Michael Bonner
Michael Bonner is an inspiring teacher at North Carolina’s South Greenville Elementary, where the majority of students have strenuous familial dynamics and some are homeless. The school is 100% FRL (free and reduced lunch) and is located in a marginalized neighborhood in Eastern North Carolina.
In early 2017, Bonner was honored by Ellen DeGeneres in recognition of his positive and innovative educational approaches for children coping adverse childhood experiences.This is when she learned of how Mr. Bonner’s mind capturing teaching methods encouraged students to go above and beyond on a reading test. Ellen presented Bonner and his school with technical equipment to assist in the creation of music videos serving as aids to education. “I wish I could go back to second grade, so Mr. Bonner could be my teacher,” were the words Ellen Degeneres released on her social media accounts to 50+ million followers. Additionally, Wal-Mart presented the school with $25,000, and the Ellen Show created a Go Fund Me site for South Greenville, which has raised over $88,000 for the Title I school.
With only six years in K-12 education, Mr. Bonner is consistently seen as a visionary leader who strives to create a positive mindset among all of his students. He understands that his students come to class each day with diverse backgrounds, strengths, needs, and challenges, and seeks to identify strategies to ensure the growth of their social, emotional, academic, and psychological needs. Because of his approach to education, students leave feeling a little more hopeful, challenged, inspired, and forever a part of Bonnerville!
JJ Ramberg
JJ Ramberg is an award-winning television host, bestselling author and entrepreneur. For 13 years, JJ anchored MSNBC’s Your Business, which was dedicated to providing a forum for issues affecting the owners of small and growing businesses. She profiled thousands of small business owners and featured advice from countless experts and investors and government officials. As a leader in this field, JJ often speaks to groups of business leaders and entrepreneurs. She recently hosted the series Follow the Food for the BBC World News to highlight the problems and solutions around the world’s food supply.
JJ is passionate about small business and has firsthand experience as an entrepreneur herself. With her brother, she co-founded Goodshop.com, which works with thousands of online stores to provide shoppers the best coupons and deals and gives a percentage of virtually every purchase back to the shopper or their favorite cause. Earlier this year, she co-founded Goodpods, a peer to peer podcast recommendation app.
She is author of the best-selling book It’s Your Business – 183 Essential Tips that Will Transform Your Small Business and The Startup Club, a fun fiction book tailored to young entrepreneurs.
Amanda Kathryn Roman
Amanda Kathryn Roman has been called a cultural translator, a catalyst for creativity, an innovative designer, a dynamic high-energy speaker, a rockstar facilitator, a maven network-builder, and a transformational coach. At her core, Amanda is intensely passionate and extraordinarily skillful in activating, building, and cultivating organizational culture during times of rapid growth or change in strategy. She excels in bridging divides and creating space for contribution by connecting stakeholders from the arenas of business, investment, academia, government, community, and media to unleash the potential of each individual in the ecosystem.
Living in passionate pursuit of service to others, for two decades and counting, Amanda has been traveling in planes, trains, automobiles, buses, boats—and even a gondola—while successfully navigating the board meetings of countless service organizations; the green rooms of local and national media outlets; the halls of Congress; the inner sanctums of Fortune 500 companies; the offices of international policy organizations and elected officials around the world; the West Wing of the White House and the chambers of state legislatures; as well as the homes of philanthropists to deliver sustainable results imbued with love and legacy. Her work has been profiled in a variety of outlets including The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Washington Post, and New York Post.
Based in New York City, Amanda is a fierce momma of three who enjoys dance parties and road trips with her magical children. She loves spending time in the great outdoors; adventuring with family and friends; running marathons; practicing yoga every damn day; swapping stories, having fun, and laughing big belly laughs with lifelong friends; drinking espresso, whiskey and mezcal {not all at the same time}; reading voraciously; traveling to satisfy her wanderlust soul; and listening to classic rock while she is on the go.
Jasmine Lawrence
Jasmine Lawrence currently serves as the Technical Program Manager on the Blood Donations Team at Facebook. Their product connects Blood Centers with potential blood donors on Facebook with the goal of creating a safe and sustainable supply of blood for the world.
Prior to this she served on the Portal ( formerly Building 8) team. This team is building products that make it easier for people to connect with the ones they love most.
