OUR Advisory Board
The HorizonCX Advisory Board is a team of business professionals with a diverse set of skills and experiences from within both business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) organizations. Each of them has a background in customer experience management and together they provide HorizonCX with valuable insights and ideas to help us identify new and unmet market needs that fit within our unique business model to help us succeed. This team of advisors offers us very unique and individual perspectives gained through years of practical and in-depth business experience.

Alec Dalton, CRDE, CHIA
Partner, Hospitality Leadership Academy
Alec Dalton inspires exceptional experiences using service science. Leveraging over a decade of experience in the hospitality industry, Alec is a Co-Founder and Partner of the Hospitality Leadership Academy. The consultancy supports brand names and boutique businesses alike with service-oriented customer experience strategy and training. He proudly serves as an Advisory Board Member for HorizonCX, in addition to being a member of the Board of Directors for the Customer Institute. Alec’s publications include co-authorship of the textbook Operations Management in the Hospitality Industry and the first two international best-sellers in the series Customer Experience. In 2018, Hotel Management Magazine named him to the “30 Under 30” list of rising hospitality executives. In 2021, the Customer Experience Professionals Association recognized Alec with the inaugural Emerging Leader in CX Award
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Alec graduated from Boston University with dual bachelor’s degrees in business and hospitality administration. The Council for Six Sigma Certification recognizes him as a Certified Six Sigma Green Belt, and the American Hotel & Lodging Educational Institute named him a Certified Rooms Division Executive and a Certified Hotel Industry Analyst. Alec’s scholarly research has been published in the Journal of Foodservice Business Research and in Hospitality Management Learning Modules by Pearson. He frequently lectures on topics in hospitality operations and quality management. Alec holds membership in the American Hotel & Lodging Association, the American Society for Quality, and the Customer Experience Professionals Association.

Rich Dorfman
VP, Customer Experience, Eastern Bank
Since introducing the customer experience role at Eastern Bank in 2008, Rich has managed and evolved CX at the company to where this strategic initiative is deemed a corporate imperative in sustaining a differentiated, competitive advantage. His role encompasses the breadth and depth of the CX discipline: program design & delivery, VOC measurement & financial linkage, insight analysis & reporting, governance & strategy, and principle CX advocate & transformationalist. He tirelessly engages with frontline colleagues, business line leaders and executive management to leverage the voice of the customer in a way that drives both better customer and employee experiences, and importantly, the desired business performance outcomes.
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Rich’s relentless pursuit of leveraging essential outside in, customer-centric perspectives into everyday decision-making has helped Eastern sharpen its focus on and alignment around the customer while supporting the company’s brand promise, “we do good things to help people prosper.”
Prior to Eastern, Rich’s banking career included stints at Chemical/Chase in New York, Shawmut/Fleet in Boston and as principle of his own strategic research consulting firm focused on delivering differentiated value to high-revenue small business and consumer customer segments.

Mike Bowers, CX-PRO
Sales Leader Focused on Customer Experience
Mike brings over 25-years of customer focused sales and leadership acumen to HorizonCX. His most recent role was scaling sales for a marketing to sales strategic consultancy focused on brand alignment. He began his formal CX journey in early 2021, earning the CX-PRO Certification.
Early in Mike’s career, he held a variety of customer facing roles in luxury retail prior to entering the commercial interiors industry. Over the next 20-years, he held leadership roles in international sales, global sales and operations, and sales training – supporting a $1B division with 300 sales professionals. Perhaps his most valuable role was leading business development for a global strategic accounts team primarily serving B2B Fortune 100 brands.
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Mike believes that customer-centricity is the way for organizations to differentiate themselves and guard against commoditization. Mike’s passion is seeking out big problems and fixing them. In 2013, he saw first-hand the dysfunction of a large, siloed organization realizing that new hires were not getting information and technology in a consistent manner. He spearheaded a divisional initiative to map and measurably improve its overall onboarding process. The initiative was later adopted by the entire company and hailed as a pivotal success toward improving employee engagement and retention.
Mike is a fierce believer that employee engagement and a company’s culture are the primary drivers for excellence in customer experience. While omnichannel should be the goal, human-to-human experiences ultimately determine outcomes. Mike is excited and honored to be a part of the HorizonCX team.

Reginald Chatman
Director, Program Management, Google
As Director of the Corp Engineering Solutions PMO, Reginald Chatman is responsible for delivering on a portfolio of software projects that make life easier for Googlers at Google. He has nearly 30 years’ experience in the areas of Customer Success, Customer Care, and Customer Loyalty at global brands such as Apple, Cisco, and now Google. Chatman holds a bachelor’s degree in Industrial Engineering from Louisiana State University and an MBA from the University of Colorado. He is also a certified PMP and Six Sigma Green Belt.

Patty Soltis
Principal Customer Experience Consultant, Kinetic Edge Consultants
As a dynamic and enthusiastic customer experience strategist, Patty gets excited about the whole process – and gets results. Her inner nerd loves to analyze data, create strategies, and set metrics that work to amplify brands, thrive in competitive markets, and excel in financial results to reach operational excellence. With an energetic personality, Patty engages with the team cross functionally, from the front line to the C Suite to create customer-centric cultures, drive change management and continuous improvement. All of this culminates in operational excellence and success for everyone!
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For the past 30+ years, Patty has worked on building the customer experience mainly with B2C and D2C organizations. Her background is 25+ years in retail creating and leading customer experience and currently serves as a CX consultant to B2C and D2C organizations.
Patty earned her BS from the Kelley School of Business at Indiana University and her MBA from Oakland University. She holds several certifications and loves how CX is all about continuous improvement. Patty is enjoying the sunshine and warm weather residing in Florida after living in several states of the US.

