2025 Speakers

J.J. Creegan has been part of the Orangetheory team since 2020 and has been in the industry for +20 years. In his role as COO he oversees the strategy for the performance, support, & quality of all global studios.

Before joining Orangetheory, J.J. was a key member of the founding team and served as Chief Operating Officer at Youfit Health Clubs. In this role, he spearheaded operations, strategy, marketing, and culture, driving the brand’s rapid expansion from concept to over 120 owned and operated locations in under eight years. His leadership was instrumental in transforming Youfit into a prominent player in the fitness industry.

J.J. Is also a board member for the Health & Fitness association (formally IHRSA) advocating for our industry and representing OTF. His career in the industry began as a teenager stacking weights at an early Planet Fitness location. 

J.J. is a true power walker who always prefers to start on the floor. His favorite benchmark is absolutely the 200m row. He and his wife Megan are happy parents to eight-year-old twins Jolene & J.J. IV.

Jon Canarick is a Managing Director with 18 years of consumer private equity investment experience. Since joining North Castle in 2001, Jon has actively managed North Castle’s investments across a variety of Healthy, Active, and Sustainable Living sectors and across all job functions at North Castle. Having started his career at NCP as an Associate out of investment banking, Jon has played a crucial role in the development of North Castle and many of its portfolio companies. Jon currently sits on the Board of Directors of Echelon Fit, CR Fitness, Encore Vet Group, Kettlebell Kitchen, The Escape Game, Barry’s Bootcamp, Brooklyn Boulders, Curves, Jenny Craig, Palladio, and SLT. Previously, Jon served on the Board of Directors of Mineral Fusion, gloProfessional, Flatout, International Fitness, Enzymatic Therapy, Performance Bicycle, Avalon and DDF and was actively involved in the Firm’s investment in Grand Expeditions. Prior to joining North Castle, Jon worked in the Financial Sponsors Coverage and Leveraged Finance groups of Bear, Stearns & Co., where he executed leveraged buyout transactions and provided advisory services for financial sponsors. Jon earned a B.B.A. from the University of Michigan and an M.B.A. from Columbia Business School.

Emlyn responsible for driving the strategic development and design strategy for wellness at ACCOR, seamlessly integrating the ethos of well-being into every facet of the customer journey. With an illustrious career spanning over 22 years, his journey into the world of wellness commenced in 1996, marking the genesis of his passion for transforming lives. Throughout his career, Emlyn has occupied various pivotal leadership roles, traversing the globe from Europe to the Middle East, Asia, and the vibrant landscapes of China. He has been at the helm of group operations for renowned luxury spa and fitness companies. Prior to joining Accor, he was a senior lead at Resense Spas S.A as Global Design Director, and as Managing Director of Asia, accountable for the growth of the Resense portfolio in China and Southeast Asia. Emlyn was the wellness director at award winning consultancy, GOCO Hospitality, and has held senior positions at Six Senses Resorts & Spas where he was the regional director for Europe and later the operations director for Asia. He started his career with Holmes Place Lifestyle club, and held director level roles in Switzerland and Germany.

Kimberley Nixon is Founder and Managing Partner at Open Venture Capital (OVC), an early stage venture capital fund. The fund invests in sport, health and wellness brands that have the ability to expand from product to platform via a unique product, marketing and/or community engagement approach. Open Venture Capital began as Open Venture Studio, and for several founders we continue to invest time and resources to build a clear value proposition and a path to scalability before investing capital. 

Kimberley is an Operator turned VC. Kim holds deep expertise in leading digital transformations and launching new products to market. Over the course of her 20-year career Kimberley has been entrusted by her clients, boards and executive leadership alike to deliver against key strategic objectives tied to growth optimization and operational excellence. Her work has spanned startup to billion dollar organizations, and across several international markets for companies including Under Armour, Manduka Yoga, Health House, Headspace and Tonal.

Julie Cartwright is the President of Pvolve, a science-led fitness method that pairs low-impact, functional movement and patented resistance equipment to sculpt the body without the wear and tear of high-impact exercise. Through its hybrid fitness model, Pvolve can be experienced globally on-demand through live and virtual classes, and in both brand-owned and growing franchise studio locations. 

Julie joined as President at Pvolve’s founding and has led the brand’s expanding footprint within the fitness space, growing the business from a small startup to a global female-led fitness authority, complete with live virtual classes, expansive on-demand programming, patented equipment, and a growing number of studio locations. 

As President, Julie is responsible for spearheading Pvolve’s overall vision and growth strategy while achieving financial objectives and setting investment priorities for the business.   

An avid Pvolve user herself, Cartwright can often be found at the Chicago studio location or taking classes online through the Live Virtual Studio. 

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, the leading digital agency in fitness design and technology to create meaningful wellness journeys for everyone.

As founder and CEO, Mohammed has established SweatWorks as a wellness technology brand unlike any other. The agency pursues innovation to make fitness engaging, beautiful and accessible to all.

