Current 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 of H Squared Research LLC a data driven, research firm for registered investment advisors and analyst for Doneger TOBE. She is also the author of the book "Black Market Billions: How Organized Retail Crime Funds Terrorists" published by FT Press. Hitha also uses her expertise in the retail space to advise start-ups in Silicon Valley and with Parsons The New School of Fashion incubator XRC Labs while teaching a class on social commerce. 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. Forbes magazine recently named her as “one of the most influential South Asian women in the United States.” In 2022, RETHINK retail named Hitha as one of the “Top 100 Retail Influencers of 2022.”

She has had numerous television appearances as a national retail and consumer spending expert for 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. 

Hitha served as the retail reporter for Forbes Media, covering the luxury industry as well as men’s fashion. She is contributing writer for Vogue India. She has written for Bloomberg Businessweek, Newsweek, Time magazine, MSNBC.com, nymag.com, Today.com, People magazine, People.com, ELLE India, Metro Newspapers, Gotham magazine, Inked magazine and Zink magazine.

Hitha has been featured in Vogue India, New York Times, Shape magazine, Glamour magazine, Marie Claire, Oprah magazine, Lucky magazine, Gotham, OK Magazine, Albuquerque Living, The Daily News, Metro, The Daily Mail, Style.com, Forbes.com, Huffington Post and has been a guest on NPR lending her style knowledge on everything from where to shop to which diamonds will be on the red carpet during the Oscars. Her proudest moment came in 2009 photographer Scott Schuman profiled and photographed Hitha for the Burberry “Art of the Trench Campaign.” 

She is a graduate of Smith College (including a year stint at the London School of Economics) with a B.A. in Philosophy and Economics and holds an M.A. from Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism.

Style and retail aside, Hitha’s favorite pastimes are running marathons, biking, yoga, taking pictures of her twin daughters, hanging out in the beauty section of Duane Reade and walking to the corner deli with her husband Seth Herzog.