Growth + Profitability Summit Chicago 2023

Mike Smith is a pricing advocate for business leaders, pricing teams, and sales organizations who pursue the noble journey to grow sales profitably.
Mike’s 30 years in finance and pricing have made him a trusted advisor, and sought-after opinion leader within his organization. He has implemented pricing software with multiple pricing vendors and across multiple selling organizations. His diverse business experience coupled with his passion for data and analytics has helped his organization develop pricing analytics tools and expertise.
Mike received his BBA in Accounting from the University of Notre Dame, and his MBA from Southern Methodist University. Mike is a certified pricing professional and has also been selected by Valparaiso University to be an advisory board member for their Customer Experience Program. Currently Mike supports global pricing technologies at Zimmer Biomet, a global medical technology leader.

Ryan has held multiple pricing roles over the past 10 years within Cardinal Health’s Pharmaceutical business. His roles have included responsibilities covering Deal Management, Contracting, Pricing Strategy, Pricing Analytics, and most recently, Product Pricing. Ryan has experience with prime vendor negotiations, marketing of customer proposals, and preparing competitive pricing for Cardinal Health customers throughout Retail, Specialty, and Acute classes of trade.. In his current role, he leads a team responsible for all product pricing within Cardinal Health Pharmaceutical Distribution.

Reid Garrett has over 15 years of expertise in the field of pricing. In his career, he has showed exceptional skills in managing pricing strategies, implementing effective pricing programs, and overseeing pricing operations for large-scale divisions. Recognizing the importance of measurable success, Reid developed clear key performance indicators and protocols to assess the effectiveness of pricing programs. By implementing these metrics, he enabled data-driven decision-making and continuous improvement in pricing strategies. Over the past six years he has worked at TruckPro, where he is a driving force in the field of pricing.

Sam’s journey into the pricing world is a unique one. After spending 8 years as a Forensic Meteorologist & Data Scientist, he joined GAF’s Master Data Management (MDM) team as a Data Analyst. Sam transitioned from MDM to Supervisor of Pricing Systems, and is now a Senior Systems Analyst on the Sales Operations Technology team.

During Sam’s time with GAF, he has overseen the current pricing system, and played an integral part in the Vendavo Deal Guide update & cloud migration as well as the Deal Price Optimizer installation and upgrade. Sam is currently at the forefront of GAF’s adoption of Vendavo Price Point & CPQ. Over the coming years, Sam will continue to be a core influencer of new pricing strategies in these systems, and will be involved with the implementation of other new platforms & enhancements during GAF’s ongoing pricing evolution.

Kevin Mitchell is the President of The Professional Pricing Society (PPS), the worldwide professional member organization dedicated to training, education, and networking in pricing, revenue management, sales enablement, and related fields. He is also the Publisher of The Pricing Advisor monthly newsletter and the quarterly Journal of Professional Pricing. Kevin is a frequent speaker at pricing conferences and events in North America, South America, Europe, and Asia where he often discusses trends and demographic changes within the pricing and revenue management disciplines.
Before joining PPS in 2007, he worked for 11 years in various Financial Management fields with Colgate-Palmolive and General Electric. He has BA degrees in Economics and English from Duke University and an MBA in Marketing from The William E. Simon Graduate School of Business at the University of Rochester.

Bruno Slosse has served as the President and CEO for Vendavo since 2015, where he has led a comprehensive transformation of the company from a 1st generation B2B price management solution provider, into the leading SaaS provider of Price Optimization & Management and CPQ (Configure, Price, Quote) solutions.

Bruno came to Vendavo with more than 20 years of sales and senior leadership experience in enterprise software at companies like Cerner Corporation and Ascend Learning. Having spent over 10 years as General Manager of Cerner Europe, Bruno has worked with global clients and led organizations in both the US and Europe.

He is fluent in Dutch, French, German and English. Bruno graduated with Honors with a Bachelor’s Degree in Economics from the University Ghent, Belgium.

Ron Pascuzzi has more than 20 years of leadership experience in software, IoT, and consulting.

As Chief Customer Officer, Ron provides executive leadership across the entire customer lifecycle, from onboarding through to retention, expansion, and renewal. Prior to joining Vendavo, he spent 4 years as Chief Customer Officer at Plex Systems, Inc. where he led customer success and services.

