Mark W. Schaefer is a globally-recognized author, keynote speaker, futurist, and business consultant who blogs at {grow} — one of the top five marketing blogs of the world. He teaches graduate marketing classes at Rutgers University and has written 10 best-selling books. Mark’s new book Audacious: How Humans Win in an AI Marketing World describes an essential framework for businesses to stand out and be seen in a noisy world.

Cyrus runs Zyppy SEO, an online marketing consultancy based near the forests of the Oregon coast. He writes about Google’s algorithm and frequently publishes new studies and experiments. Previously, Cyrus worked as an official Google Quality Rater and helped lead SEO and content at Moz.

Emily Kramer is a leading voice in B2B Startup Marketing. She’s known for her pragmatic, yet opinionated approach & clear frameworks. Emily previously led and built marketing teams from the ground up at Asana, Carta, Astro (acquired by Slack), and Ticketfly and has been the first-ish marketer 4 times, leading teams through hypergrowth and at scale. Since starting the MKT1 newsletter, Emily’s created content with millions of views across LinkedIn & Substack, taught 1000s of marketers in courses, and advised & invested in over 100 companies.

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Kevin is an advisor to some of the world’s fastest-growing startups and has defined Organic Growth strategies for companies like Ramp, Reddit, Bounce, Dropbox, Hims, Nextdoor and Snapchat. He led SEO and Growth at the world’s leading e-commerce platform Shopify, the #1 marketplace for software G2 and the #1 developer company Atlassian. Once a week, Kevin sends The Growth Memo to +20,000 subscribers and regularly speaks at conferences around the world.

Madhav Bhandari is CMO at Storylane, an AI-native platform for creating interactive demos in minutes, giving buyers a hands-on way to test-drive products. While others play it safe, he’s built a decade-long track record of scaling startups from $2M to $20M+ ARR using bold campaigns and “pattern interrupt” experiments that make prospects stop scrolling and start buying. On LinkedIn, he pulls back the curtain on these high-stakes marketing moves – the wins, the bombs, and the million-dollar lessons in between.

Carrie Rose is the Founder and CEO of Rise at Seven – one of the fastest-growing agencies in the UK and US, now operating across Europe and North America. What started as a bold idea to collide brand advertising with SEO has evolved into a search-first content marketing agency creating category leaders across every searchable platform – from Google and YouTube to TikTok, Reddit, ChatGPT and Amazon.

Today, Carrie leads a global team of organic media planners who don’t just respond to search demand – they create it. Her focus is on engineering semantic brand and category signals across every searchable touchpoint – building relevance, discoverability, and authority in the places that matter most.

A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree and regular voice at industry events, Carrie is known for telling it like it is – challenging traditional SEO, calling out outdated tactics, and championing a multi-channel, search-first approach built for how people discover today.

Chris Cunningham is the Head of Social Marketing at ClickUp and one of its four who started the company. He built ClickUp’s content into the best in B2B SaaS, surpassing 1 billion impressions in 2024. During his time at the company, ClickUp has grown to over 1,400 employees, raised $535 million at a $4 billion valuation, and run major campaigns including a Super Bowl commercial.

Bryan leads IBM’s Inbound marketing programs which includes a team of journalists, technical creators, a/v production and channel strategists across areas including search, newsletters & podcasting. His team is responsible for driving IBM’s organic visibility and growth globally. In previous roles he has led teams across demand generation, analytics, product marketing and social media.

Kayle Larkin is the Head of Marketing at Elevar, the #1 Shopify conversion tracking tool. A recognized leader in marketing analytics, she is known for her innovative ideas on tracking and measuring the impact of marketers’ work. Kayle teaches GA4 and Looker Studio through her YouTube channel, Analytics in Minutes, where her tutorials have been shared by Google Analytics and have helped tens of thousands of marketers.

John-Henry Scherck is the founder and CEO of Growth Plays, a leading B2B Content Strategy & SEO agency that works with mid-market and enterprise technology businesses to drive pipeline, not just page views.

