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Ken Costello is the chief operating officer of MST Solutions where he strategically guides the company’s customer acquisition, engagement and retention strategies. As part of this focus, he plays an integral role in identifying how to leverage emerging technologies to support clients in scaling and automating their marketing, sales and operational systems to achieve real business results. Effective at translating big visions to achievable plans, Ken also leads company culture, team development, and operational efficiency initiatives, driving MST Solutions to exceed growth goals year over year.
With more than 10 years in operations and business intelligence roles, Ken previously served as the executive vice president of operations at Apollo Education Group where he was responsible for company-wide process improvement and enterprise program management. Ken holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting and a master’s degree in Information Management from Arizona State University. He also volunteers with Phoenix Children’s Hospital and Branching Out Family Services, and serves as an informal mentor to colleagues, guiding them through career growth and development. |
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Eric Miller is a co-owner of Tempe based PADT, Inc., a provider of tools and services to companies who design and manufacture physical products. He holds a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the UC Berkeley and started his career focusing on the application Computer Aided Engineering to turbine engine components. As a co-founder of PADT in 1994, Eric was able to also pursue his interests in IT, graphic design, 3D printing, database programming, and small business management.
Eric is often called upon to write and speak on simulation, design, and 3D Printing as well as on startups and the high-tech sector. In addition, he is Vice Chairman of the Arizona Technology Council Board of Directors, the BioAccel Advisory Council and Board of Directors, the screening committee of Arizona Technology Investors, and he is an Entrepreneur in Residence at the Arizona Commerce Authority. He enjoys traveling, writing, history, cooking, and learning about new things. He also contributes regularly to the Phoenix Business Journal blog and hosts the All Things ANSYS podcast. |
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Burt Skiba specializes in intellectual property law, he has extensive experience in mechanical engineering and advising clients on various aspects of intellectual property law. He advises a wide range of companies in all manner of transactions involving intellectual property matters. Mr. Skiba has had three startups himself, so he can relate on a personal level with the startups he helps. Mr. Skiba assists companies with patents, trademarks, copyrights, trade secrets, and other IP related business counseling. He specializes in early-stage startups by helping establish and implementing intellectual property strategies that protects and builds value within the company. Mr. Skiba worked as a Mechanical Engineer for 11 years, and has considerable technical experience with complex systems such as turbine engines, rockets, and missiles. While as an engineer Mr. Skiba received his MBA in Finance. Mr. Skiba spends his free time with his wife and four kids.
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Charlie Tombazian is currently Principal/President, Innovative Strategies LLC, a consulting firm helping companies grow by differentiating themselves through extraordinary customer and employee experiences. He specializes in Service Profit Chain customer experience improvement, employee engagement, leadership development and differentiating strategy creation. He also assists successful companies in achieving higher and higher levels of significance through a suite of 21st Century “triple bottom line” consulting services, assessment products and tools.
Charlie was Chairman of the Advisory Board for LevelUp in 2019—a Phoenix-based company with smart-rent technology for multi-dwelling units. His recent and past consulting clients are Pipeline AZ, GPEC, Tech Data, StrongMind, MicroAge, Shelvspace, Allstate Insurance Company, Solera Health, Tallwave, Ethology, Fox and Fin, Everest College Phoenix, MobiSquad, Hunter Contracting, AZ Humane Society, Avnet, Aon and Harley Davidson University. He has consulted across the U.S. with over 50 companies and non-profits of all sizes and industries in his 14 years of management consulting. A frequent speaker for business groups, Charlie was closing keynote speaker for YPO’s Business Transformation Summit in Atlanta, November 2018. Over the past 18 months he has spoken 7 additional times, most often for CEO forums and ASU’s Compete Through Service Symposium. He is past Adjunct Faculty member at Grand Canyon University (2006-2007) and the University of Phoenix (1998-2004), teaching graduate MBA and Masters in Leadership OD/OB courses. He was honored by UOP’s Graduate Business School with his appointment as Area Chair, Organizational Behavior and Development (2002-2003). |
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Karen Cummings founded Radiant Marketing to apply a creative, market-centric and metric-forward marketing approach for brands. Radiant Marketing is passionate about creating positive change by connecting individuals to brands that can impact their lives for the better.
