Michelle has dedicated the past three years to building a global customer advocacy team at ServiceNow that is passionate about telling customer stories, as well as launching the first ever ServiceNow global sales reference program. With a further eight years at SAP and Workday in customer advocacy and customer marketing roles, Michelle has a wealth of experience to share when it comes to developing mutually beneficial customer engagement.

A customer advocacy transformation

How has ServiceNow’s customer advocacy program grown from a 2-person team in the U.S. to a global organization with 25 team members all bringing customer stories into the heart of the ServiceNow brand?

In this session, Michelle will share the transformational journey that has seen the team’s ongoing progression from pure execution to building a strong foundation for a strategic, global program that has transformed to include sales reference delivery and more human, emotional storytelling. She will talk about critical success factors like securing ongoing investment in customer advocacy, maturing cross-organizational relationships, and developing deeper support from senior leaders, which all helped the team build a truly cross-organizational ecosystem focused on finding, activating, and promoting customer stories as central to sales, marketing and thought leadership initiatives.

An essential element of the transformation has been advocating for customers and demonstrating how to engage customers in a way that is valuable for them. Michelle will share her insights, including challenges, highlights, and tips for cultivating interest and buy-in from stakeholders.

The best-known brands create a special connection with their customers, empowering their fans and turning a one-way marketing channel into multiple conversations. Pascale’s expertise is in creating and managing advocacy programs that build and nurture relationships with executive customers; strengthening the brand, increasing retention, and driving revenue. Pascale joined Coupa Software in 2021, and has previously held global customer advocacy roles at ServiceNow and Citrix.

The Only One in the Room: Being a Black Woman in Marketing

(and How Customer Marketing Can Drive Positive Change)

It’s fact, Customer Advocacy teams are simply not diverse, and the stories we tell don’t mirror society’s diversity and composition. I have been in corporate marketing for over 20 years, customer marketing for tech for 16. In that time the vast majority of customers featured in our stories, and customer speakers at events, have been white men. Meanwhile, I have had only one Black female manager and have never been part of a global corporate marketing team containing more than 3 Black women. Being underrepresented and outnumbered is lonely!

In this session we’ll take a hard look at the numbers, then our opportunity to affect change. Our teams are uniquely positioned in most corporate marketing orgs as hubs, working with just about every company department. And we get to meet customers every day. We have both a responsibility and a unique ability to increase diversity, both within our teams, and in our storytelling. Let’s talk about how we can do it.

Frank has held a broad range of senior level positions during his 33-year career. He brings his strong international background and significant experience in many high-tech and print industry positions. As a senior leader, Frank is responsible for leading several enterprises and commercial relationships in the U.S. His previous roles at HP include GM of global alliances, director of global accounts, and services sales mgr for EMEA. Frank is active in several international civil service orgs in Geneva, Switzerland, and resides in Las Vegas with his wife and two sons.

Cynthia is a passionate leader, storyteller, and innovator.
A customer advocacy pro with more than 20 years’ experience, she creates programs that showcase customer innovation and success, incorporating thought leadership, personal brand amplification, and storytelling. In roles at VMware, Salesforce, New Relic, and now Google Cloud, Cynthia has embraced every area of advocacy from strategic planning & comms, to CABs, awards, events, and CX. Cynthia spends her non-work time as a mentor, advisor, and non-profit board member/chair.

Customer Advocacy – into the Metaverse

Cynthia’s talk is still in development but will touch on the impact of Web3, Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning and Metaverse on Customer Advocacy & Experience.

The session will be a discussion will be on the influence of these new technologies on the customer advocacy and customer experience functions for organizations, the importance of establishing a 360 view of customers, and using technology and tools to scale and drive greater impact to the business.

Miranda Ling (she/her or they/them) is an afrofuturist, writer, and $25+ Million fundraiser with a background in the arts and education. As the Director of Advancement for 826 Valencia, she believes in the power of storytelling to imagine a more just and loving world, and call that world into being. She loves building connections through personal stories and social impact, and earned her MA in Communication and BA in Comparative Studies in Race and Ethnicity from Stanford University.

Storytelling with purpose; recapturing creativity

Corporate life, the focus on compliance, and content creation by committee have all sucked the life out of storytelling. In this session we’re going to explore the work being done by 826 Valencia, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students ages six to eighteen with their writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. Our work is based on the understanding that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success and that great leaps in learning can happen when trained tutors work one-on-one with students.

826 Valencia’s work is a reminder that storytelling really does have the power to change lives. You will come away from this session understanding how you can make change, and possibly strive to recapture a little of the joy and expression removed by corporate life.

Alison is an experienced marketing pro committed to building exceptional relationships with internal & external customers. A Top25 Customer Marketing & Advocacy Influencer, she moves advocacy programs from merely transactional, to an engaging, multi-dimensional customer experience. With >20 yrs in marketing, customer success and sales ops, she knows what truly drives organizational growth—the customer voice.  While her true passion resides with customer advocacy, Alison fancies herself a better-than-average baker and cook, an avid nature lover, curious explorer, and animal welfare enthusiast.

