Guy Kawasaki was one of the Apple employees originally responsible for marketing the Macintosh computer in 1984. He is a brand ambassador for Mercedes-Benz USA and has written several books on entrepreneurship and marketing including "The Art of the Start 2.0," "The Art of Social Media," and "Enchantment."
Daymond John has been a phenomenally successful business person for over 25 years, as Founder and CEO of FUBU, and Shark Tank investor. He has received over 35 awards including the Brandweek Marketer of the Year, Advertising Age Marketing 1000 Award for Outstanding Ad Campaign, and Ernst & Young’s Master of Excellence Award.
Join hundreds of dealers, partners, and industry experts in Boston for two days of inspiring discussions, educational sessions, and valuable networking.
From actionable marketing tactics to high-level strategies from industry executives, CarGurus’ first-ever automotive conference will give you the tools to accelerate your dealership's growth.
9:00 AM
Registration and CarGurus Zone Opens
12:30 PM
Welcome from CarGurus
1:00 PM
Keynote: Daymond John
5 Shark Points: Fundamentals for success in business and life
2:00 PM
Breakout Sessions A & B & C
Attend three 45 minute sessions
5:00 PM
Navigate Kickoff Cocktail Reception
Network with dealers from across the globe
6:00 PM
Women of Navigate Dinner Reception
An inspiring evening of networking with women in the automotive industry
You know more than anyone that the buying landscape is changing, and we’re here to give you the tools for success. Attend a variety of innovative marketing sessions centered around providing insightful, actionable information you can immediately put to work. Think social media, Google Analytics, SEM, and more.
With your fast-paced job, you need the tools and strategies to keep your inventory in front of shoppers. Discover tools from CarGurus and others that can help you make confident pricing, inventory, and merchandising strategies. You’ll have the opportunity to trade strategies on motivating and supporting your team with dealers in similar roles.
If you work with car dealers—as an agency partner, as an OEM, as a consultant, just to name a few—then attending Navigate will give you the inside track on what's important to them and how the market is evolving. Not to mention, you'll have plenty of opportunities to network with savvy dealers who are eager to learn how they can grow their businesses.
The Hynes Convention Center is conveniently located minutes away from Boston’s Logan International Airport and is easily accessible by public transportation.
The Hynes Convention Center is connected to the Sheraton Boston Hotel, Boston Marriott Copley Place, and Westin Copley Place Boston. Discounted pricing for rooms are available until the hotel block rooms are filled. More information provided after registration.
You'll get the chance to dig into trends, tips, and more guidance on how to grow your business during the breakout sessions. With a variety of topics and formats, there are sessions for everyone. And don’t just take our word for it – we’re bringing in industry partners, dealerships like you, and tech giants to share their tips and tricks for success.
Guy Kawasaki is the chief evangelist of Canva, an online graphic design tool. He is on the board of trustees of the Wikimedia Foundation, a brand ambassador for Mercedes-Benz USA, and an executive fellow of the Haas School of Business (UC Berkeley). He was the chief evangelist of Apple, and also the author of "The Art of the Start 2.0," "The Art of Social Media," "Enchantment," and nine other books. Kawasaki has a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from UCLA, as well as an honorary doctorate from Babson College.
Find out how Kawasaki’s experiences in creating strong brands and companies can translate to actionable steps for your dealership in his Navigate keynote, The Art of Innovation.
An entrepreneur in every sense of the word, Daymond John has come a long way from taking out a $100,000 mortgage on his mother’s house and moving his operation into the basement. John is CEO and Founder of FUBU, a much-celebrated global lifestyle brand, and a pioneer in the fashion industry with over $6 billion in product sales.
He is an award-winning entrepreneur, and he has received over 35 awards including the Brandweek Marketer of the Year, Advertising Age Marketing 1000 Award for Outstanding Ad Campaign, and Ernst & Young’s Master of Excellence Award. His marketing strategies and ability to build successful brands has made him a highly influential consultant and motivational speaker today.
