Community & Guest List
Calista Redmond is the CEO of RISC-V International with a mission to expand and engage RISC-V stakeholders, compel industry adoption, and increase visibility and opportunity for RISC-V within and beyond RISC-V International. Prior to RISC-V International, Calista held a variety of roles at IBM, including Vice President of IBM Z Ecosystem where she led strategic relationships across software vendors, system integrators, business partners, developer communities, and broader engagement across the industry. Prior to IBM, she was an entrepreneur in four successful start-ups in the IT industry. Calista holds degrees from the University of Michigan and Northwestern University.
Canadian born adventure backpacker that fell in love with the travel life and chased everything to keep it going. She landed in Australia just over 3 years ago and has made it a home base since. From what started as an Instagram handle, Traveller By Trade has now turned into an online business. Chelsea is now a website developer, primarily for services based business and online entrepreneurs, and content photographer for companies all over the world.
Chris Sica is the Chief Revenue Office at The Ronin Society, a consulting group focused on giving small businesses access to the advantages that have been exclusive to private equity and big business. A fractional CFO of sorts, they work with businesses doing less than $10M in revenue to help their owners grow, gain profitability, and if appropriate, exit their business. He is passionate about helping business owners feel confident so they can enjoy the journey of entrepreneurship and create value for themselves and their communities.
Carmine Mastropierro is the Founder of Mastro Commerce, a marketing agency that helps businesses grow through content and copywriting. He's worked with Dan Lok, Neil Patel, Marketo, GoDaddy, and others.
Ce’Aira Brown is a professional track athlete with a psychology degree from Hampton University. Ce’Aira and her fiancé, Fortune 500 corporate accountant André, formed DreamAgain, a company based on Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s vision. DreamAgain offers services for financial and psychological treatments for devalued individuals and communities. With over 600 members, DreamAgain provides a tax service, financial advice, and a women’s empowerment chatroom. Ce’Aira and André met through mutual friends while running track at state competitions and in the same conference in college. Ce’Aira grew up without a mom and André lost both of his parents at a young age. Their shared pain has brought them closer.
Chandler Sterling founded the California Beard Company in 2016. A cartographer by training but a lover of beards by birth he became frustrated by the cosmetics industry after searching for a high-quality natural beard oil. Fed up with being unable to find a suitable beard oil, and being a DIYer at heart, he set out to create his own recipe that would meet his high standards. The goal was to create something simple, only containing materials that came from the earth, that could mimic a product from the era before cosmetics were synthesized and contained potentially harmful chemicals. The result of this experiment led to California Beard Company’s Original Beard Oil recipe. After months of serious use, he realized that this product needed to be shared with the world, and it’s been a wild ride ever since.
Christine McKay is a Business Negotiation Strategist, international speaker, host of In the Venn Zone podcast, and author of Why Not Ask? A Conversation about Getting More. Christine holds a Harvard MBA and is the CEO/Founder of Venn Negotiation. She has negotiated with more than half of the Fortune 100 & hundreds of small and mid-sized companies across 53 countries. She loves leveling the playing field for her clients and empowers entrepreneurs and business owners to ask for more of what they want and shows them how to get it. Her mission is to reduce business failure rates by helping people elevate their negotiation skills! She was born and raised in a rural community in Montana, graduating with the same 20 kids she grew up with. Christine’s been married to the love of her life for almost 30 years and is a proud mom of three grown children.
I grew up in a 1 stop light town in rural Pennsylvania. In 1999, fresh out of University (age 23), I moved to Costa Rica. Via a fateful "roommate wanted" ad, I met a fellow U.S. expat. With little money and less experience, we started an online travel agency. Today we're the largest in Central America, designing high-end, custom trips to Costa Rica, Panama, Nicaragua & beyond.
Christan Hiscock is on a personal mission to change the conversation in the business world, moving away from the pursuit of success, to focusing on fulfillment instead. Because if you’re fulfilled, success is a given, but not so much the other way around. You’ll often hear him saying, “You mean more than you know,” because he believes that as people learn to understand their worth, their fears fade, and amazing feats become reality. He considers this the foundation for all his achievements as the Co-Founder and CEO of Kardia and leader of 16 thriving companies. Through Kardia, which means heart in Greek, Christan is determined to bring more heart into the business world.
Christina is the Owner of Knieriem Designs (pronounced Canary-um) and KD Social. At Knieriem Designs she designs and produces women's clothing in her studio in Alexandria, Virginia. At KD Social, she helps small businesses stand out on social media. She's all about supporting local small businesses and is especially passionate about empowering female entrepreneurs.
