Jon Gold, Vice President, Supply Chain and Customs Policy, National Retail Federation
Tom Heimgartner, Chairman, Association of Bi-State Motor Carriers; President and Founder, BEST Transportation
Jason Miller, Eli Broad Professor of Supply Chain Management, Eli Broad College of Business; Interim Chairperson, Department of Supply Chain Management, Michigan State University
Jennifer Safavian, President & CEO, Autos Drive America
Maria Zieba, Vice President, Government Affairs, National Pork Producers Council
Additional Speakers to be Announced…
Speaker Biographies
Jon Gold is vice president of supply chain and customs policy at the National Retail Federation. In this role, Gold is a primary spokesperson and is responsible for representing the retail industry before Congress and the administration on supply chain, international trade, product safety and customs-related issues impacting the retail industry. While with NRF, he has been a leading advocate of the value of trade and global value chains to the U.S. economy.
Prior to joining NRF, Gold served as a policy analyst in the Office of Policy and Planning for U.S. Customs and Border Protection. He joined CBP in May 2006 and was responsible for providing policy guidance on issues surrounding maritime cargo security and trade-related matters. Gold also worked on implementation issues surrounding the SAFE Port Act and other issues within the agency including CBP intelligence reform, pandemic flu and trade facilitation.
Before joining CBP, Gold spent nearly a decade with the Retail Industry Leaders Association holding several government relations positions including director and then vice president of international trade policy before being named vice president of global supply chain policy in January 2005.
Gold has served on several government advisory committees including the Department of Commerce’s Advisory Committee on Supply Chain Competitiveness, the Department of Homeland Security’s Commercial Customs Operations Advisory Committee (COAC) and on the Department of Commerce’s International Trade Advisory Committee on Distribution Services.
Gold graduated from American University in Washington, D.C., in 1994 with a bachelor’s degree in international business with a concentration in finance.
Tom Heimgartner is an industry leader and brings more than 50 years of transportation experience. In 1982, Tom founded Best Transportation as a one truck operation, which has evolved into one of the largest and most successful intermodal trucking companies in the Port of New York and New Jersey with over 100 trucks servicing the northeast through The Ports of New York and New Jersey, Philadelphia & Baltimore. Tom is Chairman of the Board of Directors of the Association of Bi-State Motor Carriers and a member of the Board of the Intermodal Carriers Conference of the ATA.
Participating in Port Authority’s Clean trucks focus group, the Port Productivity Task Force and working directly with terminal operator’s, cargo owners and shippers; Tom is an advocate for improving the work environment, productivity, safety and sustainability of intermodal transportation and a proponent for the growth and efficiency of the Port of New York and New Jersey.
Jason Miller (PhD The Ohio State University) is the Eli Broad Endowed Professor of Supply Chain Management and is serving a third year as interim chairperson for the Department of Supply Chain Management at Michigan State University’s Eli Broad College of Business. His primary research stream examines issues in the for-hire truck transportation industry including safety, productivity, pricing dynamics, driver turnover, and employment. He also conducts macroeconomic research in the manufacturing and retail sectors, with a special emphasis on the disruptive role of imports, tariffs, and the COVID-19 pandemic. His research has appeared in Academy of Management Journal, Decision Sciences, Forecasting, International Journal of Physical Distribution and Logistics Management, Journal of Business Logistics, Journal of Management, Journal of Operations Management, Journal of Supply Chain Management, Manufacturing and Service Operations Management, Multivariate Behavioral Research, Production and Operations Management, Transportation Journal, and Transportation Research Part E. Jason is a Senior Editor at Journal of Business Logistics; an Associate Editor at Journal of Operations Management, Decision Sciences, Journal of Supply Chain Management, and International Journal of Operations and Production Management. He also actively reviews for several supply chain (International Journal of Logistics Management and Transportation Journal) and quantitative methods (Behavior Research Methods, Educational and Psychological Measurement and Structural Equation Modeling) journals.
In addition to academic research, Jason provides commentary via LinkedIn on various issues that affect supply chain practitioners such as inventory levels, pricing dynamics, manufacturing output, and transportation activity. He regularly speaks at industry webinars regarding these topics. He is frequently quoted by national general media outlets including The Wall Street Journal, Bloomberg, NBC News, The Washington Post, Reuters, and NPR as well as specialized industry news outlets including Journal of Commerce, FreightWaves, Supply Chain Dive, Business Insider, and Trains, amongst others.
With regard to teaching, Jason teaches or has taught courses at the undergraduate, masters, and doctoral level. He currently teaches a course on integrated logistics systems in the MBA program and a distribution fulfillment course in the MS in Supply Chain Management program. At the doctoral level, he co-coordinates the introductory PhD seminar common to both the logistics and OSM doctoral programs.
Jason has been recognized with multiple awards for research and teaching. He was recognized as the undergraduate faculty member who had the greatest impact on students based on the 2017 graduating senior survey. The website Poets & Quants has recognized him as one of the top 40 undergraduate professors in 2017.
Jennifer Safavian is the President and CEO of Autos Drive America. She is an accomplished government relations professional with two decades of policy experience both in government and the private sector.
Before joining Autos Drive America, Safavian was Executive Vice President for Government Affairs at the Retail Industry Leaders Association. Prior to holding that position, she spent the majority of her career on Capitol Hill, serving as Staff Director and General Counsel on the House Ways & Means Committee, and holding senior positions on other key House Committees, including Energy & Commerce and Oversight & Government Reform.
Among her various accolades, Safavian was named one of the “Top Trade Association Lobbyists” by The Hill six times since 2017. She has been named by the National Law Journal as one of the “Top 10 Lawyers on Capitol Hill” and one of the “Fabulous 50” top congressional staff members by Roll Call. Safavian has a J.D. from Michigan State University College of Law and holds a B.A. from Saint Louis University.
Maria Zieba is the Vice President of International Affairs for the National Pork Producers Council (NPPC) and helps represent over 65,000 U.S. pork producers. She works on NPPC’s trade policy program, which focuses on opening, maintaining and increasing market access for U.S. pork.
Prior to joining NPPC, Zieba was a Trade Policy Manager for the National Milk Producers Federation and the U.S. Dairy Export Council, where she worked on various non-technical trade issues affecting the dairy industry. Before that, she worked at the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s Foreign Agricultural Service, managing capacity building projects aimed at increasing U.S. agricultural exports to emerging markets.
Zieba holds a M.A. in international commerce and policy from George Mason University. She received her B.A. from the University of California, Riverside with a double major in political science-international affairs and Spanish.
She is fluent in three languages and has lived in Washington, D.C., Southern California, Argentina and Brazil.