Courtney Peace is an Artist and Entrepreneur with an incredible story of adversity, transformation, and success.
At age 18, he was accused of a crime he didn’t commit and was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
After serving 12 years in prison, he was released on parole.
During his incarceration, he developed a love for fine arts and poetry.
Today, he’s a successful artist and inspires people with his art and story of transformation.
Contact:
Adam Posner is the Founder and Managing Director at NHP Talent Group, a boutique NY-based staffing firm, specializing in talent acquisition for Senior-level roles within: Digital Marketing, Media, Product and Content Creation at Start-ups, Creative Agencies, and Brands.
Prior to pivoting into the world of recruiting, Adam spent 15 years working within the NYC advertising and marketing industry. He has lead account management and digital strategy at American Express, SIRIUS XM and digital ad agencies in NYC like VaynerMedia and EP+Co for major Clients like Verizon, Pepsi and British Airways.
This has instilled him with a unique perspective when working with candidates to truly understand their Career DNA and ensure a good fit on both sides of the recruiting equation. In addition, he brings expert advisory around the Talent Acquisition process, employer branding, and recruitment operations.
He has built a strong reputation by always putting relationships first, while balancing his clients business needs and candidates career goals. Adam is truly a power connector. He identifies opportunities, synergies, and connect the dots.
Topics:
- Harnessing your strengths, while at your weakest point (getting fired and pivoting careers).
- Tenacity during the job search (3 P's - Patient, Polite, Persistence)
- Finding harmony in your life through your work
Contact:
April Melton is a Client Manager for an IT Staffing Firm by day and a Personal Trainer by night, and a podcaster on the weekends. She is the co-host of Big Girl Pants Podcast aside her former boss, Kimberly Shapiro.
Fitness has been something that has fueled her since her days playing football in Duncanville, Texas. April has been lifting weights and training since the first time she stepped in the field-house in 7th grade. Empowering women to feel more confident in the gym is her motivation! April has lost over 60 lbs over the last four years and wants to help women do the same.
April is a single mother with a beautiful four year old daughter. When she's not working, training her clients, podcasting, or being a mother, she's passionate about personal development, reading, and listening to podcasts.
On this episode, we talk about her fitness journey, the carnivore diet, and how she empowers women in the gym.
Connect with April:
Matt Sandrini is a high-performance and business coach, helping 7-9 figure entrepreneurs take control of their day and focus on what brings real results, to reach the next level in life and business. Matt's journey started when working as a business consultant for an international firm, and started to question the value of his own time and actions. After launching his first business, he started sharing his principles online, which generated millions of views. Matt lives in London, and travels and works remotely for 3 months of the year, while growing his business and helping top performers take control of the only resource that is scarce—time.
Checkout Matt’s NEW Book, Invest Your Time: http://bit.ly/InvestYourTime-Book
- How to compress time: how I wrote a book in 3.5 months, and why I started using the 14 day week
- The importance of saying no to opportunities in business and life (and how to spot the right ones)
- The structure to be unstructured: why planning the week and having constraints is fundamental if you are a leader and the basis for true freedom
- Tools: Calendar, Task and Project Management
- Favorite daily habits and hacks
Motivational Speaker Shannon McKain is widely recognized as a leading authority in career development topics including: Emotional Intelligence, Generational Differences in the Workforce and Personal Branding for Employees. A former Executive Recruiter, Pryor Leadership Fellow, NFL Cheerleader and now Keynote Speaker for over a decade, Shannon has entertained and educated audiences around the world, receiving several accolades and awards throughout her career. She had a regular segment on CBS KCTV5 Better Kansas City and has been featured on Nickelodeon.
Book Shannon to Speak! https://www.shannonmckain.com/contact/
Topics:
- Building your Personal Brand
- Growing yourself as a Leader
- Emotional Intelligence
Bruce Waller is the Vice President of Corporate Relocation for Armstrong Relocation and Companies in Dallas, Texas. Bruce has enjoyed many roles in relocation from operations to general management since 1995. Bruce is certified by WorldwideERC as a Certified Relocation Professional (CRP) and serves on the North Texas Relocation Professionals Board of Directors. In 2014, Bruce was the recipient of the Saul Gresky Award presented to NTRP’s Relocation Professional of the Year, and has received many awards including UniGroup Masters Club and Armstrong Relocation Presidents Club. Bruce is also certified by both HRCI (Human Resources Certification Institute) with a PHR, and SHRM (Society of Human Resource Management) with a SHRM-CP and currently serves on DallasHR Board of Trustees as well as TexasSHRM as a District Director. Bruce graduated from the University of Central Oklahoma with a degree in Business Administration. Bruce and his wife of 33 years have 3 children and 1 grandson and live in Dallas, Texas.