John is also an author of two New York Times best-selling books "Power of Broke" and "Rise and Grind." In 2009, he joined the cast of ABC's entrepreneurial business show the Shark Tank by acclaimed producer Mark Burnett. Millions of weekly viewers tune into the show as John, known as "The People's Shark," demonstrates his marketing prowess and entrepreneurial insights.
Find out how John's experiences in entrepreneurship can translate to actionable steps for your dealership in his Navigate keynote, Daymond John's 5 Shark Points: Fundamentals for success in business and life.
Is your marketing stuck somewhere between traditional offline and digital tactics? Are you unsure how to truly harness the troves of consumer data that are available? In this session, you’ll learn how to get your marketing strategy into high-gear using location intelligence. Jeff White, founder and CEO of Gravy Analytics, a location intelligence platform, will explore how anonymized and aggregated location data can help dealers strengthen their relationships, increase customer engagement, boost sales and maintain an edge above the competition.
With nearly two decades of professional experience driving demand for B2B software and technology solutions, Katie was the first marketer to join Mautic in 2016 to lead the team in disrupting the multi-billion dollar marketing automation market. Katie has re-joined the Acquia team as part of the recent acquisition to help accelerate market awareness and adoption of Mautic’s open marketing platform. Prior to Mautic, Katie held senior marketing positions at several rapidly growing technology companies including Signiant, Acquia, Object Geometries and Mercury Interactive. Katie holds an undergraduate degree from Rivier University and an MBA from Bentley University.
After spending his career working for Dealerships, OEMs and Advertising Agencies, and being educated at The University of Michigan, London School of Economics, and Emory University, George joined CarGurus as the Director of Automotive and Economic Analytics. As a former Automotive Industry Insider, George is bringing his experience to lead the Industry Analytics function at CarGurus. His unique POV is built on his educational background and experience working in and running marketing, pricing, planning, strategy and customer research functions.
As Google’s Senior Automotive Retail Strategist, Kelly helps automotive retailers develop strategies to reach in-market shoppers with the right message at the right time to improve sales and loyalty. She is a passionate public speaker who has conducted keynote addresses at Digital Dealer, DMSC, ALR, NADA, the Google Automotive Retail Summit, AIADA, JD Power and many OEM conferences.
Prior to joining Google, Kelly spent 9 years at ESPN developing and selling sponsorships with the world’s top brands and sporting events. Kelly is a graduate of the University of Kansas with degrees in Journalism and Spanish. She is a thinkLA Person of the Year award-winner and is a regional lead on GoogleServe, Google’s annual volunteerism initiative.
Kelly lives in Hermosa Beach, CA and is always looking for tips on interesting travel destinations.
Kim is the President of KO Advantage Group. She's listed as LinkedIn’s top sales influencers and continuously named as one of the top sales leaders to follow. She’s Startup Canada's Woman Entrepreneur and Success Magazine’s most inspirational blogger. She speaks internationally, including at North America’s largest entrepreneurial event, Inbound 2017, 2018 & 2019, alongside Michelle Obama, Brené Brown, and Deepak Chopra.
In 2014, Kim courageously quit her life to backpack solo around the world. When she returned she turned her passion for sales into one of North America's fastest growing sales training programs, KO Sales U.
Her third book "Sell More. Faster." is available for now. Passionate sales thought-leader who started her own company purely to fund her very expensive world travel addiction.
Kyle Stock is a senior correspondent at Bloomberg Businessweek where he created the "Sunday Strategist" newsletter and writes about corporate strategy with a focus on the auto industry and emerging transportation technology. He holds an MBA from Columbia University and a master's degree in journalism from Northwestern University.
Langley Steinert founded CarGurus in 2006 with a vision for helping automotive shoppers better navigate their car search. Since then, the company has grown to become a leading global automotive marketplace, helping millions of shoppers find great car deals and connect with top-rated dealers. Prior to founding CarGurus, Steinert was co-founder and Chairman of TripAdvisor, Inc. an online travel marketplace. He also held management roles at Viaweb (sold to Yahoo! Inc.), Papyrus, and Lotus Development Corp. Steinert holds an MBA from the Tuck School at Dartmouth College and a BA from Georgetown University.
