June 16, 2008

Networking Dinner for Speakers and Attendees
The Russian Tea Room, New York

June 17, 2008

The New York Athletic Club

Overview: What's on the Mind of CEOs?

A look at recent C-Suite studies — identifying the greatest concerns of senior management worldwide — and reactions from CEOs

Jon Spector, CEO, The Conference Board

Steve Loranger, CEO, ITT Corporation

Drilling into the issues...CEO commentary and panel discussions:

• Executing Business Strategy

  Many companies suffer from a chronic disconnect between strategy formulation and execution. Learn how you can embed efficient execution into your corporate culture. This panel will dissect what it means to take a top down, bottom up and cross functional approach to executing strategy while closing the gap between ambition and performance.

  Joseph R. Marciano, President & CEO, Oce Business Services
  Mike Walsh, CEO, Lexis Nexis, US Legal Markets
  Lan Lakshminarayana, Chief Strategy Officer & M&A Officer, Wipro Technologies
  Jim Greene, Vice President, Cisco Systems

• Finding, Keeping, and Engaging Talent

  Filling the talent gap is proving to be a serious challenge to corporate strategies internationally. An aging population, fewer H1-B visas, wage inflation in China and India and gaps in education and training are among the factors contributing to this extreme competition for talent in many industries. This panel will share insights on keeping the talent pipelines filled through effective workforce planning, leadership development and management succession, leveraging a multi-generational, diverse workforce, and striking a deal with employees that engages hand, heart, and head.

  Randy Dearth, President and CEO, Lanxess
  Linda Barrington, Research Director, The Conference Board

• Corporate Reputation & Risk Management

  Global expansion, increasing regulatory oversight and Web 2.0 are among the factors that have heightened awareness about the importance of preparing for macro, sector, and operational threats to an organization's reputation and competitive position. This panel will talk about integrated approaches to organization-wide risk management and how they can ensure crises are handled effectively when they do arise.

  Kathleen Edmond, Chief Ethics Officer, Best Buy
  Eve Dreher, Communications Adviser to the CEO, Coors Brewing Company
  Ellen R. Dulberger, Ph.D, Vice President, Enterprise Risk Management, IBM

A Conversation with Ernst Lieb, President and CEO, Mercedes Benz USA

Working More Effectively With the C-Suite

In this session, participants will explore the building blocks of effective C-Suite relationships and how to apply them by working through a series of case studies. Topics will include:

• The importance of knowing the issues to engage substantively
• Characteristics of C-level issues, why framing them is so crucial—and how to do it
• Clarifying what it is that you have to bring to the table
• Developing an engagement plan
• Collaborating to achieve a common objective
• Advocating a point of view

In closing, each participant will be asked to identify and commit to specific actions they can take to begin improving a C-suite relationship.

Jon Spector, CEO, The Conference Board and Jeffrey Garten, Professor, Yale School of Management