In 2017, Bruce published a leadership book called “Find Your Lane” to inspire people with a “Career GPS” to help navigate for success in their career and in their personal life.
- Leadership (Getting better)
- Relocating Talent (Reducing stress)
- Networking (Expanding resources and learning from others)
Connect with Bruce:
Jay Barnett is a former professional athlete, best-selling author, and high impact speaker whose generated countless success stories and has transformed hundreds of lives through his mentoring and leadership.
Jay was a standout performer and four year starter at Tarleton State University and ultimately went on to earn a spot with the Green Bay Packers in 2006. After his time with the Packers, he played 2 years in the Arena Football League with the Tulsa Talons and Tennessee Vipers.
Today, he runs his own mentoring company, JBarnett Enterprise, which trains young men to be both physically and mentally strong.
Jay’s also pursued a successful acting career making appearances in such films as Hyphen, and on the reality show, Wedding Wars.
Books:
– Letters to a Young Queen: Redefining Their Throne
– Hello King: Claim Your Throne
– Finding Our Lost Kings and Queens: Strategies for Empowering Our Future Kings & Queens
Yoram Solomon is the founder of the Innovation Culture Institute. He published 8 books, 22 patents, more than 200 articles, and was one of the creators of Wi-Fi and USB 3.0.
Named one of the Top 40 Innovation Bloggers in 2015, 2016, and 2017, and a columnist at Inc. Magazine and Innovation Excellence. Yoram is an adjunct Professor of entrepreneurship at the Southern Methodist University, the University of Texas at Dallas, and the Hadassah Academic College in Jerusalem. He was the host of the first TEDXPlano in 2014, and a speaker at theTEDXOakLawn 2018.
Elected in 2015 to the Plano ISD Board. Yoram brings his experience as a shooter, serving in the IDF 35th Airborne Paratrooper brigade, and as a USAF CAP pilot. In 2015, he founded the Innovation Culture Institute, with a mission of helping companies build innovation culture and trust.
Checkout Yoram’s NEW online Innovation Culture & Trust Interactive Masterclass
Contact:
Gus Kalathakis is a network marketing professional, weight loss specialist, lifestyle transformation coach, with an inspirational story of survival. He built a multiple six-figure bank account before the age of 30 as a restaurant owner, social media marketer, professional poker player, and real estate investor only to watch it all come crashing down after a devastating back injury that left him physically and spiritually hurt, depressed, 50 lbs overweight and 6-figures in debt. This was all just 7 short years ago. Since then, he’s had a complete transformation physically, spiritually, and financially.
He has overcome more than 6-figures of debt, created a residual online income, has beat the battle of depression and anxiety, and restored his physical health without need for back surgery. Gus credits his faith for his complete transformation and today helps free others from spiritual, mental, physical, and financial pain through his businesses.
On this episode, we discuss discuss how Gus completely transformed his life and how you
can do it too.
Connect with Gus!
Patti Geolat, founder & CEO of Geolat, is a widely known authority on appraisal, brokerage & sale of fine jewelry. Her clientele includes many of the top jewelry houses globally, as well as an extensive network of private & industry collectors. She has a reputation for excellence, confidentiality & ethics in the private world of jewelry and gemstones, giving her access at the highest levels.
In 2013 Patti established Something For Kelly to honor her niece who died from anorexia at the age of 26. The Mission of The Something for Kelly Foundation is to advocate, educate, empower, raise awareness, and support all individuals and their loved ones to take control of their predisposition to Eating Disorders with the central goal to aid all individuals on the ED spectrum with an emphasis on youths and vulnerable communities.
Patti has teamed up with Amanda Welch, who has struggled with eating disorders since she was child, to raise awareness about eating disorders and the mission behind Something For Kelly. On this episode, Amanda shares her personal story and the steps she's taken to get on the road to recovery.
What you will learn:
- How big of a problem are eating disorders in society?
- The misconceptions of eating disorders. Separating fact from fiction.
- Why some symptoms of eating disorders are not as easy to see as you think
- What you should do if you suspect someone of having an eating disorder
- If you are struggling with an eating disorder, the steps you should take to seek help
Donate: https://somethingforkelly.org/
Contact:
- Amanda Welch on Facebook
- Patti Geolat on Linkedin
Marcus Aurelius Anderson is an Author, TEDx Speaker, Keynote Speaker, US Army Veteran, lifelong Martial Artist and High Performance Mindset Coach to entrepreneurs who are Leaders, CEO’s and coaches.