Madison Gross, Director of Customer Insights at CarGurus, is a passionate marketing researcher with 10 years of experience in the automotive industry. She loves questions like:
What role do cars play in consumers’ lives?
How do they find and fall in love with a vehicle?
How do they balance budget, functional needs, and car ownership dreams as they make such a major purchase decision?
At CarGurus, user insights help us build a top-notch site experience that attracts 37M users each month. Before joining CarGurus, she studied Marketing and Cognitive Science at the University of Virginia, spent 8 years understanding vehicle shoppers and the car dealership business inside and out at CarMax, and completed her MBA at IE Business School in Madrid, Spain.
Perry Hewitt works at the intersection of marketing and digital strategy, helping private sector and not-for-profit organizations navigate digital transformation for sustainable change and impact. Perry serves in a number of leadership roles including the business council for Glasswing Ventures and the boards of Junior Achievement U.S.A., the Harvard Club of New York, and The Marketing Society's New York hub. She writes and speaks on topics including product management, marketing technology, and women’s leadership.
Prior to joining CarGurus, Welch was CMO of consumer electronics marketplace Gazelle, where she oversaw the end-to-end consumer experience including all aspects of marketing, product management, customer care and and direct-to-consumer sales. Prior to Gazelle, Welch helped grow TripAdvisor from a small, unknown dotcom into the world's most visited travel site. Her roles at TripAdvisor included VP of Marketing and VP of the TripAdvisor Media Group, where she drove synergies across the company's large portfolio of travel brands. Welch holds an MBA from Stanford University and a BA from Brown University.
Prior to joining CarGurus, Tom spent five years as the Chief Product Officer at Fiksu, a mobile marketing innovator, where he successfully led the company's product strategy and development. He also served as the Vice President of Product Management for x+1, acquired by Rocket Fuel in 2014, and Group Product Manager at Microsoft. Caputo holds a BA in Computer Science from Dartmouth College, and both an MBA and MS in Electrical Engineering from Stanford.
Most recently, Zales was Chief Executive Officer of ClickSquared, a marketing software company that was acquired by Zeta Interactive in January, 2014. Prior to ClickSquared, Zales was President of Zoom Information where he led day-to-day operations and oversaw the company’s growth strategy into the marketing services and sales intelligence arenas. Prior to ZoomInfo, Zales was President and CEO of BuyerZone.com, an online marketplace for business purchasing which he led from early stage through six years of monthly growth in revenue and profitability to its successful acquisition by Reed Elsevier (NYSE: RUK) in 2007. Zales holds an MBA with distinction from Kellogg (Northwestern University) and a BA with honors from Dartmouth College.
Justin Brun joined the Internet Sales Team at Acton Toyota of Littleton in January 2005. He currently serves as the dealership’s Director of Marketing & E-Commerce.
Ben Koller started his automotive career in 2004 at Acton Toyota of Littleton as an Internet Sales Consultant. His present role for Acton Toyota is CRM Manager.
In 2011, together the two co-founded Dynamic Beacon offering true dealer-to-dealer digital marketing. Services include website management, email marketing, SEO, SEM, and operational consulting.
As a boutique provider, Dynamic Beacon caters to progressive dealerships who demand highly customized and individualized marketing solutions.
The resulting success and accomplishments at Acton Toyota of Littleton and Dynamic Beacon have afforded Justin and Ben the opportunity to speak at a number of the industry’s top conferences surrounding digital marketing including two previous DrivingSales Executive Summits. The two have also been guest presenters at NCM Associates Digital Marketing Manager 20 Group.
David is President of Kain Automotive Inc., an industry leading provider of Automotive Internet Sales, Business Development Center and Digital Marketing training and consulting which he founded in 2003. Kain Automotive has been recognized as the #1 Dealer Rated Internet Training Company in the U.S.
David sold his first car in college in 1980 and worked for 20 years in his family dealership group, Kain Auto Group, where he is still a partner today. While serving on Ford’s 2000 Dealer Council he co-founded FordDirect.com where he served as the COO before leaving to start Kain Automotive in 2003 to teach dealers how to successfully market and sell vehicles online.
