ASTD General Session Speakers

Thornton May Executive Director and Dean, IT Leadership Academy

Thornton May is a world-renown curriculum designer specializing in crafting executive learning experiences that bridge three very different and unfortunately, frequently very separate disciplines: technology – the tools we use; economics – the trade-offs we make; and experience – how we feel about the tools we use and the trade-offs we make. Good curriculum design brings these three disciplines together.

A relentless learner, Thornton’s goal is to get you to see what is likely to appear on the horizon and help you make correlations between your current reality and the emerging trends, which can impact your future. By doing so, you can help create a better future, rather than letting the future come to you. He combines a scholar's passion for empirical research, an entrepreneur's capacity for opportunity identification and a stand-up comic's gift for storytelling.

Thornton has established a reputation for innovation in executive learning, pioneering the Lyceum (a time-compressed, intense learning experience designed to keep Chief Information Officers abreast of emerging technology trends); the Directors’ Institute (a forum for Board members to increase their awareness of emerging management issues); and the Controller’s Institute (arena for European Chief Financial Officers to fine tune processes associated with making technology investments). Thornton designs the curriculum that enables the mental models that allow organizations to outperform competitors, delight customers and extract maximum value from tools and suppliers.

Thornton is responsible for sculpting executive education programs at the John E. Anderson Graduate School of Management at UCLA. He teaches the "Strategic IT" Module in the Advanced Management Program at the Haas School of Business - UC-Berkeley [where he co-founded the CIO Institute]; is a Faculty Associate at the Center for Advancing Business Through Information Technology [CABIT] at the W.P. Carey School of Business -Arizona State University, and contributes to the evolving curriculum at the Performance Management Institute at the Fisher School of Business – THE Ohio State University.

Thornton sits on the Board of Curriculum Review for the Center for Information Management Studies at Babson College. Thornton has served as an advisor to the senior management teams at the World Bank, Toyota, Sony Pictures & Entertainment, American Express, Staples and Cisco Systems. Thornton was responsible for ghost writing portions of the technology track for the World Economic Forum held in Davos Switzerland.

Thornton served on the Advisory Boards of MentorU.com.

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Rick Borovoy CTO, nTAG Interactive

Rick Borovoy has pioneered technological breakthroughs in social networking and collaborative learning. He has applied these innovations to the corporate world, and is an expert in the $120 billion business meetings and event industry. A noted presenter and publisher, Rick has been quoted in Forbes, Fast Company, The Boston Globe, and Business 2.0. He has presented at leading edge events worldwide such as the Harvard Cyberposium, PC Forum, the O'Reilly Emerging Tech Conference, CHI (Computer Human Interface conference), CSCW (Computer Supported Co-operative Work), and the Corporate Event Marketing Association Summit, and has had numerous appearances at MIT-sponsored events.
For over 15 years Rick has been researching how technology can improve collaborative learning and business meetings. As a graduate student at MIT's Media Lab, Rick researched the causes of dissatisfaction with business communications and networking events. To break past social barriers and get people to communicate, he invented the world's first interactive badge specifically designed for face-to-face social networking and event data management. In 2002, he founded nTAG Interactive, now a premier provider of event data management solutions. nTAG has improved meeting and event results for companies such as IBM, JP Morgan Chase, Pfizer, Bristol-Myers Squibb, P&G and Lucent Technologies.

As CTO of nTAG Interactive, Rick continues to analyze unique data from meetings and events, to determine trends and best practices in business networking, corporate learning and event management. He makes his findings available in his lively presentations and informative white papers, along with actionable recommendations and best practices.

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