Eric Berridge is a 23-year Salesforce ecosystem veteran and CEO of Coastal, a premier Salesforce consultancy he joined in 2020 and took the helm of in September 2023. He previously co-founded Bluewolf in 2000 - one of the first Salesforce-focused consulting firms - and built it to a major acquisition by IBM in 2016. A TED speaker, two-time author, and MFA-holder in creative writing who never studied computer science, Berridge argues that the humanities are tech's most underrated competitive advantage. Under his leadership, Coastal was acquired by Tata Consultancy Services (TCS) for $700 million in January 2026, the largest professional services acquisition in Salesforce ecosystem history.
Kevin Scott is the Chief Technology Officer of Microsoft, where he has served since January 2017 under CEO Satya Nadella. A computer scientist from Gladys, Virginia, Scott rose from a working-class background to become one of the most influential technologists in the world, architecting Microsoft's landmark partnership with OpenAI, the Copilot suite, and the 'agentic web' vision. Before Microsoft, he held senior engineering roles at Google, AdMob, and LinkedIn, where he led the infrastructure overhaul known as 'Operation InVersion.' He is also a Wall Street Journal #1 bestselling author of 'Reprogramming the American Dream' (2020), which argues that AI must be harnessed to serve rural and working-class communities, not just coastal elites.