SPEAKERS
Stacy Spikes is an award-winning entrepreneur and inventor who USA Today named one of the 21 most influential Black leaders in technology. He holds several technology patents and is the co-founder and CEO of the nation’s first theatrical subscription service, MoviePass. In addition, Spikes is the founder of Urbanworld, the largest international festival dedicated to nurturing Women and BIPOC filmmakers. His memoir, Black Founder, was released in January 2023.
Stacy Spikes
Co-founder and CEO, MoviePass
Julian S. Newman is founder and CEO of The FutureCast Foundation and Culture Creative. He is a global leadership development expert and an inaugural Anthem Award winning Diversity & Inclusion Leader of the Year, along with Trevor Noah. He is an actor, filmmaker, has published writings in various media outlets, and featured on NPR and Fox News affiliates. Julian will be releasing his first book Beautiful Together in 2023.
Julian S. Newman
Founder and CEO,
The FutureCast Foundation
Terri Bryant
Founder, GUIDE beauty
GUIDE Beauty Founder, Terri Bryant has devoted her career to both makeup artistry and education. Throughout her 25+ years in the cosmetics industry, she has shared her love of makeup with people around the world. Her work has been behind the scenes as a celebrity makeup artist, in front of the camera as a presenter on QVC, QVC UK and HSN, and as an education executive, teaching makeup artistry for brands like Dior and Stila, and leading education departments for companies such as Smashbox and Josie Maran.
Throughout her time as a makeup artist, Bryant worked with people of all skill sets and abilities. She found that while her enthusiasm for makeup seemed to be shared almost universally, her skillset and natural ability as a makeup artist was not and was always looking for ways to make makeup better and easier for everybody. Then a life-changing event accelerated these efforts. When Bryant was diagnosed with Parkinson’s in 2015, her first thought was “what if I lose the ability to apply my makeup?” This wasn’t a question of vanity, but one of a lifelong passion and connection to a community. She got to work designing a line that would make application easier and better not only for her, but also all those people she had met over the years who struggled with applying the looks she had created for them. This resilience led to the launch of GUIDE Beauty, a collection of makeup tools and products mindfully and intentionally designed with users across all levels of skill, ability, and disability, to create products that can be enjoyed by all, regardless of skill, ability, and disability.
Chloé Valentine Toscano is an NYC-based writer, model, and diversity and inclusion advocate. She is working on an essay collection titled Disarmed: Essays From a Punk Rock Amputee. Her work has been published in The Washington Post, them., Glamour, NBC, Allure, The Huffington Post, Vogue India, Wired, Nylon, Salon, and more. You can read more of her work by visiting her website www.ChloeValentineWrites.com and follow her on Instagram @chloevalentinetoscano and TikTok @chloevalentinetoscano.
Chloe Valentine Toscano
Writer (Allure, Glamour, Wired), Model, and Diversity and Inclusion Advocate
Chad Cole
Social Impact & Sustainability Manager
Jackson Walker LLP
LaTasha Owens
Chief Marketing Officer
Metro Esports
LaTasha Owens is a Marketing executive with over 25 years of professional experience in business leadership. She has led multichannel Marketing efforts across industries, managed business development with startups, and consulted with Fortune 10 companies. She has worked on both the client and agency sides in Technology, Media, Sports, Entertainment, Fashion and Beauty industries developing Marketing, promotional, partnership, experiential and digital strategies for the general market and segmentation efforts. This includes special projects for Verizon from loyalty programs like Verizon Up to industry first technologies like partner app development with Disney, AI, VR, AR, and Machine to Machine products. Showcasing technologies at CES and other large scale activations in sports and entertainment like Super Bowl, FIFA World Cup, NBA All Star, Grammy’s, MTV Awards, Essence Festival and Coachella became a specialty among corporate circles.
