Community & Guest List
As an accomplished strategic business development, marketing, and operations professional, Kim Bryden has focused her expertise on the food & beverage industry, and supporting small business growth at-large, for more than a decade. Her management experience ranges from working in and alongside governmental agencies, to increasing sales as Top Fortune 200 retail management, to deploying agile, innovative marketing and partnership strategies at food tech start-ups. Since founding Cureate LLC in 2014, Kim continues to build out this multi-sector, public-private partnership approach. Whether its working with Anchor Institutions in Baltimore City on localizing procurement, to reimagining retail experiences for corner store owners to grocery chains, to developing educational entrepreneurship curricula for economic development agencies, Cureate takes a 360-degree approach — and that growth mindset comes from Kim and her passion for learning.
Dr. Chris Whaley overcame a lot of obstacles to become a professional wrestler. He wrestled such greats as The Undertaker and The Ultimate Warrior. His book, The Masked Saint documents his transition from pro wrestler to pastor. His book was made into an award winning movie by the same title.
Dan is the founder and creative director of Metro Nova Creative, a design shop based in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Metro Nova Creative's mission is to inspire business owners to Love Your Brand. Dan has been in the design industry for nearly two decades and running his branding business full time for 5 years. His passion is to help small business owners learn, grow, and succeed while supporting community.
Betsy Talbot helps businesses explain what they do so they can get more sales from the right customers. If you've ever wondered why people who obviously need your services aren't buying, then you're in the right place. Betsy is a bridge builder between customer problems and business solutions, and today she's going to to tell us how we can make it easier for people to see the value in our offers and click the buy button.
Shantay Carter better known as The Nurse Philanthropist, has been a registered nurse for the past 21 years. She is the Founder of Women Of Integrity Inc., Men Of Integrity Inc., and Co-founder of Nurses Of Integrity. She's an award winning Empowerment Leader and Public Speaker. She is also the Best Selling Author of Destined For Greatness. Shantay is a proud member of the NAACP, Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, The Nassau County Medical Reserve Corp., The NY Chapter of the American Nurses Association, and the Greater NYC Black Nurses Association. Her passion & purpose is to educate, empower, and inspire the youth and her fellow nurses. Shantay believes that being of service is one of the greatest rewards in life.
Heather Farris is a Pinterest Marketing Strategist with a full-service Pinterest Agency dedicated to helping online entrepreneurs scale their businesses with organic and paid marketing. Her true passion is helping business owners like you craft a custom strategy to get your amazing content in front of your audience on Pinterest. She is always sifting through trends, data and pins to learn more about the audiences she is serving. She's a multi-passionate full-time traveler with her husband and two little girls. Aside from traveling full-time with her family she loves learning how to use her camera in manual mode and finding off the beaten path restaurants to eat at.
Marissa Ferguson is a 24 years-young entrepreneur who began her business just under 2 years ago with a vision and her iPhone. What started as a side gig turned into a full time job in 4 short months, all thanks to shampoo... yup, shampoo. Since then, she's been able to travel freely, pick up her dream car, build fruitful savings + investments, give back more than ever and most importantly, impact thousands of lives. This is just the beginning for Marissa as she continues to live out her god-given purpose!
After a 30-year career as a corporate marketing copywriter and content strategist, Susan decided to pursue her dream and become a life coach. Assuming there was NO WAY the proven tactics she used for her B2B clients would work in the personal development market, she tossed her expertise out the window. Instead, she followed the {incomplete} advice of her online coaching mentors—with no results. After losing more than $60,000, she was ready to quit. Then she attended a digital marketing conference where the light bulb went on and she realized her BIG mistake. By going back to the tactics she had successfully used to help multi-million dollar companies (and her husband’s massage clinic) consistently grow, she began to see results—higher email open rates, more engagement, and sales! Now she spends her days teaching her students how to replicate the same success.
Amir Shiekh is the Founder and CEO of 4b, a social platform bringing together original controversial news and topics from both sides. The unique concept came from years of frustration listening to divisive and bias content from all media sources. Amir is committed to bringing people together through respectful and productive fact based content in an intuitive social platform.
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).
