Gratitude Through Hard Times

Chris is a serial entrepreneur and investor with more than 25 years of experience across a dozen startups, private and public companies and various social enterprises. He is currently a Venture Partner at GGV Capital in San Francisco and Shanghai, as is a sought after expert on company culture, team building and what it takes to scale a business. He has spoken at the World Economic Forum in Davos...

Mr. James David Waldinger, J.D, MBA, is the CEO and Founder and of Artivest. Prior to forming Artivest, Waldinger was a portfolio manager with Clarium Capital, a large global macro hedge fund established in 2002 by Peter Thiel, co-founder and former CEO of PayPal. He also served as the lead analyst on Thiel’s initial Facebook investment in 2004. Prior to his positions with Clarium and Thiel, Waldi...

BJ Lackland has spent nearly 20 years as an investor in and executive at startups, raising or investing over $200 million. As an investor, he’s been a VC, an angel, and is now the CEO of Lighter Capital, where he has overseen over 550 alternative investments in early-stage tech companies. As an executive, he’s been on the executive team of three companies, including as the CFO of a public energy t...

Barry Saywitz has 25 years of experience in the real estate industry. He began his career in the late 1980s with Grubb & Ellis, and then with Howard Ecker & Co., in Orange County. In 1992, Mr. Saywitz became a partner in the West Coast operations of Howard Ecker & Co., and in 1994, he purchased the outstanding stock of the company and changed the corporate name to The Saywitz Company....

Ro Gupta is the CEO of Carmera, the world’s only 4-dimensional index of city streets, accessible to anyone. Before Carmera, he created data products and helped grow web commenting network, Disqus, to 2 billion users. Prior to that, he held digital roles at Disney. Earlier on, Ro was a management consultant for corporations and NGOs in San Francisco, Sao Paulo, New York, and Mozambique. He also adv...

Tony Galati is an information technology professional, entrepreneur, teacher, and business leader who is revolutionizing vocational education with the founding and growth of MyComputerCareer a remarkable career college for new Information Technology professionals. From opening its first campus in 2008 to construction of six additional campuses in four states and its current national expansion in t...

Shari Dingle (Sandifer) Costantini is a renowned expert in the healthcare industry, with 29 years of experience in strategic leadership, nursing and international nurse staffing. She is a strong advocate for creating supportive work environments in which healthcare workers will thrive and improve patient outcomes. Shari founded Avant Healthcare Professionals in 2003. Avant has placed thousands of...

For some people in the world of food, it isn’t about composing a dish or a cocktail or overseeing a balanced wine list. For some people, it’s just about one thing, one love amidst the trove of food and drink products. For Michele Buster, for the past 26 years, that one thing is cheese. Recently dubbing herself the Head Treasure Hunter when asked what she actually did, Buster has spent many years c...

Simon Berg is CEO of Ceros, a technology company with a cloud-based platform that empowers brands like Red Bull, United, Conde Nast, and Universal to create bespoke digital experiential content without coding. Simon’s path to CEO has been unusual: after design school turned him down, he started working on an agency production floor at age 16, helping magazine publisher clients design and produce t...

Jon Morris is the founder and CEO of Rise Interactive. Under Morris’ leadership, Rise has received recognition for excellence in client service, innovative marketing campaigns, and commitment to culture, including acknowledgment from Inc. 500|5000 Fastest Growing Companies (nine-time winner), Ad Age (Best Places to Work in Advertising), Fortune Magazine, and more. Morris has been personally recogn...

Luke Acree, President of ReminderMedia, is a sales fanatic, a marketing evangelist, and an expert team builder. Luke has worked with tens of thousands of business professionals over the years, helping them understand how to connect with their client database in a way that generates leads, secures repeat clients, and captures referrals. In 2003, ReminderMedia launched American Lifestyle magazine, a...

Michael Rolph is co-founder and CEO of Europe’s fastest-growing payment, marketing, and loyalty platform, Yoyo. Michael started his career at Barclaycard, First Data and PayPal. Prior to founding Yoyo, he was a founding member and Director at Anthemis Group, the specialist FinTech advisory and investment firm. During his time there, he advised multiple start-ups like Azimo and The Currency Cloud i...