Ron holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering and an MBA from Western Michigan University.  He resides in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Jesus is a Design leader specializing in enterprise product design. He has over 25 years of design experience. In his role at Vendavo, he aims to bring product development closer to everyday users. When we can close that gap with users, we can then identify opportunities & collectively build solutions that genuinely add value for Vendavo.

Darius leads the Value Acceleration practice at Vendavo. He has 15+ years of professional experience in pricing and digital transformations across various industries including B2B manufacturing, distribution, and financial services. He is an advocate for elevating commercial excellence to strategic levels in organizations and is an expert in scaling pricing & negotiation capabilities. Before joining Vendavo Darius advised customers at other consultancies including Simon-Kucher & Partners focusing on top-line growth initiatives.

David Anderson is the Boston-based leader of the Americas Business Consulting team at Vendavo. Since 2001 he has worked inside companies to advance their strategic pricing agendas. Dave is a manufacturing engineer by training (BS, MSE from Kettering, Purdue), has an MBA from Harvard Business School, and he has had the great privilege of working in the field of strategic pricing with many fantastic pricing experts over the course of his career

Janice is a Principal Consultant at Vendavo with 20 years of progressive global experience in pricing consulting and process transformation focusing on pricing process re-engineering, change management, and profitability for manufacturing, wholesale distribution and process industry customers. Prior to Vendavo, Janice was a lead consultant delivering pricing solutions for the banking and financial industries. Janice holds a MS degree in Engineering System Management from Texas A&M University and BS degree in Industrial Engineering and Operations Research from UC-Berkeley.

Corey Schroeder is the VP of Product Management for Intelligence Cloud products at Vendavo. His current focus is developing new analytics and optimization capabilities to help pricing and comercial leaders profitably identify and execute revenue enhancing opportunities. Previously, Corey worked for a multi-billion-dollar supplier of advanced electronic components where he led the global pricing team, a centralized capability supporting ten business units across 40 countries. His focus was to build and execute B2B commercial excellence capabilities through the lever of pricing.

Dan Cakora is a Chicago-based Business Consultant at Vendavo. He has done “pricing stuff” since 2006, ranging from measuring inflation to implementing pricing software to leading pricing teams, and has even developed new pricing products. Dan has worked in manufacturing, CPG, ecommerce, and B2B distribution. In addition to pricing, he is passionate about data visualization and is happy to chat about charts, graphs, and widgets. Dan is an economist by training (BS, Purdue University) and received his MBA from DePaul University.

Anne has operated within the pricing field for the past 20 years. She has led global B2B company value initiatives, where she has deepened the cross functional understanding of customer economic value and improved company profit. She is truly committed to value pricing and has been celebrating its benefits to organizations where she has worked. She has implemented tools and processes to ensure globally consistent pricing processes. Anne has worked at Afton Chemical the past six years, where she is an integral part of Afton Chemical’s pricing strategy.

Frederick is an executive pricing strategy and analytics leader with a career spanning over 20 years. With a strong background in marketing, statistical modeling, decision analysis, and product development, he is utilizing his expertise to solve complex high-value business problems and drive revenue gains. He has a genuine passion for using data to generate pricing insights that foster customer value creation. In his roles, he has taken various initiatives, including coordinating data mining, predictive modeling, and pricing analysis, to provide invaluable portfolio pricing guidance for client accounts.
Over the past two years, Frederick has been an integral part of Dentsply Sirona. With a proven track record of driving revenue growth and a relentless pursuit of excellence, Frederick contiues to make significant contributions to the organizations he serves.

Matt is a Siena College graduate with a master’s degree in accounting and over five years’ experience with KPMG, a big 4 public accounting firm.  Currently oversee the accounting and finance functions for a leading food packaging manufacturer, Genpak. Genpak produces innovative, quality to go food packaging for major food service operators and distributors.

With over 25 years of line management and consulting experience, Chris is recognized for his pricing expertise in a broad range of industries and is a sought-after thought leader in the field of margin analytics. Chris has more than two decades of experience at global strategy consulting firms, including McKinsey & Company and Corporate Executive Board.
Chris holds a BBA in Economics from the University of Georgia and a JD from Yale Law School. He currently resides in Atlanta and Fort Lauderdale.