A Reference Evolution

It’s a tale as old as time (or as old as customer advocacy anyway). We need customer references! When do you need them? Yesterday! No, we already used those five customers; who else do we have? And while those of us in the industry know that customer advocacy goes well beyond the reference, we still must support our internal stakeholders with this critical piece of the sales cycle. But, just as advocacy has evolved over the years, so have customer reference programs.

Going beyond the reference and creating a multidimensional approach allows us to not only maximize the customer voice, but minimize our workload. How? Join us to learn about building a customer reference program that is definitely not a one-way street (i.e., transactional), but allows you to create a strategy around multi-use customer references, leveraging reference content across a marketing strategy, and finding new ways to support your sales team without exhausting customers with repetitive requests.

Mike started his career in software sales before developing and launching global CRPs with companies such as Procore, Rubrik and Workday. His knowledge of sales has complimented his ability to create meaningful client relationships to influence over $1B in ARR. Mike has a listen-first approach when it comes to providing customer references by alignment with sales leadership, understanding opportunity details and ensuring customer advocates have a best in class experience. Outside of work, you can find Mike at a baseball game or cooking up Texas style smoked bbq with his wife in Northern, CA.

Partnering With Sales.

In this session, Mike will be sharing insights of how his prior experience in sales has given him a unique perspective into how customer references are a driving force in the sales cycle, thus giving him a broader view of global strategy and how Customer Marketing can be a true partner in achieving larger company goals.

While customer reference requests are typically reactive in nature, we must align ourselves with sales leadership to better forecast future needs while continuing to be the advocate for our very own customers.

Workday has developed a best-in-class global reference program with not only a very small turnaround time, but with quality customer insights and data to support our partners in sales. Mike truly looks forward to sharing his expertise to help you drive results.

Precediha Dangerfield (she/her) is an activist, educator with a background in sociology and community organizing. As the Program Manager of 826 Valencia, Tenderloin, equity is at the core of her work and program development. Precediha created the Black Students’ Initiative which provides equity in access to opportunities for Black students in the San Francisco Bay Area to becoming published authors. She finds deep fulfillment in supporting young writers gain the tools for understanding how to write stories in order to authentically tell their own.

Storytelling with purpose; recapturing creativity

Corporate life, the focus on compliance, and content creation by committee have all sucked the life out of storytelling. In this session we’re going to explore the work being done by 826 Valencia, a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting students ages six to eighteen with their writing skills, and to helping teachers inspire their students to write. Our work is based on the understanding that strong writing skills are fundamental to future success and that great leaps in learning can happen when trained tutors work one-on-one with students.

826 Valencia’s work is a reminder that storytelling really does have the power to change lives. You will come away from this session understanding how you can make change, and possibly strive to recapture a little of the joy and expression removed by corporate life.

Robin’s a self-confessed customer advocacy geek with both client and agency experience, that finds joy in making unexpected connections to create the new, the next. His focus is to drive advocate marketing forward as a profession, is very proud to be able to facilitate getting folks together at AMA, and he has a love for cheese and coffee (so dreams in technicolour)

As well as being a remarkable customer advocacy program consultant, people are Melissa’s passion. She is all about making real connections with real people – giving them a reason to listen and remember conversations and stories. When not hosting AMA, Melissa is the ultimate cat lady with an unfounded fear of wind turbines

David has been a member of the customer advocacy professional community since 2003, when Point of Reference was founded. His passion is helping companies maximize the persuasive power of customer advocates through expertise and purpose-built technology; and establishing customer advocacy as a strategic game-changer in achieving company growth.

Lisa is a seasoned customer advocacy pro with more than 20 years’ experience in customer marketing leadership roles and contributing to customer advocacy programs. Her knowledge extends from strategic planning and elevating brand awareness, to influencing revenue growth, CABs and developing outcome-based content. 

Ray Rhodes is the co-founder of UserEvidence. As a long time sales leader Ray was a great customer storyteller. He now works to help B2B marketers capture and tell customer stories at scale.

Trish is passionate about working with customers to elevate them as innovators and thought leaders to inspire and influence others.  In various roles, she has developed exec advocacy and marquee programs.  When she’s not cheering at a high school football game or cruising down the coast, you’ll find Trish amplifying customer voices across comms, events, and brand.

VP of Customer Engagement and Community at Crowdvocate, Soctt comes from a rich background in technology companies such as HubSpot, Apple, Marketo, Google, Adobe and Intuit.

Patrick is responsible for the go-to-market for products that synchronize revenue teams from initial lead to customer advocacy. Previously he was CMO at Altify. Prior to Altify, he was CRO at Simpplr, managing the sales, marketing and customer success orgs. Patrick has also held multiple exec positions at Salesforce, DataSift, Savvion and Business Objects.