We still have a lot of Code speakers to announce, so without further ado, here are three more great ones to add to an already amazing lineup:
More Code Speakers: Target’s Cornell, Google’s Kordestani, CBS’ Moonves
There are more to come, but here are some great voices onstage at our annual tech and media conference.
Brian Cornell was named CEO and chairman of Target just under a year ago, the first outsider to run it, brought in to reenergize the once innovative retail giant. His resume is certainly impressive: CEO of PepsiCo Americas Foods, CEO of Walmart’s Sam’s Club, CEO of Michaels Stores. While Target had long been known for style and freshness, it has faced challenges in recent years, as competition has sharpened and new shopper growth has stalled. Besides reigniting the core base, Cornell is also charged with the task of digitizing the business even faster than before, even as Target faced a hacking crisis in 2013. Known as a data wonk, we are eager to hear how Cornell thinks physical retail will change and shift.
Omid Kordestani was Google’s first key business and sales exec, dubbed its “business founder,” a major player in making the search giant the behemoth it is today. After stepping away, he returned a year ago to head all business efforts at Google. Kordestani is a Silicon Valley veteran, having been the top business exec at the doomed Netscape Communications and also doing stints at Hewlett-Packard and (also doomed) GO Corporation. Obviously, Google is anything but doomed, but it still faces a range of new challenges as its business and the competitive landscape shifts quickly from how search changes, to mobile and video advertising monetization, to figuring out how to make some dough from Google X’s far-flung moonshot efforts.
Les Moonves appeared on our stage many years ago, but things have certainly changed dramatically in the media business since then. Considered one of the most successful execs in the space, Moonves is the competitive and aggressive CEO of CBS, in charge of figuring out how it maintains and grows its many current offline businesses, while also continuing to figure out an evolving strategy online. When he is not sealing the deal on big boxing matches, Moonves has been pushing CBS into the future. “The days of the 500 channel universe are over,” he recently told investors. What that means for CBS and the rest of the media universe will be one of the many questions we’ll be asking the high-profile exec.
Other speakers announced previously include: Xiaomi’s international head Hugo Barra; Sprint CEO Marcelo Claure; Reddit interim CEO Ellen Pao; GoPro CEO and founder Nick Woodman; Snapchat’s Evan Spiegel; Airbnb’s Brian Chesky, Oculus VR’s Brendan Iribe; Kleiner Perkins partner Mary Meeker; and Massachusetts Senator Elizabeth Warren.
As usual, the event — held May 26 to 28 in Rancho Palos Verdes, Calif. — sold out quickly. But, as always, Re/code will be putting up extensive video clips of the interviews immediately and the entire sessions soon after.
Since there are so many interesting issues to discuss this year — from diversity to hacking to privacy to national security — we looked for speakers who could discuss these big issues and be challenged to explain what it all means for consumers. While we never have a specific theme to Code events, this has been an especially disruptive year in tech and media and we want to put disruptive speakers in the spotlight.
There are more of those to come, which we will be announcing soon.
This article originally appeared on Recode.net.
