Petcare Innovation USA

Heidi Sirota

Heidi Sirota serves as Nationwide’s Chief Pet Officer, leading the nation’s first and largest provider of pet insurance protecting more than 1 million pets. She joined Nationwide in 2018 as vice president of marketing for the Retirement Solutions business and led an expansion of its capabilities and markets.

Before joining Nationwide, Heidi transformed consumer experiences in human health care. As UnitedHealth Group’s Optum Bank vice president of marketing, she pioneered the retailization of health savings accounts, and as a marketing executive at Aetna and ConnectiCare she introduced new, engaging ways for consumers to shop for health insurance and get care.

Heidi started her career in commercial bank operations, then moved into investment and insurance marketing leadership at The Phoenix Companies. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communications from Loyola Marymount University and completed executive education from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Heidi sits on the Board of Trustees of the Human Animal Bond Research Institute (HABRI) and the Board of Directors of Second Harvest Food Bank in Orange County, California. Also she is an Advisory Board member for the University of California Santa Barbara-Extension, Customer Experience Certificate Program and the executive sponsor of Nationwide’s Pet Advocacy and Wellness Support (PAWS) Associate Resource Group.

Dennis Chmiel

Jon Alexander

Jonathan Wainberg

Shaina Denny

Shaina is the Founder and CEO of Dogdrop— an LA based start-up building the next generation of dog care.  Shaina went to business school in Shanghai and ended up staying in China for over three years to work at early stage tech start-ups before returning to the US to get involved in the growing LA tech scene. She has her Masters of International Business and is a co-instructor and guest lecturer at Whittier College. She's passionate about international business, lifelong learning, and her mini dachshund, Poppy!

Renaldo Webb

Renaldo Webb is Founder and Chief Product Officer at PetPlate. Inspired by his dog Winston, Renaldo founded PetPlate after deciding that he did not want to feed his dog anything less than real food. After making hundreds of batches of home-cooked dog food for Winston and his pup pals, Renaldo decided to launch a pet food brand that he could proudly call his own. 

Renaldo graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology with a degree in Physics, and prior to starting PetPlate worked at LCatterton and McKinsey & Company. He launched PetPlate as a nationwide subscription service in early 2017, following an appearance on the hit TV show Shark Tank.

Amanda Howland

Andy Katz

Rebekah Kang

Da Chang

In his role, Da focuses on the operations function across our hospitals and supporting BluePearl’s organizational goals.

Da’s prior experience in the medical field includes his roles as VP of Operations and Chief Operating Officer of Advanced Dermatology as well as his positions at Sea Lane Biotechnologies, Maine Center for Lipids and Cardiovascular Health and Health Dialog.

Da earned his undergraduate degree at Harvard University, followed by a Master of Business Administration at the University of Florida. He is a dynamic leader who earns trust and builds relationships via transparency, communication and teamwork along with his data-driven approach to operational leadership.

Adrian Archie

Originally from Concord NC and grew up with the goal of becoming a Veterinarian. I Attended University and graduated with a B.A. in Psychology after switching my major from a Pre-Vet Focus. 

From 2003 until 2005 I played Professional Football in the CFL for the Montreal Allouettes and briefly for the Atlanta Falcons. Upon hanging up my cleats began a decades long career with Stryker Corp in Sales and Product Management for Neurosurgerical Highspeed Instruments.

After a successful career in Corporate America I wanted to get back to my passion for animals. I founded petNmind in 2014 with the mission to improve pet health through quality nutrition and pet parent knowledge packaged in a personalized approach to customer engagement. After 6 years of success delivering our mission I franchised the business and we signed our first franchisee recently. Our Franchise concept is based on a small box design that offers the best products, a personalized approach that pet parents love, and a simple business model that is inexpensive, easy to pivot, scalable, and in high demand. We want to create a more diverse community of business owners in the always fruitful Pet Industry. 

Ryan Honaker PhD

Wayne Wu

Jose A Bermundez

Peter Weinstein

Roy Chin

Alexander Rinkus

Josh Guttman

Ameetess Dira

Ameetess Dira is an entrepreneur and international executive with expertise across US, EU, and APAC markets, and a track record of driving growth performance. Currently the SVP of Growth at DOGTV, an OTT streaming channel with 3M+ downloads, scientifically designed to alleviate stress and anxiety in dogs, Ameetess advocates for animal rescues and pet startups that contribute to improving animal and human well being through innovations and partnerships.

Ameetess is a Steering Committee Executive Member at Pavilion: contributing, mentoring, and advising on CMO, CRO, Digital Media, and Martech topics. She has been a guest speaker at Mindshare Content Summit, M Accelerator, Eurekafest, Enterprise Blockchain Forum and Unilever Innovation Day, speaking on topics wide ranging as go-to-market strategy, engaging the millennial audience, content and localization, and women in tech.

Prior to joining the pet space, she served as CMO for several tech startups in the US and Asia. She has successfully scaled multiple media platforms, including Inc. Southeast Asia (a franchise of Inc. Magazine U.S.) where as SVP she launched the inaugural Inc40 event hosting the top 40 startups in the region. As well, during her time as President of New Markets at Tickled Media (now called The Parentinc), she led user growth to over 1300%. In the US, notably, she has led integrated marketing strategies for brands like Disney Movie Club and The Oprah Store, and was a member of TD Ameritrade’s esteemed marketing team.

Jim Heim

Alexandre Douzet

Allison Redmond

Richard Nilsson

Silvia Janska

Richard Kestenbaum

Richard is a co-founder and Partner of Triangle Capital and has been an investment banker for over 35 years. Richard has a great deal of experience advising clients in merchandising businesses, particularly in the Retail & Consumer sector. Richard is an often-quoted expert on the retail and merchandising industries. He is a Contributor to Forbes.com where he writes a regular blog about trends in retail and consumer product businesses. He also appears regularly in print and other media as well as industry panels and speaking programs.

Before co-founding Triangle, Richard was a Managing Director at a boutique investment banking firm called Financo, Inc. While at Financo, Richard was responsible for a majority of the firm’s apparel industry transactions. Prior to joining Financo, Richard was a Partner and First Vice President at Drexel Burnham Lambert Inc. At Drexel, Richard was responsible for a group of 14 professionals doing middle-market mergers and acquisitions around the world.

Richard is the co-author of three books on finance and computer programming. He is formerly an Adjunct Assistant Professor of International Business at the graduate program of the Stern School of Business at York University.

Richard received a BS in Accounting from New York University and an MBA with a concentration in Finance from Harvard University. Richard is married and lives in New York.

Click here to read Richard’s blog and follow him on Forbes.com.