Diana Aviv—President and CEO, Independent Sector

As the leader of Independent Sector, the national leadership forum for America’s nonprofit organizations, foundations, and corporations, Aviv is a noted expert on the major issues affecting the national nonprofit community. Aviv is a frequent speaker on emerging trends within the sector, the financial state of the nonprofit community, public policies affecting charities and foundations, the role of civil society in democracy, and civic engagement. Aviv joined Independent Sector in 2003 after spending nine years at United Jewish Communities, she was also formerly associate executive vice chair at the Jewish Council of Public Affairs, director of programs for the National Council of Jewish Women, and director of a comprehensive program to serve battered women and their families.

Dom Betro—A.C.S.W., President and CEO, Family Service Association of Western Riverside County

In addition to being president and CEO of Alliance member Family Service Association of Western Riverside County in Moreno Valley, Calif., Betro is also a consultant with the Alliance Executive Consultant Select Group. Betro has guided his agency through 35-fold growth and diversification. In addition to being an instructor of management at the University of California, Riverside, since 1989, Betro also teaches at California State University, San Bernardino, University of Notre Dame, and Andrews University of Berrien Springs, Michigan. He has trained more than 200 international managers, with a special emphasis on Russia and the newly independent states of central and Eastern Europe. He has provided consultation and training for more than 300 nonprofit organizations.

Elizabeth Carey—Senior Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, Alliance for Children and Families

Carey directs day-to-day operations, plans and executes strategic plans, coordinates member recruitment and retention efforts, and helps determine the public policy agenda for the Alliance. Carey joined the Alliance in November 2007 with a comprehensive professional background that includes social work, government relations, and statewide membership association leadership. She was most recently executive director of the Michigan Federation for Children and Families. Prior to that, she was director of government relations for the Council on Accreditation in New York City, and began her career as a social worker in Michigan.

Jeff Degraff—Professor, Ross School of Business, University of Michigan

Jeff DeGraff, the ‘Dean of Innovation,’ has more than 20 years of experience in management issues, and is a professor at the University of Michigan's Ross School of Business, where he teaches MBA and executive education courses. He is also the Managing Partner of Competing Values Company, a consulting firm that assists leaders in facilitating change, innovation, and growth. Known as the 'guru to the innovation guru' at many Fortune 500 companies, he has created a broad array of widely used tools and methodologies for implementing innovation. Besides being an in-demand speaker, DeGraff is a thought leader at top innovation incubators and think tanks such as the Aspen Institute. His advice is frequently sought after by the investment community on how to pick, manage, and harvest winning ideas and successful business enterprises. He has also contributed his expertise in publications such as Business Week, CIO, Leadership Excellence, T+D, Training, and USA Today. DeGraff has written about innovation and leadership in numerous articles and books. He is the co-author of Creativity at Work: Developing the Right Practices to Make Innovation Happen, Competing Values Leadership: Creating Value in Organizations, and Leading Innovation: How to Jump Start your Organization's Growth Engine.

Peter Goldberg—President and CEO, Alliance for Children and Families

Goldberg is president and chief executive officer of the Alliance for Children and Families and its parent holding company, Families International, Inc. The Alliance represents more than 340 nonprofit child- and family-serving organizations. Alliance members serve millions of individuals annually in thousands of communities, providing services ranging from residential care for children to community centered prevention and intervention programs to economic self-sufficiency initiatives. Goldberg also serves as CEO of Ways to Work, another subsidiary of Families International. Ways to Work is an innovative program that provides modest loans to low-income workers to help pay for expenses that could interfere with their ability to keep a job or stay in school. Before joining Families International in 1994, Goldberg held a variety of positions in the corporate and philanthropic field and in the public sector. He has been selected by The NonProfit Times as one of the 50 most influential people in the nonprofit sector six times since 1998.

Undraye Howard—Director of Consultation and Leadership Services, Alliance for Children and Families

Prior to joining the Alliance, Howard was the executive director of an Alliance member agency in Milwaukee. His major responsibilities included organizing board governance, strategic planning and implementation, program design and development of various child and family welfare programs, and the development and implementation of a broad range of community programs for adults. Howard also operated his own business as a leadership consultant to a number of nonprofit human service organizations, primarily providing leadership development consultation, and training and organizational development. At present, he is an adjunct professor at several Milwaukee-area universities and a career college.

