Forum 2023
Thank you for joining us at NextUp Forum 2023! Check out our 2023 Executive Forum Takeaways on the NextUp blog. Stand Up. Stand Out. What…
NextUp Executive Symposium & Forum offers an opportunity to join senior leaders from all over the country as they come together to examine ways to advance gender equality, be inspired by world-class speakers, and nurture their networks. The event drives leaders to act collectively to create real and sustainable change.
This year, we’re providing a unique experience on the first day of our conference, June 3 – NextUp Executive Symposium! We’ll focus on the challenges facing DEI&B and how to surmount them, including an opportunity to get access to cutting-edge research in a groundbreaking collaboration between IBM and NextUp, and learn from our experts and each other in a safe and private space.
Then, on June 4-5, we’ll broaden our scope at NextUp Executive Forum. Hear from thought-leaders and connect with peers who are working to power skill, coach high-performance, and build effective programs for equity in the workplace.
Your registration provides access to all three days – and we can’t wait to see you there!
Carolyn Heller Baird is a Strategy Principal and the Global Research Leader for Customer Experience and Design with the IBM Institute for Business Value, IBM’s business strategy think tank.
Carolyn conducts research and produces thought leadership on a variety of topics impacting customer experience, marketing, and digital transformation. She also covers workplace issues, such as employee experience, and she directs the IBV’s Women in Leadership study series. Her work spans more than 25 years with IBM, where—in addition to her executive consulting role—she has held numerous positions, including leading internal communications for IBM Consulting-North America.
Carolyn lives in Atlanta, Georgia and can be reached at linkedin.com/in/carolyn-heller-baird and cbaird@us.ibm.com.
Kara Swisher is good at what she does. And she knows it.
Kara Swisher is the host of On with Kara Swisher and co-host of the Pivot podcast. She’s editor-at-large at New York Magazine and a CNN contributor. Swisher is the co- founder of the technology website, Recode , and tech conference, Code, which is the country’s premier conference on tech and media.
Considered the top reporter in the tech game, Swisher has been reporting on the industry since the early 1990s. She was there when Amazon was looking for its first headquarters in Seattle, when Google was in its garage and when Netflix was just a small startup. Once called “Silicon Valley’s most feared but revered journalist” by New York Magazine , Swisher has established herself as the oracle of the tech world with unrivaled access to the industry’s most significant leaders.
In 2024, Swisher will publish Burn Book: A Tech Love Story — part memoir, part history, and ultimately a witty, scathing, but fair accounting of the tech industry and its founders who wanted to change the world but broke it instead. Burn Book includes soaring tales of innovation and brilliant entrepreneurs, as well as Silicon Valley’s much more complex history of striving, success, and failure. The book details how the commercial internet came into being and how, for all it has given the world, it now sits at the center of global power, creating a clear and present danger to humanity. Yet despite the damage she chronicles, Swisher remains optimistic about tech’s potential to help solve problems and not just create them. She calls upon the industry to make better, more thoughtful choices, even as a new set of powerful AI tools are poised to change the world yet again. At its heart, this book is a love story to, for, and about tech from someone who knows it better than anyone. She is also the author of aol.com: How Steve Case Beat Bill Gates, Nailed the Netheads and Made Millions in the War for the Web, published by Times Business Books in July 1998. The sequel, There Must Be a Pony in Here Somewhere: The AOL Time Warner Debacle and the Quest for a Digital Future, was published in the fall of 2003 by Crown Business Books.
Swisher was named to The Hollywood Reporter’s list of “Podcast Power Players” in 2022 and 2023, and to the 2023 Out 100. She also received the “Pioneer Icon” award at the 2023 iHeart Podcast Awards. Additionally, Pivot was named one of the “Best Podcasts of 2022” by the New York Times and “Best Thought Leadership Podcast” at the 2022 Adweek Audio Awards. She was previously a contributing New York Times opinion writer and former host of the podcasts, Sway and Recode Decode. She co- founded the technology website, Recode, and, before that, co-produced and co-hosted The Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference series (now called the Code Conference) with Walt Mossberg starting in 2003. It was, and still is, the country’s premier conference on tech and media, with interviewees such as Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, Tesla Technoking Elon Musk, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, Google and Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai, Netflix co- CEO Ted Sarandos, and many other leading players. Swisher worked in the Wall Street Journal’s San Francisco bureau and as a reporter at the Washington Post.
She was also a contributor to NBC, CNBC, and MSNBC. Swisher played herself on HBO’s Silicon Valley and Fox’s The Simpsons, and is a regular guest on national broadcast programs. She also hosted HBO’s Succession podcast, which was named Adweek’s 2023 “Podcast of the Year.” For many years, she wrote the column BoomTown, which appeared on the front page of the Marketplace section and online at WSJ.com. Previously, Swisher covered breaking news about the web’s major players and internet policy issues, and she also wrote feature articles on technology for the paper. Earlier in her career, Swisher worked as a reporter at The Washington Post and as an editor at the City Paper of Washington, D.C. She received her undergraduate degree from Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service and her graduate degree at Columbia University’s School of Journalism.
Kalissa Hendrickson serves as Managing Director of Executive Leadership Seminars at the Aspen Institute, a nonpartisan organization that drives change through dialogue, leadership, and action. She regularly works with CEOs, senior teams, executive boards, government officials, military personnel, and educators to help them become more self-aware and more self-correcting leaders by identifying and amplifying their core values.
In her current role at the Institute, Kalissa works at the crossroads of leadership development and executive education via Socratic dialogue and humanities-based inquiry. Each year her team delivers a diverse portfolio of virtual and in-person leadership seminars both domestically and abroad. Her entrepreneurial approach to expand the scope of Aspen Seminars has resulted in leadership seminars with organizations such as Microsoft, Meta, Centers for Disease Control, and the University of Chicago, among others. In addition to overseeing the department, developing external partnerships, program design, and serving as a spokesperson the Institute’s values-based leadership work, Kalissa is also a seminar moderator, regularly moderating Aspen Leadership Seminars including the flagship Aspen Executive Seminar on Leadership, Values, and the Good Society.
Prior to joining the Institute, Kalissa taught literature and composition at Arizona State University (ASU) where she earned her Ph.D. in English literature. A former aspiring symphony musician, she earned her bachelor’s degree in music performance from Northwestern University. She currently resides in Washington D.C. with her husband and dog.