2020 Speakers

Eric Arnum

Eric Arnum is the editor of Warranty Week, an online publication written for the warranty industry professional. Based in New York and launched in late 2002 as both a free weekly email broadcast and a website at www.warrantyweek.com, the newsletter has quickly gained a following among manufacturers, retailers, servicers, and insurance professionals. Subscriptions to the free weekly email edition have now surpassed 7,000 people, while Web traffic is typically around 12,000 to 15,000 page views per week.

Weekly topics have included specific market close-ups on product warranties, extended warranties, claims rates in industries such as air conditioning, automotive, PCs, disk drives, printers, consumer electronics, solar panels, construction, mining, telecommunications equipment, plasma TVs, jetliners, sports stadiums, new homes, skateparks, and farm equipment. On a quarterly basis, trends in warranty claims and accruals by more than 800 manufacturers are detailed in depth. Also featured are periodic articles about industry conferences and warranty claim processing and analysis software providers.

Before launching Warranty Week, Arnum edited two different newsletters about the data communications industry -- Messaging Online, and Electronic Mail & Micro Systems (EMMS) -- while also engaging in custom research projects tracking the growth of the World Wide Web in Europe and the market for Internet services in South America. He also has worked as a reporter and freelance photographer for various online music publications. Eric Arnum is a graduate of Syracuse University with a degree in economics.

Mark Bardusch

Mark Bardusch oversees Ford’s Global Extended Service Business. Mark is a 34 year veteran of Ford Motor Company and has played various roles in Ford’s Extended Service Business at various times in his career.

Recent positions for Mark have included overseeing Ford’s 1100 Quick Lane locations, as well as positions in Market Representation, Minority Dealer Operations, and various Sales and Marketing positions. Mark has also held international positions as Vice-President, Ford Motor Company Philippines and Director of Asia-Pacific Vehicle Personalization. In addition to his various positions in Ford Protect, he has considerable experience designing and implementing start up operations within Ford.

Darius Bullock

Darius is currently the Sr. Business Manager for Extended Service Agreements (ESA) for Electrolux Major Appliances – North America, responsible for the overall strategic growth of ESA programs through direct marketing, pricing, and profitability strategies. He promotes and drives business sales of extended service agreements as part of a differentiated ownership solution experience for Electrolux major appliances customers. Darius also leads and develops a team that ensures consistent year-over-year performance improvement through sales growth, earnings growth, new customer acquisitions, and program enhancements. Darius is an Advisory Board member of the Global Warranty Service Contract Association, and has served in multiple service contract program leadership positions since 2004. He is based in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Chad Burris

Chad Burris is the Product Protection Program Manager for Nationwide Marketing Group, a buying group for independent retailers in the appliance, furniture, and bedding channel. In his 6 years with Nationwide, Chad has focused his efforts on developing warranty programs that provide unique advantages to the members of Nationwide, with a specialty in assisting the members with implementation of warranty programs in their stores. Prior to working for Nationwide, Chad gained valuable retail and management experience working for Best Buy.

Chad is a proud graduate of Harding University and enjoys spending quality time with his wife and children, always looking to create fun experiences together with his family.

Tiffany Cannon

Brian T. Casey

As Co-Leader of Locke Lord's Regulatory and Transactional Insurance practice group, and a member of the Firm's Corporate, Capital Markets and Health Care practice groups, Brian focuses on corporate, merger and acquisition, corporate and structured finance and other transactional, and regulatory matters for corporate clients in the insurance, financial services and health care industries. One significant facet to Brian's practice is a focus on insurance-linked securities and related insurance capital markets transactions. His clients include insurance companies, insurance holding companies, managing general agents and insurance agencies, third party and claims administrators, banks and other financial institutions, investment banks and reinsurance companies.

Michelle Esgar

Michelle Esgar oversees brand strategy, brand marketing and customer experience for the Panasonic consumer brand in the US. She manages the creative content development team and works closely with customer insights to develop data-driven, customer-centric marketing, programs and experiences across the entire customer journey. Recent initiatives include improvement of the digital support experience, content development strategy and brand awareness among younger generations. Michelle works closely with the global Panasonic consumer marketing community and has spent the last 2 years focused on bridging the gap between the sales and support sides of the business through 360° brand experience initiatives. Before Panasonic, Michelle built and managed a full-service boutique creative agency in NYC with clients including the NFL, Verizon, Macy’s, Bloomingdale’s and JP Morgan. She earned her MBA in 2017 and holds an undergraduate degree from Cornell University.

