Community & Guest List
package and promote their brand."
Lauren Befus is the founder and chief historian of Memory Lane Jane, a national life story writing company that partners with individuals and families to preserve their loved ones’ life stories and legacies in custom heirloom books. Lauren’s company is based in Grand Rapids, Michigan, where she lives with her husband and four kids, but she travels around the country interviewing and working with life story clients.
Andrea Siy has more than 25 years’ experience in the marketing communications field in both agency and corporate environments. She is the CEO and founder of the marketing agency S!Y Communications, Inc., which offers a full range of marketing services since its start in 2003. The agency combines strategic thinking and proven marketing techniques with an innovative and creative style. Andrea has shared her knowledge at several conferences including The Executive Forum (Florida), the Plastics News Marketing Summits (Chicago), Women Breaking the Mold (Chicago), The Women in Business Conference (New Hampshire), and NE/SAE Digital Conference (virtual) as well as local events. Along with sharing her wealth of marketing tips and tricks, Andrea is passionate about helping women manage the challenges of running a company and running a family and provides guidance for working moms.
Robyn Young is a branding specialist for startups and small businesses with a vision to make branding and marketing more efficient, effective, and lean. Through her namesake agency, Robyn hand selects her creative team from a pipeline of freelancers, and creates a customized approach to brand development. Her intention with each brand is to create a sustainable relationship between brand and customer by meticulously curating every touch point, and testing at each phase of development. Armed with a full-service team of graphic designers, copywriters, photographers, videographers, event designers, illustrators and the like, her team can expand and contract depending on the needs of each client.
Andy Brenits is the Principal of Phoenix-based Brenits Creative, a branding, marketing, and creative strategy firm that helps growing businesses and business owners working (mostly) by themselves compete with name brands by creating a consistent way to look, communicate, and act.
He's a creative professional with 25+ years of experience running creative businesses specializing in branding, marketing, and design. Before founding Brenits Creative, Andy led in-house creative teams at Fortune 500 brands such as Banana Republic, The Gap, National Football League, KPMG, and Arizona Public Service.
An experienced mentor and teacher, Andy has taught undergraduate and graduate classes at Pratt Institute, Rowan University, The Art Institute of Phoenix, Sessions.edu, Columbia University, Grand Canyon University, and Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). He earned his Master’s Degree in Design Management from Pratt Institute and has a BFA in Graphic Design from the School of Visual Arts.
He's a creative professional with 25+ years of experience running creative businesses specializing in branding, marketing, and design. Before founding Brenits Creative, Andy led in-house creative teams at Fortune 500 brands such as Banana Republic, The Gap, National Football League, KPMG, and Arizona Public Service.
An experienced mentor and teacher, Andy has taught undergraduate and graduate classes at Pratt Institute, Rowan University, The Art Institute of Phoenix, Sessions.edu, Columbia University, Grand Canyon University, and Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA). He earned his Master’s Degree in Design Management from Pratt Institute and has a BFA in Graphic Design from the School of Visual Arts.
Angela Myers is the CEO of Angela Myers Creative, a digital marketing agency focused on writing, SEO, and social media for companies in the health and lifestyle spaces. She also posts about her love of books for an audience of over 20,000 book lovers on Instagram and TikTok. When not working, you can find her scouring the best coffee shop in whatever country she's living in as a digital nomad (currently Portugal).
The inspiration behind starting her own business was that she married a descendant of the revolutionary women’s rights activist, Amelia Bloomer. Amelia created and produced the first women's newspaper The Lily, in 1849 promoting events and discussing issues important to women of the time.
Amelia was even more well known for popularizing a radically new, and comfy, style of dress; and that is where the term “bloomers” comes from.👖 Amelia was a revolutionary for women’s fashion and social reform; Amy aspire to be a revolutionary for women’s space.
Amelia was even more well known for popularizing a radically new, and comfy, style of dress; and that is where the term “bloomers” comes from.👖 Amelia was a revolutionary for women’s fashion and social reform; Amy aspire to be a revolutionary for women’s space.
Nicholas Grillo is the owner of Tranquility Smart Homes and Security, LLC. which has quickly become known as the DMVs Audio/Visual experts. Tranquility is a covid startup that was founded by Nick during his transition out of the United States Air Force, where he served 10 years in a multitude of jobs and assignments.
Bofta Yimam is an Emmy® & Murrow Award-Winning Journalist, DC-based News Correspondent, International Speaker and Executive Coach. She was recently honored with the Asian-African Chamber of Commerce & Industry International Leadership Award and the Black Business Review’s Top 40 Under 40 Professionals Award. From London to Africa, Bofta has also captured global crowds with her dynamic style and presence.
From teenage depression to an award-winning broadcasting career — including reporting from the White House and Capitol Hill — to building a successful business from scratch, Bofta works to inspire others that anything is possible. She firmly believes that adversity has its advantages and there’s incredible power in owning your story — that’s what her clients learn to embrace, too. Bofta helps change agents and industry transformers increase their confidence, develop their compelling story, deeply connect with audiences and speak their mission!
From teenage depression to an award-winning broadcasting career — including reporting from the White House and Capitol Hill — to building a successful business from scratch, Bofta works to inspire others that anything is possible. She firmly believes that adversity has its advantages and there’s incredible power in owning your story — that’s what her clients learn to embrace, too. Bofta helps change agents and industry transformers increase their confidence, develop their compelling story, deeply connect with audiences and speak their mission!
Brian Burkhar is the founder and CEO of SquarePlanet Presentations & Strategy, a Phoenix, Arizona-based business communications firm that landed a spot on the 2018 Inc. 5000 list.