John Haynes
Marketing Executive and Business Visionary
In a career spanning more than 30 years, John has directed industrial marketing and product management functions in both multi-national manufacturing companies and a technology start-up. His areas of expertise include strategic marketing, new product development, the establishment of alternate sales channels and the implementation of Voice of the Customer and Customer Satisfaction programs. Haynes has undergraduate degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Architecture and Civil Engineering, a master’s degree in Business Administration from the Harvard Business School and holds five U.S. Patents.

Jerry Seufert
Customer Experience Advisor, Executive Coach
Jerry Seufert is a consultant, executive coach, and small groups facilitator based in Alpharetta, Georgia, along with being a resource to CXPA local networks and CX practitioners. Jerry is an accomplished customer experience visionary, executive counselor, product advisor, change management expert, critical thinker, writer, and facilitator. Jerry’s ‘first home’ was in the health industries where he led more than 100 projects for hospitals, health systems, provider groups, federal and state health agencies, and solutions vendors, and now serves clients across a number of product and service sectors and individuals at all stages of their professional journeys. Jerry has a B.S., Biology, and M.S., Industrial Engineering, from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute.

Mindy King
Customer Experience Strategist
Mindy is a customer experience professional who partners with diverse teams developing and implementing end-to-end customer-centric programs to get, keep and grow the best customers. She has spent the past two decades working with B2B service industry brand leaders providing customer insights and business solutions that drive customer retention.
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Mindy has a passion for understanding both the needs of the business and customer; driving programs to create alignment. Her programs have resulted in reduced attrition, increased employee engagement and NPS scores. She is a former board member of the S. Florida CXPA and SCIP and a contributing member of the CCO.
A Florida native, Mindy holds a B.S degree from Palm Beach Atlantic University and MBA from Nova University. A six-sigma black belt and former PMP, she has been certified in customer journey mapping.

Brett Sharp
CX Strategy & Trends Advisor
Over the past 25 years, Brett has been a trusted consultative partner to many Fortune 500 companies. He has accelerated growth for middle market companies and guided small entrepreneurs to develop sustainable business models. His rich experience includes supporting both Consumer and Business audiences and working with clients across a multitude of industries, such as Healthcare, Technology/SaaS, Financial Services, Manufacturing (both Durables and Consumer Packaged Goods), Retail/Home Improvement and Automotive. Across each of these engagements, Brett’s greatest strength is understanding the unique aspects of complex scenarios and designing creatively simple solutions that drive tangible and measurable business outcomes.
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Based in Atlanta Georgia, Brett holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Marketing and a Master of Marketing Research (MMR) degree from Southern Illinois University at Edwardsville. As part of the HorizonCX Advisory Board, Brett provides leadership vision on industry trends, counsel on emerging products and services, and guidance on profitable revenue generation strategy.

James Duckworth
Customer Experience Executive
Over the course of his career James worked in a variety of roles giving him a unique perspective on the importance of the customer experience to organizational success. He spent over 20 years in the scientific software industry as a Product and Program Manager which transitioned into a role at Thermo Fisher Scientific developing and deploying a global CX program driving measurable and sustainable business process improvements. More recently, he returned from a five-year posting in Singapore where he was a member of the Executive Committee for the local USA Girl Scouts Overseas chapter and applied his skills in the non-profit arena to grow enrollment and upgrade the program offerings. He has passion for understanding customers’ needs, wants and desires to make businesses, organizations and products “work better” for them. James has an undergraduate degree in Chemistry from Boston University.

Peter Swaim, MBA, CSSGB, CX-PRO
Marketing, Business Development
Peter brings over 25 years of experience and an extensive track record of designing, implementing and managing customer insights programs directly targeted to impact the value of customer relationships. In companies including Digital Equipment, EMC, and Staples, he inspired a deep understanding of the art and science of effective Voice of the Customer research and applied it to customers through various types of market research, transaction surveys, extensive global relationship programs, and Executive Interviews.
At HorizonCX, Peter provides marketing and promotional support focusing on:
- Identifying new CX business opportunities in existing markets
- Growing and expanding existing CX business engagements
- Following CX trends and recommending new targets for market expansion
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As a resident knowledge expert before joining HorizonCX, Peter provided executive-level evidence-based guidance based upon customer insights for management teams in Sales, Marketing, Product Management, and he provided key strategic insights from unique analysis methodologies, including Neural Networking, financial linkage, and proprietary loyalty modeling. Having worked in both B2B and B2C settings, he has seen the application and value of qualitative as well as quantitative research to gain multi-dimensional perspectives of customer behavior and intention.
Peter has an MBA from Northeastern University, a Six-sigma Green Belt, has been a member of the CXPA, and is a HorizonCX CX-PRO. He also has been involved in various non-profit organizations including a long-standing relationship with a summer camp for disadvantage children of New England. As an avid cyclist, he has supported fundraising for cancer research and family support on behalf of institutions including Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, Massachusetts General Hospital, and the Dartmouth’s Norris Cotton Cancer center. Peter lives in Wellesley, Massachusetts.