Speakers

Don has a popular voice in the worldwide media, and writes frequently as an "expert blogger" for Fastcompany.com. His thought leadership, keynote presentations, and executive workshops routinely focus on the business issues that today's global enterprises are grappling with, while trying to maintain a competitive edge in their marketplace. These include:

* Building stronger customer relationships, better customer experiences, and trust;

* Balancing long-and short-term financial goals by focusing on customer value;

* Engaging employees in order to create a stronger, more competitive corporate culture;

* Stimulating innovative thinking and benefiting from new ideas within a firm; and

* Dealing with social media, customer advocacy, and increasing levels of business transparency.

With co-author Martha Rogers, Ph.D., Peppers has produced a legacy of international best-sellers that have collectively sold well over a million copies in 18 languages. Peppers' and Rogers' newest book, their ninth, is Extreme Trust: Honesty as a Competitive Advantage. It suggests that social networks and rapidly increasing transparency have combined to raise customer expectations regarding the trustworthiness of the companies and organizations they deal with. Extreme Trust follows Rules to Break &; Laws to Follow, published in 2008, and named as the inaugural title to Microsoft's "Executive Leadership Series." This book addressed the challenges of succeeding in a world where networked customers and engaged employees hold immense power over your brand, making it doubly dangerous to succumb to the kind of rant short-termism that characterizes many businesses today.

Among the other best-sellers authored by Peppers and Rogers, their first”The One to One Future (1993)”was named by Inc. magazine's editor, George Gendron, as "one of the two or three most important business books ever written," while Business Week called it the "bible of the customer strategy revolution." Enterprise One to One (1997), received a 5-star rating from the Wall Street Journal. One to One B2B made the New York Times Business best-seller list within a month of its publication in 2001. And their 2005 book Return on Customer was named one of the 15 "most important reads" of 2005 by Fast Company, and cited again in 2007 on its list of the 25 "Best Books" in business. In 2011 the authors released a second, updated edition of their CRM textbook for university use in graduate level courses, Managing Customer Relationships.

Previously, Peppers was a celebrated new-business rainmaker in the advertising industry, and the CEO of a top-20 direct marketing agency. Prior to Madison Avenue, he worked as an economist in the oil industry, and as the director of accounting for a regional airline. He holds a B.S. in astronautical engineering from the U.S. Air Force Academy, and a Master's in public affairs from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. He is a competitive runner and a very happily married father of five.