Winter 2022

 

Final Fellow Presentations

 

Frances Rios |

Orlando, Florida

Issue Area | Gender Equality

When business leaders think about women, they think of Frances. Not because of her gender but because she helps companies grow with the power of women while supporting their female talent reach leadership roles. After leaving the corporate world as a top executive for Fortune 50 companies like Walmart and Humana, Frances founded Women Who Lead 15 years ago. The firm’s signature programs and results allowed Frances to receive the Significant Partner recognition by the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, one in only 15 companies in the Nation. Companies that trust her are Microsoft, Pepsico, Merck, AIG, Santander, and Walmart.

Frances has been a speaker at the Forbes magazine’s Most Powerful Women Summit and recently at the RSM Global Summit next to global leaders like Tony Blair. She can be seen often in news media outlets like CNN, ABC, FOX, CBS, iHeart Radio, Univision, and Telemundo.

Venture | Mujer Next

Mujer Next is a unique two-sided platform that provides Spanish-speaking Latinas with knowledge and a network to grow professionally and financially while connecting them with companies that want to serve them.

Joseph Russo |

West Palm Beach, Florida

Issue Area | Sustainable Cities And Communities

Joseph Russo is the Founder & CEO of Emergency Ventures, a startup building technology to connect and serve citizens, volunteers, and emergency managers in natural disasters. In 2015, Joe founded Tech Hub South Florida, a nonprofit tech association Building South Florida's Tech Hub. Since its founding as the Palm Beach Tech Association, Joe led the organization to attract over 200 corporate members and over 10,000 professionals to their community, with an annual budget of over $300,000 and 5 FTE's. In 2018, Joe co-founded 1909, a nonprofit to support entrepreneurs throughout the Palm Beaches by partnering with the FAU Adams Center for Entrepreneurship and $350,000 in support from the Knight Foundation and four (4) local Cities. Since 2013, Joe has also served on the academic Advisory Boards for FAU, FIU, PBSC, and local School Districts. In addition to Economic Development Taskforces, Chamber of Commerce Councils, and several nonprofit boards and committees.

A native Floridian, he attended Cardinal Newman High School in West Palm Beach and Florida Gulf Coast University in Fort Myers.

Venture | Emergency Ventures

Emergency Ventures builds life-saving technology to serve citizens, emergency managers, and organizations in communities impacted by natural disasters.

Karolyn Stewart |

Orlando, Florida

Issue Area | Sustainable Cities And Communities

A strategic thinker and consummate business development and marketing professional, Karolyn is focused on helping the 360 attorneys in 19 offices at Burr & Forman secure new work as the Director of Business Development. She has over 20 years of business development and experience in various industries, including Legal, Financial, A/E/C, Senior Living, Manufacturing, Hospitality, Nonprofit, Professional Organization, Retail, Music, and Agriculture. Karolyn serves on the Board of Directors for the Victory Cup Initiative and the Bobcat Fund.

Venture | Victory Cup Initiative

VCI's social entrepreneur initiative will shift haphazard philanthropic giving to a strategic effort that elevates the business's profile and increases employee engagement.

Alex Todd |

Toronto, Ontario

Issue Area | Peace, Justice, And Strong Institutions

Alex Todd is the Founder and CEO of ReliablyME, a for-profit social enterprise. He is a social innovator and entrepreneur and a published researcher and thought leader on ESG, Corporate Governance, Trust Enablement, and natural language processing (NLP). His distinguished career in technology includes serving as CTO at PRESTO, Metrolinx, and Managing Consultant Information Security and Trust at IBM Global Services. ReliablyME is a social innovation that emanated from his career-long insights into leveraging emerging technologies to optimize conditions for trust.

Venture | ReliablyME

ReliabyME is a software utility that provides an onramp to financial and social inclusion for people with insufficient credentials by helping them establish and retain a trusted record of identity, character, and accomplishment through smart contracts on a Hyperledger blockchain.

Cheryl Brown Merriwether |

Orlando, Florida

Issue Area | Good Health And Well-being

As Vice President and Executive Director of the International Center for Addiction and Recovery Education (ICARE) Cheryl Brown Merriweather possesses over two decades of experience in corporate Human Resource management, addiction awareness, recovery support, and adult education. In addition to her role at ICARE, Cheryl is the President of the Greater Orlando Society for Human Resource Management (GOSHRM), and a member of the Board of Directors for Project Opioid Central Florida. Cheryl is also the former Chairman of the Board of Regents of the Institute of Certified Professional Managers (ICPM) and is an associate faculty member at the University of Phoenix. Since the onset of COVID-19, Cheryl has increasingly been sought out as a Subject Matter Expert, Consultant, Writer, and Speaker on the pandemic's impact on the Workforce. She offers a unique perspective on substance misuse and addiction as a workplace people and performance issue that impacts companies of all sizes.

Venture | ICARE Workforce Solutions

ICARE Workforce Solutions provides non-clinical awareness and prevention programs designed to help employers meet their employees' needs and, by extension, provide support to their families, loved ones, workplaces, and communities regarding substance misuse and addiction.

Yusuf Serag El-Din | Toronto, Ontario

Issue Area | Peace And Justice Strong Institutions

Yusuf Siraj is a co-founder of the Official Faith-Based Community Convener for Anti-Racism in the Province of B.C. - Foundation for a Path Forward. With a background in psychology from the University of British Columbia and Social Entrepreneurship, he is passionate about finding human and technological solutions for the challenges we face. To further this passion, he co-founded Ai Forte Solutions with Tariq Tyab and Masood Hassan in 2019.

Venture | HateShield

HateShield is a technology platform that helps organizations and municipalities undermine hate, bullying, and biased content through crowdsourced flagging and bot algorithms that capture, analyze, and report information.

Debbie Blacher | Orlando, Florida

Issue Area | Reduced Inequality

Debbie Blacher is a serial social entrepreneur who believes in leveraging the franchise model to accelerate social change. She imagines a world where the opportunity to own a business is based on character and ability - not gender, race, ethnicity, nor how much money is in the bank. Most recently, Debbie co-founded Better Together Brands to remove the social and economic barriers to small business ownership, making wealth possible for all. In this role, she works with a diverse group of community leaders, impact investors, and franchise systems to create scalable wealth-building opportunities for low and middle-income Americans.

Venture | Better Together Brands

Better Together Brands helps low and middle-income individuals obtain financial security by supplying them with the capital, infrastructure, mentoring, training, and financial literacy needed to start and build a sustainable business through selective franchising opportunities.

Joseph Genovesi |

Orlando, Florida

Issue Area | Industry, Innovation And Infrastructure

From lighting faces to now lighting spaces - Joey's 30-year journey through commercial photography and a knack for understanding how things work have culminated in creating Kolumi - a Hard-tech manufacturing, engineering, and design firm. Joey's drive is to create eco-friendly, hard-tech goods in a sustainable model that makes a difference in our day-to-day lives.

Venture | Kolumi HTS

Kolumi designs, engineers, and manufactures eco-friendly and low-voltage lighting systems made from 100% recycled materials that use 80% less energy and last twice as long as and distributes light more evenly than standard LEDs.