Dr. Kelly Goldsmith is currently the E. Bronson Ingram Chair of the Marketing Department of the Owen Graduate School of Management at Vanderbilt University.

As a behavioral scientist, Professor Goldsmith is an award-winning teacher and researcher who examines consumers’ psychological and behavioral responses to goals and threats. Her research began as an undergraduate at Duke University, and then built on this work, earning a Ph.D. in behavioral marketing at Yale University.

Her research is highly interdisciplinary in nature, drawing upon theories and methods from a variety of areas, including anthropology, cognitive and social psychology, economics, evolutionary biology, and marketing. Because her research bridges theory and practice, it contributes not only to theories of consumer decision making, but also to new techniques for marketers, firms, and policy makers. Professor Goldsmith’s work has appeared in several top marketing and psychology journals and has been featured in hundreds of media outlets including the BBC, Time Magazine, The New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal.

Ryan Hamilton is an Associate Professor of Marketing at Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. An award-winning teacher and researcher, Ryan’s research on findings pricing, branding, and customer experience have been covered in Harvard Business Review, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Financial Times and CNN Headline News. He has consulted with Walmart, FedEx, Home Depot, Caterpillar, ConAgra, Cigna, Visa, and Ipsos, among others, and has been a keynote speaker and trainer on various topics in marketing and decision-making.

Professor Hamilton co-authored a book and co-hosts a podcast, both called The Intuitive Customer, which apply the insights from consumer psychology to effectively managing customer experiences. He has also produced two lecture series, “Critical Business Skills for Success: Marketing” and “How You Decide: The Science of Human Decision Making,” for The Great Courses. In 2011 he was named one of “The World’s Best 40 B-School Profs Under the Age of 40” in the first ever such rankings by Poets & Quants, an online magazine that covers the world of MBA education.

Ryan received his PhD in Marketing from Northwestern University’s Kellogg School of Management and has an eclectic background that includes both an undergraduate degree in physics and time spent performing stand-up and sketch comedy.

Americus Reed is the Whitney M. Young, Jr. Professor of Marketing at the Wharton School. He brings more than 25 years of research, teaching, and consulting experience in leveraging deep social psychological analysis on how the topic of “Identity”, the complexity of how a person, organization, brand, or service creates self-expression, and how this interfaces with various domains of business (Accelerating Growth, Creating True Loyalty, Work Identity and Organizational Culture and Calling, Persuasion and consumer targeting, and Brand Crisis).

Dr. Reed has authored more than 50 articles, book chapters, and cases on the topic of Identity. In 2005, his academic work in this area received honorable mention for the prestigious Robert Ferber Award for academic impact in the Journal of Consumer Research (JCR) and in 2009 he received JCR’s Best Paper Award. His article “Identity-Based Consumer Behavior” was the recipient of the 2023 Steenkamp Long-Term Impact award in the International Journal of Research in Marketing (IJRM). Americus is also a recipient of the Society for Consumer Psychology (SCP) 2023 Distinguished Scientific Contribution Award, and been featured on CNN, CNBC, Forbes, Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, New York Times, NPR, and the Hidden Brain Podcast.  

Learn more about Americus at americusreed.com

Maura L. Scott is Professor of Marketing and the Edward M. Carson Chair in Services Marketing at the W. P. Carey School of Business, Arizona State University.

Maura’s research emphasizes consumer-based strategy, connecting consumer psychology insights and managerial strategies, to help companies strengthen relationships with consumers as they adapt to evolving consumer, societal, and sustainability needs.

Dr. Scott is the Immediate Past President of the American Marketing Association’s Academic Council, and has served as Joint Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Public Policy & Marketing (JPP&M). She is Associate Editor for leading academic journals including the Journal of Marketing (JM), Journal of Marketing Research (JMR), Journal of Consumer Psychology (JCP), and Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science (JAMS). Her own research is published in leading scholarly journals including JMR, JCP, JAMS, JPP&M, Journal of Consumer Research, and Journal of Economic Psychology, among others.

Maura’s work has been mentioned in the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Time, Forbes, Fast Company, and Entrepreneur. It has also been covered in lifestyle magazines such as Women’s Health, Allure, Shape, Prevention, Consumer Reports and Good Housekeeping.

Prior to her academic career, Maura held marketing/brand management positions at 3M Company, Dial Corporation, and Motorola.

Lawrence Williams is a consumer psychologist who studies the influences of emotions, environments, and goals on behavior. As an associate professor of Marketing at the Leeds School of Business, University of Colorado Boulder, he has devoted his career to understanding when, why, and how nonconscious, beneath-the-surface influences shape action.

