Miguel Morales is an area market manager with Monsanto. Miguel Morales is a veterinarian from Mexico who graduated with honors from the National University in Mexico City. After 3 years in practice focusing on milk quality and research, he joined the Monsanto Company in 1990. He currently resides in California where he serves as a technical services specialist with Monsanto. One of his roles is to support dairies with employee training and development.
Angelo Mino is the President of Summit Consulting Services, Lenexa, Kansas. A native of Ecuador, Mino has led Summit Consulting Services since 1998, and has been a workshop and keynote speaker for the Associate Landscape Contractors of America and twenty more international, state, and regional landscape associations. Summit provides clients with immigration consulting services, multicultural programs, seminars, motivational speeches in both English and Spanish, business coaching, supervisor training, and development of certification programs for landscape companies.
Simone Fojgiel offers a wide variety of services for multimedia projects, especially created for hitting the Hispanic market. Born in Montevideo, Uruguay she is nowadays the most exported voice that her country ever had, and without a doubt, the top Spanish Voice over Female Talent in the US right now. Simone has built a long, rich, successful career over the past two decades, which began while studying Mass & Social Communications at the most prestigious university of her country, Universidad Catolica del Uruguay. After working for 13 years at the #1 FM station, Océano FM, as an On-Air Personality and DJ, Main female Corporate/Commercial Voice Talent, Audio Imaging Director and Creative Copywriter, Simone decided in 2004 to promote her talent on the Internet.
Marlene Quijano is Director R&D for Cereals, Bars, Better For You Platforms and Open Innovation for the Snacks & Cereal Sector at Kraft. She is responsible for Category Leadership across Growth, Quality and Core Programs across North American Cereal, Bars, Back To Nature and South Beach Diet Categories.
Prior to moving into this assignment, Quijano had prior leadership roles in the Snacks & Cereal Sector. Quijano was the Director for Snacks & Cereal Productivity and Pilot Plant Operations, responsible for Raw & Pack productivity across Biscuit, Snacks, & Confections, involving major product and process cost optimization initiatives and Pilot Plant Operations supporting Growth, Quality and Productivity for the sector. She also served as the Director Packaging and Engineering where she oversaw all of the Packaging and Engineering activities for Biscuit, Snacks & Confections businesses.
Quijano also held a leadership role in Human Resources where she was responsible for guiding the Kraft diversity agenda and focusing on effective strategies to meet quantitative and qualitative goals across the Westchester and New Jersey management sites.
Quijano began her career with the company in 1984 as an intern in the Beverage Division at General Foods Corporation. A year later, she joined the company as a technical researcher in Beverages. She has held numerous positions of increasing responsibility including Senior Engineer for Maxwell House and Asset Planning Manager for Maxwell House Logistics. In 1995, she was named Beverages Operations Quality Manager where she focused on leading and implementing food safety and quality assurance initiatives. A year later, she was named Technology Section Manager for the Beverages Division and then in 1998 became Technology Section Manager for Kraft's Coffee & Cereals Division.
In 1999 Marlene was promoted to Associate Director for Beverages, Desserts & Snacks with overall technical business leadership across two categories - Ready-to-drink beverages and new product development for the entire division. She progressed in that capacity to overseeing the overall technical business leadership across Kraft's Dessert businesses.
Marlene Quijano has a bachelor's of science in Chemical Engineering from Cornell University.
Luis Machuca is the President and Chief Executive Officer of Kryptiq Corporation, the leading provider of next generation connectivity solutions for healthcare.
From 1981-1996, Machuca held various positions at Intel Corp before becoming co-GM of the OEM Products & Services Division where he established Intel as the #1 motherboard supplier in the world.
In 1996 he became the EVP of the NEC Computer Services Division of PB-NEC Corp. In 1999, Machuca joined eFusion Corp. as President and COO and subsequently merged the company with ITXC.
Luis Machuca received his BSEE in 1980 and MSIE in 1981 both from Purdue University.
Scarlett Alvarez is the Regional Managing Director of Investor & External Relations for AES Latin America. Alvarez joined AES via its relationship with EDC in 2002 as Director of Investor Relations. In 2005 she was promoted to EVP of Investor & External Relations which included social responsibility, public affairs and media relations in addition to Investor Relations. While at EDC, Alvarez worked on numerous international bond offerings. Additionally, she led the listing of EDC on the Latibex stock exchange in Madrid: the first listing of a Venezuelan company. Prior to joining EDC, she worked in the public telecommunication company of Venezuela (a subsidiary of Verizon) to coordinate their debt refinancing. Scarlett Alvarez received her B.A. in Business Administration from Universidad Metropolitana in Venezuela and a postgraduate degree in Capital Markets from New York University.
Fernando Poma has been the Managing Director of Real Hotels & Resorts since 2000. During that time, Poma has grown Real Hotels and Resorts from four to 22 premier hotel brands including InterContinental, Marriott, Quality and Comfort Inn. His growth plans are focused on Costa Rica, Honduras, Panama and Colombia and include a JW Marriott hotel, a JW Marriott Resort and five Courtyard by Marriott hotels. The company is also expanding its InterContinental hotel base.
Prior to joining Real Hotels and Resorts, Poma was assistant to the managing director of Choice Hotels Europe and worked in asset management and hotel acquisitions for the Westmont Hospitality Group.
Poma spoke at Cornell University on Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008 as part of the "Conversations with Entrepreneurs" series presented by the Leland C. and Mary M. Pillsbury Institute for Hospitality Entrepreneurship at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration.
Fernando Poma graduated from the School of Hotel Administration at Cornell University and received his MBA from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Tony Mendes is the Director of the Academy for Entrepreneurial Leadership at the University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign.
Previously, Mendes had been with the Kauffman Foundation where he served as the Program Director for Kauffman campuses which was the funding unit of the foundation for providing support to colleges and universities for entrepreneurship.
Mendes has more than 20 years of experience in entrepreneurial education and in the healthcare industry. Prior to his position with the Kauffman Foundation, he served for more than thirteen years as a training and development manager and health promotion manager for AT&T Corporation.
Tony Mendes is a licensed psychologist and holds a Ph.D. in counseling from the University of Missouri and an MBA from Rockhurst University.
William D. Perez succeeded William Wrigley, Jr. II as CEO of Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company, the world's largest chewing-gum manufacturer. He is the first person outside the Wrigley family to head the 116-year-old company.
Previously, he succeeded Phil Knight as CEO of Nike, Inc and served from November 2004 until his announcement on January 23, 2006 that he was resigning from Nike due to disagreements with Nike founder and chairman Philip Knight over how to run the company. Previous to his position at Nike, Perez worked for eight years as president and CEO of S. C. Johnson & Son.
Bill Perez received his undergraduate degree from Cornell University and a graduate degree from the Thunderbird School of Global Management.