2025 Great Lakes Data, AI & Analytics Summit

Aaron is Senior Director of Marketing Analytics at Outcast PR, supporting innovative clients like OpenAI, Amazon, Meta, and Bloomberg Philanthropies. He leads measurement, KPI setting, business intelligence, and data product development across the US and Europe, providing actionable insights for PR, social, and paid campaigns. Aaron is a founding member of Outcast's AI adoption and consultancy practice, leveraging agile and lean methodologies to streamline processes and drive innovation.

Dylan serves as CTO at Marker, a joint venture from three leading communications agencies—Archetype, Outcast, and Nectar. At Marker, he leads product development efforts, building software products to accelerate agency teams and deliver data-driven tools and insights to customers. Before Marker, Dylan spent over a decade in engineering leadership roles, including as co-founder of CALA (acquired by H&M), a pioneer in apparel software and generative AI.

Larry is the Vice President of Information Technology at Ziebart International Corporation in Troy, Michigan, with over 25 years of expertise in IT operations, software engineering, and AI-driven solutions. In his current role, Larry leads a diverse team of software and network engineers, security specialists, and data analysts, driving the deployment and maintenance of advanced technology infrastructures. He has spearheaded major initiatives, including migrating on-premise servers to Microsoft Azure, rebuilding comprehensive IT infrastructures, and developing a custom AI agentic framework to orchestrate complex tasks using natural language. Larry's AI innovations encompass model fine-tuning, RAG systems, text-to-speech and speech-to-text, object classification in video and images, chatbots, and various other AI-driven applications. Additionally, he authored a Microsoft-published paper on 3-Tier data architecture. Larry holds a Bachelor of Science in Information Systems Management and multiple certifications from MIT in Cyber Security, Data Science, and Machine Learning. Passionate about leveraging data and AI to solve complex challenges, Larry is excited to share his insights and collaborate with industry leaders at the Great Lakes Data, AI & Analytics Summit.

Ryan, with a remarkable 31-year career, has traversed diverse landscapes, from the intricate workings of FA-18 Aircraft weapons systems in the US Navy to his current role as Vice President of Enterprise Analytics at Michigan State University Federal Credit Union. His journey has been nothing short of rewarding, and the situations he’s navigated have shaped a unique perspective on team building and innovation. Ryan’s broad experience stems from his insatiable curiosity. He’s explored various domains, always seeking to understand the intricate gears that power organizations. Ryan’s journey has seen him don multiple hats—Internal Audit, IT infrastructure, Enterprise Cloud Architecture, Data Engineering, and Analytics. Armed with a master’s degree in information security, Ryan has fortified his expertise in safeguarding critical data while his passion lies in continuous improvement. Whether it’s optimizing processes, fostering innovation, or nurturing talent, he’s always offering ways he can help the organization move forward.

Nathan has over two decades of experience in logistics and supply chain management, focused heavily in the Automotive sector. He is currently a Senior Director of Supply Chain Excellence at Ryder Integrated Logistics, leading the full domestic LLP operations for a major Automotive OEM.  Nathan holds a B.S. in Pure Mathematics from the University of Michigan and has a proven track record of focusing on cost savings and network efficiency. managing high-level strategic initiatives, including the implementation of cloud-based analytics to move beyond traditional reporting into improved cross-functional decision-making.  He pushes people development as a primary focus and strives to continuously improve both his and his team’s leadership competencies using anything from traditional organizational experts to ancient Stoicism. Beyond his professional life, Nathan enjoys being a gigging musician and trying to narrow down the hundreds of hours of podcasts in his queue. 

David is the Chief Administrative Officer of North. In this role, David oversees, among other things, North's collections, compliance, legal, risk, and underwriting departments. His focus is to help guide the North’s business units successfully through the complex maze of laws, rules, regulations, and guidelines that apply to the payments industry, and to do so in a manner that enables North to maintain its position as a market leader. 

Under David's supervision, North has taken the lead in the payments industry in its utilization of data analytics, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Today, these tools represent important components of North's underwriting and risk decisioning processes. Given this success, North is currently building a productized version of these tools, which it expects to bring to the merchant acquiring market in early 2026.