The speakers at this years JRB Designer CEO Summit represent the best of the best. We have tapped into our vast network of contacts and enticed professionals to create brand-new seminars that are totally geared towards helping a designer jewelry business soar.
Each speaker is tops in their field and often costs hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars to get the chance to work with them and learn from them. Here you get literally a $10k education in one day for the cost of a Summit ticket.
Read about our amazing speakers and see why we're so proud to present them on Sunday March 14th at the Fashion Institute of Technology from 9am to 6pm.
Andrea Hill, Hill Management
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Andrea has over 20 years professional experience as the president and/or CEO of small and mid-sized companies, and she has demonstrated serial success in leading companies through rapid and profitable growth. Her experience spans multiple industries as the CEO of a jewelry industry manufacturing distributor, the president of an international clothing manufacturer and direct marketer, president of a marketing services firm, and a founding senior executive of a direct marketing catalog company in publishing, music and video.
Andrea's special expertise is in preparing companies for growth - whether they seek to improve cash-flow for organic growth, or acquire angel or institutional investors. She uses proprietary processes for strategic planning, operations improvement and management, financial reporting, and branding & marketing strategy - all areas which must be perfected in order to improve the bottom line or approach serious investors. In 2007 Andrea formed HMC Group (Hill Management Consulting, MentorWerx, and SupportWerx), providing consulting, coaching and back-office services to small and mid-sized businesses.
Meeling Wong. Meeling Wong
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Meeling founded her namesake consulting company in May 2005 , her clients have included; Jay Strongwater, Temple St. Clair, Konstantino, H. Stern, Hearts on Fire, Kimora Lee Simmons for Hello Kitty, Diamond in the Rough, Coomi, Mattia Cielo, Kimberly McDonald, Zadora Timepieces, and Padma Lakshmi.
Meeling was born in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, educated in England, and is a resident of New York City. Previous to the Jewelry industry, Meeling was a research scientist in organic chemistry.
Lisa Jenks, Lisa Jenks Limited
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Acclaimed designer Lisa Jenks, widely recognized for her distinctive modern style, has been creating extraordinary pieces for over 20 years. After graduating from Parsons School of Design, Lisa established her own company (Lisa Jenks Limited) in 1987, which officially marked her foray into the fashion realm. Eager to communicate and share her aesthetic with the world, she started designing jewelry that effortlessly combined her interest in ancient cultures (from African and Egyptian to Mexican and Polynesian) with a unique style that drew inspiration from her travels and love for the exotic. Lisa's original collections, which mainly focused on sterling silver, led to work with gold and precious stones and cemented her as one of the more versatile designers in the industry. Her success at established and well-respected retailers, such as Barney's New York, Bergdorf Goodman and Saks Fifth Avenue, enabled her to reach an extensive and loyal customer base. In 2004, Lisa was fortunate to collaborate with Origins, an Estee Lauder company, and developed a highly lauded packaging and gift item collection for their popular beauty and skin care lines.
In the past few years, Lisa has branched out far beyond traditional accessories, (specifically her impressive home accessories line and work with Lifetime Brands) but her passion remains entrenched in jewelry. Her most recent achievements have readied her to revisit her beginnings and return to her roots: jewelry design and her new collection, Lisa Jenks Jewelry, a highly-anticipated move that has excited customers and retailers alike.
Additionally, Lisa is a proud member of the prestigious Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) and has been honored with many awards; most notably, Jewelry Designer of the Year (2006) by the Women's Jewelry Association (WJA) and was named as a finalist in the International DeBeers Diamond Jewelry Design award. She resides in Brooklyn with her husband Chris, an award-winning photographer, and their two children Sam and May.
Kate Peterson, Performance Concepts
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Kate Peterson is the President of Performance Concepts, Inc., a company dedicated to providing innovative and effective consultation in the areas of organizational design and development, retail operations, human resource management, sales and consumer behavior, and training, and education focused on the learning needs of the Luxury Industry. Kate Peterson has over 25 years' experience in retailing, in every capacity of management, operations and training, in companies ranging in size from 1 to 1000 stores, having held senior operations and training executive positions with JB Robinson Jewelers, Kay Jewelers, Sterling, Inc. and Littman Jewelers prior to founding Performance Concepts.
