Samir Mirza is the Co-Founder and Executive Director of Fifth Star Funds - a venture philanthropy fund investing in Black tech entrepreneurs at the pre-seed / "Friends & Family" stage in Chicago. He was formerly the Co-Founder and CTO of TapCommerce (acquired by Twitter for $100M).   He began his career in Chicago consulting for Fortune 500 clients while building robust content management applications, APIs, and backend distributed systems. In 2012, he co-founded TapCommerce in New York and created the industry's first mobile ad retargeting solution. As the Chief Technology Officer, h ..read more

Dan is on a mission to personalize nutrition by leveraging CGM (Continuous Glucose Monitoring) and Machine Learning. In simple terms, Nutrisense helps reduce the risk for type 2 diabetes & heart disease, helping people shed unwanted weight, and advise athletes on how to become the best versions of themselves. Website: https://www.nutrisense.io ..read more

Chris Kelly is Owner of the Sandler Training® Center located in Toronto. His firm works with Business Leaders, Sales Leaders, Sellers & Customer Care professionals who are serious about personal and professional success and willing to succeed through ongoing improvement and implementation of growth strategies, structure and skill. Over the last decade, the typical Toronto based organisation that chooses to begin a conversation with Chris has some business success behind it. The leadership is growth minded and they have a belief that how they sell has a significant impact on their growth ..read more

Claude Cimeus is a close personal friend and peer within Chicago's entrepreneurial ecosystem. He's currently Director of Platform at P33 Chicago; a non-profit focused on driving inclusive growth for Chicago’s tech sector. Prior to that, Claude worked as a Product Manager at five startups and founded three of his own right out of high school. On the side, Claude enjoys bringing the startup world closer together by hosting fireside night chats with leaders in different industries as well as hosting in-person tech events via ChiTech IRL.   To connect with Claude: https://www.linkedin.com/in ..read more

Swapnil is the CEO & Co-founder of Zeni.ai - Bookkeeping, Tax, and CFO Services Platform designed for Startup Founders. Zeni is his 3rd startup. He has built and sold two startups before. His first startup was Dhingana and his second startup was Mezi ..read more

Venture Capital investor, CEO, Serial entrepreneur, a faculty member at the Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, and Co-author of Exit Right. Check out Mark's new book: https://amzn.to/3EGmqPS ..read more

FranShares is an investment platform that lets anyone diversify their portfolio, hedge against inflation, and earn passive income through franchise investing. Our investors enjoy unparalleled transparency while investing in SEC and FTC regulated real assets that are rigorously-vetted and managed by our world-class team of franchise experts. Kenny Rose started his career at Merrill Lynch then somehow found his way into the world of franchising. He's written about franchising on Quora (sent to over 35 million readers) and has been featured on Forbes, ABC News, American Express, The Hustle, Mark ..read more

Born in Lebanon and based in Dubai, Kristel Bechara is an award-winning contemporary artist who has quickly established herself as the rising star of the Middle Eastern art world. Recognized for her dynamic patterns and expressive colours, Kristel’s artwork consists of the revolutionary creation of photographic imagery using oil, acrylic and giclée printmaking mediums to depict complex emotions and also portray the human condition. Her artistic process involves creating stencil-like drawings that are combined with modern mixed media lines to form multi-layered fantasy paintings. Kristel’s work ..read more

Evvy is on a mission to radically reinvent how we understand and treat the female body, starting with the vaginal microbiome. Evvy’s first product — the Evvy Vaginal Health Test — is the first-ever at-home vaginal microbiome test to use metagenomic sequencing to tell you what’s up down there, why it matters, and what you can do about it. Site: https://www.evvy.com ..read more

Daniel is a serial entrepreneur and passionate changemaker. He recently sold his last two venture-backed companies and joined Airbnb full-time. Daniel also spoke on stage in front of 20,000 youth at We Day, directed a film series on the sharing economy, received a monthly grant from the Austrian government to conduct research on the European sharing economy, and traveled to over 30 countries. Daniel has been named Top 30 Under 30, a Canadian G20 Delegate and was named the top student entrepreneur in Canada and top three student entrepreneur globally by Entrepreneurs’ Organization. Daniel spoke ..read more