Vijay Swaminathan is the Co-Founder & CEO of Draup, an AI-Driven Reskilling and Talent Intelligence Platform. Vijay has extensive experience in the areas of Product Ideation, Concept to Productization, and Platform enablement. He brings a wealth of expertise in the areas of Data Analytics, Operations Research, and Strategic Management. He has developed numerous quantitative models and heuristics related to global talent, business analytics, and strategic business initiatives.

Vijay is also the co-founder of Zinnov (a leading research & advisory firm) and TalentNeuron (acquired by CEB a Gartner Company (NYSE:IT)). Prior to co-founding Zinnov and TalentNeuron, Vijay held senior positions at Hewitt Associates and KPMG Consulting. He is passionate about translating business ideas into tangible Intellectual Property.

Judith Almendra, Vice President Human Capital and Talent Acquisition at TTEC is an accomplished human capital professional with a proven track record of integrating business and people strategies to drive results. With over 15 years of business and human capital experience, Judith has led teams in the implementation of traditional and innovative strategies in the areas of marketing and communications, public relations, learning and development, talent acquisition, performance management, succession and employee engagement and employee retention.

In her 12 years with TeleTech, Judith has held progressive leadership positions, covering multiple facets of the for Human Capital spectrum as well as leading the development of company’s proprietary human capital tools, programs and solutions. Through her career, she has gained deep expertise in the international business and multicultural markets. And, she has played key roles leading global cultural transformation.
She is originally from Mexico and moved to the US in 2001 to pursue her Masters in Business at the University of Colorado. She is also a board member of the TTEC Community Foundation. The mission of the foundation is to provide better education opportunities to children in underserved communities, which is something Judith is very passionate about.

Crystal Lannaman is currently the head of Talent Acquisition and University Relations at BASF, the largest chemical company that creates chemistry to help solve the world's problems. In this capacity, Crystal leads her team ensuring that BASF acquires top talent, drives the employer branding and talent attraction diversity recruitment and management of third-party vendors. As an innovative and performance driven Human Resources professional with 15 years’ experience, she has driven impact in various large global organizations in various industries (manufacturing, retail, consumer goods to name a few).

Her leadership success has been experienced through organizational growth/development and business transformation, and global operations.  Crystal’s impactful HR solutions drive business growth and generates cost savings. She is a creative problem solver with expertise analyzing trends and implementing new business plans that boost business partnership and trust.  She drives for HR functional development resulting in increased capability and caliber ultimately improving performance metrics.

Crystal is passionate about empowering professionals to grow and develop to their optimal potential. Her speaking engagement specialize in professional branding, networking, career planning, interview and resume prep, and general HR consulting. Crystal helps to reimage intentionality on managing one's career.

Eric is well-known as a diligent bilingual networker and people connector within the professional Hispanic community. With proven years of experience in staffing/recruitment fields and D&I, he has worked on both corporate and agency environments focusing on management and technology placements. Presently, he is Director of Talent Acquisition leading corporate recruitment strategies at Warner Music Group’s HQ in NYC. Prior to joining WMG, Eric worked for companies such as Univision, Verizon, PR Newswire, McGraw-Hill, Gartner as well as overseas organizations in Australia.

As an established LinkedIn power user, he often is engaged to present and train people on improving their Social Media presence and digital branding with the world’s largest professional network. A passionate advocate of developing long-term relationships for personal and career growth, he has been a guest speaker/panelist at events in Columbia University, Penn State University, Red Shoe Movement, FindSpark, Proud to be Latina, Junior Achievement, SCIP, Google Innovation Lab, SHPE, to name a few organizations.

Kevin Danaher is the Head of Campus and Early Career Recruiting at Wayfair.

Emily McCrary-Ruiz-Esparza is a freelance journalist and From Day One contributing editor who writes about work, the job market, and women’s experiences in the workplace. Her work has appeared in the BBC, The Washington Post, Quartz at Work, Fast Company, and Digiday’s Worklife.