Sophie Brannon is the Co-Founder & Director of StudioHawk US, based in Atlanta. With over a decade of SEO experience spanning agency, in-house, and consultancy roles, she has worked across a wide range of industries including eCommerce, finance, gaming, health, and SaaS. Sophie brings a strategic, data-driven approach to organic growth, helping brands scale sustainably through technical SEO, user experience testing, content and digital PR. She’s passionate about making SEO accessible and mentoring the next generation of search marketers.

James Norquay is an SEO with 20 years of experience. He started in SEO by running a Myspace Layouts site in 2005, growing it to over 20 million+ visitors from SEO. James founded Prosperity Media in 2012, which is Sydney’s largest SEO, content, & digital PR agency, and has worked with clients in the most competitive SEO markets, such as cryptocurrency, finance, FMCG, health, and news. The team also manages a portfolio of 30+ affiliate assets in competitive verticals in both the Australian & US markets. Prosperity also runs Australia’s largest dedicated SEO conference, the Sydney SEO Conference. You can expect an actionable talk from James with plenty of takeaways for SEO professionals, both new and old.

Heather Physioc leads the global Discoverability offering at VML. The Discoverability group serves more than 70 enterprise brands across verticals and around the globe. The award-winning discoverability group has been recognized as the Best Large Integrated Search Agency, Integrated Search Agency of the Year and International Search Team of the Year.

Based in Kansas City, Heather is a graduate of the University of Missouri in Columbia, with a bachelor’s degree in strategic communication (advertising), and holds an Executive Masters of Business Administration (EMBA) from Rockhurst University. She is an adjunct professor of digital marketing at the Masters level at the University of Kansas.

Brandon is the Global Lead of Total Search at SolarWinds, where he focuses on building intelligent search and predictive intent systems to drive global growth. He has led and consulted on strategy for iconic brands including Foursquare, Workday, Evernote, and Warby Parker. Formerly the Global Director of Search at Merkle and Dentsu, Brandon brings deep expertise in unifying paid search and SEO to eliminate siloed strategies across a single SERP. He is also a certified Google Machine Learning Engineer and the founder of Hendricks.Al, a think tank focused on intelligent predictive marketing systems.

As CEO of Digital Web Solutions, Dawood Bukhari has over 13 years of expertise in sales and marketing to spearhead high-impact Digital PR and SEO campaigns. He has personally helped over 100 agencies improve profitability, with 25% of them doubling their revenue year-over-year, and his initiatives have resulted in an average 98.75% year-on-year growth across client campaigns. Beyond his leadership role, Dawood is a podcaster, a consultant, and a content marketing strategist whose entrepreneurial mindset and commitment to scaling businesses make him a sought-after voice in the digital marketing landscape.

Debbie Chew is an SEO Manager at Stripe and organic growth consultant with over 10 years of digital marketing experience. She specializes in SEO for B2B and SaaS companies and has spoken at various conferences including MozCon, SearchLove, and Women in Tech SEO Fest.

Jean-guy brings over 15 years of SEO experience with a strong focus on product development and technical strategy. His approach is rooted in data-driven decision-making. Jean-guy currently leads SEO product development at AT&T, where he has driven measurable growth in organic traffic and sales. Previously he held impactful roles at Verizon, GalaCoral in the UK, and Videotron in Canada, where he led initiatives across paid search, affiliate marketing, and consistently delivered performance improvements, built high-performing teams, and launched scalable SEO programs.

Rory is the Head of EN Growth at HubSpot. He’s responsible for leading user acquisition across HubSpot’s web properties, and he’s currently working on developing HubSpot’s AI Search playbook. Rory has over a decade of digital marketing experience, in-house and agency-side, delivering growth strategies for startups and leading SaaS brands, including Remote, Cloudflare and Stripe.

Travis Tallent is a driving force behind Brainlabs’ industry-leading SEO & CRO initiatives, serving as Managing Director. He spearheads a 90+ person team, delivering transformative digital growth strategies for some of the world’s most recognizable brands, including Microsoft and Capital One. Based in Denver, CO, Travis also shares his expertise through the Tallent’s Take: Marketing newsletter, finds inspiration in nature, plays saxophone in a local band, and dedicates his time to volunteering for LGBTQ+ organizations.