Owens also developed the first live product integrations in entertainment with ABC’s Lost and Star Wars while at Verizon and in syndicated urban radio during her tenure at Uniworld Group for Burger King. These would be the first of many media integrations and partnerships. She’s innovated in the fashion industry as well, helping to build pipeline programs to diversify staffing and develop collaborations to provide designers of color with access to retail opportunities in luxury and big box stores. She’s developed beauty products for Johnson & Johnson and is an independent film producer.
A strategist, innovator, and collaborator, LaTasha’s work is proven in driving continued growth to increase relevance and market share through cross-functional leadership. Throughout her journey, LaTasha continues to align her efforts with philanthropy, driving STEM and STEAM efforts in underserved communities, Domestic Violence, and food insecurity causes. Her mission is to live a life of purpose with precision and ensure she continues to mentor the next generation while encouraging them to let their lives speak louder than their words.
Samuel Taylor
Founder/Creative Director
CoreImpact, Inc.
Samuel Taylor is a retired professional athlete of 8 years and two MLB teams. Since then, he has become a successful entrepreneur in the athletic industry, with a proven track record and a previous exit. With the support of expert industrial footwear designer/entrepreneur Ryan Duke, Taylor established Oakland, California's groundbreaking community-driven athletic footwear and apparel company in 2013; known as TESH Sports. Through a focus on bio-mechanical movement and human anatomy, Samuel secured licensing agreements with the NFL, NBA (D-League), and MLB, propelling the company's valuation to $12M. Notably, the brand achieved record sales with major US retail sporting goods stores such as Sports Authority and Dicks - thanks to endorsement deals signed with 10 professional athletes.
Building on this success, Sam aspires to make a profound impact on a larger scale within the sports technology industry with his latest venture Core Impact. Core Impact is a sports specific wearables company that tracks muscle activity in real time and provides simple actionable insights to help athletes maximize their training and in-game performance. There is no other system on the market, that combines sensor-equipped equipment, customized apps and training content from leading industry experts to hone the best training techniques for every sport. Learn more at coreimpactinc.com.
Ara Kurnit
Chief Innovation Officer
Critical Mass
As the Chief Innovation Officer at Critical Mass, Ara drives global innovation efforts for clients such as Mars Wrigley, Apple, BMW, and Diageo. Combining her unparalleled expertise in media, technology, and publishing with a profound understanding of global innovation strategy, Ara creates opportunities for client growth.
Ara is a passionate consumer and student of the world, analyzing everything from people to products. She has strong human intuition, which makes her particularly great at working with both colleagues and clients. Prior to joining Critical Mass, Ara spent five years at the New York Times, leading diverse teams in areas such as Product Innovation and Customer Research, crafting groundbreaking strategies and content for clients. With over 13 years of experience as an innovation consultant, Ara commenced her career at Ogilvy & Mather.
AWARD HONOREES
COMMUNITY IMPACT AWARD
Bryce Fluellen has fought for food justice and social equity for more than 20 years, developing and implementing strategic programs at Starbucks, Magic Johnson Enterprises, and the American Heart Association to drive systemic change to benefit underserved populations and communities. as community impact director at the Los Angeles Chapter of the American heart Association, he was instrumental in developing and executing a multi-year, million-dollar regional campaign with the National Football League Foundation to transform and improve youth physical activity, building a collective impact blueprint for the league to scale across 30 team markets.
Bryce also aligned with the American heart association’s national office to develop national health equity programs, cultivating volunteers, donors and corporations for both national and local initiatives. fluellen created a groundbreaking sustainable basic cooking skills and nutrition curriculum for more than 9,000 children within the Los Angeles, Long Beach, and Santa Ana school districts, and facilitated hundreds of workshops to educate parents, school administrators, corporate and community leaders about the positive impact of healthy eating on disease prevention.
a classically trained chef, he operated a Los Angeles full- service catering company, yams catering, where he created partnerships with health-focused organizations to educate black and brown communities about healthy eating.
in 2022 Fluellen was named one of the 50 most influential restaurant leaders by the nrn power list and has been a featured subject matter expert at the culinary institute of America and Harvard University’s T.H. Chan public school of health menus of change summit, fast casual magazine's franchise innovation conference, & w.k. Kellogg Foundations' radical social enterprise convening. he also serves on the executive committee of the los angeles food policy council in 2016; he published his first book that artfully connects healthy recipes with captivating family stories titled Food a Vehicle for Healing: (The Fruitful Journey) pt. 1.