Ryan Fink

Ryan Fink is the President & Co-founder of Streem, which was acquired by Frontdoor Home (NASDAQ:FTDR) in 2019. Streem’s mission is to make the world’s expertise more accessible. Using augmented reality (AR), computer vision and machine learning, Streem makes communication between consumers and brands more efficient, more accurate, and more convenient - all while providing contextual insights to the brand. Streem provides a full platform (SDK and Web) that enables remote video collaboration, offers simple AR tools to make that experience as valuable as being on-site, and automatically captures relevant project or product data to better arm experts with the information they need. Ryan began his career in the Augmented Reality (AR) space in 2010 by building an AR application called Ghost Runner, which had the goal of gamifying exercise in collaboration with Nike. He went on to build a machine learning and computer vision company (ONtheGO Platforms), which had 350+ enterprise customers and 100k end users and was acquired in 2015. Ryan holds 10 issued patents and nearly 20 pending patents.

Sarah Fink

Sarah has worked at Cisco for seven years having worked in Warranty, Royalty, and Revenue Organizations. Prior to Cisco she worked in various Accounting and Financial roles at Clorox, IBM, and Stock Building Supply. Sarah holds degrees in Accounting, Management, and Communication. Charlotte has worked at Cisco for four years having worked in Distribution Finance and Warranty Organizations. Prior to Cisco she worked as a Cost Accountant and a Financial Reporting Accountant at Caterpillar. Charlotte has her CPA license and holds degrees in Accounting as well as Construction Management. Sarah and Charlotte are silo breakers on the forefront of driving cross functional change on warranty and services cost. They work to understand both up and downstream end to end processes to identify potential issues and ensure data integrity across multiple system platforms. They perform and lead data testing as well as create dashboards to provide insight to key levers for cost reduction activities. They do all of this to ensure that the product and services for warranty cost are accounted for appropriately across organizations, by providing insightful analytics for early detection of potential quality concerns. Driving changes to warranty management at Cisco has entailed changing how Cisco:

• Account for the cost of service during the warranty period
• Provide actionable analytics
• Hold teams accountable for warranty cost savings

David Froning

Mr. Froning manages a Product Management team that focuses on Quality & Service Solutions. He works in partnership with manufacturers, suppliers, and industry organizations to develop solutions that apply AI and analytics to industry issues such as fraud detection, early warning, predictive maintenance, and accelerated problem solving. Through participation in industry groups and independent research, Mr. Froning’s team works with companies to develop best practices for technology applications.

Before SAS, Mr. Froning worked for General Motors. He managed the development, operation, and continual improvement of quality and warranty information systems across GM’s North American operations and supplier community. His experience also includes work with leading automotive market research firms. He holds a Bachelor of Science from Michigan State University and a Master of Science from the University of Wisconsin.

Matt Ganus

Matt Ganus has been with Whirlpool Corporation since 2008 serving in many roles across Whirlpool Consumer Service Organization and is currently Senior Manager for Whirlpool’s Service Provider Network. In his role, Matt leads daily operations for more than 2,000 service providers and 9,000 technicians.

The objective for his team is to drive service as a differentiator for consumers and to create unforgettable consumer interactions that translate to a 5 star experience. Under Matt’s leadership, the Service Network is focused on strategies that continue to elevate industry standards including first call complete, days to complete, and driving an exclusive service network for the Whirlpool Corporation family of brands.

Matt has a Master’s degree in Lean Manufacturing from Kettering University and will be graduating from the University of Michigan with an MBA in late 2020.

Christina (Chrissy) German

Since 1994, Chrissy has been part of Whirlpool Corporation. She is a self-managed thought leader with over twenty-five years of experience in people development, operational efficiency, project management, change management, process improvement, relationship management, direct marketing, and customer relations.

Over the past 25 years, she has held various positions of increasing responsibility. Chrissy is currently the Competency Development Senior Manager for Whirlpool Corporation’s Consumer Services organization. She is accountable for developing and enhancing knowledge and training solutions for Whirlpool’s contact centers and entire service network.