2025 Agenda

She’s helped lead the U.S. military into the era of AI. From the Pentagon to the White House, Eileen Vidrine has spent her career transforming how government and defense organizations use data to drive mission success. If you're serious about making AI work at scale, this keynote is one you can't afford to miss.

Eileen Vidrine

CEO & Founder

Vidrine Vantage, LLC

This talk explores how organizations can avoid these pitfalls and move toward scalable, trusted AI adoption.

Kristy Hollingshead

Senior Data Science Lead

Further

For executive ticket holders only.

Salema Rice

CEO & Founder

CDO Today

Take a short break away from data and code and reconnect with your creative side in this art therapy–inspired breakout. Through mindfulness and creative exploration, you’ll discover fresh ways to reduce stress, spark new ideas, and bring balance to the demands of working with data. No artistic experience is required—just an open mind and willingness to explore creativity as a tool for personal and professional growth.

Abby O'Connor

Therapist

Ellie Mental Health

This session highlights how strong data strategy and management empower organizations to transform raw data into high-quality, actionable insights that fuel impactful AI/ML models and strategic decision-making across the business.

Alicia Kimiagarov

Senior Manager of Data & Analytics

Cerrowire

How can customer reviews inform product design? Corporations typically use surveys and conjoint analysis to gauge customer interest in certain products and services. We see value in applying AI/LLMs/ and text analytics to readily available customer reviews to gain insights into the preferred aspects of successful products. We will explore in our talk NLP and LLM methods to extract these insights by turning the reviews into structured data. We will also explore how to harness the relationship between text and numeric data from reviews and ratings in order to map customer preferences. Not only can we understand these relationships, we can also learn the impacts on customer segmentation.

Jessica Pearson

Strategy Lead

Gensler

Today, AI tools promise to answer questions and spin up charts at the click of a prompt. But impactful data visualizations, which connect people with a message and add context to raw numbers, still require a human leading the design decisions. During this breakout session, we’ll dive into how we create effective data visualizations that make data meaningful.

Amanda Makulec

Founder & Data Visualization Designer

Independent

In a world where technology is advancing at an exponential pace, how do we, as humans, keep up? Join us at DataConnect 2025 as we explore "The Human Side of Exponential Change: Courage, Curiosity, and Grace." Discover how the rapid adoption of innovations like AI, quantum computing, and robotics is reshaping our lives and learn how to navigate these changes with the right skills, mindsets, and structures. This keynote will provide insights into leveraging curiosity to learn, courage to experiment, and grace to build resilient systems that allow us to thrive in this new era.

Mimi Chizever

Vice President, Emerging Technology & Innovation Center

Nationwide Insurance

This session explores the business value of AI governance by comparing leading frameworks, equipping data practitioners with the knowledge and strategies to select, adapt, and advocate for effective, ethical, and risk-mitigating AI practices tailored to their organization.

Nicole Janeway Bills

Founder & CEO

Data Strategy Professionals

This talk examines why hallucinations arise and surveys key detection strategies, including human evaluation, LLM-as-judge methods, uncertainty measures, and factuality scoring.

Ashley Lewis

PhD Candidate

The Ohio State University

When life moves fast, our nervous system often does too — leaving us distracted, stressed, or stuck in autopilot. This experiential session offers a chance to pause, reset, and return to presence. Led by Andrea Kefalos — coach, consultant, and certified HypnoBreathwork® facilitator — you’ll be guided through a short practice designed to release stress, quiet mental chatter, and reconnect with clarity and confidence.

Andrea Kefalos

Neuroenergetics & Hypnosis Practitioner

The Confident Career Corner

Einstein famously said, “Imagination is more important than knowledge.” Yet, Sam Altman declared we’re entering an ‘Intelligence Age,’ reflecting a future of AI algorithmic determinism that sounds more like a poorly rebranded iteration of the Information Age, drowning in data but devoid of wisdom. Where is human agency in this future? We need radical imagination to envision, choose, and build an equitable future for all. Join this session to discover how to reawaken human agency and transform collective imagination into impact.

Helen Todd

Founder & Podcast Host

Creativity Squared

Poor data quality is the leading cause of AI failure and the stakes are high. Join moderator Mimi Shalash with Adita Karkera (Deloitte), Colleen Saunders-Chukwu (Nationwide), and Dr. Samantha Howe (Ohio Medicaid) as they explore why data quality is the foundation of AI success, how to balance governance with speed, and what emerging tools can help organizations “get the data right” from day one.

Colleen Saunders-Chukwu

AVP, Data Science & Analytics

Nationwide

Adita Karkera

Chief Data Officer - Government & Public Services

Deloitte

Mimi Shalash

Strategist & Director

Splunk/Cisco

Dr. Samantha Howe

Analytics Director

Ohio Department of Medicaid

In this demo, we’ll showcase how the portal brings together diverse data sources, intuitive search and navigation, and rich metadata context to empower users to quickly find and trust the data they need.

Na Zhang

Software Engineering Manager

Netflix

Organizations are becoming burdened with too many tools and too many tech shifts - all while facing an explosion of structured and unstructured data across diverse environments. Yet this challenge also presents an opportunity: with the right hybrid data foundation, organizations can unlock insights, allowing data to be delivered at speed and scale to fuel AI.

Tiffany Du

Product Manager

IBM

In today's data-driven world, data literacy is no longer a luxury but a necessity. This interactive talk will equip you with the tools and strategies to empower your organization with a data-literate workforce. We'll dive into the importance of data literacy, how to assess your organization's current level, and practical steps to implement a successful data literacy program.

