2025 Speakers

Hitha Herzog (formerly Prabhakar) lives in a world where fashion, retail, finance, investigative journalism and data research all co-exist in perfect harmony—a.k.a., New York City. She is the Chief Research Officer at H Squared Research, a data visualization insights firm focusing on the crossroads of retail, consumer spending and technology. She is fellow at DC think tank Data Catalyst Institute focusing on small business retailers. She is also consumer spending columnist at Vogue India and author of the book "Black Market Billions: How Organized Retail Crime Funds Terrorists" published by FT Press. Hitha uses her expertise in the retail space to advise start-ups in Silicon Valley with Parsons School of Design’s incubator XRC Labs and as part time faculty teaching a class on technology and innovation. When she is not expanding her business and advising early-stage companies, she is raising awareness about the criminal activity linked to the black market and counterfeit products. She created a companion app to the book available in iTunes to help people identify and spot counterfeit merchandise sold on the black market. She has had numerous television appearances as a national retail and consumer spending expert for ABC News, Good Morning America, NBC Nightly News, The Today Show and MSNBC. She was a contributor and co-host on Fox Business’ “Making Money with Charles Payne” and has been a correspondent and contributor at Bloomberg TV and CNBC.  Forbes magazine recently named her as “one of the most influential South Asian women in the United States.”