While preparing to deploy with the U.S. Army, Marcus suffered a severe spinal injury that left him paralyzed.
After dying on the operating table twice, the surgeons saved his life, but told him he'd never walk again.
Having no other option, Marcus started doing some brutally honest soul searching, looking for the lesson to be learned from his injury. Once he started seeing his Adversity as a gift instead of a curse, something miraculous began to happen...
Marcus now speaks, writes, inspires and coaches others to overcome their own Adversities to actualize their personal definition of success in every area of life.
His message teaches us how we can use our own Adversity to make us into better leaders, citizens and human beings to create a better world.
What you will learn:
- Why Adversity is a gift
- Parkinson’s Law
- The Adversity scale
Checkout Marcus's LIVE "DO THE WORK" Transformative Event
Cameron Gawley is CEO and co-founder of BuzzShift, a digital strategy agency for mid-sized and large brands. He’s most comfortable when challenging the status quo. A serial entrepreneur and growth hacker, he started his first IT service company at age 18. He went on to build an online data backup company that preceded Dropbox and Box.net, before co-founding BuzzShift in 2010.
Cameron’s true north is growth, and he works to help high-potential tech companies and mid-market brands with their go-to market and growth strategies. Besides leading BuzzShift, his side hustles include serving as an advisor and investor in numerous tech startups, teaching Digital Marketing Analytics at Southern Methodist University for SMU’s Continuing and Professional Education (CAPE) program, and designing his own line of messenger bags.
What you will learn:
- Digital go-to market strategy for Brands
- The Netflix approach to social media
- Becoming a T-shaped marketer
- Leadership, Culture, and Entrepreneurship
- Being un-acquired
Contact:
Website | Podcast | Instagram | Facebook | Twitter | Linkedin
Christina Rossini is a sales professional with 10 years of experience in telecom and IT consulting sales. She’s consulted with middle market companies throughout the country, enhancing their data & voice network infrastructure keeping cost containment and operational viability at the forefront.
Leveraging her sales and business experience from her telecom career—and following an origin trip to a coffee co-op in Chiapas, Mexico--Christina created the distribution firm, Innisor International, to mobilize the social impact co-op to go to market in the USA. She imports and distributes Arabica coffee, soap, honey, chocolate and hand-embroidered products across multiple sales channels nationwide. Christina works alongside indigenous smallholder farmers and producers to address their two biggest challenges: a just, sustainable income; and large market access. Christina leads Inissor International in collaboration with UN Sustainable Development Goals and Conscious Capitalism.
Christina is the founder of Lighthouse Partners, where she builds communities surrounding international, faith-based group spiritual tourism. She creates peak moments centered on spiritual and religious travel for pastors, choir groups, bible studies, and lay people throughout the world. She has escorted group sizes of 5-40 passengers to pilgrimage destinations including Mexico, Israel, France, and Italy.
Guided by her mission of living an intentional life, everything she does centers her core values of gratitude, community, and peak moments. These themes are also braided into her philanthropic work as chair of the Holy Trinity Catholic School board, board member of Conscious Capitalism Dallas chapter, keynote speaker and advocate for the National Kidney Foundation, and executive committee member of Heritage Oak Cliff. Christina reads non-fiction, enjoys sauvignon blanc, and resides in Oak Cliff, with her husband Mark and their blue heelers, Sadie and Brinkley.
Topics:
1. Lessons learned from hiking the 500-mile Camino de Santiago
2. How Christina prepared her corporate exit to make her side hustle her full-time entrepreneurial career
3. The importance of seeking and creating communities in life
Connect with Christina:
Deya Smith-Taylor, whose byline is “Deya Direct" --- is the President and Creative Director of Deya Direct Enterprises.
She is a Certified Life Coach in Social & Emotional Intelligence, the author of nationally-published blogs and three published books: Amazon #1 Bestseller “Failure is Fuel,” “Touch Yourself, 30 Ways to Boldly Live, Love and Let Go,” and most recently “Soft is the New Power: Embracing Your Femininity to Win in Love & Life.”
