MLA 2026 Annual Conference Featured Speakers

Shane Meeker has 29 years of experience at Procter & Gamble, where he holds a degree in Industrial Design. Before becoming the P&G Company Historian and Corporate Storyteller, he led the design strategy for major brands like Tide, Downy, Gain, Dawn, Cascade, and Pampers. After years of studying the film industry, Shane has become an internationally recognized keynote speaker and instructor on business storytelling, sharing how to use movie techniques to enhance business narratives. 

Shane has presented his engaging storytelling content for 18 years at over 400+ companies and brands around the globe including Walt Disney, Ford, Anheuser Busch, Nike, American Express, Exxon Mobil, FedEx, US Bank and Coca-Cola just to name a few. Shane regularly presents globally and is an adjunct professor at the Chicago Illinois Institute of Technology and the University of Cincinnati. He is also part of the faculty for the Leadership and Strategic Impact program at the Tuck Executive Education program at Dartmouth and at the Xavier Leadership Center.

John U. Bacon has written 14 books, including eight national bestsellers. Good Morning America called his previous book, Let Them Lead: Unexpected Lessons in Leadership from America’s Worst High School Hockey Team, “The real Ted Lasso.” His next book, THE GALES OF NOVEMBER: The Untold Story of the Edmund Fitzgerald, has spent 15 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list. He has written for The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Time magazine, among others, appears often on national TV, and won NPR's prize for the nation's best commentary in 2014. John is a decent Spanish speaker, an average hockey player, and a poor piano player, but he still enjoys all three. He lives in Ann Arbor, Michigan, with his wife and son.

Ghassan Zeineddine was born in Washington, D.C, and raised in the Middle East. He is the author of the award-winning story collection Dearborn and co-editor of the creative nonfiction anthology Hadha Baladuna: Arab American Narratives of Boundary and Belonging. He and his family split their time between Dearborn, Michigan, and Oberlin, OH, where he’s an associate professor of creative writing at Oberlin College.

Maegan became a communication nerd back when she was a competitive public speaker in high school and college (yes, that’s a thing). She knew at 16 that she wanted to help people become better communicators. After earning her PhD in Communication Studies from The University of Texas at Austin, she moved from academia into industry and has since logged well over “10,000 hours” coaching and consulting for Fortune 50 executives, scientists, founders, and aspiring leaders.