Community & Guest List
Michelle Eichner is the founder and CEO of Digitile. She works with businesses to reduce the challenges employees have finding files. Eichner is a seasoned marketer and SaaS software veteran with a deep understanding of the marketplace. Her more than 25 years of in-depth B2B experience driving product marketing and strategy helps identify market challenges, gaps, and solutions.
Keshav Pingali is CEO and co-founder of Katana Graph, a high-performance scale-out graph processing, AI and analytics company, which extracts actionable insights from massive unstructured datasets. Keshav holds the W.A."Tex" Moncrief Chair of Computing at the University of Texas at Austin, and is a Fellow of the ACM, IEEE and AAAS.
Brandt Ricca hails from Tappahannock, VA via Gonzales, Louisiana and has been in Washington D.C. for nine years. With a background in events and marketing, two years ago he launched Nora Lee by Brandt Ricca, Nora Lee being his grandmother who was a Louisiana socialite and business owner. Starting solely as an events company, Brandt has traveled the road most business owners do in the beginning and has constantly evolved (and has been noticed many times in the media for it), and it's led him to what now is a creative marketing agency, Nora Lee by Brandt Ricca.
Aaron is the founder and CEO of Bold Strategy Group, a nationally recognized public relations and marketing firm that helps its clients build trust, get seen, and build bold brands. It is his delight to help others share their greatest work with the world while living a life on purpose. Aaron is a veteran U.S. Marine officer and active in promoting mental health and veterans issues in the community. He is the host and producer of the podcast, America’s Entrepreneur, a podcast that educates, entertains, and inspires others in their professional journeys.
Amy Hanlon, founder of Blue Meta Design, visually showcases the impactful stories of startups through graphic design, partnering with VC's on cutting-edge investments. A small branding agency located in the Mid-South, Blue Meta Design is client-focused, servicing companies that are changing the world and their communities. With a goal to create memorable brands, Amy dives deep into the inner workings of each company to develop creative visuals while supplementing customizable services. She works with some of Silicon Valley's biggest names, giving her insight into what makes a brand stand out to a venture capital firm. Graphic design is Blue Meta's medium for making their clients' brand their competitive edge, ultimately acting as an extension of their clients' teams, providing highly integrated solutions to help them succeed.
Tom Kirkham, founder and CEO of IronTech Security provides cybersecurity defense systems and focuses on educating and encouraging organizations to establish a security-first environment with cybersecurity training programs for all workers to prevent successful attacks. Kirkham brings more than three decades of software design, network administration, computer security, and cybersecurity knowledge to organizations around the country.
Wale Mafolasire is the founder of Givelify, the most trusted online and mobile giving platform. Nearly $3 billion in donations across more than 55,000 organizations, including churches and places of worship, as well as a variety of other non-profit causes has been generated through Givelify. Mafolasire believes giving is a beautiful thing. He leads the efforts at Givelify to make the giving experience equally beautiful and instant. A multi-time entrepreneur, Mafolasire pioneered an online learning and collaboration platform for college students and an interactive mobile video cloud platform. He formed Givelify in 2013 out of a desire to transform spontaneous giving and increase generosity in the world.
enjoys hiking and backpacking."
Kristen Coffield, Culinary Coach and Kitchen Interventionist. Empower individuals to take control of their wellness with tools to help them navigate the complicated and overwhelming landscape of health and diet information. The Culinary Cure starts with what’s at the end of the fork to help people change their health destiny.
Deb Brown Maher is a sales coach, author and speaker who helps business owners and solo entrepreneurs change the way they sell from convincing a prospect to buy to being of service and looking for the win-win. She is passionate about helping people sell from a position of integrity and shares her methods in her book and video training course called “Sell Like Jesus: 7 Characteristics of Christ for Ethical Sales”.