Karen loves helping businesses with great products and services bring possibility to life by sharing their story in an authentic way, to an audience with shared views, values and goals. Her experience includes digital marketing, content and branding strategy, print, logo & digital media design, social media marketing, content strategy, inbound marketing and more. Karen loves working with passionate teams on a mission to do good. Karen enjoys quality time with my husband, son, family & friends; traveling; the beach (really any beach); and her incredible Radiant team. Specialties: Certified HubSpot Partner, Google Partner Agency, Certified Social Media Strategist, sales enablement, branding development, nonprofit marketing |
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Dave Blackledge is an Attorney of Counsel with Davis Miles McGuire Gardner, PLLC. He is an experienced businessman and later in life attorney focusing his practice on corporate/business transactions. He is an active angel investor and frequent volunteer at various business incubators and accelerators in the valley. Dave is a Professor at GCU’s College of Business.
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Ronald J. Kisicki is a Partner in the firm's Business & Finance Department and a member of the Intellectual Property Practice Group. He is admitted to practice before the U.S. Patent Office, and concentrates his practice in Intellectual Property Law. He is experienced in managing large patent portfolios and in counseling clients on various intellectual property matters. He also has extensive experience handling intellectual property litigation, representing both plaintiffs and defendants in patent, trademark, copyright and trade secret infringement suits.
Prior to joining Woods Oviatt he was a partner with Jaeckle Fleischmann and Mugel, LLP. Before earning a law degree, Mr. Kisicki worked for 16 years as an engineer and manager with General Motors. His experience included work in the occupant safety and crash worthiness design with GM's Chevrolet Engineering. |
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Lee Benson is one of the world’s most influential thinkers on helping organizations align employees to strategy and culture to achieve extraordinary results and is a highly regarded keynote speaker. He has a powerful yet practical approach to leadership and culture that he created through his own personal business success and which has been adopted by thousands of managers and employees around the world.
Lee started his leadership journey when he became the first employee in a small specialty electroplating services company. After the company lost virtually all of its business overnight, he purchased the entity and with only 2 employees immediately set out to build his vision which he quickly grew to become Able Aerospace, a company with 500 employees and 2,000 customers in 60 countries. Able Aerospace was well known in the aerospace industry as having the best culture, innovation, and ability to effectively execute in a very complex and regulated environment. In 2016, Able was acquired by Textron Aviation, Inc., a Textron, Inc. company. Lee has been extensively quoted and interviewed as an expert on the topic of leadership, execution and culture in accredited MBA courses, featured guest on CNBC, written numerous articles, and has been a keynote speaker with prominent business leaders like Jack Welch and Blake Irving. His innovative, common sense approach has helped thousands of employees in hundreds of public, private and government organizations drive, scale and sustain an intentional culture and consistently execute on strategy. Lee believes better alignment leads to better conversations prompting better actions to yield better results. Using this foundation Lee founded and is the CEO of Execute to Win (ETW) whose sole mission is to help organizations turn strategy and culture into tangible results. Lee is an avid guitarist, practices tae kwon do and enjoys vigorous outdoor activities. He sits on several philanthropic boards. Lee works with high school and college students, introducing basic tenets of entrepreneurship and leadership. He and his family reside in Phoenix. |
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Marty is an accomplished Silicon Valley sales executive and a B2B sales best practices thought leader. His 30 years of tech industry sales experience is applied in assisting companies in building, growing, and scaling their tech businesses. Marty’s expertise encompasses direct sales (outside and inside) and utilization of sales channels to grow revenue. His industry background includes:
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Judi Pine Sellers, M.Ed, is President of Advanced Systems Designs and a leadership consultant with over 30 years of business experience in industries including health care, manufacturing, higher education, hospitality, transportation services and non-profit agencies.
Judi served on the Enterprise Leadership Development teams for fortune 500 companies including Aetna and AlliedSignal; designing, developing, and delivering leadership development strategies and programs targeted to achievement of organizational goals. She has produced programs covering a broad range of topics including The Leadership Role, Driving and Executing Strategy, Transforming the Service Experience, Performance Management, Scorecard Implementation, and many topics relating to the core skills of an effective manager and leader. Judi has also been successful as a small business owner. She scaled her family small business from 6 employees to 67 and sold it in 2014. Now she works with entrepreneurs who are growing their businesses; developing leaders, designing training, training managers and optimizing and documenting processes. As a consultant, her corporate clients have included, AlliedSignal, American Compensation Association, Amkor Technologies, Avnet, Decision One, Lockheed Martin, Mayo Clinic, Tosco, and many others. |
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Anjali Nennelli is entrepreneurial by choice and a technologist. She is a problem solver, tech futurist, serial entrepreneur, community builder, women in tech advocate, lifelong learner and a thought leader.
