Barbara Baksa serves as Executive Director for the NASPP and is a respected leader in the field of equity compensation. She frequently speaks on stock compensation-related topics, is the author of the book “Accounting for Equity Compensation,” published by the NCEO and a required text for the CEP exam, as well as numerous other articles and white papers. Barbara is a CEP, a member of the Advisory Board of the CEP Institute, and an Executive Fellow of the Institute for the Study of Employee Ownership and Profit Sharing at Rutgers University School of Management and Labor Relations.

Jennifer Shepherd Cashio, CEP has 30 years of experience in equity compensation. She started her career as an Equity Compensation Paralegal with Gray Cary Ware and Freidenrich (now known as DLA Piper Gray Cary). She worked on both the vendor and issuer side of the house at E*TRADE Financial. She was the first Senior Stock Administrator at eHealth, Inc. and handled the post-IPO set up and administration. Currently based in Austin, Texas, she is the Senior Stock Administrator for flex, a global manufacturing company in 32 countries with over 142,000 employees. She is the current President of the NASPP Austin Chapter and has been on the Curriculum Committee of the Certified Equity Professional Institute since 2018. She received her Certified Equity Professional designation from Santa Clara University in 1999 and graduated from Santa Clara University in 1992 with a Bachelor of Science degree.

As head of Fidelity Stock Plan Services' Industry Relationships and Thought Leadership, Emily drives connections with the stock plan industry and develops data-driven insights on equity compensation plan design, usage, and effectiveness to help plan sponsors make more informed decisions about their equity plans. She is a frequent speaker and author on topics to help educate employers, advisors, and the media. Emily is a board member for the Certified Equity Professional Institute, member of the NASPP Executive Advisory Committee, recipient of the NASPP Individual Achievement Award, a Fellow of Global Equity, and a representative on GEO’s Partner Alliance Council.

Natalie is a Senior Consultant at Infinite Equity. Prior to joining Infinite Equity, Natalie held a role at a large consulting firm where she was a member of the actuarial service center specializing in retirement plan valuations. Natalie currently serves on the board of NASPP’s Austin Chapter. Natalie earned a Bachelor of Science in Actuarial Science from the University of Texas, and is a CEP. Natalie is based in Austin.

Tony’s multi-disciplinary legal practice focuses on executive compensation, ESOPs and employee benefit arrangements (including their related tax, accounting, securities and corporate governance issues) in the United States and abroad. He leads the Compensation Practice Group at Hunton Andrews Kurth. Before entering private practice, Tony served as a judicial clerk to the Hon. Richard F. Suhrheinrich of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Josephine Gartrell is a senior consultant in WTW’s Executive Compensation and Board Advisory practice. She leads public company committee assignments and assists privately held companies across industries with executive compensation and benchmarking; board of director pay; incentive plan design; compensation philosophy; corporate governance; technical matters related to securities and tax issues; compliance issues related to Dodd-Frank regulations, exchange requirements, shareholder engagement, and shareholder advisory services guidelines; reasonableness of executive pay, governance, and plan design; executive employment agreement negotiations; retention; severance; and founders’ agreements.     

Josephine co-leads WTW’s ECBA Transactions Team. In that capacity, Josephine advises companies on IPOs, de-SPACs and other M&A transactions. She also advises PE firms on preparing portfolio companies for exit and designing carried interest plans.  Her work with distressed companies includes cost-containment strategies and plan design; resulting in leading many companies of various sizes and industries through restructuring in and out of Chapter 11.

LaRee is a Manager within Deloitte's Global Employer Services (GES) Rewards practice. She specializes in advising senior management teams and Compensation Committees on complex issues involving compensation, equity incentives, corporate governance, talent management, and total rewards strategy. Her expertise lies in designing and implementing compensation and equity programs that align with business strategy, motivate performance, and support the attraction and retention of high-performing talent.    Prior to joining Deloitte, LaRee worked at a publicly traded Energy & Utilities company where she provided essential support in executive compensation during a CEO transition. She also gained valuable experience at a boutique consulting firm, where she advised both publicly traded and privately held companies on a wide spectrum of executive, broad-based, and board of director compensation matters.    LaRee holds a BBA in Finance and Economics from the University of Notre Dame and is currently pursuing her MBA at the University of Florida’s Warrington College of Business. Additionally, she holds a Certified Executive Compensation Professional (CECP) certification from WorldatWork.

Garrett Griffin is a Senior Director with Alvarez & Marsal Tax, LLC in Houston.  Garrett advises clients on compensation and benefits matters, focusing on compensation program design across all phases of a company's lifecycle.  Garrett also assists with the review, design, benchmarking and implementation of both equity-based and non-equity-based compensation programs, performing market analyses to align compensation with companies' business strategies and evaluating the tax and accounting ramifications of compensation.