For over 10-years, Deya served as the Lead Content and Senior Producer for the acclaimed, nationally-syndicated Tom Joyner Morning Show (TJMS), the most successful syndicated urban radio show in history reaching more than 8 million people on a daily basis. There, she was also featured on-the-air and as a multimedia talent where she hosted, created and produced several celebrity-driven shows including: Girlfriend FM and Beyond the Studio on Blackamericaweb.com.
Under her company, Deya recently launched the SuperpowHer Podcast,
(https://www.deyadirect.net/podcast) a Powerhouse “Testimonial Series” with real-life tools that women can use! It’s a lively, yet safe space where Deya Direct gets real with Celebrities, Power Players and her Super-friends about how they overcame the fire of life, and leveraged their Superpower to Learn, Live, Love and Laugh again! By the its first month, the show had already acquired 1,000 downloads and it’s first national sponsor.
As a former Miss Black USA, Deya has been empowering women to honor and value themselves from the inside out for over 15 years. She has spoken and written about the process of self-love internationally.
Deya has offered expert guest commentary on national television, spoken and moderated at international conferences, and has served as a spokesperson and advocate for multiple nonprofit organizations including: The American Red Cross and the AIDS Healthcare Foundation.
What you will learn in this episode:
- How to ask someone out without being weird
- The best and worst reasons to be in a relationship
- The biggest mistake in dating
- Understanding love languages
- No one is responsible for your happiness
- How to heal a broken heart
- Keys to meaningful and successful relationships
Connect with Deya:
Cheri Garcia is the Founder of Cornbread Hustle, a staffing agency for second chances. Cheri is passionate about helping felons and people in recovery find transformation through employment and entrepreneurship. As someone who has re-invented her own life, Cheri wanted to create a company to help others do the same. Before starting Cornbread Hustle, Cheri found her own transformation and recovery through inventing a tanning bed and getting a career in the TV news industry. Cheri developed expert level skills for marketing and PR. She uses those talents to help individuals getting out of prison re-brand themselves to become the person they want to be and get noticed by the people they want to meet. Cheri also is a PR consultant for Mark Cuban companies, and provides strategy plans and media opportunities for a variety of the Shark Tank companies.
What you will learn:
1. Why companies should hire felons.
2. Prison stories - of teaching them inside the walls and outside the walls
3. How to build your personal brand
4. How to empower your employees to thrive in jobs they may not love
Connect with Cheri:
Elizabeth Engen is an Online Business Strategist and Founder of Premier SEO Ninjas - a digital marketing agency that has helped Doctors and Lawyers grow their practices and create massive revenue since 2009. She provides innovative and results-driven internet marketing solutions so that business owners become even more successful in their chosen fields of endeavor. Over the past fifteen years this Premier Google Partner and Double Agency Owner has been building compelling campaigns that get traffic, get noticed, and generate more clients for their businesses in nineteen countries around the world.
What you will learn:
- Online Reputation Management
- How the Only Way To Live Is In a Beautiful State
- How To Instantly Identify a Limiting Belief and How To Eradicate It Forever
5 Ways to Fix Your Reputation Online & What You Can Do To Improve It ==> https://premierseoninjas.com/pathways-to-success
Contact with Elizabeth:
Website | Facebook | Twitter | Linkedin
Scott has helped more than 23,000 organizations across the globe eliminate the stress and overwhelm of recruiting and hiring. He's shown them a method for creating an instantaneous job filling system that eliminates hiring delays.
Scott is the author of, “High Velocity Hiring: How to Hire Top Talent in an Instant” The book focuses on helping companies to stop participating in the old way of hiring (keeping a job open until the right person shows up), and instead, engage in the new way of hiring (cultivating top talent until the right job shows up).
What you will learn:
Claire is the Talent Acquisition Manager in the Buffalo, NY office of Remedy Intelligent Staffing. Remedy is a franchise division of EmployBridge, the largest industrial staffing firm in North America. She has built over six years of successively diverse HR management experience with privately-owned and publicly-traded global leaders that provide hospitality and food service management, medical devices development, and non-dairy frozen food production.
Claire holds a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with a concentration in HR from the University at Buffalo, an MBA from Niagara University and her PHR certification through HRCI. She is an active SHRM member and on the Board of Directors for her local SHRM chapter, Buffalo Niagara Human Resources Association (BNHRA) as well as a contributing writer for Workology and the SHRM blog.
When not at work she is a professional development events facilitator at both of her alma maters, on the Disrupt HR Buffalo event planning committee and Co-leader of the Remedy Women in Leadership group.
On this episode, we discuss how to build an online presence for personal branding and career growth.
