PNW MBA Conference

Scott Bright

Chief Executive Officer, Jeeva

Scott is an accomplished technology executive with 30 years of entrepreneurial and growth-phase experience. He currently serves as CEO at https://www.jeevawireless.com, a U.W. spin-out commercializing ultra-low-power (battery-free) wireless data technologies. Scott also serves as an Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering at Seattle University. Previously, he was co-founder and CEO of Synapse Product Development. Scott holds four U.S. patents, received a B.S. Electrical Engineering from Ohio University and M.B.A. from U.W. Bothell, and is a Governance Fellow with the National Association of Corporate Directors.

Brett Clay

President and CEO, Change Leadership Group, LLC

Brett Clay, Ph.D. is a management consultant, certified executive coach, speaker, author, and part-time faculty at the University of Washington. A veteran of three decades of management consulting and international sales and marketing management, he is currently the founder and principal of Change Leadership Group, a management consulting firm. Prior to Change Leadership Group, he was a group product manager at Microsoft Corporation, and held executive positions as vice president of sales, business development, and marketing in Silicon Valley high-technology companies.

Brett’s interdisciplinary scholarship centers on the question of how leaders and organizations change. He is the author of a human development theory of change leadership and a personality assessment for identifying styles of leading change. He is the author of various books, scholarly chapters, and articles, including the award-winning book, Selling Change: 101+ Secrets for Growing Sales By Leading Change, and a chapter entitled, “John Kotter, A pragmatic observer of manager’s life worlds,” in The Palgrave Handbook of Organizational Change Thinkers.

Brett holds a Ph.D. in human and organizational development, masters degrees in organizational systems and business administration, and a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering.

Kristen Forecki

Vice President of Supply at Convoy

As one of Convoy's earliest employees, Kristen has run a diverse set of teams throughout the rapid growth of the business, including Operations, Legal, PR, Marketing, and Finance. She currently leads Supply, including Convoy's industry-leading Quality & Compliance team. Kristen is experienced in finance, product management, strategy, and operations, with prior experience at industry leaders General Mills, Amazon, the Boston Consulting Group, and Rover.com. As a strong supporter of technological innovation, Kristen serves on the Board of the Washington Technology Industry Association. She was also named a Top Woman to Watch in 2019 by Women in Trucking. Kristen earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and a BA in finance and marketing from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

Alan Gonzalez

Software Engineer, Microsoft

Alan is a software engineer and founder with over ten years of experience in the software industry, both in small startups and big corporations. Alan currently works at Microsoft's Supply Chain team, which supports manufacturing operations for Microsofts 1st party devices. In 2017 Alan co-founded and acted as board chair then CEO at omegaUp, a non-profit organization that aims to increase the number of talented software engineers in Latin America.

Alan earned his bachelor's degree in computer systems engineering from Instituto Tecnológico de Celaya, where he co-founded and acted as CEO of Caffeina Software, which built software for small businesses in the region.

Currently, Alan is pursuing an MBA in Leadership from UW Bothell Business School.

Megan Kennedy

Interim Director of the UW Resilience Lab

Megan Kennedy is the Interim Director of the UW Resilience Lab. A clinically trained leader and passionate community advocate, Megan is addressing issues of policy, organizational structures, programs, and services to improve student mental health and well-being at the UW. Her passion lies in applying strategies of adaptive leadership and collective impact to bridge gaps and strengthen system-wide collaborations and partnerships. Megan has produced and directed an award-winning documentary, spearheaded community-wide initiatives, designed and implemented new programs and service sites, and trained thousands of providers and organizational leaders on issues of mental health, resilience, and well-being. Megan was previously a Clinical Director at Youth Eastside Services, a community-based mental health agency, where she developed targeted interventions for LGBTQ youth and families. Since 2013, Megan has served on the Board of Directors of Eastside Pathways, a collective impact organization that serves as the "backbone" for 70+ partner agencies in East King County. Megan received a BA from Western Washington University, a Master’s in Applied Behavioral Science from Bastyr University, and is currently pursuing a doctoral degree in Educational Leadership at Seattle University.

Jeff Marcoux

Vice President of Marketing, TTEC

Jeff Marcoux brings entrepreneurial innovation to a big-tech world. With an emphasis on customer experience and digital transformation, he provides a strategic marketing approach that helps companies understand their current marketing maturity, where they want to go, and how they'll get there.

Jeff combines a passion for technology with a talent for storytelling, backing marketing insights with behavioral science and research. A results-driven leader, he focuses on meaningful ROI metrics that integrate both marketing and sales data to provide a holistic view of how marketing impacts pipeline and demand generation.

As Vice President of Marketing at TTEC, Jeff guides the company's digital transformation, helping the business shift to a more holistic customer-centric focus away from fragmented business units. He sits across TTEC's two business units: TTEC Digital (focusing on CX strategy and technology) and TTEC Engage (delivering on CX and creating brand ambassadors) leading segment marketing, demand generation, field marketing, and web.

Jeff is a Husky squared having done undergraduate at UW Seattle and his MBA between UW Bothell & Seattle. He is a loyal season ticket holder for Husky Football and loves teaching marketing for Oregon State & GreenFig university.

Beatris Mendez Gandica

Founder, Nuevo Foundation & Program Manager, Microsoft

Beatris Alejandra Mendez Gandica originates from San Cristobal, Venezuela. She is an engineer working as a Security Program Manager at Microsoft. In this role, she runs the daily operations of two services, one that is a fabric for hosting engineering bits and another that performs static analysis automation on source code for Azure, Bing, SQL and Microsoft Teams. Her work is essential to Microsoft as it yields the most secure services for their customers.