David is an active speaker and has presented at the NADA Show, Driving Sales, Digital Dealer, Innovative Dealer Summit, Google Automotive, and Facebook Automotive, as well as internationally for Mercedes Benz China, Fenabrave’ in Brazil, eBay in the Netherlands, the AADA in Australia and the Internet Motors event in Italy. David enjoys hosting his weekly online program Kain & Co. on CBTNews.com where he provides unique perspectives, interviews dealership team members as well as automotive industry leaders.
Steve co-founded TripAdvisor in 2000 with the mission to help travelers around the world plan and book the perfect trip. Under his leadership, TripAdvisor has grown into the largest travel site in the world. As CEO, Steve has led the growth of TripAdvisor, Inc., which includes 24 other travel media brands that operate in 48 markets worldwide.
Prior to co-founding TripAdvisor, Steve was president of CDS, Inc., an independent software vendor, and prior to that, was co-founder and vice president of engineering of CenterLine Software. Steve holds several software patents. Over the years Steve has won a number of awards for his entrepreneurship and leadership in the travel industry including being inducted into the 2015 British Travel & Hospitality Hall of Fame, receiving the 2015 Pioneer Award by the International Society of Hospitality Consultants and 2005 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award.
Mr. Kaufer serves on the boards of CarGurus and the Neuroendocrine Tumor Research Foundation (formerly known as Caring for Carcinoid Foundation). He's a fan of his brother-in-law's robot sculptures at Lipson Robotics (www.lipsonrobotics.com). Steve has a degree in computer science from Harvard University.
Steve's favorite travel destination is Jerusalem, Israel.
Jeff VanderWal has spent 16 years perfecting the way vehicles are retailed to consumers. Always a car nut, Jeff began wholesaling cars through dealers and auctions in 2003. Seeing an opportunity to serve consumers he founded VanderWal Motorcar Company in 2007. He began brokering vehicles directly to consumers, cutting out the dealers and hassle that goes with a car purchase. Word spread and by 2009 VanderWal’s leasing portfolio had grown to have national recognition for catered to pro-athletes and the demands of their unusual schedules as well as a large commercial leasing portfolio.
By 2012, Jeff had enjoyed a 200% annual growth and was recognized by the Denver Metro Chamber of Commerce as one of Denver’s Top 30 under 30, a feat never achieved prior to or since by anyone in the automotive field. In 2014 VanderWal sales exceeded $10 million annually and he began seeking an opportunity to grow his organization to reach more people and prove that automotive sales can be a great experience.
Two years later, coming off a record $18 million, Jeff founded ClearShift Leasing & Sales, bringing to life the perfect online shopping experience. Consumers enjoy the person-to-person relationships they crave as well as the technological platform they demand. ClearShift has grown to have a multi-state presence and enjoyed significant increase in sales and influence. VanderWal has become an industry leader in technology base automotive sales as well as an advocate for social impact in various parts of the world.
Derek M. Pankratz is a senior research manager with Deloitte’s Center for Integrated Research and Series Editor for the firm’s research program on the Future of Mobility. Derek has led development of more than forty research pieces exploring multiple aspects of the emerging mobility ecosystem.
He has authored numerous articles, including recently Small is Beautiful: Making Micromobility Work, Regulating the Future of Mobility, The Deloitte City Mobility Index, and Framing the Future of Mobility: Using Behavioral Economics to Accelerate Consumer Adoption. He is a frequent speaker on autonomous vehicles, shared mobility, and urban transportation.
All of Deloitte’s research on the future of mobility can be found at deloitte.com/insights/future-of-mobility.
Corey joined CarGurus in September 2017 and is the Lead for the Digital Consulting Team. He comes from 5+ years of digital marketing consulting specific to Search Marketing and Social Media. Before CarGurus, Corey served as a consultant at WordStream in Boston where he consistently learned, tested, and implemented various marketing strategies across several verticals.
His efforts have proven to increase traffic and sales results for franchise and independent dealerships across the country.
Jon McNeill has deep experience as both an entrepreneur and an executive at scale. Jon has founded and scaled six companies, led teams creating tens of thousands of jobs and multi-billion dollar returns for investors.