Laura Lein—Dean and Collegiate Professor of Social Work, University of Michigan

Currently dean of the University of Michigan School of Social Work, Lein was formerly professor of social work and anthropology at the University of Texas at Austin, where she was a respected researcher and teacher from 1985 to 2008. She has served as principal investigator on multiple grants on poverty, family and women's issues, and impoverished populations in Texas. Lein directed the Women's Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin for two terms, from 1987 to 1991, where she coordinated interdisciplinary curriculum, fund development, and new programs. She was also director of the Wellesley College Center for Research on Women from 1981 to 1985 and director of an interdisciplinary project on work, family interaction, and child development at the Center for the Study of Public Policy in Cambridge, Massachusetts, from 1973 to 1977.

Roger Swaninger—President and CEO, Spectrum Human Services and Affiliated Companies

Under Swaninger’s leadership, Spectrum Human Services operates six affiliated companies that provide an array of programs and services, including foster care, adoption, independent living programs, family preservation, juvenile detention, outpatient mental health treatment, employment training for mature individuals, residential substance abuse treatment, and group homes for developmentally disabled adults. With more than 30 years of social work, residential treatment, mental health counseling, and program operations experience, Swaninger is now responsible for the direction and management of more than 1,000 employees who provide 45 programs and services in 11 Michigan counties.

Tony Schwartz—Founder, President, and CEO, The Energy Project

As founder, president, and CEO of The Energy Project, a company that helps individuals and organizations build capacity and sustainable high performance by more efficiently managing energy, Schwartz has spent 30 years studying, writing about, teaching, and coaching people in how to perform at their best. His most recent book, The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy Not Time, co-authored with Jim Loehr, was a Wall Street Journal bestseller and spent four months on The New York Times bestseller list. He co-authored the number one worldwide bestseller The Art of the Deal with Donald Trump, and also wrote What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America. Schwartz has delivered speeches to audiences around the world and contributed to leadership efforts with senior executives at dozens of companies.

John Tropman—Professor, University of Michigan, School of Social Work

Tropman holds a Ph.D. in social work and sociology and has spent his career at the University of Michigan teaching nonprofit management courses at the School of Social Work, organizational behavior and human resources management courses at the Ross School of Business, effective decision-making and creativity in the university’s executive education program, and leadership and other material at the executive education program at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. He is a widely published author in the field and is currently researching “executive calamity”— executives who go down and take the whole organization with them. Tropman has worked as a consultant with for-profit corporations, government agencies, and nonprofit human service organizations, including helping organizations and their boards with strategic planning, environmental scans, and developing product/service profiles.

Lynn Wooten—Clinical Assistant Professor of Strategy, Management, and Organizations, University of Michigan, Ross Business School

Wooten joined the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan in 1998. She earned her B.S. in accounting from North Carolina A&T State University, an M.B.A. from the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University, and her Ph.D. from the Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan. Wooten’s research projects focus on sources of organizational effectiveness that are embedded in human capital. Her research has been published in academic journals, such as the American Behavioral Scientist, Journal of Management Inquiry, and Sex Roles. 

Ari Weinzweig—Co-Owner, Founding Partner, and CEO, Zingerman’s Community of Businesses

While attending the University of Michigan as an undergraduate, Weinzweig began washing dishes in a local restaurant and soon discovered that he loved the food business. Along with his partner Paul Saginaw, Weinzweig started Zingerman’s Delicatessen in 1982 with a $20,000 bank loan, a staff of two, a small selection of great-tasting specialty foods, and a relatively short sandwich menu. Today, Zingerman’s is an Ann Arbor institution—an organization of eight distinct businesses with a 450-person staff and annual sales approaching $30,000,000 a year. Zingerman’s was instrumental in the founding of Food Gatherers, a perishable food rescue program that delivers over a million pounds of food to people in need.