Previously, she served as a Technical Program Manager at SoftBank Robotics America where she lead a multidisciplinary team to create software for social, humanoid robots.
Earlier in her career, Jasmine was a Program Manager at Microsoft. On the Microsoft HoloLens Experience team Jasmine created customer driven Mixed Reality applications for enterprise partners. Before that she worked on the Xbox Engineering team creating cross-platform social experiences for millions of gamers around the world.
Jasmine earned her Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science, with concentrations in devices and artificial intelligence, from the Georgia Institute of Technology. She also holds a Master’s degree in Human Centered Design & Engineering from the University of Washington.
At the age of 13, after attending a NFTE BizCamp, Jasmine founded EDEN BodyWorks to meet her own need for affordable natural hair and body care products. After almost 14 years in business her products are available at Target, Wal-Mart, CVS, Walgreens, Amazon.com , Kroger, HEB, and Sally Beauty Supply stores just to name a few.
Angie Moline
Angie Moline, Ph.D. started Moline Creative for two reasons. One, to use her visual communication and facilitation skills to help people solve complex problems, work more efficiently, and innovate more creatively. Two, to obliterate people’s self-limiting notions of “I can’t draw” and “I am not an artist” in order to empower them to express their ideas visually.
Dr. Moline has used visual techniques throughout her life to try to understand and explain the world around her. Angie uses visual methods to map connections between disparate components of ecological, social, and organizational systems. She quickly assimilates and organizes new information into an intelligible framework, illustrates that framework, and helps you (her client) create an action plan for how to get it done.
Guest Panelists
Matthew Fieldman
Matthew Fieldman leads MAGNET’s efforts to shape and implement the organization’s fundraising efforts. Fieldman was recently a senior account executive for the digital marketing & analytics agency Fathom before launching his own digital marketing agency, Rockit Results. Fieldman is also co-founder and Board President of EDWINS Restaurant and Leadership Institute, Cleveland’s first nonprofit restaurant and a career resource for formerly incarcerated men and women. Previously, Fieldman completed work with several nonprofit agencies and fundraising organizations, including the Joint Distribution Committee’s Jewish Service Corps in St. Petersburg, Russia and Project OTZMA in Israel. Fieldman has also accomplished development and fundraising campaign efforts with MedWish International, The Jewish Federations of Great Washington and Cleveland, and Hillel: The Foundation for Jewish Campus Life. For his work in founding and fundraising for EDWINS, Fieldman was named “2014 Fundraiser of the Year” by Fundraising Success magazine. He has also been awarded the 2011 Manhattan Institute Social Entrepreneurship Award, the 2012 Toshiba “Help the Helpers” Award, the 2012 Mutual of America Community Partnership Award, the 2012 Sherwin Williams Signature Grant, and the 2011 and 2013 Social Venture Partners Investee Award. Fieldman also mentors social entrepreneurs through Cleveland’s Social Entrepreneurship Accelerator and Purpose Capital initiatives. Fieldman holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Psychology from the University of Florida, a Master of Business Administration degree from The George Washington University and a Certificate in Nonprofit Management from Case Western Reserve University.
Michael Goldberg
Michael Goldberg is an experienced venture capitalist and international business leader whose teaching is focused on the fields of entrepreneurship and early stage finance. Goldberg is an Associate Professor of Design and Innovation at the Weatherhead School of Management, Case Western Reserve University. With support from the Burton D. Morgan Foundation, Goldberg created a massive open online course (MOOC) called Beyond Silicon Valley: Growing Entrepreneurship in Transitioning Economies, which has attracted over 175,000 students from 190 countries with subtitles in 16 languages (most on Coursera platform). Inc.com named Beyond Silicon Valley one of the top online classes that “will make you smarter and more interesting.” Goldberg spoke about the impact of his MOOC at TEDxHeraklion in Crete (February 2015) and TEDxFulbright in Santa Monica (September 2015). He is also the author of Beyond Silicon Valley: How One Online Course Helped Support Global Entrepreneurs.
Goldberg co-founded the Bridge Investment Fund, a venture capital fund focused on investing in Israeli medical device companies that have synergies with the leading health care industries and institutions in Cleveland.
Goldberg was the Director of International Business Development for America Online, responsible for structuring and negotiating international partnerships in Asia, including AOL’s joint venture with Lenovo to develop interactive services for the China market. Goldberg spent several years in South Africa working for the National Democratic Institute, designing and implementing voter education programs for South Africa’s historic first democratic election in 1994. Goldberg also worked for Microsoft and the International Management Group (IMG).
