Robyn Waters, a noted author and for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent of Trend, Design, and Prod­uct Devel­op­ment for Tar­get, will be the keynote pre­sen­ter at each of the nine tour cities. Robyn pro­vides a thought pro­vok­ing envi­ron­men­tal scan of the macro mar­ket­place that takes the lis­tener deep into the hearts and minds of the con­sumer. Her visual pre­sen­ta­tions chal­lenge the audi­ence to look at trend ‘from the inside out’ by focus­ing their atten­tion on what’s impor­tant instead of just what’s next. Ener­gies are revi­tal­ized, per­spec­tives reframed, and pos­si­bil­i­ties re-envisioned.

She is the author of The Trendmaster’s Guide: Get a Jump on What Your Cus­tomer Wants Next, The Hum­mer and the Mini: Nav­i­gat­ing the Con­tra­dic­tions of the New Trend Land­scape, and con­tribut­ing author (along with Tom Peters, Seth Godin and Mal­colm Glad­well,) for The Big Moo from Port­fo­lio, a mem­ber of Pen­guin Group (USA).

Robyn has over thirty years expe­ri­ence track­ing and trans­lat­ing trends into sales and profit. As Target’s for­mer Vice Pres­i­dent of Trend, Design, and Prod­uct Devel­op­ment, she helped a small regional dis­count chain become a national fash­ion des­ti­na­tion. Seth Godin calls her “the woman who rev­o­lu­tion­ized what Tar­get sells, and helped the com­pany trounce Kmart.”

Fast Com­pany mag­a­zine fea­tured her as one of the top twenty ‘Cre­ative Mav­er­icks’ in their June ‘04 Mas­ters of Design issue. She has served as a juror for numer­ous national design com­pe­ti­tions includ­ing the Inter­na­tional House­wares Asso­ci­a­tion, and the National Design Awards for the Cooper-Hewitt Museum.