Craig Beinecke and Adam Cookson are co-founders of TekDry, a revolutionary new and growing retail consumer servicer for recovering waterlogged phones and devices while saving your data in 30 minutes. This is Adam’s encore interview with Integrate & Ignite. Adam’s responsibilities include strategic business planning, domestic and international business development, capital formation, investor relations, and leading the TekDry’s business team for growth and expansion. Craig is focused on developing strategic partnerships with retail stores to offer localized TekDry services. The two gentlemen met during their MBA program at the University of Denver.
Barbara Weaver Smith is founder and CEO of The Whale Hunters®, co-author of Whale Hunting: How to Land Big Sales and Transform Your Company, and author of the new Whale Hunting with Global Accounts: Four Critical Sales Strategies to Win Global Customers.
Her business development process is based on the collaborative culture of the Inuit people and how they engaged their entire village to land whales. Barbara works with companies to grow their business by making bigger sales to bigger customers.
She has directly helped dozens of privately-held companies and B2B franchise owners to implement The Whale Hunters Process™ to dramatically increase their sales, deal size, and predictability. 95% of them do so!
She reaches thousands of business leaders in workshops, seminars, and keynote speeches. Barbara also produces books, articles, podcasts, webinars, and online training programs for entrepreneurs who want fast, consistent revenue growth.
Through more than 20 years in the Workforce Management, sales and operations fields, Steve has a clear understanding of the challenges retailers face communicating with distributed locations. He noticed a change in the marketplace around the time he founded ThinkTime. Large, expensive, difficult-to-deploy systems no longer met the needs of today's retail organizations.
Steve and his team built ThinkTime in the cloud, so it's more affordable and easier to install. He knows most retail companies can't spend days training staff on a communication system; you want to start communicating right away.
Steve has previous relevant experience overseeing 200 associates and a $40M P&L for the retail and healthcare consulting practices at Kronos Incorporated - a $1B in revenue Workforce Management software provider.
He has hands on operational and financial experience increasing consultants, revenue, margin, and team utilization.
Steve has International experience deploying Retail Workforce Management software in Europe and South Africa. He created the new Alliance Partnership programs with Arthur Anderson’s retail team located in London, England.
Extensive software product expertise in Workforce Management including: Time and Attendance, Scheduling, Task Management, Help Ticketing, and Analytics in retail and healthcare.
Building better service systems is the thread through the tapestry of Linda LaGanga’s career history, which spans high-tech startup operations, clinical service delivery, and quality and process improvement. As an author and educator in clinical appointment scheduling and service operations, Linda has forged new frontiers of clinical appointment scheduling research and practice to promote better access to healthcare services.
Linda is the VP of Quality & Informatics at Mental Health Partners, a 501 (c)(3) charitable organization. MHP was founded in 1962 as the Mental Health Center of Boulder County and opened at the county general hospital on North Broadway in Boulder.
After leading a bicoastal professional and educational life, Linda settled in Boulder, CO where she walks to work as often as possible and minimizes her carbon footprint by using her Eco transit pass to the max.
Jason Blumer is the Chief Innovative Officer of his firm, Blumer & Associates, CPAs. The firm was one of the first to move from a traditional office to a virtual environment, where they serve digital, design, and marketing agencies only. Jason focuses heavily on business coaching and consulting, while his team meets the technical and compliance needs of the clients.
Jason also founded Thriveal in 2010 as a way to help CPA firm owners connect. Since that time, Thriveal has helped many firms grow by providing an online community, coaching services, webinars, and live events. The newest offerings include a Lab for experimentation, an Academy for continuing education for CPAs, and an Incubator for new firms.
Jason is the host of two podcasts, the Thrivecast and The Businessology Show and speaks and writes frequently for CPAs and creatives, his firm’s chosen niche. He has been honored as one of the 40 under 40 in the profession (CPA Practice Advisor) as well as one of the Top 100 Most Influential People in Accounting (Accounting Today). Jason loves to watch documentaries on just about anything and is working on his personal bests in Crossfit several times a week. He lives in Greenville, SC with his wife and their three daughters. Stay connected with Jason by signing up at JasonBlumer.com.
As a founder and principal at SDR Ventures, a Denver-based investment banking firm, Chris works closely with clients executing mergers and acquisitions, securing equity and debt financing and implementing strategic initiatives aimed at maximizing shareholder value. He has 25 years of experience in strategic and transaction advisory services along with the Series 24, 62, 63 and 79 securities licenses.
Chris is also a founding partner at Coulton Creek Capital and BlackBook, Inc.®
Chris is a Vistage member and an advisor to Vistage International forums and serves as an Executive Board Member with the Denver Area Council for the Boy Scouts of America. He is a CPA and started his career at Deloitte & Touche after graduating from the University of Illinois.
Chris lives in Denver with his wife and triplets and is working towards climbing the last nine to finish all 54 of the 14,000 foot mountains in Colorado.
Julie Reiskin is the executive director of the Colorado Cross-Disability Coalition (CCDC). CCDC advocates for social justice for people with all types of disabilities.
CCDC is a leading disability rights organization whose unique model of blending legal and non-attorney advocacy has achieved results for thousands of Coloradans with disabilities. With a motto of Nothing About Us Without Us Ever, CCDC has led the way in citizen or client engagement and CCDC trained advocates permeate the Colorado public policy arena. CCDC and Ms. Reiskin assist other organizations with assuring real and meaningful participation by clients at all levels.
Through CCDC and the disability community, Ms. Reiskin has gained expertise on nonprofit accountability and best practices, publicly funded long-term community based services, disability rights law, public benefits and the intersectionality of systemic and individual advocacy. Ms. Reiskin has proposed and helped to implement many solutions to create a sustainable and client friendly Medicaid program such as the consumer direction as a delivery model, acted as a respected advocate for individuals and has trained many others in health advocacy and health policy. Prior to becoming the Executive Director for CCDC in 1996, Ms. Reiskin served as the organization's policy analyst.
In 2010, Ms. Reiskin was appointed by President Obama to serve on the Board of Directors of the Legal Services Corporation as the client representative.
Ms. Reiskin provides consulting with organizations seeking to improve, expand or enhance their ability to effectively practice real and meaningful client/constituent engagement at all levels of the organization. She also helps organizations develop disability cultural competence.
Ms. Reiskin moved to Colorado from Connecticut in 1994. In Connecticut, she was a partner in a consulting firm, specializing in diversity issues throughout Southern New England. She also had a private psychotherapy practice.
Previous work includes, but is not limited to, several positions working with "hard to serve" youth and positive youth development, AIDS/HIV Education, and grassroots community organizing. Ms. Reiskin has taught extensively in the areas of disability rights, disability culture and disability policy, along with other areas related to diversity in human services.
Ms. Reiskin received her Masters in Social Work from the University of Connecticut, with a major in community organizing in 1989. She obtained a B.S. in Women's Studies from the University of Connecticut in 1985. She lives in Denver with her partner of more than 20 years and has two adult stepsons, who both make her very proud.