Dave is a Partner and Head of Simon-Kucher’s New York office, where he supports top-line growth strategy design and implementation for clients in a variety of industries.

Dave’s areas of expertise include customer segmentation, price setting and implementation, product and service design, and rewards and loyalty programs. His recent project work has focused on business services, industrials and manufacturing, and franchise organizations.

He is a guest lecturer at multiple MBA programs, regularly speaks at industry and business association events, and authors content focused on customer segmentation, product and service offering, and go-to-market strategies (pricing and digital focused).

Dave is a native of Philadelphia and earned his bachelor’s degree in economics from Brown University, where he was a three-year varsity football letterman.

Gina Bates brings more than 20 years of sales and leadership experience from SAP, Coupa, Anaplan and Salesforce.

Gina has a proven track record building successful, high-performing teams, and is passionate about cultivating a strong team culture. She leads the Global Sales, Business Consulting, Sales Operations, and Partnership teams in all geographies. Gina is a Michigan State alumna.

Alex Hoff has been with Vendavo since 2008 and has served in roles across pre-sales, professional services, marketing, and product management. In his current role as head of product management, Alex manages a talented team that brings innovative software solutions to market that enable B2B corporations to operationalize their commercial excellence strategies. Since 2018, Alex has led the transformation of Vendavo’s product portfolio from a first-generation on-premises software platform, to a portfolio of integrated cloud-native SaaS products.

Prior to working for Vendavo, Alex worked in various marketing and pricing roles for Fortune 500 companies in business services, retail/consumer goods, and freight transportation.

Alex earned his MBA with a Concentration in Marketing from the MJ Neeley School of Business at TCU where he also holds a B.S. in Psychology.  Alex was also among the early participants in the Certified Pricing Professional program from the Professional Pricing Society in 2008.

Mitch is the Profit Evangelist at Vendavo, with 25+ years of experience in the technical, operational, marketing, and commercial arenas of the chemical industry. Prior to Vendavo, Mitch was with BASF and Orica in product marketing and business management, driving operational optimization, pricing excellence, and margin improvement, as well as personal engagement in high value sales negotiations. Mitch also has deep experience with raw materials supplier portfolio management having negotiated large scale and long-term agreements with leading suppliers.

Elvin McLaughlin has over 20 years of professional services, software deployment and Customer adoption experience. As the Sr. Director NA Implementations, Elvin is responsible for the delivery of the Vendavo product suite in the Americas. His teams work with our customers to drive best practices in their respective industries and catapult our customer business KPI’s while deploying the software to enable.

Prior to Vendavo he performed as a Procurement and Strategic Sourcing expert at Accenture and BearingPoint. Elvin earned his Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from Florida Tech, a M.B.A. from University of St. Francis and currently resides in the Chicagoland area.

Aneesa Needel is a Senior Product Marketer, focused on delivering industry-leading products across market verticals and helping customers innovate and transform their pricing, selling, and rebate strategies. Obsessed with technology that drives customer value, Aneesa helps solve business challenges by aligning their needs with best-fit products and solutions. She’s collaborated with hundreds of B2B customers in the eCommerce, legal, and cybersecurity verticals to guide their market paths to better and stronger solutions.

Based out of Dallas, TX – Zara has 10 years of Client Success background managing top-tier Customers in implementation of all strategic, long-term evolution of client programs including the overall direction and operational management of all business activities.​

​Zara has a proven ability to provide leadership and develop develop strong Customer partnerships that promote retention and loyalty by managing accountability, creating development plans, ensuring KPI targets are met and driving adoption of Company products/services.

Mike Slavin is a results driven member of Vendavo’s Business Consulting team with more than 15 years of management experience with manufacturing and distribution companies in pricing, product management, customer service, and supply chain roles. He has more than 25 years of both pre-sales and post-sales consulting experience with large enterprise software companies including Oracle, SAP, PROS and Vistex.   Mike joined Vendavo  2019.  His current responsibilities include leveraging his industry experience to recommend value-based pricing, CPQ and commercial excellence solutions for Vendavo prospects and customers.