This years PRSSA National Conference is San Francisco California. I can't wait to be able to attend this conference and get the opportunity to listen to some incredible speakers. 

Speakers that I am most looking forward to hearing from:

***Joseph Trahan

Trahan is a retired Lieutenant Colonel, United States Army. He has over twenty-nine years of public relations/affairs experience in governmental, association, and educational and non-profit public relations. Fun fact: Since 1998, Trahan has superbly trained more than 3,500 people yearly in media relations throughout almost all of the United States. England, Norway, France, Belgium, Paraguay, Mexico and the Netherlands.

***Maurice Brazelton

I would love his job!! He works for Maloof Sports & Entertainment and oversees all elements of in-arena day-of-game entertainment and production, including in-game promotions, player introductions, halftime entertainment, mascot, performance teams, music and video production for the Kings. He also oversees the special events team for the Kings that is responsible for producing hundreds of events annually both internally and externally.

***Matt Price

He seems like a stellar dude. Matt is currently working as the social media manager for The Walt Disney Company. Prior to his current role, Prince was senior manager of executive communications, handling speech writing and strategic communications for executives at the world famous Disneyland Resort. Prince founded his own creative agency, launched two successful blogs read in over 100 countries around the world, led the communications department for one of the most influential business organizations in California and was tapped as an executive speech writer for one of the most famous brands in the world – all by age 26.

***Biz Stone

Stone, who considers himself an “Internet entrepreneur who believes in the triumph of humanity with a little help from technology,” started out as a progenitor of the early social Web in 1999, joined Google in 2003, and in 2006, launched the online social network and microblogging service, Twitter, effectively providing a voice for a generation. In 2011, he co-founded The Obvious Corporation, which focuses on building systems that help people work together to improve the world.


***Rita Tateel

Rita Tateel, founder and president, The Celebrity Source, an international agency headquartered in Los Angeles, matches celebrities with corporate and non-profit public relations programs, marketing and advertising campaigns as well as special events. Tateel has been working with celebrities for over 20 years. She has been interviewed and quoted as a celebrity expert for media outlets such as CNN, Entertainment Tonight, EXTRA!, E! Entertainment Television, New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Playboy Magazine, New York Post, Los Angeles Times, PRWeek and the Hollywood Reporter, among many other sources.

***Tim Westergren

Following 20 years in the music industry as an award-winning composer and accomplished musician, Tim Westergren, founder and chief strategy officer of Pandora, launched the popular personalized radio service with the Music Genome Project, which uses a mathematical algorithm to predict a person’s musical taste based on a small musical sampling. Along with guiding Pandora's overall strategy and vision, he spends much of his time as the company’s chief evangelist, traveling the country to connect with some of the tens of millions of people who use Pandora. He also works extensively with technology and distribution partners, advertisers and investors to help shape the future of Pandora and personalized radio.

***Angela Jackson

Jackson joined the San Francisco Travel Association as director of public relations in April 2007. In 2011, her role was shifted to concentrate on the international market under the tourism division as director of media relations, international. Jackson works very closely with San Francisco Travel’s 13 international offices to increase international press coverage by promoting San Francisco as the number one travel destination in the world. In the past year, Jackson has traveled with the tourism team to attend key travel trade shows including World Travel Market in London; ABAV in Brazil; ITB in Berlin and US Travel’s trade and media mission in India. She recently returned from a European Sales Mission in London and Frankfurt with Visit California.