In-Person Cost: $3,000

Accelerate your executive development by learning from executives in the Manager Tools® community. This 2-day event is packed with networking events and engaging sessions where you’ll hear from top leaders in diverse industries including banking, software, aerospace, consulting, markets, finance, HR, etc. as they share their thoughts on leadership, managing and more. Build your skills and grow your network by getting access to the right topics and the right people.

Attendance Includes:

  • Membership to an instant messaging group for connecting with other attendees, speakers, and the MT team.
  • Meals throughout, including a meet-and-greet the day prior to the event and a dinner after the first day's sessions.
  • Videos of our speaker sessions for one year after the event.
  • Free Virtual Effective Manager Registration to be awarded at the time of the event (can be used or gifted to someone else).
Those wishing to purchase just the videos but not attend the event can do so when those recordings are made available as part of our Executive Outlook Video product.

Meet The Speakers

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Jackie Milhans - Director of Research Computing and Data, Northwestern University

Jackie Milhans is the director of Research Computing and Data Services at Northwestern University, where she is responsible for the long-term strategic planning for research support and delivering a portfolio of high-performance computing, data science, AI, data management, and cloud services and support for faculty, student, and staff researchers. This requires building relationships with deans, faculty, and administrators from social sciences to medicine to engineering. She leads the development of new services to address emerging technology and compliance requirements in the diverse breadth of research domains at Northwestern.

Jackie has led and served on numerous committees and working groups both at the local and national level – focusing on computing, research, higher ed, and equity and inclusion. She is currently Co-Chair of the NSF-funded Campus Research Computing Consortium (CaRCC) Advisory Board and member of the Regulated Research Community Group of Practice Advisory group. Jackie is a recipient of the EDUCAUSE 2023 Rising Star Award. She has a passion for learning and sharing methods to build and lead effective, engaged, and productive teams through improved hiring and management practices, as well as ensuring an equitable and inclusive workplace. Outside of work, she enjoys traveling and the great outdoors.

Sarah Sentes - Managing Partner, Manager Tools

Sarah earned her degree in Psychology from the University of Alberta. It is there that she started her career, employing Manager Tools’ principles and methodologies within the administration of a unionized public service environment. Sarah can be heard co-hosting our podcast, Manager Tools. Sarah also serves as one of our presenting associates, training folks on our guidance. And she also helped co-author the book, The Effective Manager, Second Edition.

Mark Horstman - Co-Founder, Manager Tools

Mark is the author of The Effective Manager, which has sold over 50,000 copies, The Effective Hiring Manager, and co-authored The Effective Manager, Second Edition. He is a graduate of the United States Military Academy at West Point. Following his service, he worked in Sales and Marketing at Procter and Gamble prior to starting Manager Tools. Mark is retired from day-to-day operations after having written and hosted the Manager Tools Podcast for 17 years. That said, Mark remains as board member and writer and co-host of the Executive Tools podcast.

John Hoffman - Chairman, Onward Ops Foundation

John Hoffman currently serves on the ETS Board of Directors and serves as the Chairman of the Onward Ops Foundation. Onward Ops is focused on successfully transitioning service members out of the military into civilian life.

Prior to his work with Onward Ops, John was the Chairman and CEO of Pivotal Systems. Pivotal Systems was an Inc 500 Fastest Growing Company in both 2015 and 2018. Pivotal Systems launched on the ASX in July of 2018 with Hoffman as Chairman and CEO until his retirement in 2022. John also served as the Chief Executive Officer of RagingWire Enterprise Solutions prior to its sale. John was a corporate officer at Applied Materials for many years. His assignments included President of the Etch Product Business Group, VP & General Manager of the Process Diagnostics and Control (PDC) Business Group, VP and GM of the Intel Business Group and the GM of the Customer Service Division.

John spent 7 years in the United States Army in the 5th Infantry Division as a Platoon Leader, Executive Officer, Battalion S-1 and Company Commander. He received the Meritorious Service Medal and multiple Army Commendation Medals during his service. John has a B.S. from the United States Military Academy at West Point and an Executive MBA (AEA) from Stanford University. He and his wife Debbie have five children and live in Incline Village, Nevada.