THE CHAMPION AWARD
Suzan Kedron is a partner in the Land Use practice group of Jackson Walker and helps to build our cities, making them better communities to live in.
Suzan represents real estate developers, land owners and public entities in a variety of land use and real estate development issues. Suzan’s practice focuses on the following issues: zoning, development, planning, emerging technologies seeking municipal support/approval, due diligence, public private partnerships, economic development incentives, tax increment financing, green building, permitting, affordable housing, special districts, and litigation.
Previously in her career, her law practice included corporate and white collar crime, bank fraud, evidentiary procedures, and general business litigation. Her architectural practice concentrated on upper-end residential design
and construction.
Suzan chairs Jackson Walker’s Diversity & Inclusion Committee and Land Use practice. She previously served as Chair of the Business Development Committee for the Dallas office.
GLOBAL LEADER AWARD
As the VP of Groupe Media & Inclusive Buying Solutions, Carlos Sanchez drives scalable client-facing media and new, high-growth inclusive solutions centered upon Publicis Groupe’s commitment to DE&I. In addition to his growth role, he is a steering committee member on Publicis Media’s Once & For All Coalition, which champions investing with minority-owned and targeted inventory, establishing a lasting infrastructure. Through this work, Carlos created Publicis’ award-winning Inclusive Buying Protocol (IBP). The IBP bolsters equitable impression delivery within digital media buys, against ethnically diverse audiences in general market buying. Previously, Carlos served as Starcom’s Diversity & Inclusion Lead. He has received multiple awards for his work, including from Cynopsis and FutureCast.
CREATIVE VISIONARY AWARD
Emilee Syrewicze (pronounced: Sir - witch) is Executive Director of Opera Grand Rapids, Michigan’s longest-running professional opera company and one of the top mid-size opera companies in North America. Emilee is the youngest person to serve in such a capacity in Opera Grand Rapids’ 56 year history and she is one of the youngest executives to manage an opera company in the world.
Since the start of her tenure at Opera Grand Rapids in 2019, Emilee has increased the production calendar from two major shows to twelve productions/events in one single season while growing the organization's budget. In March 2020, Opera Grand Rapids produced a virtual production of Derrick Wang’s Scalia/Ginsburg within the first 24 hours of the COVID-19 pandemic. Also, during the pandemic the opera presented a live socially distanced grand opera performance with a livestream to a minor league baseball park for opera patrons. In the 21/22 season, Emilee was the Executive Producer for the world premiere of Stinney: An American Execution (projected to air on PBS in 2023).
Prior to leading Opera Grand Rapids, Emilee was the Executive Director of the Catawba Riverkeeper Foundation (CRF) in Charlotte, North Carolina. CRF’s mission is to advocate, educate and protect the Catawba-Wateree River Basin in North and South Carolina and is considered one of the most influential environmental organizations in the American south. CRF’s work leading the litigious efforts to clean up coal ash in the Carolinas has been featured on 60 Minutes, CNN, The Rachel Maddow Show, National Geographic’s From the Ashes, The Washington Post, and The Atlantic.
Emilee is a native of Northern Michigan. She graduated from Vermont Law School in 2011 and received her BA in political science in 2008 from Alma College, which later named her Young Alumni of the Year in 2017. She is a member of the Grand Rapids Rotary Club, a board president of the Torch Conservation Center in Alden, Michigan, and the East Fulton Business Association/Uptown Inc. In 2014, Emilee was recognized by the Traverse City Business News as one of the 40 most influential people under 40 in Northwest Michigan and named one of the top 200 Executives in West Michigan by the Grand Rapids Business Journal in 2019-2022.