Iconic Conversations with Tanaka Tava

After 15+ years in the Tech Industry as an Enterprise Account Executive, Jarrett is now launching BlackHire (www.blackhire.com), which is the premier place for companies to find talented black freelance talent, and the go to place for black freelancers to find opportunities.  This venture stems from Jarrett’s calling: promoting Diversity, Equity & Inclusion in the Tech space, which resulted fr...

Brianna Kilcullen is the founder of Anact and is originally from Atlantic Beach, FL. In 2019, she helped legalize hemp in Florida while launching Anact. Prior to starting Anact, she worked in the apparel industry for prAna, a subsidiary of Columbia Sportswear and Under Armour traveling to 40+ countries working in factories on almost every continent. She is a dual citizen of the US and Ireland. Ash...

Iconic Conversations with Zack Bolak - Founder of Culture Technologies - Zack is the founder of Culture Technologies, a music tech and artist services company. The music tech division is developing a product for producers and songwriters, called Collective, to simplify the complex process of accessing music publishing royalty money. With the artist services arm, Culture Technologies amplifies loca...

Albert Prewitt, 25, born and raised in Lexington, KY found some success as a logistics broker and early investor in cryptocurrency but found his true calling when he moved to Austin to partner with the startup, FreeWater. The company prints advertisements on aluminum bottles and paper cartons which pays for everything including a ten cent per beverage donation to water well charities. He quickly i...

Ace Patterson, also professionally known as Call Me Ace, is a Billboard-charting hip-hop artist and Founder/CEO of Five Mics, a digital hip-hop trading card game (think Yu-Gi-Oh! Or Hearthstone, but with rappers, not dragons). In 2023, Five Mics was selected by Techstars Music as 1 of 10 startups for its accelerator cohort, receiving early investments from Warner Music Group and Concord Music Grou...

Gabe Warshaw is a musician, technologist, and the Founder of Baton - a platform that supercharges creative careers by building a community around work-in-progress material, while ensuring artists are properly credited and compensated for their work. Gabe is also a Founder in Residence at the NYU Entrepreneurial Institute and is currently finishing his master's at NYU ITP, a creative technology...

Jake Zinn, from Chapel Hill, NC, is the founder/CEO of BEEPR APP, a company at the intersection of music and technology. Previously, he ran a music management company that signed and developed artists. Jake has a passion for music and the potential for technology to shape the industry.

Sanika Bhave is an environmentalist, venture capitalist, and graduate of the University of Texas at Austin double majoring in Canfield Business Honors and Plan II Honors in Management Information Systems and Art History. She’s a firm believer in people and has sought to realize the power that comes from community at the intersection of policy, technology, and business whether it be by working in i...

Achievement is in Diana Nyamekye’s DNA! She is a highly successful 26-year-old social entrepreneur, former Googler, activist, and global speaker, honored by the Princess of Dubai as the CEO of the Most Impactful Initiative worldwide. She is the product of a diligent single mother, prayer, and a constructive community of Newark, NJ. Nyamekye is the founder and CEO of Black Sisters in STEM, where sh...

Mouloukou Sanoh is the Co-founder of Cassava Network, a Web3 platform focused on entertainment, gaming and rewards for the African continent. He is keenly interested in driving Web3 adoption in Africa. Mouloukou is also an Investment Manager at Adaverse, a $100 million fund backed by Emurgo, and a Vice President Emerging Markets at Everest Ventures Group, a global venture studio. Additionally, he...

Warwick Powell is an Adjunct Professor in the School of Design at Queensland University of Technology, where he is an industry lead in a multi-disciplinary research program focused on the design and application of distributed ledger technology solutions to supply chain environments. He is also founding chair of Smart Trade Networks, a blockchain technology development and commercialisation co...

After a year of lockdowns, global economic turmoil, 9% inflation rate, record high home prices and record low savings rates, the average American is hurting financially with $6500 in credit card debt and less than 10% over 65 having enough to retire. The cost of a college degree is going through the roof while its value is going through the floor. So how do we fix this?  Grant Watkins is an e...

Self-made developers Calvin and Chris LaMont host the HGTV Hit Show Buy It or Build It. The duo’s journey to builder success started with their first company, which specialized in fixing fire and water damage (and helped them hone their renovation skills).  Soon after, the brothers found major success flipping fixer-uppers, eventually growing a stellar reputation. Today, the former college fo...