Goldberg has deep experience teaching entrepreneurship in international markets. He was awarded Fulbright fellowships to teach entrepreneurship at the National Economics University in Hanoi, Vietnam (2012), the Polytechnic in Windhoek, Namibia (2015) and the Asociación Canaria de Startups, Empresas de Base Tecnológica e Inversores Ángeles (Emerge) in the Canary Islands, Spain (2018). Goldberg has also been a visiting professor teaching courses on entrepreneurial management and finance at Bilkent University in Ankara, Turkey and the ALBA Graduate School of Business in Athens, Greece. He has conducted seminars on behalf of the US Department of State on entrepreneurship in Argentina, Austria, Botswana, Cambodia, Chile, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Kosovo, Laos, Macedonia, Morocco, Myanmar, Namibia, the Netherlands, Philippines, Portugal, Russia, Slovenia, Spain, Switzerland, Tanzania, Tunisia, Vietnam, Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Goldberg is active in the entrepreneurship community in Cleveland, serving as a mentor to entrepreneurs through Jumpstart and FlashStarts. He has appeared as a frequent guest panelist on MSNBC’s “Your Business” and written on international entrepreneurship for CNBC, Entrepreneur.com and The Huffington Post.
Goldberg earned a BA from the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs at Princeton University, MA in International Relations from the School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University and MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Patricia Hohlbein
Dr. Patricia Hohlbein is an Assistant Professor of Management at Ohio Dominican University. She earned her Ed.D. in Organizational Leadership from Pepperdine University in Malibu, California, with her dissertation research focusing on “The power of play in developing emotional intelligence in leaders.” Additionally, she earned her MBA with a concentration in Applied Leadership and bachelor’s degrees in Business Management and Marketing from Franklin University. Prior to beginning her academic career, Dr. Hohlbein was a Director of Marketing for a regional hospital in Kentucky, a Vice President of Business Development for international, national, and local architectural planning and design firms, and a serial entrepreneur. She has started and owned two companies, one in the consulting area and one in the floral design industry. Dr. Hohlbein has been a featured speaker at international and national conferences in Belize, South Carolina, Florida, Virginia, and Ohio on her research on emotional intelligence, play, organizational leadership and organizational behavior. She is a lifelong learner and has active research interests in: organizational leadership, conscious capitalism, organizational behavior, play and emotional intelligence.
Doris Korda
A successful tech entrepreneur-turned-educator, Doris Korda developed a globally acclaimed high school entrepreneurship program that has been recognized for its innovation and student transformation. Doris’s singular goal is to change K12 education to empower students with the skills they need to thrive in a changed world. Doris has worked with hundreds of educators to implement her radically different method of teaching and learning that is spreading across classrooms, schools and districts – whether in Kazakhstan or the most disadvantaged public schools. She is currently leading Korda Institute for Teaching, a non-profit that works with educators and administrators to do school better. Doris’s work has been featured in press such as Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, and Huffington Post.
Student Panelists
Leah Berdysz
In addition to being a student at Case Western Reserve University, Leah is the CEO and Founder of Empowered & Poised and the Chief of Staff at Whoa Dough. Leah is an experienced leader with a demonstrated history of working as a mentor for youth and start-up companies. She is skilled in communication, management, networking, brand development, and creativity. Her company, Empowered & Poised is a returning Be Enspired! Mini-grant partner.
Javon Miller
Javon Miller is a Life Coach and Entrepreneur who has a passion to help and inspire others about career, well-being, personal development, and faith. A student entrepreneur with several businesses, he enjoys making inspirational, motivational, and Christian speeches and empowerment sessions to influence people to become the purpose driven, authentic, faith-filled, and successful person they have the potential to be. Javon is a student at Kent State University and is the Owner of Arize Entertainment and Event Venue.
Andrew Roth
A student at Vanderbilt University, Andrew is the Founder of GenZ Designs and the Executive Director at Champions for Charity. Andrew does things differently. He is a trailblazer, entrepreneur, innovator, philanthropist, designer, analyzer, and do-er who lives by the Steve Jobs quote:
“The people who think they are crazy enough to change the world are the ones who do.”