December 3 | 1:00 PM ET
Michelle Poler is a Latina-Jewish entrepreneur, brand strategist, author, and professional keynote speaker.
She is the creator of the project 100 Days Without Fear, and founder of Hello Fears, a movement that has reached over 70 million people worldwide.
Today, her work as an author, digital educator, and social influencer continues to amplify her impact helping audiences turn fears into opportunities, comfort into growth, and ultimately go from being one more to becoming one of a kind.
Michelle’s best-selling books have been translated into 7 languages, and distributed in 4 continents:
1) Hello, Fears: Crush Your Comfort Zone and Become Who You’re Meant to Be
2) The Hello, Fears Challenge: A 100-Day Journal for Self-Discovery.
She has been invited to speak at The Global Leadership Summit, Google, P&G, ESPN, TEDx, Netflix, Microsoft, Meta among many others, and her work has been featured in: The TODAY Show, Forbes, CBS, CNN, Buzzfeed, Mashable, Huffington Post just to name a few.
Michelle holds a master’s degree in Branding from the School of Visual Arts in New York City, and early in her career, she worked as an Art Director for brands like Hershey’s, Wendy’s, AT&T, and Revlon.
When Michelle is not flying, speaking, or indulging in culinary experiences around the world, you’ll find her drinking matcha at home in Miami, and living fully with her husband, Adam, and their son, Noah.
December 4 | 7:30 AM ET
Curated by UPCEA Research & Consulting
Amid demographic and generational shifts, UPCEA members will become even more vital to their institutions--and will almost assuredly spend more over the next few years to do so, as they strive to be more competitive for credit-seeking students while building out new audiences of adult and lifelong learners. Review the impactful results of UPCEA’s pace-setting bi-annnual Marketing Survey and other UPCEA research, and then dive into ramifications that will address perspectives on how practitioners source talent, how they are investing in tools and technology, and what influences decision-making as institutions continue to increase budgets and expectations for their marketing departments.
Leigh Saunders, University of Minnesota 
Marilou Cruz, Toronto Metropolitan University 
Moderator: Bruce Etter, UPCEA
December 4 | 12:15 PM ET
Join this lively interactive conversation with the top recipients of the 2024 MEMS awards as these innovative leaders share their insights and expertise in marketing, diversity and inclusion, and enrollment management.
Kristen Pope,
Harvard University
Vanessa Cook,
University of Mississippi
Melissa Semione, SUNY
Oswego
Moderator: Alicia Jasmin, Tulane UniversityDecember 5 | 7:45 AM ET
Online, graduate professional education has experienced significant transformation over the last decade through the evolution of technology and shifts in workforce demands, and critically, the arrival of COVID-19, seeing sizable growth in the net number of new programs--and also similarly-sized variances in enrollment. In this lively briefing, a panel of senior leaders for graduate professional education will share their perspectives on the trends and realities they are seeing in this disrupted landscape, how they are positioning their institutions for success, and how they are addressing challenges around scale, demographic shifts, uncertainty in the market, and the impact of stackable graduate programming.
Kris Rabberman, University of Pennsylvania 
Minh Virasak, Santa Clara University
Amy Heitzman, UPCEA
December 5 | 11:15 AM ET
Our world is rapidly changing as a result of shifting demographics, advances in technology and economic pressures. Will it come to an end as many science fiction movies predict? No, there’s always a hero or heroine and overlooked solution. Let’s learn from the popular movie “A Quiet Place” on how marketers and enrollment managers can prepare for the anticipated adverse conditions of the near future. UPCEA research and data will play an important role in combating invaders in the future.
Jim Fong is UPCEA's Chief Research Officer and the founding director of UPCEA Research and Consulting. In his role, Jim has analyzed demographic, occupational, technological and societal trends and data to help the higher education community better serve the adult and corporate learner. He works closely with dozens of colleges and universities annually in new program development initiatives, enrollment management and marketing process analyses and the review of online and continuing education portfolios.
Prior to joining UPCEA, Jim worked as a higher education strategic marketing and CRM consultant and researcher for two firms and prior to that was the Director of Marketing, Research and Planning for Penn State Outreach. At Penn State Outreach, he was responsible for strategic marketing, marketing management, research, creative and database teams. Jim played a major role in the early launch of Penn State’s World Campus by assessing new program needs and the development of marketing strategies and systems.
Jim holds an M.B.A., an M.S. in Applied Statistics and a B.S. in Mathematics, all from The University of Vermont. In 2004, UPCEA awarded him the Adelle Robertson Award as its Continuing Professional Educator for the year. That year, he also received the Mid-Atlantic Region’s Distinguished Service Award.