She has hands-on experience and expertise with mobile & emerging technologies and their ecosystems. With over 17 years in the tech industry, she has worked in software solutions from start-up to large-scale enterprise architecture. She co-founded Mokriya, a product creation studio that delivered products to Fortune 100 enterprises like Intel, Google, Twitter, Verizon, L’Oreal etc. She built one of the first ‘remote-first’ company and successfully took it to an exit. She has also taken one of her products through the YC startup school. Currently in its eighth year, Phoenix Mobile & Emerging Tech Festival is Nennelli’s passion project; she’s thrilled to use her thought leadership to bring people together to witness the cutting edge of technology, and along with her products, hopes to make a difference in this world. She is currently growing a product services company around AI and Machine Learning. You can often find her mentoring founders, startups across the Phoenix Valley. Social media handles, website links - Twitter: @anjalisa, Website: http://lotuslabs.co Applicable calls to action, i.e. find out more about Anjali- If you have a tough software problem or looking to build something innovative, we can help. You can reach me at anjali@lotuslabs.co or find me on linked in - https://www.linkedin.com/in/anjalinennelli/ |
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Alan Carey has over 30 years business experience in Europe and the US in both manufacturing and service industries, ranging from large, Fortune 500 companies to smaller businesses. At one time, he was the successful owner of an import/export company. Alan holds an advanced degree in Organization Development and has specialized in that field, with an emphasis on sales and marketing. He is the author of numerous published articles and has been involved in many community-based organizations. Alan has served as both an internal and external consultant to individuals and organizations in Europe, the US, and Africa, with additional contacts in Asia, Central and South America.
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Brian Martinitz is a Business Consultant passionate about process improvement. Brian has over 30 years of experience optimizing supply chains and improving operational outcomes leading to increased revenues, reduced costs, and increased profits for global fortune 500 companies.
Brian is a respected leader, subject matter expert, and project manager with the ability to influence and focus diverse teams on achieving organizational goals and objectives by creatively balancing resources, scope, and schedule. Specifically, collaborating with cross functional personnel to identify Operational Excellence (OpEx) opportunities that support business and financial objectives in Engineering, Information Technology, Human Resources, Customer Service, Manufacturing, Planning, Finance, and Logistics organizations amongst a myriad of industries. Brian holds B.S. and M.S. degrees in Industrial Engineering from Kansas State University and an MBA with an emphasis in Finance from California Lutheran University. In addition, Brian is a licensed Professional Engineer - P.E., Project Management Professional - PMP®, and Certified Supply Chain Professional - CSCP®. Brian’s areas of expertise include: Process Improvement, Business Case Development, Capacity Analysis, Data Mining & Analytics, Work Measurement, Facility Layout, Technical Problem Solving, Metrics Development, Strategic Planning, System Thinking, Lean Six Sigma, Business Process Modeling, Methods Engineering, Capital Justification, and Supply/Demand Planning. |
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Melissa Wilson is a Strategist at Intel Corporation, where she is responsible for defining and monitoring execution of strategy within IT. She stays abreast of external IT industry trends (including disruptive technology) and collaborates with IT senior leaders to drive annual refresh of IT strategy, priorities, and metrics.
In addition to her 5 years in IT Strategy, she brings 19 years of experience in a variety of roles including Corporate Real Estate/Site Development, Assembly Technology Development, Information Security, and Emergency Communications. She is a Lean Six Sigma Green Belt and has professional certifications in Crisis Management/Communication and ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library). She holds a B.S. in Business Management after beginning her studies at Auburn University at Montgomery and completing her degree at the University of Phoenix, cum laude. Melissa has a strong interest in making a difference within the community both professionally and personally: · Professionally: With a background in IT, she wants to help the Chandler Innovation Program develop and grow future technology leaders in Chandler. Her professional experience with senior IT leaders, venture capitalists and start-ups will help guide new businesses/local start-ups. · Personally: She was the founder and now co-leader of a local community support group for parents of children with ADD/ADHD and other learning challenges. Starting as a grass-root effort, the support group grew through word-of-mouth with now more than 1300 local Chandler members. The rate of growth attracted interest from a national CHADD network which resulted in the creation of an East Valley CHADD Chapter. Outside of work and community focus, Melissa devotes her time to her husband of 26+ years, teenage son and their two dogs. |
