Dr. Paul Bedford started off as a gym instructor and personal trainer, working with members every day to help them achieve their goals. After 20 years of focusing on one single problem, Retention Guru serves health club businesses and fitness industry operators globally. Its services are designed to guide operators out of the situation they are in now to a place where members stay longer, pay more, and are more loyal. Recognising that there is no one way to tackle this problem, they developed a framework that they guide our clients through, making the process of change and the adoption of new behaviours easy to learn and embed within their business. 

With more than 25 years of comprehensive experience in fitness, wellness, and sport, David Van Daff brings a vast level of expertise in fitness industry business operations, multi-facility management, and training and education to the National Academy of Sports Medicine (NASM).

As Director of Health Club Relations, Van Daff leads the NASM Health Club Industry Division that includes ClubConnect, the global industry’s premier fitness education, and training platform.

Jim Donnelly is a seasoned entrepreneur with a rich background in health optimization, branding, and marketing. As the CEO and Co-founder of Humanaut Health since May 2024, Jim focuses on enhancing longevity medicine. Previously, Jim served as CEO and Co-founder of Restore Hyper Wellness & Cryotherapy from 2015 to February 2023, targeting wellness for Americans aspiring for optimal health.  

Emily Drouillard is the Chief Executive Officer of Modo Yoga International — a family of 55 studios worldwide, plus a robust on-demand wellness platform committed to creating more peace in the world, one person, one practice, one breath at a time.

Having owned Modo Yoga Cambridge for 10 years and co-founding Modo Yoga Brantford, Emily has a deep love for the greater Modo Yoga community.

Emily believes that life is all about taking risks and meeting challenge head on.

Jonathan J.J. Gantt serves as the CEO of Barry’s, the original global high-intensity interval training boutique fitness concept. Prior to joining Barry’s in 2018,

Jonathan was a die-hard Barry’s client in New York City while serving as the Chief Financial Officer of a publicly-trade hotel real estate investment trust. Prior to this role,

Jonathan was a member of the M&A and Treasury team at Starwood Hotels & Resorts. He also has experience with two private equity funds. Jonathan resides in Miami, Florida.

He holds a BS degree from Cornell University and an MBA degree from the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth.

Rick Mayo is the founder and CEO of Alloy Personal Training, est 1992. Rick and his team have licensed the Alloy training systems to over 2,500 clubs worldwide. Alloy has recently pivoted to a full franchise model to better serve our communities and owners.

Rick is a featured speaker at conferences domestically and internationally, speaking on how to best sell and service personal training. He has written numerous articles on the business of fitness for trade journals and contributes regularly to national publications such as Men’s Health. Rick sits on the board for the GA State exercise science department as well as the Fitness Business Association. Rick is also an NSCA certified personal trainer and has also been elected to the Industry Board of Advisors for the American Council on Exercise.

Mohammed Iqbal strives to enhance people’s lives. He believes the key to leading a healthier life is having access to fitness knowledge and acting on it. He founded SweatWorks to create meaningful wellness journeys for everyone.

His personal commitment to his fitness journey is an inspiration to all those he comes in contact with. Daily, he immerses himself in strategic and creative thinking, fitness, and innovation. For ten years Mohammed has worked at exploring the intersection of fitness and technology, paving the way towards a more tangible wellness and healthcare future.

 Published authority on fitness and wellness and a pioneer of the Pilates method, Alycea Ungaro brought some of the very first mat Pilates classes to New York City. Both the method and Alycea built a devoted following as people flocked to her classes. 

Alycea has expanded her popular Pilates classes into a fitness media empire. Her first multi-media project was the innovative Portable Pilates™, an easy-to-use at-home mat workout. Best selling titles followed including; Pilates: Body in Motion, The Pilates Promise and The Pilates Practice Companion, Alycea’s most comprehensive book. Her 15 Minute Everyday Pilates was an international bestseller. A new edition of Pilates: Body in Motion was released in 2019 a re-worked version of 15-Minute Everyday Pilates was released in 2020. 

Brian Smith is a managing director and member of the Piper Sandler consumer investment banking team, focused on providing M&A advisory services to companies in healthy, active and sustainable living industries, with a focus on fitness, sports nutrition and multi-unit retail.

Prior to joining Piper Sandler, Smith was a partner and founding principal at Partnership Capital Growth, a boutique investment bank providing M&A and private placement services to health and wellness-oriented businesses. Prior to investment banking, Smith served as a director of corporate development and sales & marketing analysis at EAS, a leading sports nutrition and supplements company based in Golden, Colo. Smith previously worked with North Castle Partners where he was primarily focused on new deal generation, due diligence and financial modeling. Prior to NCP, Smith was a management consultant for Bain & Company in Boston and Los Angeles.

Smith graduated from Claremont McKenna College with a bachelor’s degree in economics.

Helping fitness business owners do what they love, sans tech headaches….