Sundance is a seasoned executive, recognized thought leader in video game culture, and veteran creative director with more than 18 years of experience in the media, technology and video game industries. He co-founded MLG in 2002 with Mike Sepso, with the goal of creating a company that would reflect both his lifelong passion for gaming and his deeply competitive nature. Sundance currently serves a...

Cory Tholl is the President and CEO of Klymit. Cory is a visionary and execution minded entrepreneur who joined Klymit pre-revenue in 2008 to lead R&D. Cory became President/CEO of Klymit in 2011 and quickly turned the company into a profitable and high growth outdoor brand. As a patent holder with an engineering and business mind, Cory leads the overall corporate strategy and thrives on profi...

Isaiah has a Ph. D. in Anatomy & Cell Biology and is an internationally recognized Fortune 500 consultant. He is an expert in the biotechnology industry and specializes in helping people transition into cutting-edge career tracks. Isaiah believes that if you feel stuck somewhere in your life right now, you should make a change. Don’t sit still and wait for the world to tell you what to do. Sta...

Olivier Chateau is the CEO at Health Union, LLC. Health Union integrates the power of human connection and technology and helps unite people in the shared experiences of living with chronic health conditions. Today, the Health Union family of brands includes online health communities such as Migraine.com, MultipleSclerosis.net, Endometriosis.net, and Type2Diabetes.com. Olivier has over 15 years of...

Richard Albrecht is an entrepreneur and leader focused on building adaptable, customer-driven and employee-focused organizations. Passionate about transforming business in an environment of authenticity, collaboration, and professionalism. As CEO at Bridge Partners, he is responsible for driving growth and building our world-class consulting organization. Bridge has been named a "fastest grow...

Pete Pallares is the Founder and CEO of the Center for Social Dynamics. Active in the field of autism and developmental disabilities for over 19 years, Pete has devoted much of his time working in research, diagnosis, and the treatment of autism across different cultures. As CEO, Pete oversees a team of highly qualified professionals develop and implement individualized treatment programs for chil...

Matt is an experienced business leader with a passion for innovation. He has recently founded Neos (neos.co.uk), which is an InsureTech business that is focused on delivering smart home protection products and services Prior to this, he spent fifteen years in the Insurance industry working in the UK and US with AXA and RSA. His most recent corporate role was the Commercial Director for More Than (...

As an award-winning CEO of a successful facilities management company, Michael Kurland is committed to leading with purpose and giving back to the community. With more than a decade of sales and marketing experience in the facility management industry, Mr. Kurland launched Branded Group in 2014 and has led the company's year-over-year exponential growth, cultural transformation, and the cultivatio...

Goddess Aviva is a lifestyle and professional Dominatrix based in NYC. She has over 5 years of professional experience in the NYC BDSM scene. Some of her many BDSM interests include power exchange, foot fetish, humiliation, objectification, and corporal punishment. Aviva also mentors aspiring female Dommes, teaches group workshops on beginner BDSM and kink, and trains male submissives in the art o...

Craig Elbert is Co-Founder and CEO of Care/of. Since launch, the company has made it easier and more gratifying for hundreds of thousands of customers to build healthy habits. Prior to Care/of, Craig led marketing at the men’s apparel brand Bonobos. He has an MBA from Wharton and a BA in English Literature from Dartmouth College. Currently, he lives in Brooklyn with his wife, Lauren, and kids, Whi...

Judy Zhu is a global operating tech executive and a long-time advocate for diversity in senior leadership. She is the Founder/CEO of a soon-to-launch venture-backed company called MoneyGirls – a simple direct-to-girl platform for young women to develop financial skills and build wealth, so they become confidently independent. Judy has spent the last decade years building and leading various techno...

Ms. Lisa Rosenthal is the Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Mayvin, a dynamic women-owned small business. In less than 4 years, her team doubled the firm’s revenues annually making the Inc 5000 list of fastest growing firms 3 years in a row. She is a seasoned leader and business developer with significant government and commercial experience managing a broad spectrum of tasks, functions, p...

Tom Gerace is the Founder and CEO of Skyword, the leading content marketing platform and services provider. Prior to founding Skyword, Tom launched Gather.com, a demand-driven news and entertainment property reaching more than 6M people each month. Gerace also founded and served as President of Be Free, a publicly traded online marketing services company. He received a Bachelor of Arts in Social S...