Thought Leaders
INNOVATE® South Carolina
HAROLD SINGLETARY
CEO & FOUNDER, BRIGHTMA FARMS INC.
I often tell people that BrightMa didn’t start as a company — it started as a calling. My ancestors were enslaved farmers who worked the same South Carolina soil I walk today. Their sacrifice, resilience, ingenuity, and stewardship of the land are the foundation for everything I do. BrightMa Farms...
INNOVATE® Philadelphia
Christopher M Wolfington
Automating Peace Of Mind For The Modern Healthcare Consumer
Many people think that the healthcare system is broken because hospitals & insurance companies charge too much. The fact is, the market has seen a massive shift in financial responsibility for healthcare costs to the consumer. Combined with increased compliance burdens, the result is a massive spike in consumer out-of-pocket...
INNOVATE® Nashville
KEVIN JONES
CEO, CELERO
Historically, electronic payments solutions have been delivered by most banks as a secondary offering – often living in the bowels of the bank’s basements or tucked away into treasury as a secondary offering. Frankly, the early evolution of the payments landscape caused such posturing. Electronic payments and deposits were miniscule...
INNOVATE® Detroit
Fr. Tim McCabe, SJ
President & CEO, Pope Francis Center
When I arrived at the Pope Francis Center in downtown Detroit in 2015, our focus was on providing food and a space for respite for our friends experiencing homelessness. I quickly realized that while providing immediate relief is critical to staying alive, we were not doing enough to make a...
INNOVATE® Jacksonville
Theodore R. Willich
CEO - NLP Logix
NLP Logix teaches computers to do what humans can do or want to do. They automate. This means that at NLP Logix, they teach machines to do almost any repetitive business process that humans do, to help humans to do things faster and better. The company harnesses the power of...
INNOVATE® Nashville
TYSON BICKLEY
HOLLAND & KNIGHT LLP
I’ve spent the better part of two decades as a partner at a large law firm, advising founders, boards and investors on mergers and acquisitions, growth equity financings, joint ventures and other strategic transactions. My practice centers on innovation – helping companies that are building for the future navigate the...
INNOVATION Quebec
LE RÉSEAU DES CCTT
A WORD FROM MICHEL LESAGE, CEO OF THE SYNCHRONEX CCTT NETWORK
Innovating means giving yourself as an organization the ability to lead the pack—a key position that enables you to exert a positive pull in your community. It is a strength that brings together the various players in a given industry towards a common goal, a collaborative strength that is fundamental...
INNOVATE® Tampa Bay Vol.3
Jim Barnish
Jr. Thought Leader Of Morgan Hill Partners
Jim Barnish is a strategic change leader with over 15 years of leadership experience in global and integrated operations, M&A, and strategic go-to-market planning. Over the course of his career, Jim has successfully worked with companies undergoing roll-up mergers and acquisitions, accelerated business development, process improvement, change management, and operational...
INNOVATE® Phoenix
Clate Mask, CEO & Co-Founder
KEAP
Back when our software was just an idea, my co-founders Scott and Eric Martineau wanted me to join them, and I was really hesitant. I had a business and a law degree, along with a mountain of debt, and just wanted to have a paycheck I could rely on. But...
INNOVATE™ Flanders
DR THIERRY VANELSLANDER
PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORT AND REGIONAL ECONOMICS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ANTWERP
When I started working at TPR in 1998, transport and logistics was mostly a phenomenon split up according to the modes, not featuring that much public attention, and not that innovative. All that has changed a lot over the past two decades. Multimodality has changed into intermodality and more recently...
INNOVATE™ South Africa
MPUME NGOBESE
CO-MANAGING DIRECTOR, JOE PUBLIC JOHANNESBURG
With digital media usage higher than ever, more than 38 million people in South Africa are active on the internet, and 27-million consume social media content by liking, sharing, posting and commenting on everything from politics and the pandemic, to funnies and pictures of ‘fur babies’. Consumers have so many...
VOICES of the Future
DAVID SHRIER
THE HARMONY OF HUMAN INGENUITY AND AI
David Shrier, a notable professor at Imperial College London and co-director of the Trusted AI Institute, stands at the intersection of technology and humanity. His work, transcending academia, delves into the commercialization of AI and digital assets, influencing top tier corporations and governments alike. Through our conversation, it is clear...