In his research, he has explored what makes things funny, why bodily states shape mental outcomes, and how people find pleasure in unpleasant experiences. Recently, he has turned his attention toward understanding how consumers’ choices are impacted by the pursuit of meaning in life. 

His papers have been published in the Journal of Consumer Research, Psychological Science, and Science, amongst other outlets. Popular press accounts of his work have appeared in the New York Times, NPR, BBC News, and Harvard Business Review. Currently he serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Consumer Research. An award-winning MBA teacher, he serves on the executive committee for CU's Graduate Inclusive Mentoring Community. He completed his doctoral studies at Yale University.

Molly Crockett is an Associate Professor at Princeton University’s Department of Psychology, Center for Information Technology Policy, and the University Center for Human Values, where she directs the Future Values Initiative.

Molly's lab investigates social and moral cognition, integrating theory and methods from psychology, neuroscience, economics, philosophy, and data science. Her recent work has explored moral outrage in the digital age, trust in leaders during a pandemic, and the impact of artificial intelligence on science and policy decisions.

Dr. Crockett has received early career awards from the American Psychological Association, Association for Psychological Science, Society for Neuroeconomics, Society for Personality and Social Psychology, Society for Social Neuroscience, European Brain and Behavior Society, and Society for Judgment and Decision Making, and grants from the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, Welcome Trust, Social Science Research Council, Democracy Fund, Academy of Medical Sciences, and John Templeton Foundation.

Crockett’s work has been featured by the BBC, NY Times, Washington Post, Newsweek, Scientific American, CNN, The Guardian, Time, Wired, and Fast Company. Crockett was elected a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum and presented research to His Holiness the Dalai Lama at his residence in Dharamsala, India.

Uri Gneezy is the Epstein/Atkinson Endowed Chair in Behavioral Economics and professor at the Rady School of Management at the University of California, San Diego.

As a researcher, Gneezy focuses on putting behavioral economics to work in the real world, where theory can meet application. He is looking for basic research as well as more applied approaches to the study of when and why incentives (don’t) work. His research covers topics such as incentives-based interventions to increase good habits and decrease bad ones, behavioral health economics, gender differences in reaction to incentives, and how incentives affect deception and ethical behavior in general. In addition to the traditional laboratory and field studies, he is working with firms on using basic findings from behavioral economics to help companies achieve their traditional goals in non-traditional ways.

Dr. Gneezy’s research includes over 100 peer-reviewed journal articles, for which he won the Most Highly Cited Researcher prize for the last 8 years. He is a coauthor (with John List) of the international best seller The Why Axis: Hidden Motives and the Undiscovered Economics of Everyday Life and author of Mixed Signals: How Incentives Really Work which describes his academic work in a more accessible way to non-academics.

M.B.A. International Business — Xavier University
B.S.B.A. Marketing — Xavier University
B.A. Public Relations — Xavier University

At the intersection of research, strategy, branding and design, Kari has worked for clients such as the NCAA, Crest, Oral-B, Tabasco, Cummins, Trane, Gainbridge, and OneAmerica on brand positioning, consumer segmentation, visual identity and communication strategies across a variety of business challenges.

Leading Y&L’s Brand Strategy and Analytics practices, she understands the critical business equation of establishing meaningful audience insights, building sound strategies around those audiences and measuring those strategies’ impact on business. She’s a firm believer in uncovering the often unspoken, subconscious influences that drive consumer decision-making, while, at the same time, measuring any changes that marketing makes to reach and connect with its audiences more effectively.

When not conducting deep consumer interviews or delving into data, Kari tries to tap into her competitive nature as a former Division I swimmer by spinning, swimming and being active outside. Just don’t ask her to run—she played for the Y&L Kickball club only to “sacrifice” her ACL for the team.

Tom Denari is the President & Chief Strategy Officer of Young & Laramore, an independent, creatively-driven advertising agency based in Indianapolis. Tom has spent his career studying what makes people buy, exploring non-rational motivations to uncover why consumers do what they do. And, as a hands-on strategist, he continues to engage with consumers on a regular basis, leading Y&L’s consumer immersion and brand strategy processes.

Across his thirty-year career, Tom has led the brand strategy development for a wide variety of brands, including: Brizo: Delta Faucet's premium faucet brand, KraftMaid Cabinetry, Farm Bureau Insurance, Angie's List, Goodwill Retail Stores, Stanley Steemer and Steak n Shake restaurants, to name a few.

Continually questioning the conventional wisdom of traditional communications practices, Tom studies how non-rational influences affect consumers’ buying decisions. His writings on consumer behavior and brand strategy have been regularly featured in Advertising Age, AdWeek, Forbes and Inc.

Tom has an M.B.A in Marketing from the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University-Bloomington, and a B.A. in Economics from Wabash College.