Prior to re-joining Alvarez & Marsal, Garrett served as VP Total Rewards and Head of Compensation at Crown Castle, Inc., a Fortune 500 company engaged in telecommunications infrastructure.  In this role, Garrett had responsibility for leading the compensation and benefits functions, including incentive plan design, executive compensation and governance, job management and benchmarking, and oversight/administration of employee benefit programs.  Prior to his time with Crown Castle, Garrett was in various consulting and leadership roles with both Alvarez & Marsal and Mercer HR Consulting.

Garrett is a graduate of the McCombs School of Business at The University of Texas at Austin, where he received a BBA with majors in Business Honors and Engineering Route to Business, focusing in Finance and Mechanical Systems.  Garrett is a Certified Compensation Professional (CCP) and Certified Executive Compensation Professional (CECP) through WorldatWork.

Dylan Hernandez, a Director with Alvarez & Marsal, advises clients on a variety of compensation and benefit issues with a specialty in executive compensation.    Mr. Hernandez assists with the review, design, benchmarking, and implementation of both non-equity and equity-based compensation programs, performing market analyses to align compensation with a company’s business strategies, and evaluating the tax and accounting ramifications of compensation.      Mr. Hernandez helps companies tackle how to effectively and efficiently pay and incentivize their employees. Dylan focuses on restructuring compensation, which means developing both retention and incentive based for both public and private companies, as well as mergers and acquisitions for healthy companies.    Mr. Hernandez received a bachelor’s degree in Finance from the Cox School of Business at Southern Methodist University. Mr. Hernandez is a Certified Executive Compensation Professional (CECP) through the WorldatWork organization.

J.D. Ivy is a Managing Director with Alvarez & Marsal Tax, LLC. Mr. Ivy advises clients on executive compensation and benefits issues.   Mr. Ivy provides tax and accounting advice to corporate clients for executive compensation matters, including issues related to stock options, restricted stock, retirement plans, deferred compensation, global compensation strategies, golden parachute rules (section 280G) and the one million deduction limitation.    He also assists with the development of compensation strategies; assessing competitive compensation plans; the design of annual incentive and long-term compensation programs; and retirement programs to align with a company's business strategies; and in evaluating tax and accounting ramifications.   Prior to joining A&M, Mr. Ivy was a Senior Manager in the compensation and benefits groups of KPMG and Arthur Andersen. He also led the executive compensation group for a Fortune 500 company.   Mr. Ivy received a bachelor's degree in accounting from Abilene Christian University and a master's degree in business administration from Texas Tech University.  He is a Certified Public Accountant (CPA), and a Certified Compensation Professional (CCP) through the World at Work organization.  Mr. Ivy is a member of the National Association of Stock Plan Professionals (NASPP) and a board member of the NASPP Dallas chapter.

Rebecca Kargl is the Senior Equity Manager at Zillow Group. In this role, she is a key member of the Corporate and Securities Legal team, overseeing the administration, analysis, and employee education for the company's global equity plan. Rebecca also leads collaboration with various internal and external teams on matters related to equity planning, processing, accounting, and global equity administration.  Before joining Zillow Group, Rebecca served as Payroll Manager and Senior Executive Compensation and Stock Plan Administrator at Concho Resources Inc., until its acquisition by ConocoPhillips in early 2021. She began her career as an auditor at Weaver.  Rebecca is a licensed Certified Public Accountant (CPA) and a Certified Equity Professional (CEP). She is an active member of the Global Equity Organization (GEO) and the National Association of Stock Plan Professionals (NASPP), where she currently serves as President of the NASPP Dallas Chapter and received her designation of NASPP Distinguished Equity Fellow (NDEF) in 2024.  Additionally, she frequently speaks at industry conferences and events and dedicates her time to equity education and networking initiatives.

Paul is a Director in the Workplace Benefits group of Bank of America.

Rob Miceli has been a member of Bank of America’s AwardChoice Financial Reporting team since 2006. Rob brings to the AwardChoice Financial Reporting team a background in Finance, graduating Summa Cum Laude with a B.S. in Finance from the Barrett Honors College, W.P. Carey School of Business, at Arizona State University. Rob began his career in equity compensation in 2005 with Equity Methods, ultimately serving as Director of Business Development for Equity Methods before the company was acquired by Merrill Lynch in 2006. Rob earned his Certified Equity Professional (CEP) designation from Santa Clara University in 2015 and received his Advanced Equity Compensation Accounting Certificate through SCU’s Certified Equity Professional Institute in its inaugural program year in 2021. Rob resides in San Diego, California with his wife Carmen and their two children, Dominic, and Sofia.