He is the 2012 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year and in 2013 he was named "Most Admired CEO" in Boston. He was President at Tesla from 2015-2018, before becoming the COO at Lyft in 2018. He began his career at Bain & Company. He serves on the boards of Lululemon, TruMotion and the Brigham & Women’s hospital in Boston.
McNeill is a graduate of Northwestern University.
Aron Ain, chief executive of Kronos Incorporated and author of the award-winning “WorkInspired: How to Build an Organization Where Everyone Loves to Work,” fiercely contends that great businesses are powered by great people and there is a direct link between employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and business success – and he has proof.
Since becoming Kronos CEO in 2005, Ain has put a laser focus on employee engagement as a growth strategy and saw worldwide employee engagement scores skyrocket as annual revenue tripled to $1.5 billion. Ain is a multiyear recipient of Glassdoor’s Top CEOs honor, proudly leading a company that has been recognized as a great place to work in every country where it operates – including being named multiple times to the prestigious Fortune “100 Best Companies to Work For®” and Glassdoor “100 Best Places to Work” lists.
Ain’s book, “WorkInspired,” shows leaders surprisingly simple strategies they can follow to replicate the company’s success.
Arian AJ Maknati is currently the General Manager of Tricars, a luxury pre-owed car dealership in Gaithersburg, Maryland. He lives in Clarksburg, Maryland, and is a Master's degree candidate at American University.
Tricars found success in delivering a different type of experience to car buyers: easy and simple, with no pressure, no stress, and no rush.
In his free time, he enjoys playing and watching sports, and is a huge Redskins and Lakers fan.
A Car and Driver subscriber from the age of 12, Nick always knew he was going to be in the car business. After harassing sales and managers at a local Nissan store, Nick finally got his shot as a lot tech at 17. His sales career started the day after graduating from high school in 1992. After a few years Nick was the top salesperson.
At 22, Nick was asked to run a large used car dealership. Thinking things could be done better than the bureaucratic way, he started his own store with a partner in 2000. Things quickly took off, becoming a top 10 independent dealer by 2007. After the great recession, Nick ventured out on his own. Today Nick’s three stores average over 200 units a month 70% of which are financed in house.
Utilizing Car Gurus transparency philosophy, Nick sees his organization growing to 3000 in-house finance accounts and always offering folks fair deals on great cars regardless of credit situation.
Nick has lived in the Salt Lake City area his whole life and takes full advantage of the incredible outdoor lifestyle Utah has to offer - cycling multiple times a week and skiing at Snowbird in the winter. Nick has six kids ranging in age from 2 to 18.
Prior to CarGurus, Trevisan was with Polaris Partners for twelve years, serving as a General Partner since 2010. While at Polaris, Jason led and supported investments and served on the boards of Internet and SaaS companies including Legalzoom, Shoedazzle, Life Line Screening, PartsSource and Art.com among others.
Prior to Polaris, he held various management roles in Analytics and Client Services at aQuantive (acquired by Microsoft). Earlier in his career he was a consultant with Bain & Company.
Trevisan received his MBA with Distinction from The Tuck School at Dartmouth graduating as an Edward Tuck Scholar and a BA with honors from Duke University.
Aron Ain, chief executive of Kronos Incorporated and author of the award-winning “WorkInspired: How to Build an Organization Where Everyone Loves to Work,” fiercely contends that great businesses are powered by great people and there is a direct link between employee engagement, customer satisfaction, and business success – and he has proof.
Since becoming Kronos CEO in 2005, Ain has put a laser focus on employee engagement as a growth strategy and saw worldwide employee engagement scores skyrocket as annual revenue tripled to $1.5 billion. Ain is a multiyear recipient of Glassdoor’s Top CEOs honor, proudly leading a company that has been recognized as a great place to work in every country where it operates – including being named multiple times to the prestigious Fortune “100 Best Companies to Work For®” and Glassdoor “100 Best Places to Work” lists.
Ain’s book, “WorkInspired,” shows leaders surprisingly simple strategies they can follow to replicate the company’s success.