Mohammed also contributes to the wellness industry via speaking engagements at leading events and fitness conferences around the world. 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

SweatWorks collaborates with top-tier fitness brands to provide design, technology and marketplace expertise to produce first-to-market fitness and wellness products. It has made the Inc 5000 list as one of the fastest growing private companies five years in a row.

Evelyn Webster is the Chief Executive Officer at SoulCycle. She joined the cycling brand in mid-December of 2020, with the initial challenge of successfully guiding the business and thriving during the pandemic period.

From January 2017 to November 2020, Evelyn was the CEO of Guardian News and Media’s international operations. Since Jan. 2017, she was responsible for directing the brand’s international strategy across the U.S. and Australia.

Before Guardian News and Media, Webster was the executive vice president and group president of the media corporation Time Inc, where she led business operations for 20 U.S. brands, including Essence, InStyle, Real Simple and Travel and Leisure. Prior to that, she was the CEO of British publisher IPC Media.

Webster is native of Yorkshire, England, and graduated with a B.A. in business with marketing honors from the University of Greenwich.

Jeff is a long-time entrepreneur that continues to find new ways to combine his passion for building businesses with his love of music.

Prior to Feed.fm, Yasuda launched Blip.fm, which grew to over 1 million registered DJs who reached over 30 million people on Twitter.

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Jeff was the Managing Director and Chief Financial Officer of Silicon Valley VC firm Redwood Ventures, where he held board directorships and managed investments in their technology portfolio. Prior to joining Redwood, he worked in Investment Banking at Lehman Brothers, concentrating on technology financings within Equity Capital Markets.

Tim Delisle is the Co-Founder and CEO of Fiveonefour, where he leads efforts to transform data and analytics for developers. Previously, he co-founded and sold Datalogue to Nike, where he served as VP of Engineering for Enterprise Data, overseeing global software and data engineering 

teams.

At Fiveonefour, Tim spearheads the development of Moose, an open-source framework; Boreal, a hosting platform; and Aurora, an AI-powered Data Engineer. These tools empower industries, including connected fitness, to optimize data workflows and scale effectively. A seasoned entrepreneur, Tim is passionate about driving innovation and helping businesses unlock the full potential of their data.

Chris Crane is the Co-Founder and Chief Product Officer at Fiveonefour, dedicated to transforming the data and analytics stack with cutting-edge developer experiences. His career has spanned leadership roles at startups through Fortune 100 companies across the sport and technology sectors. At Nike, he led product teams driving cutting-edge innovations in data tech and e-commerce platforms. Earlier in his career, he worked at Bain & Co, and Bain Capital Ventures, before playing pivotal roles in scaling Sysdig into a multi-billion-dollar tech startup unicorn, and Datalogue into a leader in the data engineering and data pipelining space.

Greg Solak is a seasoned tech leader in the Fitness space. He is the Head of Engineering at F45 Training - a global fitness company. Prior to joining F45, he was the Tech Lead at Flywheel Sports, a boutique indoor cycling company.

His latest focus is LionHeart: F45 Training’s heart rate tracker. He’s championing a system that is not only more intuitive, but also allows members to adjust their resting and max heart rates for better workout results. Greg is passionate about using his technical skills to drive innovation in the connected fitness space and enhancing the workout experience.

Dr. Elie Gottlieb is a sleep neuroscientist with over 10 years of sleep, circadian rhythm, and neuroscience research experience across academia (clinical neuroscience) and industry (Fortune 100 and startup). He is currently the Head of Applied Sleep Science at SleepScore Labs, a B2B consumer sleep tech company offering evidence-based sleep APIs and R&D services to characterize and improve population sleep health. Prior to joining SleepScore, Dr. Gottlieb led a team of researchers at Johnson & Johnson working on the Lake Nona Life Project, a multi-generational study aimed at identifying behavioral health factors that contribute to long-term health and wellness. He remains a Visiting Researcher at the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and University of Melbourne in Australia where he investigates associations between cerebrovascular disease, neurodegenerative disease, and sleep-wake dysfunction. He publishes what he preaches — leveraging user-generated big health data, he has over 50 peer-reviewed publications, conference abstracts, and book chapters. His areas of interest are in sleep neuroscience, consumer sleep and health technology, big-data, behavior change science, UI/UX, and science communication.

As co-CEO and owner of the agency, Nicole has guided the creative process for a large portfolio of clients including the Kansas City Current, The Hershey Company, Georgia Pacific and Panera. With more than 25 years in the design industry, Nicole has extensive experience overseeing large-scale projects, brand identity creation, major civic initiatives, environmental installations and stand-out packaging innovations. Her critical eye and expertise mean she can visualize the big picture without neglecting the details.

In her role as Managing Director, Katy is focused on guiding brand strategy and uncovering consumer insights that lead to big ideas.  Katy's career has been driven by developing a keen understanding of the human behavior that drives purchasing decisions. She has worked with world-class brands like Hallmark, Build-A-Bear Workshop, Helzberg Diamonds and Kohl’s. At her core, Katy is a problem solver and a storyteller. As a strong collaborator and thoughtful writer, Katy leads teams through the strategic process to simplify the complex and deliver succinct brand systems.