Angelica Spratley

Manager of Academic Data & Assessment

KIPP NC

Joyce Myers

Chief Data Officer

Modern Technology Solutions Inc.(MTSI)

This presentation explores the transformative potential of Agentic AI in revolutionizing agricultural inventory management. We look at how AI/BI Genie, powered by Azure Databricks, can empower domain experts through natural language processing (NLP). By enabling the configuration and refinement of agent behavior, this approach facilitates dynamic, data-driven inventory optimization. We showcase how this technology streamlines operations, reduces inefficiencies, and enhances complex supply chains.

Lakshmi Devulapalli

Data Architect

Limoneira Company

We’re entering an era where AI doesn’t just respond to typed commands, it can talk, listen, and understand in real time. Voice AI agents are emerging as the next step in human-machine interaction, enabling more natural and accessible ways to engage with technology. In this talk, we’ll explore what makes voice the most intuitive interface, how Voice AI agents differ from traditional chatbots, and the opportunities they unlock across industries; from customer experience to accessibility and beyond. I’ll also share a live demo powered by Telnyx, showcasing how an AI agent can hold a simple, natural conversation over voice. Attendees will leave with a clear sense of where Voice AI fits in the AI landscape, and why it’s poised to become the next big shift in how we interact with machines.

Sonam Gupta

Developer Evangelist

Telnyx

This session explores how small and medium-sized businesses can maximize ROI by using Business Intelligence to turn raw data into strategic insights, guided by real-world case studies and practical BI strategies.

Amee Gill

Business Intelligence Consultant

Analytixx

In this talk, I’ll introduce CC/CD: Continuous Calibration / Continuous Development, a framework we’ve applied across industries to make AI systems enterprise-ready.

Aishwarya Naresh Reganti

Founder & Forward‑Deployed Staff

LevelUp Labs

Stick around after Day 1 talks conclude for our one-of-a-kind After Party supported by the team at Interworks! Reconnect with old friends and meet new connections while enjoying food, drinks, music, and great conversation.

The AI revolution is in full swing, but are we measuring the right things? While many organizations are chasing the promise of new technology, true value is found in the outcomes it delivers. In this keynote, Cindi Howson, Chief Data & AI Strategy Officer at ThoughtSpot, will challenge the audience to shift their focus from AI hype to business impact. She will share practical strategies for building a data foundation that not only fuels AI, but ensures every AI initiative is an ROI conversation. Attendees will learn how to transition from simply shipping dashboards to solving for customer outcomes, fostering a culture of experimentation, and using trusted data to unlock sustainable business value in the age of AI.

Cindi Howson

Chief Data & AI Strategy Officer

ThoughtSpot

How NLP and LLMs Can Help or Hinder Gender Equality This session explores how Natural Language Processing and Large Language Models can both perpetuate and combat gender bias, offering ethical strategies for developers to ensure more equitable AI systems.

Astha Puri

Senior Data Scientist

CVS Health

Learn how semantic layers unify data, reduce costs, and improve AI accuracy by standardizing metrics and business logic across platforms, enabling more consistent and trustworthy analytics.

Rachel Kurtz

Analytics Architect

InterWorks

You’ll leave with actionable tools to protect your well-being, sustain performance, and lead with clarity.

Allison (Allie) Lombardo

Clinic Director

Ellie Mental Health - Westerville

Learn how to move AI and data workloads from development to production with Kubernetes. This session covers reproducibility, resource scheduling, and managing large datasets—giving you practical strategies to build scalable, resilient systems.

Shefali Victors

Strategic Architect

Rackspace

AI and generative AI have shifted the way we work and it's also shifting the way we think - for better and for worse.

Merav Yuravlivker

Chief Learning Officer

Data Society Group

This session demonstrates how to transform complex healthcare insights into engaging, accessible stories using design and storytelling to drive audience impact and meaningful change.

Megan Jones

Creative Director

Oracle

Discover how privacy-preserving techniques like analytical embedding enable modeling with sensitive data you can't see, offering powerful insights without compromising data security or compliance.

Devyani Biswal

Sr AI Strategy Consultant

IQVIA

Let’s explore the evolving concept of authenticity in a digital landscape dominated by AI-generated content, deepfakes, and misinformation.

Andi Andrews-Isreal

VP, Global Transformation CxM

Johnson & Johnson

The DataConnect Conference is proud to present the Data Visualization Competition. This esteemed event invites participants to submit their data visualization projects, where creativity, innovation, and insightful storytelling converge. During this session we will be awarding the winners of the competition and sharing their project submissions.

Mimi Shalash

Strategist & Director

Splunk/Cisco

Bhavya Kashyap

Sr. Director - Business Architect, Data Strategist & Client Partner - Digital Transformation

Apexon

Sphinx - The First AI Copilot for Data Science

Caroline Liu

Chief of Staff

Sphinx

Nate Horan

Founding Engineer

Sphinx

This session highlights how semantic layers and no-code analytics tools democratize data access, enabling non-technical users to independently explore insights and accelerate decision-making at scale.

Shruti Khanna

Manager Game Data Science & Engineering

Netflix

This session explores the future challenges of AI adoption and equips organizations with strategic solutions for managing integration, measuring success through KPIs, and maximizing ROI while ensuring responsible and ethical implementation.

Kristy Wedel

Learning Experience Manager

AlignAI