Sara Brumbaugh is Managing Principal of Ceres Analytics, a consultancy specializing in applied mathematics, statistics, and machine learning. Sara’s roots are in business forecasting: she’s worked with the IBF for over 20 years, and is the 2015 recipient of IBF’s Lifetime Achievement Award. Sara’s work in predictive analytics began with construction of forecast drivers to predict stock returns. Her recent work supported genetic brain research at Harvard Medical School. Other recent work includes, patent-pending algorithms to detect financial fraud, and genetic models to predict success of cancer chemotherapy. Sara holds a masters in Economics from Florida State University, and is a currently pursuing a second masters (Biology) at Harvard University.

Prior Roles

• Escalade Sports: Director of Demand Planning
• Berry Plastics: Director of Demand Planning
• Tempura Sealy International: Director of Demand Planning & S&OP

Industry Involvement

• Frequent speaker and panelist for many executive forums and professional conferences
• Written numerous articles in publications including The Journal of Business Forecasting and APICS Magazine
• Author of the books Cultural Cycles and Predictive Analytics for Business Forecasting & Planning

Award

• IBF Excellence in Business Forecasting & Planning

Certification

• IBF Advanced Certified Professional Forecaster (ACPF)

Tina is a Senior Demand Planning Analyst at Intel Corporation. Her professional experience is interwoven among operations & supply chain, as well as information technology. Her career has seen her work for a range of global multinationals including Boston Scientific, Nestlé, Citrix Sytems and Google, covering a variety of roles including master scheduler, demand planner and S&OP manager and assuming responsibility for the monthly S&OP process, statistical forecasting, production scheduling and more. A data aficionado, she taught herself SQL to pull reports and build analytics to improve decision making. Tina is an APICS Certified Supply Chain Professional, holds an undergrad degree in Finance and Operations, and a Master’s in Business Management.

Kendell Churchwell is a senior analyst with Southern Farm Bureau Life Insurance where she is responsible for the implementation of marketing predictive analytics projects. Her career started at IBM as an IT specialist before moving on to business analysis and analytics roles at C Spire where she spent 10 years. She is a Certified Analytics Professional (CAP®, INFORMS), a certified IBM SPSS Modeler Professional, and Project Management Professional (PMP). Kendell has BS in Mathematics and Computer Science and an MBA from Mississippi State University.