customers and prospects.

Josh helped start the field program more than 10 years ago, and manages more Facebook business pages than anyone in the world. One of his proudest moments (though at the time the scariest) was when he quite literally broke Facebook. You’ll be glad to know the result is the Facebook Business Manager you know today. Josh is a passionate electric vehicle (EV) driver and solar advocate, and also administers the company’s employee EV charging, education and advocacy program.

Josh holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in Journalism and Spanish from the University Wisconsin – Milwaukee and a Master of Arts in Sustainability Leadership from Edgewood College, Madison, Wis.

Bill Tester

Vice President, Supervision, Ameriprise Financial

Bill Tester is a Vice President of Supervision at Ameriprise Financial in Minneapolis, MN. He is responsible for leading teams which are focused on reviewing a variety of financial advisor communications including social media, text messages, emails, websites and more. He also leads and provides oversight for several functions located in India that deliver administrative support to the firm’s broader Supervision teams.

He has been with Ameriprise for more than 21 years, having also spent time in Marketing, Finance and Service departments. One of his more notable accomplishments includes being part of a leadership team that helped rebrand the company as Ameriprise Financial after its successful spin-off from American Express, which remains as one of the largest spin-offs in U.S. history.

He holds an MBA and BA from the University of St. Thomas in St. Paul, MN.

Gloria R. McRae

Regional Director, Hearsay Systems

Gloria is Hearsay's Regional Director in Canada, and the Head of Solutions and Value Consulting. This is an incredibly exciting time to transform relationships between agents and their customers alike, beyond social selling and CRM; Hearsay is the place to make it happen. You’ll soon appreciate the synergies and experiences that led Gloria to Hearsay, from leading teams selling Enterprise SaaS, to my multiple career stops within FSI. Here’s the past 10 years of her career in a nutshell.

Most recently, she was a Senior Manager of Solutions and Value Consultants at Hootsuite. During her three years there, she led enterprise level solutions for the financial service sector across North America with her Eastern Canada. Prior to being invited in-house to Hootsuite, she did a lot of international speaking, a TedX Keynote alongside her husband Ricardo, and authored an Amazon best-seller, ‘BYOB: The Unapologetic Guide to Being Your Own Boss’. During her entrepreneurial adventures, she co-founded and grew two social strategy businesses before getting her insurance license and launching a third business which her husband now leads today: a financial brokerage that they couldn’t be more proud of.

Leslie Leach

Vice President of Marketing, Hearsay Systems

Leslie Leach leads Hearsay’s marketing strategy and execution. She has more than two decades of experience in consumer and B2B marketing, starting her marketing career as a Brand Manager at The Clorox Company. More recently, she served as Vice President of Marketing for ZapLabs, the innovation lab for Realogy RLGY (NYSE) and Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer at Certent, a fintech SaaS company, where she grew the business from $11 million to $40 million in revenue over four years.

Leach holds a B.A. in Economics from The University of Pennsylvania and an MBA from the UCLA Anderson School of Management, where she was named an Edward W. Carter Fellow. In her spare time, she enjoys cheering on her two teenage boys, travelling, and the outdoors.

Jim McCarthy

Head of National Sales, Morgan Stanley

Jim McCarthy is the head of National Sales and serves as a member of the Wealth Management Division’s Operating and Management Committees. His group supports the Firm’s Financial Advisors by managing the field sales support of non-banking products and the business development function in our branch network.

Prior to his current role, Mr. McCarthy was accountable for the Division’s workplace offering as well as the Mutual Fund, Annuities, Insurance, and Retirement businesses. Prior to joining legacy Morgan Stanley in mid-2006, Mr. McCarthy held several senior management positions at Merrill Lynch. He joined Merrill Lynch in July 1992 as part of the Private Client Counsel team and at separate times also served as Head of the Institutional and Individual Retirement businesses.

Mr. McCarthy currently serves as co-head of both Wealth Management’s Global Products Committee and the Westchester Philanthropy Committee. He earned a B.S. from The College of William and Mary and J.D. from St. John’s University.

THIS YEAR

Theme &
What To Expect

Reimagine the Advisor Client Journey

Today, technology plays a crucial role in guiding financial services and insurance consumers through the client journey – but not on its own. In some finserv verticals, 80% of the experience takes place through an advisor or agent whether through email, social media, texts, calls, or in-person meetings.

This year’s Hearsay Summit explores how to enhance the human aspect of the advisor client relationship with technology, to define and own your client journey.

Keynotes

Confirmed keynotes include Jeremy Balkin, Head of Innovation at HSBC; Chief Counsel, Office of Investor Education & Advocacy U.S. SEC; and Amy Webber, President & CEO of Cambridge Investment Research.
See more speakers

Content

Informative and interactive sessions to help you Prepare (industry trends), Guide (Hearsay roadmap and solutions), and Track (best practices and insights to enhance the client experience) your Advisor Client Journey.

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HAVE A QUESTION?

Contact Us

If you have any questions about Hearsay Summit 2020 please email us at summit@hearsaycorp.com.

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