INNOVATE® Minnesota
Angie Conley
CEO - Abilitech
In my days at Medtronic, I remember Bill George used to say (as a lighthearted dig at General Mills), “We’re not selling Cheerios; we’ve got soul.” We all laughed, but even today I find it relevant in thinking about the importance of a mission. A mission-centered culture gives employees purpose,...
INNOVATE® Gaming & Esports
SEBASTIAN “CHOSEN1” BURTON
DIGITAL ADVERTISING & ESPORTS THOUGHT LEADER ACTIVATING BRANDS WITH CONSUMERS VIA ESPORTS & GAMING,
The way I see it is that the gaming/esports ecosystem is an interesting experience that reflects the games we all play. Need an example? God of War, Uncharted and The Last Of Us are all blockbuster titles that are classified as action-adventure games. However, if we start digging deeper we’ll...
INNOVATE® Nashville
LAURIE OSWALD
CEO, INTERAWORKS AND CO-FOUNDER, BEST YEAR YET FOUNDATION
LEADING THE NEXT WAVE IN BUSINESSWe are in a huge change moment equal to the Renaissance and the Industrial revolution. The way we have always done business cannot continue to work in this new environment. The focus must move away from expecting employees to serve the company with no reciprocity...
INNOVATE® New Jersey Vol.2
ABBY AYOUB
CEO, OPTICAL ACADEMY
Every business that I’ve poured my heart into was founded on the idea of adding value and convenience to everyday life. I saw a problem, found one million ways to fix it, and stayed laser focused on the solution even when it didn’t make sense to other people. To do...
INNOVATE® Washington DMV Edition
SEEMA ALEXANDER
PRESIDENT & CO-FOUNDER, VIRGENT AI
We are amid society’s most unprecedented era of technological innovation – the next industrial revolution driven by the mainstream adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). For CEOs, founders, and organization leaders, this period surpasses the advent and rise of the internet. New business categories will emerge, while many companies that resist...
INNOVATE™ Kitchener Waterloo
JONATHAN NEWMAN
VICE-PRESIDENT: RESEARCH, WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY
At Wilfrid Laurier University, our tagline “Inspired Research. Real Impact.” guides and reflects the purposeful, collaborative work of Laurier researchers and the tangible effects it has on policy, culture, science, education and local economies. Research is inherently innovative, but for it to be truly impactful, researchers must lead with imagination,...
INNOVATE® Miami
TRANSIT ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT Downtown Miami is experiencing one of the most dynamic urban reinventions in the world. Less than 10 years ago, Downtown was a 9-to-5 business district, but today businesses are launching and thriving, city streets are populated around-the-clock, parks and cultural venues now occupy land that sat vacant...
INNOVATION Quebec
VINCENT ROUSSON
RECTEUR, UQAT
Cependant, pour une université en région comme l’AbitibiTémiscamingue, l’innovation peut jouer un rôle encore plus important dans son développement et dans celui de ses territoires d’attaches. Tout d’abord, l’innovation peut aider à attirer et à retenir les étudiants et les professeurs. En développant des programmes innovants et en offrant des...
INNOVATE™ Bengaluru
Sunil Padmanabh
Enterprise applications consulting, digital transformation, cloud adoption strategies and innovation
How can startups scale up? What are the key drivers of innovation? On the flip side, what are the pitfalls? For answers to these questions, we spoke to an expert in the vibrant ecosystem. Sunil Padmanabh works with startups in Bengaluru and Indian cities at various stages of growth, from founders...
VOICES of the Future
KAY VAN-PETERSEN
THE BUILDER
In my pursuit to unravel the mysteries of what the future holds, I had the privilege of interviewing Kay Van-Petersen, an avant-garde thinker and a trailblazer in the realm of finance and technology. His insights, not just on where we are heading but on how we can shape our trajectory,...
INNOVATE™ Stockholm
DR. CHRISTIAN GUTTMANN
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NORDIC AI INSTITUTE & SENIOR RESEARCHER, KAROLINSKA INSTITUTET
I wrote my first lines of AI code at 13 on a home computer—little did I know I was joining the earliest wave of AI natives. By 17 I’d launched a startup building intelligent inventory systems so small retailers always knew what was on their shelves before their accountants did—a...