I’m the president and co-founder of Walla Software, an all-in-one business management platform for boutique fitness studios. Walla gives studio owners the freedom to focus on what they love by reducing the time, expense, and energy spent on tech-related issues. Unlike other software out there, Walla provides intuitive, easy-to-use features so they can enroll students, schedule and lead classes, manage operations, and use behavioral psychology to execute campaigns designed to motivate their clients, increase revenue, and improve retention.

Lucy Adey is the Chief Executive Soul at Good Soul Hunting. We hand-pick executive go-getters for purpose-driven health and fitness companies.

Utilizing her 15 years’ experience in HR, employment law and recruitment; nine of these within the health and wellness industry, Lucy supports startups and scaling boutique fitness and fitness technology brands with building teams and providing strategic people advice to CEO’s, Founders and leadership teams.

Becky Cerroni is a highly accomplished CEO with over 12 years of experience leading and scaling major wellness, health, and beauty brands and 25 years leading global teams.

She has successfully built large, multi-location organizations including JoyRide Cycling + Fitness, a regional fitness chain with over 150 staff across two regions. At JoyRide, she created and executed a growth strategy that included expansion through acquisitions, successfully integrating new regional brands and positioning the company for significant growth via mergers.

Most recently, as President and COO of GoSaga, she managed a portfolio of 14 medical spa, wellness, and fitness brands - VIO Med Spa, FitLab Brands, LYMBR and Tone It Up - with plans to expand to 300 locations across the East Coast, demonstrating her ability to drive large-scale growth and operational excellence.

Mark Fisher is a former actor turned trainer, gym owner, and gym business speaker/consultant/advisor/investor. 

She is a growth-minded entrepreneur and thought leader with over 20 years of success across the health and wellness, fitness, and financial services industries. Leveraging extensive hands-on experience building and managing a global organization from the ground up, her broad areas of expertise include strategic planning, revenue growth, business development, marketing, branding, turnaround strategies, and change management. She has a passion for high-growth early-stage (VC or private equity backed) B2C fitness and wellness companies whose mission is to improve the health and well-being of their communities.

Emma Barry calls herself an observer and a catalyst. Founding member of group fitness juggernaut Les Mills International and former director for luxury lifestyle brand Equinox, she has excelled in senior roles in programming, product development, training and people.

Barry consults for the fastest-growing fitness segments: budget clubs and boutique studios. She’s also a prolific writer, sought-after speaker and mentor - she’s also fluent in “what happens next” in fitness. She contributes to global forums, trend panels and women’s events. Barry specializes in lighting fires under people and projects that need action – now.

Barry has authored Customer Engagement in Boutique Studios – the 2018 Retention Report for Europe Active and Building a Badass Boutique, facilitated the London event Sweat – Powering Boutique Fitness, and delivered boutique insights on The Fitness Business Podcast and Escape Your Limits Podcast.

Lars Scofield is the owner of Orangetheory Fitness studios in Brooklyn, Manhattan and Queens, NY, and southern Florida.

From 2013 to 2015, he supported global strategic alliances, sales and business development for MasterCard’s Information Services business. Prior to that he oversaw all product development and launched dozens of new products and enhancements to meet MasterCard’s aggressive annual revenue targets.

He has prior experience as a corporate attorney with extremely broad in-house legal experience as corporate counsel to a Fortune 1000 public data and technology company and general counsel at a privately held software company. He’s also worked in mergers and acquisitions and securities transactions, representing a diverse range of clients.

Prior to creating Fhitting Room, Kari, was a marketing executive at Pepsi. She focused on building equity for powerhouse brands and launching new product innovations.

In 2007, she left the world of boardrooms and bubbles and entered the world of diapers and sleepless nights. Exhausted and time-starved, Kari began Functional High-Intensity Interval Training as a means to work off her pregnancy weight in her scarce free time. As someone who hasn’t always loved exercise, Kari was blown away by the physical and emotional results of HIIT and the efficiency of her new, only 2x weekly, workout routine.

Around this time, specialized boutique fitness studios started popping up, and people were getting instantly hooked on the fun, social dynamic classes provided. Kari loved the idea of working out with friends but couldn’t find a studio that offered functional HIIT workouts with enough personal attention from certified trainers. Her friends were taking classes 2-3x weekly and seeing personal trainers 1-2x per week, a time consuming and expensive practice.

Kari took her love of planning unique consumer experiences and finding creative solutions to develop a new way for anyone to access the benefits of a personal training session in a motivational group setting. This “Gym Idea” became the subject line of an email Kari sent to a close friend in 2012 and led to the opening of the first Fhitting Room location in a small studio on Manhattan’s Upper East Side in March 2013. The lease for Fhitting Room’s flagship Flatiron location was signed six months later, followed by the Upper West side flagship in 2017.

Kari is the Founder + CEO of Fhitting Room overseeing three Fhitting Room studios in NYC, Fhitting Room On Demand and Fhitting Room LIVE virtual classes. She has an MBA from Harvard Business School, where she graduated with honors, and she graduated summa cum laude with a BS in Economics from the Wharton School of University of Pennsylvania.