Matt Dubois - Director of Project Management, Vanderlande’s Baggage Handling and Parcel Solutions

Matt Dubois is the director of project execution for Vanderlande Airport and Parcel Solutions in North America. Vanderlande moves about 4 billion pieces of luggage around the world every year with systems in more than 600 airports, including 12 of the world’s top 20. For parcel automation, approximately 52 million parcels are sorted by Vanderlande systems every day. Matt is responsible for the performance of his team on approximately 25 North American airport terminal projects and parcel distribution system automation projects. This team is responsible for project management, engineering, construction management, planning, and subcontracting. Their goal is to deliver new automation projects to airports and parcel companies in North America.

Complex construction of automation systems requires effective stakeholder management, technical issue resolution, and planning in dynamic operating environments, such as active, busy airports. Very effective risk management is critical to the success of these projects. Matt prepared for this with a math degree from the United States Air Force Academy, several years as a construction litigation lawyer, and a couple of decades managing project teams and contracts in the material handling industry. At Vanderlande, Matt is also responsible for the global project management organizational and leadership development programs and championing continuous improvement programs in North America.

Denise Iglesias - Executive VP of Engineering, Dealerware

Denise Iglesias is a strategic engineering leader with a proven track record of delivering high growth hardware and software architectures and products. Iglesias has worked in tech for over 25 years, starting at National Instruments. She later led product development at Icontrol Networks, helping the company to its eventual acquisition by Comcast, where Iglesias spent another 4 years in development and software engineering leadership roles. Now at Dealerware, Iglesias is focused on building and leading a diverse team to solve new challenges in the automotive industry. Iglesias is also passionate about diversity and inclusion. She has founded multiple employee resource groups, is a mentor with Code2College, and helps others develop their own leadership skills with Ceresa.

Steve Holden - Senior Systems Engineer, Naval Information Warfare Center

Steve Holden is a systems engineer passionate about building secure and reliable solutions for warfighters. Throughout his 30+ year career, he has tackled complex challenges in designing & implementing robust, hardened, resilient, & reliable systems with a focus on cybersecurity. This has included balancing architecture, strategy, and emerging technologies against cost, schedule, and performance.

Steve is a Senior Systems Engineer in the Command & Control (C2) Department at the Naval Information Warfare Center (NIWC) Pacific. Steve is a San Diego State University (SDSU) graduate with a Bachelor of Science (BS) and Master of Science (MS) in Computer Science.

His previous roles at NIWC Pacific include Lead Systems Engineer, Project Manager, and Technical Lead. His focus areas include Information Warfare, Advanced Command & Control, Cybersecurity, Multi-Level Security, Enterprise Systems, and Rapid Prototyping. Before joining NIWC Pacific, Steve was a software engineer and integrator at Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC).

Steve has been an active member of the Manager Tools community since 2005. He is also a certified David Allen Getting Things Done (GTD) instructor, having delivered over 47 classes since 2018.

Brad Revell - Vice President - Logistics Service Providers EMEA, Blue Yonder

Brad's career has always been driven by a commitment to a global perspective and an appreciation for diverse cultures. Over the course of his 24-year journey, Brad has navigated a professional path that spans continents such as Australia, Asia, the Americas, and Europe. Thinking with a cross-cultural lens and embracing a global mindset have become second nature to him.

Just prior to COVID, Brad earned a Graduate Certificate in Global Management from INSEAD, specialising in international business and cross-cultural collaboration. Brad's extensive global experience, acquired through roles at multinational organisations such as Boeing, Oracle, IBM, and more recently Infor and Blue Yonder. This has uniquely positioned him to approach the workplace with a focus on fostering unity and innovation within diverse teams and cracking the cultural code in a global business.

A. Brooke Bennett - Chief of Staff, Rep. French Hill in the U.S. House of Representatives

A. Brooke Bennett currently serves as the Chief of Staff to Rep. French Hill in the U.S. House of Representatives, a role she has held since his election in 2014. She started in the House in 2005, serving first as an investigative counsel on the House Oversight Committee and then as Legislative Director to two Members of Congress including Rep. Hill’s predecessor. Prior to coming to Congress, she worked for nearly seven years in corporate finance for Arthur Andersen based in London.
As a Chief of Staff, she has stressed the importance of a professionally managed office, and in 2021, the office won the Congressional Management Foundation’s prestigious “Democracy Award” for best workplace environment. She prioritizes staff development and institution building and runs the GOP’s Female Chiefs of Staff mentoring program, which she co-founded, and the monthly GOP Chief of Staff Breakfast Club.