Rena is the CEO of Boutiq, which is building a trusted luxury vacation rental brand and real estate investment engine. Prior to launching Boutiq, Rena worked in finance and strategy for Indeed’s new product portfolio, and led an edtech startup, Prepify. She previously was a senior consultant at Deloitte and has also worked at organizations such as Bono's ONE Campaign. Rena earned an MBA from MIT S...

Isaiah Studivent is the CEO, Head of Growth of Evron Digital, a RevGen Ad Agency that uses social media as the primary customer acquisition channel for growth-stage B2B SaaS companies.  As the CEO, Isaiah's goal is to facilitate and cultivate a culture of innovation, creativity, and progression that results in sustainable, repeatable, and momentous growth for clients.   With a backg...

Jonathan Barshop is a podcast growth marketer for the HubSpot Podcast Network — working on top business shows like My First Million, The Hustle Daily Show and more.  Before joining HubSpot, he co-founded a podcast agency where he helped brands like FreshBooks, Four Sigmatic & Doist grow through podcast PR and production.

About 25% of the population is affected by mental illness, but no one is talking about what it’s like to grow up with parents who suffer from mental illness. After meeting so many people who were affected by this very cause, Mary Korch decided that needed to change. She’s set out to create the first ever novel combined with a music collection called She saw in Color that also raises awareness of g...

Lauren is the cofounder and CEO of Fundr, a platform that uses data and AI to empower decision making in seed investing. Prior to this, Lauren cofounded Black Women Talk Tech, the largest membership organization and only conference for black women founders and KeepUp, an automated social listening platform. Her companies have won multiple awards including 43North, the Advanced Imaging Society’s Di...

At 19 years old, Blake Zonca dropped out of college where he was studying to become an aerospace engineer to work full time developing a virtual reality video game. Two years later after thousands of hours of coding, hiring a team, and many highs and lows, Crunch Element launched successfully in December 2020. Blake is continuing to grow Dreamlab XR while enjoying the freedom of being hi...

Virtual reality makes isolation and depression easier, and suicide and substance abuse are too common to ignore. Yoga and meditation are free mental health tools offering potentially lifesaving coping mechanisms for optimal mental health in the Metaverse. Christine Lewis is known as The Yoga Boss after teaching Transformational Yoga Therapy since 2009 to founders of multi-billion-dollar companies,...

Landon Campbell is a 24-year-old Podcaster and Media Executive based in Chicago, IL. He’s the Co-Founder and Host of inTheir20s. Upon graduating from DePaul University during the pandemic, Landon created the popular inTheir20s podcast as a way to share the best advice with fellow twenty-somethings. On the show, he interviews top business leaders and influencers to explore what they did in the...

Destin George Bell is a serial entrepreneur, content creator, real estate & equities investor, and natural-born hustler. Since he started selling toys to neighborhood kids at 5 years old, he's always had a love for business & has always found a way to make money for himself.  After graduating college in May 2020, at the peak of COVID, he moved to Austin, Texas without ever visiting or...

Liz Trosper is a new media painter working with ideas of reproduction, the body, painting, and technology. She teaches as Assistant Professor of Instruction at The University of Texas at Dallas. Trosper’s work centers on the desire for touch that is both fueled by technology and denied by it. Her creative work examines reproduction as a concept and as technical means.  Her work is represented...

Andrew Baines is an mechanical engineer turned entrepreneur who is building a media platform focused on combating the racial wealth gap by increasing the number of Black and Latino STEM professionals. Prior to becoming an entrepreneur, Andrew held numerous roles at General Motors (GM); including, Noise & Vibration Engineer, Quality Engineer, and Design Release Engineer. He then went on to work for...

Amy Anderes is one-half of The Bitcon Brew, a Youtube. She joined the Texas Blockchain Council in 2021 during the peak of the most recent bull market. Since then, she has been on a crash course to understand the economic and philanthropic aspects of Bitcoin.  Amy hopes to capture the interest of women and newbies to cryptocurrency in a weekly show, The Bitcoin Brew, co-hosted with Becca Bratcher. ...