Beatris' enjoys giving back to the community. In 2018, she started a nonprofit organization, Nuevo Foundation, where she works to prepare underrepresented minorities to become tomorrow’s leaders. Nuevo Foundation’s mission is to inspire kids to be curious, confident and courageous by discovering the world of STEM. The nonprofit has taught more than 3,000 students about Computer Science and STEM education across eight countries and Puerto Rico.

In 2019, Beatris was awarded with the HACR Young Hispanic Corporate Achievers’ 40 under 40 award, the Outstanding Recent Alumni award from her alma matter in Wisconsin, and selected to be one of the 125 ambassadors for the American Association for the Advancement of Science IF/THEN to help shift the way our country—and the world—thinks about women in STEM. Lastly, she loves volunteering for youth causes such as TechnoloChicas and DigiGirlz.

Rob Pasterick

Former President, Boeing Shared Services Group

Rob Pasterick retired from the Boeing Company in 2016. Rob’s last position was President of Boeing Shared Services Group (SSG), an 8,000-person, multi-billion dollar business unit that provides common internal services across Boeing’s global enterprise. He led SSG from February 2010.

A 30-year Boeing veteran, Pasterick brought to the job significant experience in asset and process management, financial and reporting policy and leadership development. Prior to taking on his SSG assignment, Pasterick was vice president, finance and corporate controller, responsible for managing the company’s financial cost accounting, external reporting cost policy, companywide estimating, and common business systems.

Pasterick has also served as Chief Financial Officer for Boeing Commercial Airplanes, where he was responsible for the overall financial management of the $57 billion business unit, as well as its contracts and business operations functions. Before assuming CFO duties at Commercial Airplanes, Pasterick served as the group’s vice president and controller.

In this capacity, he was responsible for accounting, financial planning and reporting, pricing, estimating and cost management activities at the global aircraft manufacturer.

Previously, Pasterick served as Boeing Vice President of Financial Planning and analysis. He joined Boeing through the company’s acquisition of the aerospace and defense units of Rockwell in December 1996. Pasterick joined Rockwell in 1979 and progressed through a series of management positions in finance and material/subcontract management.

Pasterick has been a member of Financial Executives International Committee on Corporate Reporting. He participated in the CFO Council at the University of Washington and the Puget Sound CFO Roundtable. He also is a member of the Board of Visitors of the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Business, the Boeing Classic Golf Tournament Advisory Board, and was involved with the March of Dimes.

Pasterick earned an undergraduate degree in economics from the University of Pittsburgh and a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Pittsburgh Graduate School of Business.

He is married with two sons. He enjoys running, skiing, and golf.

Britt Provost

Executive Vice President, People and Culture, Accolade

Britt Provost is the Executive Vice President of People and Culture at Accolade. She plays a key role in shaping the employee experience across Accolade to ensure they attract, develop, retain and engage their talent.

Britt has over 15 years of experience leading People teams in global and growth organizations. Prior to joining Accolade, Britt was Chief HR Officer at Promethean, a global educational technology company, serving millions of teachers and classrooms worldwide. Britt also lead the People function at Apptio through many transitions during her tenure (as a private VC-funded company, through their initial public offering, to a publicly traded company, and finally, through a private equity acquisition).

She has also held many senior People leadership roles at Avanade, an innovative leader in digital & cloud services and business solutions, as well as Real Networks and Microsoft.

Britt is also an accomplished speaker and facilitator on topics including: enabling and growing great people managers; building organizational culture; developing high performing and engaged teams; and career empowerment.

Britt has a bachelor’s degree in Art History from the University of Washington and a Masters in Business Administration (MBA) from University of Colorado.

Joseph Robinson

Senior Vice President, Health Systems Solutions, Philips Healthcare North America

Joe is currently the Commercial Leader at Philips Healthcare. Joe also holds the position of Board Chairman for MITA (Medical Imaging & Technology Alliance) and was nominated in 2017 by Senator Elizabeth Dole to serve on the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Veterans’ Family, Caregiver, and Survivor Advisory Committee.

Joe’s career has been focused in Medical Imaging, starting with a small business in the Mid-Atlantic region. Joe has managed sales, marketing and service organizations in North America for many years. He has spent 30 years in Medical Systems across multiple large healthcare companies. Joe’s other roles at Philips include Sr. Vice President of Commercial Sales USA, Government VA/DoD Sales & Military Contracts, Service Solutions, GPO and Government Affairs, Sr. Vice President of Imaging Systems Sales & Marketing, Sr. Vice President of Enterprise & Government Solutions, Vice President of MR Sales, Vice President of Imaging Systems Marketing, Vice President of Sales South Zone and Registered Radiologic Technologist.

Joe received his Bachelor of Science degree in Healthcare Administration from Columbia Union College. In 2008, he co-authored "Radiology Business Practice: How to Succeed".

Joe is a proponent of collaboration, accountability and accelerating growth through empowered teams.

Joe enjoys playing golf, basketball, downhill skiing and spending time with his family.

Katie Young

Vice President, Urban Market Operations, Starbucks

Katie Young is vice president of urban market operations at Starbucks. She joined Starbucks in 2012 as a director of Food Strategy. She ran the $2B+ food P&L for several years then launched the food innovation team. She currently leads the integrated operations and strategy for complex urban markets. She also currently sits on the boards of Global Washington and the NW chapter of Trust for Public Land.

Prior to Starbucks, Katie worked at McKinsey & Company, specializing in the social sector, CPG, and agribusiness. She was part of the team that developed the first-ever agriculture strategy for the Gates Foundation. Other strategy work included: food security for 16 countries and creating transformational frontline change for the Ethiopian Government’s 60,000 extension agents.

Katie holds a Masters in Public Policy (MPP, International Development) from the University of Chicago and a Bachelors in Spanish and Honors Political Science from Kenyon College.