In 2017, she was named a Stennis Fellow, a prestigious, bipartisan two-year fellowship program aimed at institution building and cross-party dialogue, and, in the same vein, has started several bipartisan initiatives for House Chiefs of Staff including a book club and a first-of-its-kind listserv for all House Chiefs of Staff to facilitate bipartisan dialogue and information sharing. In 2023, she was recognized by The Hill newspaper as one of the 25 staffers who “make Capitol Hill run” and was one of two recipients of the Women’s Congressional Staff Foundation Leadership Impact Award for her mentorship initiatives. Brooke regularly addresses groups locally and nationally and was a featured speaker in the Manager Tools “M Conference” series in 2022. She is a Washington, D.C. native and a graduate of Smith College and Tulane Law School, and, in her spare time, can be found singing soprano in Capitol Hill choir.

Kate Braun - Managing Partner, Manager Tools

Kate is a BSME graduate of Tulane University who used Manager Tools principles in her previous role as a missile defence engineer. As well as managing the firm, Kate is co-host of our flagship podcast, Manager Tools. Kate also serves as one of our presenting associates, training on the guidance we provide. And she helped co-author the book, The Effective Manager, Second Edition.

John Nuttall - Director of Technology, AT&T

John is the Director – Developer Ecosystems for AT&T. His organization is responsible for Developer Platforms & Roadmap, Developer Experience, Developer Technology Standards, and Application Code Quality/Security for all of AT&T. AT&T Developer Ecosystems has more than 35,000 internal users and 1.5M software builds per month executed on the platform. John's 100-person organization is made up of 8 teams, each run by a Manager Tools trained manager, and each having one or more Manager Tools trained future managers among their ranks. He has been with AT&T for 28 years, primarily in the internal application development space. Prior to AT&T, John was a Submarine Officer in the US Navy for 9 years. He has 4 children ranging in age from "not telling" down to 7... with the first 3 being at the "not telling" end of the scale… and two beautiful grand-daughters. He loves Scouting, playing music (he and his wife own, play, and record more than 20 instruments), and golf (his 7 yr. old has already robbed him of $100 on the course).



Working Agenda

Wednesday, October 9th

Time Wednesday
7:00 Breakfast & Sign In
8:30 Welcome & Introductions
9:15 Kate Braun & Sarah Sentes, Topic TBD
10:15 Break
10:30 Speaker and Topic TBD
11:30 Break
11:45 Speaker and Topic TBD
12:45 Lunch
2:00 Speaker and Topic TBD
3:00 Break
3:15 Speaker and Topic TBD
4:15 Group Photo
4:30 Close
5:30 Cocktail Hour
6:30 Dinner and Discussion
8:00 Done for the Day

Thursday, October 10th

Time Thursday
7:00 Breakfast
8:30 Welcome Back
9:00 Speaker and Topic TBD
10:00 Break
10:15 Speaker and Topic TBD
11:15 Lunch
12:30 Speaker and Topic TBD
1:30 Break
1:45 Speaker and Topic TBD
2:45 Break
3:00 Mark Horstman, Topic TBD
4:00 Close/End

Watch a Sample:

Matt Beckwith - Customer Experience: Not a Department, a Revolution

The M Conference provides the opportunity for business leaders to network and meet like-minded professionals. It is an excellent platform for leaders to exchange views and information, allowing them to discuss tomorrow's challenges and share ideas on leveraging employee talent and business opportunities within the Executive Manager Tools framework. Attending is also an excellent way for busy executives to assess their leadership skills informally. Over meals and in breaks, you should have the opportunity to discuss leadership vision, organizational dynamics, and Manager Tools applications. The best part? The M Conference is the perfect forum to observe, debate, and discuss these leadership elements and gain feedback on your ideas and thoughts and even your particular leadership challenge. That's why I would recommend attending the M conference in 2022.

      Read more...Rodney Woods

This is the first conference I’ve been to where I found 100% of the speakers engaging. Actually great presenters. I don’t know how you pulled that off, but it’s an incredible achievement.

      Read more...Yanek Korff