Where Culture Drives Growth Summit

Thursday, October 22

• 9:00 AM Breakfast & Registration
• 9:30 AM Opening Remarks

  Brandon Gutman, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Brand Innovators

  Marc Sternberg, Co-Founder & Co-CEO, Brand Innovators

  Joe Varano, Vice President, Content & Community, Brand Innovators

  Maggie O. Connors, Chief Marketing Officer, North America, Havas

  Jorge Plasencia, CEO & Co-Founder, Republica Havas

• 9:45 AM Culture as a Growth Engine: How Brands Turn Cultural Insight into Commercial Impact

  Many brands understand culture. Fewer operationalize it. This panel explores how leading brands use cultural intelligence to unlock demand, drive relevance, and create measurable business growth.

  Martha Garnica, Multicultural Marketing Lead, Mead Johnson Nutrition (a subsidiary of Reckitt)

  Monica Gil, Chief Administrative and Marketing Officer, NBCUniversal Telemundo Enterprises

  Javier Herran, Chief Marketing Officer and CIO, Sedano’s Supermarkets

  Moderated by: Jorge Plasencia, CEO & Co-Founder, Republica Havas

• 10:15 AM From Purpose to Pilot: Building an AI Strategy That Fits Your Culture

  Before choosing an AI tool, organizations need to decide what they want it to do and why. This discussion steps back to the start of the process: identifying where AI can drive the most value for your business, designing pilot programs that test those ideas in a low-risk way, and integrating what works into the culture of your company. Participants are invited to share their experiences, challenges, and open questions on how AI can support consumer understanding and, ultimately, drive desire and power growth. 

  Theo Holloway, CHDM, Senior Director, Marketing, BWH® Hotels

  Santiago Alvarez Matamoros, Chief Commercial Officer, LATAM Cargo, LATAM Airlines

  Stephanie Wicky, Head of Marketing, Ryder

• 10:45 AM Building Brands with Cultural Relevance

  Cultural relevance can drive growth, but maintaining it across markets, audiences, and platforms is increasingly complex. Explore how brands balance consistency with adaptability in a rapidly evolving cultural landscape. 

  Glory Alcántara, Director of Multicultural Marketing, General Mills 

  Guillermo Santa Cruz, President of Homestead-Miami Speedway, NASCAR

  Daniela Loreto, Digital Marketing Director, Latin America & Caribbean, McDonald’s

• 11:15 AM Networking Break
• 11:30 AM Where Culture Meets AI: Scaling Human Experiences

  Artificial intelligence can identify patterns at scale, but can it genuinely understand culture? Eirasmin Lokpez-Cobo, Head of Cultural Intelligence & Transformation for Republica Havas and Havas Miami, will explore how organizations can bridge the “Interpretation Gap”: the distance between what data reveals about behavior and what that behavior means within cultural and social contexts. This session will examine an integrated approach to developing culturally relevant brand and customer communications. Attendees will learn how cultural intelligence can help identify opportunities with diverse audiences, build nuanced segments, map cross-cultural journeys, increase messaging resonance, develop culturally relevant concepts, validate communications before launch, and optimize performance post-launch. The result is a scalable and more informed, efficient, and impactful multicategory approach to connecting with diverse audiences and advancing business growth.

  Joining Eirasmin is Michelle Palacio, Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Florida International University (FIU),  one of the largest, highest-ranked U.S. public research universities with a very diverse student body of 56,000. Drawing on their work together, they will show how cultural intelligence helped the university understand how students, alumni, and faculty define success, opportunity, and institutional value, and ground its positioning in validated audience insight.

  Michelle Palacio, Senior Vice President, Chief Marketing & Communications Officer, Florida International University

  Moderated by: Eirasmin Lokpez-Cobo, Head of Cultural Intelligence & Transformation, Republica Havas

• 12:00 PM Innovation at the Speed of Culture

  Consumer expectations evolve faster than product development cycles. Learn how leading brands are using cultural intelligence to accelerate innovation, develop more relevant offerings, and stay ahead of market shifts.

  Casey Hurbis, Chief Marketing Officer, Cinch Home Services

  Moderated by: Joe Camp, Director of Demand Partnerships, SE7EN

• 12:30 PM Lunch
• 1:15 PM The Cultural Advantage: Why Growth Leaders Think Differently

  Culture is increasingly becoming a leading indicator of business performance. Explore how high-growth brands use cultural intelligence to identify opportunities, anticipate shifts in consumer behavior, and make smarter strategic decisions before competitors do. 

  Marci Greenfield, Head of Ecommerce, Travelpro

  Max Kaczynski, Senior Director, Digital Marketing, Cinch Home Services

  Jennie Kaylie, CEO & Founder, Rock the Brands

  Lauren Maffei, Senior Director of Business Development & Partnerships, Purpose Brands

   

• 2:00 PM Wrap