Kate is a member of the Board of Directors of the Diamond Council of America. She is also the Training and Performance consultant to the Leading Jewelers of the World, an organization of high-end fine jewelers committed to providing the Ultimate Jewelry Buying Experience. Along with her Performance Concepts' team, Kate provides training and business consultation services to retailers, manufacturers and trade organizations worldwide. She has conducted workshops for education programs held in conjunction with JA International Jewelry Shows as well as JA Regional conferences, Couture International, The Centurion Show and the JCK Shows and has appeared at numerous other trade venues. She is a Contributing Editor for Jewelers' Circular Keystone Magazine and In Store Magazine and is a member of the Curriculum Advisory Board of the Fashion Institute of Technology.
Macala Wright Lee, owner, FashionablyMarketing.me
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lifestyle-related brands, products and services for almost 10 years. Her current clients include celebrity stylists Jessica Tingley and Kristen Turner, Sprinkles Cupcakes, and medium sized fashion companies throughout the United States.
In 2009, Wright-Lee partnered with venture capitalist Jeff Keni Pulver to host the first ever Twitter Conference, 140Conf, in London, New York & Los Angeles. For the conference, Wright-Lee created an international series on how medium-size retailers, Luxury and Fashion brands were using Twitter to market their product lines.
FashionablyMarketing.Me is a marketing, PR and merchandising firm that focuses on fashion and beauty brands, companies and individual industry professionals. Our agency offers a practical approach to online marketing. We develop and customize sensible strategies that merge traditional, online and new media services in into a comprehensive plan to meet -- and exceed -- each clients' marketing goals.
She is also the co-creater of FashionCamp NYC & founding member of FashionCamp LA. Currently, she teaches classes on online marketing. You can follow her on twitter@FashMarketing or @Macala. You can follower her on Twitter at @FashMarketing.
Marlene Richey, Marlene Richey Consulting
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Marlene received a BA in art and jewelry from Central Washington University and married jeweler Bill Richey soon after. They created what turned out to be an award-winning jewelry design firm with no idea of how to run a company. And that was the beginning of a long journey on learning the do's and don'ts, ups and downs, ins and outs of running a small art business.
During her 30+ year career in jewelry she has run a wholesale design business, a retail gallery, participated in hundreds of shows - craft and trade, indoors and out, juried and not juried, dreadful and successful. She traveled for a decade selling her jewelry in every nook and cranny of the US. She have served on numerous Boards of Directors (currently Society of North American Goldsmiths), consults with emerging and not-so-emerging artists both nationally and internationally, teaches seminars and classes (including at the Fashion Institute of Technology in NYC), gives speeches and participate on panels, writes articles for jewelry/craft publications including a regular column in Art Jewelry magazine called "Business Savvy" and has a book published by the MJSA Press on running a small jewelry design business called "Profiting by Design."
Michael Schreier, Senior Fine Jewelry Buyer, RueLaLa.com
http://www.ruelala.com/Michael is a third-generation jeweler who started his career as an independant retailer. After the store was sold he began working for a large catalog retailer and branching out into television and internet sales. As Director of Jewelry Merchandising for Ross-Simons Catalog he was responsible for product development, buying diamonds, pearls gemstone, silver and gold. He was also responsible for catalog creations including, layouts and approval of photography and copy. In addition, he was the liaison between Ross-Simons and QVC.Thus learning the new media.
Michael served as President of Direct Source Inc. a sourcing agency created for TJX Corp to work directly with factories in China and Thailand. Which brought him to Retail Convergence Inc., the parent company of RueLaLa.com, where he specializes in finding the right product for his diverse audience. RueLaLa.com is a relatively new business model of online sample sales with a trendy, designer product assortment.
Stacy Kaplan, co-owner, Truth be Told, Inc.
http://www.truthbetold.com/Her company has represented several key LA jewelry companies including Roseark, Jennifer Meyer, Sara Weinstock and many others.