Erika Rivera is a Vice President at Morgan Stanley and leads the Executive Services Engagement Team. She’s primarily responsible for working with Issuers to assess the needs of their company’s executives and develops a bespoke program and model for ongoing support. Having spent over a decade in the Corporate and Executive Services space, Erika specializes in Section 16, Rule 144, Private to Public transaction and provides thought leadership on corporate 10b5-1 sales plans while onboarding corporate executives.

Erika is actively engaged in her local equity compensation community, serving as the Houston NASPP Chapter President and is a board member for the Texas Chapter of GEO. She has a BA in Advertising from the University of Houston, and holds Series 7, 63, and 66 FINRA licenses.

Ryan is Managing Director at Infinite Equity, where he helps companies design, value, account for, and track their equity programs. Ryan specializes in the valuation of complex awards requiring Monte Carlo simulation and assisting companies to navigate stock-based compensation accounting. Ryan most recently worked in an equity compensation consulting role from 2014 to 2023, where he served as an Associate Partner and the Western US Practice Leader. Ryan frequently speaks on a wide variety of equity compensation topics across the US. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Economics with specialization in Financial Markets from Washington State University and is a Certified Equity Professional. Ryan is based in Denver.

Sandy focuses on the tax and regulatory issues that impact employer rewards programs. As a compensation consultant with specialized experience serving clients across the globe in the area of long-term incentive plans, Sandy has helped U.S. and non-U.S. companies navigate the complexities of operating equity and non-equity based programs. Sandy assists clients with global grant strategies, M&A support, complex tax issues faced by issuers in the U.S. and abroad, employee communications, corporate tax issues relating to incentive program cost charge outs, qualified plan implementation, cross-border issues impacting globally and domestically mobile employees, as well as daily plan administration. Sandy is also the Lead Alliance Partner for Deloitte Tax LLP’s alliance with Awardco.

Sebastian Skalany is currently Vice President, Total Rewards at TechnipFMC., a global technology provider to the energy industry and has over 20 year of experience leading Total Rewards strategies and programs for major multinational companies. 

Tommy is an experienced equity compensation professional and a trusted leader in the stock plan community. Dedicated to advancing education, thought leadership, community engagement, and passionate about shaping the future of equity plans. With nearly 20 years of experience, Tommy has excelled in diverse roles, including stock plan administration, financial reporting, product development, project management, training, partnerships, and industry engagement. His extensive experience has equipped him with a deep understanding of equity plan complexities and the ability to drive innovative solutions that benefit organizations and their employees. Tommy is a frequent and highly regarded speaker at leading equity compensation events, such as the GEO Conference, Equilar Summit, NASPP Conference, chapter meetings, and numerous other local and national forums.

A lifelong learner, Tommy holds a Bachelor of Business Administration (B.B.A.) in Finance from Middle Tennessee State University and is a Certified Equity Professional (CEP). He also maintains FINRA Series 6, 63, and 65 registrations. In addition to his professional accomplishments, he serves as the Regional Chapter Representative for the NASPP Southern Region and Treasurer of the NASPP Nashville Chapter. Tommy's contributions to the field have been widely recognized. He was honored as a Fellow of Global Equity (FGE) by the Global Equity Organization in 2019 and as a NASPP Distinguished Equity Fellow (NDEF) by the National Association of Stock Plan Professionals in 2023.

A proud Tennessean, Tommy resides with his wife and two daughters, embodying a commitment to both his professional endeavors and his family.

Robert Vaughan has spent over 15 years in the retirement and institutional consulting industry. As a Senior Retirement and Institutional Consultant with UBS Global Wealth Management, he provides customized solutions to meet the needs of clients across the United States. Robert is also a member of UBS's Retirement and Institutional Consulting Group, which offers expertise in portfolio investment management, risk management, retirement plan design, and more.    

His experience includes financial wellness, equity plan administration and retirement plan consulting. Robert has earned the designation of Certified Investment Management Analyst (CIMA®) through the Wharton School of Business and is a Chartered Retirement Plan Specialist (CRPS®). Through the Center for Fiduciary Studies at the Katz Graduate School of Business, University of Pittsburgh, Robert achieved the Accredited Investment Fiduciary (AIF®) designation. Robert holds an master’s in finance from Baruch College part of the City University of New York.

Shannon is an Associate Director in the Executive Compensation practice at Willis Towers Watson, in its Metro New York City offices. Shannon has experience in multiple industries, including energy, technology, financial services, insurance, consumer goods and manufacturing.    

Specific experiences include:  Independent Compensation Committee consulting and support  Short and Long-term incentive design, execution and communications, including systems’ support and financial and tax implications  Executive benefits, including deferred compensation, retirement and perquisites  Job grading, pay structures, benchmarking and competitive intelligence  Regulatory compliance and reporting requirements, including proxy statement preparation and supporting the process for a successful Say on Pay shareholder vote.