| Bruce Campbell Wicks Unlimited Bruce Campbell has worked in the candle industry for 21 years primarily in candle wick optimization and test burning. He cofounded Wicks Unlimited in 1998 and currently works for the parent company, Stimpson. Bruce's has recently also opened a new company dedicated to State of the Art candle testing, CDAS. | |
| Janis Guadelli Takasago Janis lives and breathes consumer culture! She is a highly insightful and experienced culture vulture who focuses her efforts in consumer research, trends & futures and social media engagement. Janis has over fifteen years’ experience deep-diving into the consumer marketplace. With deep dedication and passion for understanding the today’s active consumer, Janis thrives and excels in interpreting their behaviors, backgrounds, drivers, and preferences. Through her exploratory research and daily dialogue with these markets, she develops unique and successful social media and trend programs for Takasago’s clients.
After being the “go-to-girl” for companies like Telemundo, Lucky Magazine, Teen People, Warner Brothers, and Reebok, Janis took her consumer insight abilities and started a company by the same name (GO-TO-GIRL Inc.). She came to Takasago from The Futures Company, a world renowned trend agency, where she spent time forecasting the future as VP of Qualitative Research & Trend Foresight. She joined Takasago three years ago and says “it feels like home again”.
Besides studying consumer culture, Janis's greatest passion is being a mom to her four year old son, Kellan. She has developed an expertise in all things “Paw Patrol” and most definitely can tell you how to get to Sesame Street. | |
| Mel Kleiman Humetrics Mel Kleiman is an internationally-known speaker, trainer, author, and consultant whose expertise is hourly, frontline employee recruiting, selection, and retention. With over 25 years of research and consulting work to his credit, Mel is known for helping organizations improve their employee hiring processes through high impact, high energy presentations that deliver hands-on, practical information and advice meeting attendees can put to immediate use. He also serves as president of Humetrics (which he founded in 1976) and is a member of several human resource-related boards and organizations as well as a longstanding member of the Society for Human Resource Management and the National Speakers Association. The author of five books, including the bestselling Hire Tough, Manage Easy, Kleiman has also written hundreds of articles for business, trade, and association websites and publications and worldwide. | |
| Tyler McIntyre Sonneborn LLC Tyler McIntyre is the Commercial Technology Manager for Sonneborn LLC, a world leader in highly refined hydrocarbons. He has been with Sonneborn since 2010 and has worked extensively to develop the Sono Jell® Candle Base product line. In his current role he leads a team of scientists at Sonneborn's Petrolia Plant (Western PA). The team brings new products to the market and works closely with customers during development projects. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Chemistry from Penn State University and is currently pursuing his Master of Business Administration from Waynesburg University. He lives outside of Pittsburgh with his wife and son and is an avid fly fisherman. | |
| Bonnie Schmidt ScentsAbility Bonnie Schmidt is the Founding Director of ScentsAbility and co-founder of The IDDeal Foundation. Her most important role is being Jessica’s mom and advocate. She started ScentsAbility, a non-profit providing job training, employment and housing for young adults with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD), ten years ago with her husband, John Becker. Her love of candles gave Jessica and others with IDD an opportunity to have purposeful employment, meaningful social relationships and experiences and a better chance at a productive life. Since then ScentsAbility has received much recognition including a United States Congressional Proclamation and most recently chosen as AOL’s Holiday Heroes. Bonnie is the recipient of 2018 WEX Award (Women’s Empowerment Expo), the premier event for female leaders, entrepreneurs and executives. The most challenging part of our mission is to build a community where young adults with IDD can WORK, LIVE and PLAY. The next two years Bonnie will be focusing on spreading ScentsAbility’s message of inclusion, while networking within the corporate, educational, and South Florida communities to help make this dream of a community a reality. When Bonnie isn’t being Mom and “second mom” to Team ScentsAbility, she enjoys painting and playing golf. You can reach her at bonnie@scentsability.org. | |
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