INNOVATE® St. Louis
John G. Gatewood
CFP®, CLU®, President & Founder - Gatewood Wealth Management
When his military pension wasn’t enough to support our family, my father went into life insurance. He realized no one was coordinating all of the separate aspects of families’ financial planning. The Glass Steagall Act was still in effect, and it kept all financial companies separate; insurance was separate from...
HAROLD SINGLETARY
CEO & FOUNDER, BRIGHTMA FARMS INC.
I often tell people that BrightMa didn’t start as a company — it started as a calling. My ancestors were enslaved farmers who worked the same South Carolina soil I walk today. Their sacrifice, resilience, ingenuity, and stewardship of the land are the foundation for everything I do. BrightMa Farms...
Christopher M Wolfington
Automating Peace Of Mind For The Modern Healthcare Consumer
Many people think that the healthcare system is broken because hospitals & insurance companies charge too much. The fact is, the market has seen a massive shift in financial responsibility for healthcare costs to the consumer. Combined with increased compliance burdens, the result is a massive spike in consumer out-of-pocket...
KEVIN JONES
CEO, CELERO
Historically, electronic payments solutions have been delivered by most banks as a secondary offering – often living in the bowels of the bank’s basements or tucked away into treasury as a secondary offering. Frankly, the early evolution of the payments landscape caused such posturing. Electronic payments and deposits were miniscule...
Fr. Tim McCabe, SJ
President & CEO, Pope Francis Center
When I arrived at the Pope Francis Center in downtown Detroit in 2015, our focus was on providing food and a space for respite for our friends experiencing homelessness. I quickly realized that while providing immediate relief is critical to staying alive, we were not doing enough to make a...
Theodore R. Willich
CEO - NLP Logix
NLP Logix teaches computers to do what humans can do or want to do. They automate. This means that at NLP Logix, they teach machines to do almost any repetitive business process that humans do, to help humans to do things faster and better. The company harnesses the power of...
TYSON BICKLEY
HOLLAND & KNIGHT LLP
I’ve spent the better part of two decades as a partner at a large law firm, advising founders, boards and investors on mergers and acquisitions, growth equity financings, joint ventures and other strategic transactions. My practice centers on innovation – helping companies that are building for the future navigate the...
LE RÉSEAU DES CCTT
A WORD FROM MICHEL LESAGE, CEO OF THE SYNCHRONEX CCTT NETWORK
Innovating means giving yourself as an organization the ability to lead the pack—a key position that enables you to exert a positive pull in your community. It is a strength that brings together the various players in a given industry towards a common goal, a collaborative strength that is fundamental...
Jim Barnish
Jr. Thought Leader Of Morgan Hill Partners
Jim Barnish is a strategic change leader with over 15 years of leadership experience in global and integrated operations, M&A, and strategic go-to-market planning. Over the course of his career, Jim has successfully worked with companies undergoing roll-up mergers and acquisitions, accelerated business development, process improvement, change management, and operational...
DR THIERRY VANELSLANDER
PROFESSOR, DEPARTMENT OF TRANSPORT AND REGIONAL ECONOMICS OF THE UNIVERSITY OF ANTWERP
When I started working at TPR in 1998, transport and logistics was mostly a phenomenon split up according to the modes, not featuring that much public attention, and not that innovative. All that has changed a lot over the past two decades. Multimodality has changed into intermodality and more recently...
MPUME NGOBESE
CO-MANAGING DIRECTOR, JOE PUBLIC JOHANNESBURG
With digital media usage higher than ever, more than 38 million people in South Africa are active on the internet, and 27-million consume social media content by liking, sharing, posting and commenting on everything from politics and the pandemic, to funnies and pictures of ‘fur babies’. Consumers have so many...
DAVID SHRIER
THE HARMONY OF HUMAN INGENUITY AND AI
David Shrier, a notable professor at Imperial College London and co-director of the Trusted AI Institute, stands at the intersection of technology and humanity. His work, transcending academia, delves into the commercialization of AI and digital assets, influencing top tier corporations and governments alike. Through our conversation, it is clear...
