Cultivating Employee Trust Through Continued Learning

Gary Cooper is the newly appointed Alex Trust & Privacy Marketing Lead for Alexa Marketing at Amazon. He previously served as strategy lead for responsible tech at Amazon, where he owns the collaborative development, alignment, communication and achievement of the Inclusive/Responsible tech vision across the organization. In this role, he defines the business opportunity and product strategy for the integration of responsibility within tech builds. He also helps shape new organization structure to ensure alignment of building and implementing responsible tech frameworks, while setting strategic priorities across org to maximize in-team efforts and technical process needs. He's accountable for the identification of DEI/HR and technical builder skill gaps and engages L&D to develop a competency-centered curriculum, while ensuring continuing inclusive leadership coaching and development.

In his previous role at Amazon, he was a senior language inclusion and learning leader. As a DEI professional, he focused on solving large, complex, highly-confidential, and/or endemic problems through equity-centered strategy, leader engagement and organizational adoption of mechanisms or systemic changes. In all his roles, his work ensures platforms, processes, policies and organizational structures allow employees to thrive and not merely survive. His career has included stops in digital marketing, strategic partnerships and community engagement across sports, sports media and tech, with companies ranging from Amazon and ESPN to the Carolina Panthers.

Justin Joffe is the senior director of learning and development at Ragan Communications, where he oversees the production of Ragan Training courses and content, along with the implementation of learning pathways across Ragan products and services.

Previously, Joffe served as editorial director and editor-in-chief, leading Ragan's editorial strategy across brands and products. In addition to his editorial duties, Joffe also advises the programming team on best-in-class conferences, webinars, and workshops during a time of unprecedented change in how communicators and marketers learn and meet.

Joffe remains a freelance journalist and communications writer specializing in travel, arts and culture, media and technology, and ad tech beats. Before joining the Ragan team, Joffe worked for Muck Rack, PR News, and The Observer. His writing has also appeared in several publications including Vulture, Newsweek, Vice, Relix, Flaunt, and many more.