Speaker Biographies

Hazem Ghonima

B.Sc. M.A. FCILT President & CEO

President & CEO of TAF Consultants™ of Ottawa, Canada since 1989. His company provides professional services in freight transportation, particularly in Traffic Analysis and Forecasting of modal freight movements through the Canadian and U.S. transportation systems.

TAF Consultants managed and implemented several major freight transportation projects on behalf of public and private organizations in Canada, the United States and Overseas that dealt with the present and future competitiveness of the North American transportation systems on the domestic and global levels. His company also designs and develops state-of-the arts data base information and forecasting systems.

Don Soderquist

Founding Executive, The Soderquist Center and former Sr. VP Chairman and COO,

Don Soderquist is the Founding Executive of The Soderquist Center. Don spent over 20 years with Walmart, and after Sam Walton died, Don became known as “The Keeper of the Culture.” Don led the company as Chief Operating Officer during a period marked by exponential growth. Under his watch, Walmart grew from being the largest retailer in the world with sales of $43.9 billion the year of Sam’s death, to becoming the largest company in the world with sales over $200 billion.

Walmart’s success is grounded in the highly ethical, performance-focused, servant leadership philosophies that Sam and Don instilled in the hearts of every associate. Don's passion now is to teach those same principles to companies and organizations around the world. He is the author of the bestselling book “The Walmart Way”.

GEORGE STALK, JR. Senior Advisor and BCG Fellow of The Boston Consulting Group, Inc.

Adjunct Professor of Strategic Management for the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto

George Stalk's practice is focused on creating unassailable competitive advantage. He has consulted to a variety of leading manufacturing, technology and consumer products companies throughout North and South America, Europe and throughout Asia. Along the way, George worked and lived in Japan for over a decade where he first revealed the sources of Japanese competitive advantage in cost, quality, but most importantly time, leading to BCG's breakthrough thinking on the use of time as a competitive weapon. To demonstrate the reproducibility of the Japanese strategy, George ran a client's factory in North America where costs were reduced and quality improved significantly while throughput times were cut by a factor of ten. At BCG, these efforts lead to the creation of a practice called Time Based Competition and re-engineering for speed as well as costs.

George is currently with BCG's Toronto office. He started with BCG in Boston in 1978 and has been with the firm's Tokyo and Chicago offices as well. George holds a BS in engineering mechanics from the University of Michigan, an MS in aeronautics and astronautics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and an MBA from Harvard Business School. George lives with his wife and six kids on a farm outside of Toronto.

George Magliano,IHS Automotive.

George Magliano is a Senior Principal Economist, Americas for IHS Automotive. In that role he is the North and South American groups' auto economist, responsible for relating the overall economic and market environment of North and South American light vehicle sales. He has focused on the automotive industry since 1989.

Magliano became director of Automotive Research when ECAP was acquired by WEFA, Inc. several years later. For WEFA, he supervised all global automotive research, primarily specializing in forecasting North American vehicle sales and production, as well as many Asian countries. Magliano also has developed models of international trade flows for vehicles and parts and conducted studies of the U.S. aftermarket. In addition, he has directed studies involving customer segmentation, price elasticity, and the outlook under alternative forecast scenarios.

Prior to joining ECAP and WEFA, Magliano was the senior corporate economist for J.P. Stevens, one of the world's largest manufacturers of textiles. While there, he was responsible for all economic and industry forecasting and assisted in the development of the annual corporate business plan.

Magliano is a graduate of St. Francis College and has a Master's degree from Fordham University. He is also a member of the National Association of Business Economists, New York Association of Business Economists, and the Society of Automotive Analysts.

T. Michael Riggs, Chairman, Jack Cooper Transport Co., Inc.

T. Michael Riggs is Chairman and the largest shareholder of Jack Cooper Transport and also served as CEO prior to Bob Griffin's appointment. Mike was President of Active Transportation when Active purchased Jack Cooper in 2009. With over seventeen years of executive experience in the trucking industry, Mike is also Chairman and Managing Partner of Innovative Equity Partners, a private equity firm that he founded. Prior to founding IEP, Michael served as the Chief Executive Officer of JHT, where he was responsible for over 4,000 employees and almost $500 million in annual revenues. He also served as the President of Automotive Carrier Services, the parent of Auto Truck Transport and a subsidiary of JHT and was President and Chief Executive Officer of Hook Up, a privately held truck transport company that he grew from $1 million to more than $70 million. Prior to Hook Up, Mike was President of Able Body, a manufacturer of heavy truck sleeper cabs that he grew from $4 million in revenue to more than $60 million in six years. Mike began his career with General Motors, where he held various manufacturing, labor relations and marketing positions in the U.S. and Europe in. Mike received his MBA from Harvard Business School.