Angie Conley
CEO - Abilitech
In my days at Medtronic, I remember Bill George used to say (as a lighthearted dig at General Mills), “We’re not selling Cheerios; we’ve got soul.” We all laughed, but even today I find it relevant in thinking about the importance of a mission. A mission-centered culture gives employees purpose,...
SEBASTIAN “CHOSEN1” BURTON
DIGITAL ADVERTISING & ESPORTS THOUGHT LEADER ACTIVATING BRANDS WITH CONSUMERS VIA ESPORTS & GAMING,
The way I see it is that the gaming/esports ecosystem is an interesting experience that reflects the games we all play. Need an example? God of War, Uncharted and The Last Of Us are all blockbuster titles that are classified as action-adventure games. However, if we start digging deeper we’ll...
LAURIE OSWALD
CEO, INTERAWORKS AND CO-FOUNDER, BEST YEAR YET FOUNDATION
LEADING THE NEXT WAVE IN BUSINESSWe are in a huge change moment equal to the Renaissance and the Industrial revolution. The way we have always done business cannot continue to work in this new environment. The focus must move away from expecting employees to serve the company with no reciprocity...
ABBY AYOUB
CEO, OPTICAL ACADEMY
Every business that I’ve poured my heart into was founded on the idea of adding value and convenience to everyday life. I saw a problem, found one million ways to fix it, and stayed laser focused on the solution even when it didn’t make sense to other people. To do...
SEEMA ALEXANDER
PRESIDENT & CO-FOUNDER, VIRGENT AI
We are amid society’s most unprecedented era of technological innovation – the next industrial revolution driven by the mainstream adoption of artificial intelligence (AI). For CEOs, founders, and organization leaders, this period surpasses the advent and rise of the internet. New business categories will emerge, while many companies that resist...
JONATHAN NEWMAN
VICE-PRESIDENT: RESEARCH, WILFRID LAURIER UNIVERSITY
At Wilfrid Laurier University, our tagline “Inspired Research. Real Impact.” guides and reflects the purposeful, collaborative work of Laurier researchers and the tangible effects it has on policy, culture, science, education and local economies. Research is inherently innovative, but for it to be truly impactful, researchers must lead with imagination,...
TRANSIT ORIENTED DEVELOPMENT Downtown Miami is experiencing one of the most dynamic urban reinventions in the world. Less than 10 years ago, Downtown was a 9-to-5 business district, but today businesses are launching and thriving, city streets are populated around-the-clock, parks and cultural venues now occupy land that sat vacant...
VINCENT ROUSSON
RECTEUR, UQAT
Cependant, pour une université en région comme l’AbitibiTémiscamingue, l’innovation peut jouer un rôle encore plus important dans son développement et dans celui de ses territoires d’attaches. Tout d’abord, l’innovation peut aider à attirer et à retenir les étudiants et les professeurs. En développant des programmes innovants et en offrant des...
Sunil Padmanabh
Enterprise applications consulting, digital transformation, cloud adoption strategies and innovation
How can startups scale up? What are the key drivers of innovation? On the flip side, what are the pitfalls? For answers to these questions, we spoke to an expert in the vibrant ecosystem. Sunil Padmanabh works with startups in Bengaluru and Indian cities at various stages of growth, from founders...
KAY VAN-PETERSEN
THE BUILDER
In my pursuit to unravel the mysteries of what the future holds, I had the privilege of interviewing Kay Van-Petersen, an avant-garde thinker and a trailblazer in the realm of finance and technology. His insights, not just on where we are heading but on how we can shape our trajectory,...
DR. CHRISTIAN GUTTMANN
EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR, NORDIC AI INSTITUTE & SENIOR RESEARCHER, KAROLINSKA INSTITUTET
I wrote my first lines of AI code at 13 on a home computer—little did I know I was joining the earliest wave of AI natives. By 17 I’d launched a startup building intelligent inventory systems so small retailers always knew what was on their shelves before their accountants did—a...
John G. Gatewood
CFP®, CLU®, President & Founder - Gatewood Wealth Management
When his military pension wasn’t enough to support our family, my father went into life insurance. He realized no one was coordinating all of the separate aspects of families’ financial planning. The Glass Steagall Act was still in effect, and it kept all financial companies separate; insurance was separate from...