Connect with Claire:
Ronald Davis, Sr. is the Founder of Davis Integration Group LLC, the Executive Director of Optimum Prep Student - Athlete Development, and the founder of Monopoly Business Impact Night, which mobilizes corporate and city leaders to serve our youth.
Originating in Fairfax, VA, Davis Integration has been in operation since 2012, working within 17 states with over 25,000 hours of community service impacting 1,000 kids per year through their community initiatives programs.
On this episode, we discuss Ron’s mission and how he brings together corporate and city leaders to serve our youth.
With over 10 years of experience mentoring, public speaking, and most important, real-life in the trenches business experience, his view is radically different. He has generated countless success stories and has transformed hundreds of lives. Jay shares with his mentees that leadership is a moment-to-moment choice and not about title and position. Leadership is for everyone. It’s a choice. It’s how we should live our life.
As a leader in the community, Jay serves as the senior consultant and Master Teen Mentor with his Sugar Land, Texas-based organizations.
His various organizations serve “at risk” teens ages 13-18, which includes children and teens transitioning through foster care and group homes. He also offers Back To School Back Pack Campaigns as well as Football and Basketball Camps. He continues to work with the best and brightest in the leadership development field. As a result of working with Jay, teens develop winning mindsets, self-esteem, self worth-worth, and value for their bodies.
This episode is brought to you by Focusrite, the Interface Company who makes interfaces for recording podcasts, music, or any audio. If you are a new podcaster looking to start a show, or an experienced podcaster looking to level up your audio quality, I highly recommend you check them out! https://focusrite.com/
Leena Patel is the CEO of Global Impact Systems, founder of Sandbox2Boardroom.com, and a leading expert on helping executive teams worldwide lead change, drive innovation, and develop a culture of collaboration and inclusion. Leena draws from her experience being mentored by her grandfather – a direct disciple of Gandhi, as well as two decades experience as a woman-owned, minority-owned business owner. Recognized with a Woman of Distinction Award for pioneering Gamulation as a revolutionary leadership training methodology, Leena and her team have worked with leading corporations in 16+ industries, advised CEOs and Senior Executives worldwide, delivered over 1000 seminars, and have been featured by leading media like NBC, Bloomberg, Fox News, ESPN, and many more.
Dr. Stephanie L. Knight is dean of the Simmons School of Education and Human Development. She is a nationally recognized education leader, researcher, and professor dedicated to bringing the results of evidence-based research to elementary, secondary, undergraduate and graduate education.
Knight began her education career as a classroom teacher of Spanish and French in Texas, Saudi Arabia and Pennsylvania. She received her doctorate in curriculum and instruction at the University of Houston before beginning a 20-year tenure at Texas A&M University, where she was professor of educational psychology and teaching, learning and culture. In addition, she held the Houston Endowment, Inc. Chair in Urban Education at Texas A&M, received the University Distinguished Teaching Award and was named a University Faculty Fellow. Knight joined Pennsylvania State University in 2009 as professor of educational psychology, where she taught courses on educational psychology; intelligence and creativity; integrated teaching methods for special education and English Language Learners; and research methods in teacher education. In 2013 she became associate dean at Penn State, leading the College of Education's undergraduate and graduate studies programs.
Her areas of research expertise include the relationships between instructional strategies, classroom processes, learning environments and student outcomes, particularly in U.S. urban and international settings; preservice and inservice teacher professional development; and the use of observational techniques to study classroom processes. She has published her research in hundreds of books, book chapters and journal articles and presented at numerous professional conferences.
In addition, Knight has directed university and national research centers, including serving as associate director of research into practice for the National Science Foundation Information Technology in Science Center for Teaching and Learning; director of evaluation and assessment for the National Center for Science and Civic Engagement in Washington, D.C.; executive director of the Houston School-University Research Collaborative at University of Houston; and director of the Center for Collaborative Learning Communities at Texas A&M. She was co-editor of the American Educational Research Journal: Teaching, Learning, and Human Development from 2004-2006, a publication of the American Educational Research Association; recently completed a five-year term as Lead Editor for the Journal of Teacher Education, the primary publication of the American Association of Colleges of Teacher Education; and also recently served as associate editor, Review of Educational Research, a publication of the American Educational Research Association ranked highest among education research journals.
Knight received her B.A. in romance languages and literature at the University of Kentucky, her M.A. and certification in secondary education at Lehigh University, and her doctorate in Educational Curriculum and Instruction from the University of Houston.
Connect with Dr. Stephanie L. Knight and the Simmons School of Education and Human Development: