Allen Weiss is an emeritus professor at USC. His academic research has focused on decision-making in B2B companies, especially in high-tech markets. He was also the co-founder and Director of Mindful USC. In this role, he has brought mindfulness to the 23 schools and five hospitals at USC. Before joining USC, he was a marketing faculty member at Stanford University where he developed and refined his ideas on segmentation and positioning.

Dr. Weiss has worked with organizations to segment and position their products in the market based on brand benefits for over 30 years. He has worked with technology, media, defense industry, and other organizations from various sectors. Clients include Texas Instruments, Intel, Hughes Space and Communications, Northrop Grumman, Informix, Venafi, EMI Music, and AIG.

Allen traveled world-wide and taught Intel engineers about the Intel brand and the Inside campaign. He positioned all the products and services for Informix (a relational database company), including its flagship database product, before it was sold to IBM. Allen positioned Texas Instrument's digital signal processing solution in Europe. He segmented the Machine Identity Protection market for Venafi and has worked on other positioning engagements.

Allen is also the founder and CEO of MarketingProfs, LLC, a B2B training and events company with over 600,000 subscribers, 457,000 Twitter followers and 55,000 LinkedIn followers. MarketingProfs is dedicated to helping large organizations, teams, and individuals execute marketing campaigns that drive real results. Through MarketingProfs events and training, Allen has impacted companies that include IBM, Oracle, Microsoft, Cisco, Deloitte, 3M, Vanguard, Experian, Accenture, Facebook, PayPal, PWC, Medtronic, Salesforce, Epsilon, Wells Fargo, LinkedIn, SAP, Verizon, UPS and others like them.

In a prior life, Allen was a professional musician.

Debbie MacInnis is the Charles L. and Ramona I. Hilliard Professor of Business Administration and Emerita Professor of the Marshall School of Business at the University of Southern California and the Doris Drucker Chair and Full Research Professor at the Peter F. Drucker and Masatoshi Ito Graduate School of Management at Claremont Graduate University. She is an expert on consumer behavior and branding.

Debbie is a Fellow of the American Marketing Association, the Association for Consumer Research, and the Society for Consumer Psychology. She has received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the American Marketing Association’s Consumer Behavior Special Interest Group and the Faculty Lifetime Achievement Award from the University of Southern California. She is also the recipient of the Irwin-McGraw Hill Distinguished Marketing Educator Award. Debbie has served as Coeditor and Associate Editor for Journal of Consumer Research and Associate Editor for Journal of Marketing and Journal of Consumer Psychology. She has received numerous awards for her academic articles.

Debbie is coauthor of a leading textbook on consumer behavior, several edited volumes on branding, and a book on developing, enhancing, and leveraging brand admiration, and the author of two books on branding. She is former Treasurer and President of the Association for Consumer Research, former Vice President of Conferences and Research for the American Marketing Association’s Academic Council, and former President of the AMA’s Consumer Behavior Special Interest Group.

Debbie is the winner of local and national teaching awards, and she has also served the Marshall School of Business as Vice Dean of Research and Strategy and Vice Dean of the Undergraduate Program. She has also received the USC Mellon mentoring award for her mentoring work with faculty. Her consulting includes work with major consumer goods companies, branding agencies, and advertising agencies.