Internationally renowned brand design strategist, Jeffrey Hamilton Smith has maintained a successful career that spans more than a quarter century. Working at the visual core of brand development, he realizes his passion in the creation of aesthetic magnetism for names like Abercrombie & Fitch, Pac Bell, Boeing and Microsoft, among a vast list of equally large and smaller clientele. In 1989 he founded Smith Design Works, receiving ADC awards in both 2007 and 2008 (the only Seattle studio to be awarded such). His many accolades earned him a seat as Director of the American Branding Association in 2001, a position which he still holds.

After spending four years in Europe and twelve years in the San Francisco Bay Area, where he honed his brand design acumen, authoring several proprietary pieces discussing the similarities between cult behavior and participatory brand experience, Smith returned to his hometown of Seattle in 1999.

Joe Grushkin

Business coach Joe Grushkin has an extensive background as an entrepreneur in direct sales, general sales management, marketing and leadership of small and mid-sized businesses. During his 25-year career, he has assisted hundreds of independent business owner, and trained more than 20,000 sales people.

Grushkin is intimately involved with the yarn business: In addition to having coached yarn shop owners on improving LYS operations, his wife of 22 years, Pam Grushkin, is a knitting blogger, designer and yarn shop employee. Family vacations always involve field trips to local yarn shops, and their car's emergency kit includes a yarn stash and needles. Grushkin's firsthand knowledge of knitting culture combines with his diverse business experience to offer the LYS exciting new insights and practical ideas both to build a better business and achieve balance between professional and personal life.

Jeanette Nyden

As a litigation lawyer at a bankruptcy firm, Jeanette Nyden spent years negotiating on behalf of small businesses.

Recognizing in 2003 that business people needed relevant and practical negotiation advice, Nyden started J. Nyden & Co, Inc. Since then, she has trained and coached hundreds of people at businesses ranging from powerhouses like Microsoft to start-ups like NetStar Communications. She is the author of Negotiation Rules! A Practical Approach to Big Deal Negotiations, a hands-on guide to winning great deals without sacrificing your bottom line.

Nyden is a professional mediator, business attorney and adjunct professor in Seattle, Washington. She is an avid knitter and lives in Tacoma, Washington, with her husband an independent bookstore owner.

Tom Shay

Tom Shay's experiences as a fourth-generation merchant provide him with the knowledge and background to present tried and proven ideas to assist owners, managers and staff with the day-to-day operation of their businesses. During the 25-plus years that Shay was a part of the family business, the stores were ongoing laboratories for the management and promotional techniques that are the backbone of the seminars that he now produces.

Shay presents proven and time tried ideas on the topics of promoting, customer loyalty, business management design, employee skills development and financial control.

In addition to providing proven business building ideas through his writings in more than 60 trade publications, Shay has authored EZ Cashflow, a book teaching business owners how to accurately forecast their next 12 financial sheets, and a series of books of management tips beginning with 100 Profits Plus Ideas for Power Promoting and 100 Profits Plus Ideas for Power Managing.

Shay and his wife Marilyn reside in St. Petersburg, Florida, with their twin sons Darren and Blake.

Cinda Baxter

Cinda Baxter understands small business from the inside out, having once been a retailer herself. As past recipient of two national Retailer Excellence Awards and with press coverage in outlets ranging from Modern Bride to the Wall Street Journal, she now pays it forward to retailers and vendors through her consulting company, Always Upward, and as founder of The 3/50 Project, which Fox Business News refers to as “the formula that could save some local businesses that might not otherwise survive the recession.”

Baxter is widely recognized as an expert in the gift and stationery industries, and her resumé includes seats on numerous influential boards including AmericasMart Atlanta and Gift for Life; speaking engagements throughout the U.S. and abroad; and as contributing editor for the trade publication Gifts and Decorative Accessories Magazine. Her blog, found at AlwaysUpward.com, is considered a “must read” in the industries that she serves.

Considered a social-networking pioneer in gift and stationery circles, Baxter is also the founder of successful online communities RetailSpeaks and Brilliant Ink. Her launch of The 3/50 Project on March 30, 2009, marked the start of a national Buy Local campaign unlike any other; through its viral growth, the grass-roots movement garnered more than 10,000 registered supporting businesses and more than 16,000 Facebook fans in its first few months alone.

Debi Ward Kennedy

Debi Ward Kennedy is a retail visual designer providing design services to independent retail merchants, artisans, and retail industry shows and showrooms. Her services build retail brand identity through coordinated visual presentation of store environment, product merchandising and visual marketing. For more than 30 years, Ward Kennedy has worked with retail clients such as Hickory Farms, Jeans West, Western Exhibitors Shows, George Little Show Management, the DenverMart, Pacific Market Center and wine industry luminaries Chateau Ste. Michelle, Hogue and Columbia Wineries. She has won awards for her booth designs for Molbaks Garden+Home and artist/designer Shaunna Morrissey.

Ward Kennedy is a frequent guest speaker at retail and gift industry trade shows across the country, and her articles have been published in industry magazines such as GiftBeat, Business Journal, Country Business Magazine, OneCoast Advisor and the Design*Sponge blog. Her own retail blog is a popular online resource for retailers and designers alike. As a featured retail expert on Country Business Online and the Gift & Home Channel, Ward Kennedy produced, hosted and filmed a series of merchandising and display how-to videos for retailers.

Ward Kennedy's work with women entrepreneurs for over ten years includes the co-founding and development of online resources TheBlissGuild.com, WomenTakeWing.com, and participation in Victoria Magazine's Business of Bliss community

Linda Cahan

Linda Cahan has been in visual merchandising, store design and display since 1971. Her experience includes visual merchandising for traditional department stores, specialty stores and large corporations for all types of merchandise—fashion, soft and hard lines, including appliances, computers, auto parts, machinery and tools.

Cahan consults on store renovation, design and visual programs specializing in layout/flow, surface specifications for new or renovated spaces, fixturing, staff training for visual merchandising and feng shui through hands-on sessions and manuals.

She has written custom visual standards manuals for companies including Saks Fifth Avenue, Lancome Cosmetics, American Express, Singer, United Rentals and two retail companies in South America.

Cahan is a columnist for Gifts and Dec Magazine as well as a frequent writer for many other trade publications. She recently published Feng Shui for Retailers and authored the textbook A Practical Guide to Visual Merchandising. Cahan taught at Parsons School of Design in New York City for 12 years.

She lives in the Portland area of Oregon and consults and lectures extensively around the world.

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