Shelly Porges – Serial Entrepreneur, Investor and Global Entrepreneurship Advo-cate | Managing Director Reservoir Q Global LLC

Shelly Porges

Shelly Porges

K. Shelly Porges is a successful serial entrepreneur and investor as well as a global entrepreneurship advocate. She is a sought-after strategy expert and speaker advising many organizations ranging from governments to corporations to NGOs, as well as Managing Director of Reservoir Q Global LLC.  She served most recently as the National Finance Co-Chair for the Ready for Hillary PAC before joining Hillary for America as a key fundraiser. She is also the President of the North American Jury for the Cartier Women’s Initiative Awards, on the Advisory Board for Global Entrepreneurship Week, and an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Georgetown University.

She is the former Senior Advisor, Global Entrepreneurship Program (GEP) at the U.S. State Department, a program she expanded to almost 150 countries, under Secretary Clinton.  Prior to joining GEP, she launched the State Department’s Global Women’s Business Initiative to promote women’s entrepreneurship worldwide.

Before joining the State Department, she had a distinguished career in the private sector, including both corporate and entrepreneurial ventures.  Her ten-year stint at American Express culminated as executive head of marketing for American Express Canada, prior to three years as chief retail marketing officer for Bank of America during a historic turn-around. Ms. Porges founded or co-founded a number of start-up ventures including one sold to Wachovia Bank; Third Age Media, the leading Internet portal for baby boomers; Scudder Weisel Capital LLC, a joint venture between Thomas Weisel Partners and Zurich Scudder Investments, one of the largest asset managers in the world; and Global Payments Experts LLC, a payments industry advisory firm.

Ms. Porges also serves on the International Business Advisory Council for the President of Cyprus, the boards of the Global Banking Alliance for Women and on the National Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation, and the advisory boards for early stage companies StartUp Cup, a global network of accelerator programs; Tiatros, a medical solutions platform; Distributed Sun, a commercial solar company and Cornerstone Capital, an institutional investment firm for impact investors.  As a recognized expert on entrepreneurship, innovation and leadership, she has spoken at events all over the world.

Ms. Porges holds both a BS and MPS degree from Cornell University.

Bob Dorf – Co-author with Steve Blank of the Startup Owner’s Manual, Angel Investor in 27 startups, Global Educator on Startup Methodology

Bob Dorf

Bob Dorf

Bob Dorf is likely the second most knowledgeable Lean and Customer Development expert on the planet, second only to Steve Blank, who developed the methodology and spent a decade extending and refining it. Together with Steve Blank, Bob published The Startup Owner’s Manual: The Step-by-Step Guide for Building a Great Company. Today, after two years of near-fulltime research and writing, it’s Amazon.com’s #1 Business/Entrepreneurship bestseller, published in 15 languages worldwide. The 608-page, painstakingly detailed guide is the most comprehensive, rigorous step-by-step roadmap available anywhere, guiding startup founders throughout the world.

Bob Dorf travels the world, helping startups, foreign governments, and major corporations learn how to effectively deploy Customer Development process through intensive 8-10 week training sessions, as well as one- and two-day workshops and hands-on consulting that he conducts repeatedly in Russia, Latin America, and throughout the US. He teaches the Lean LaunchPad program at Columbia Business School, where he is an Adjunct Professor of Entrepreneurship, and has led training sessions at Tech de Monterrey, Mexico, Skolkovo Business School in Moscow, and repeatedly for the government of Colombia and Moscow’s GVA Launch Gurus “Startup Academy.”

Entrepreneurial from the age of 12, Bob received his last W-2 some 40 years ago, when he left a great news editor’s job at WINS Radio in New York to launch his first major startup. Since then, he has personally founded seven companies, including—as he puts it—“two homeruns, two base hits, and three solid tax losses.” His 24 personal investments included 7 IPO’s, six colossal failures, and–as he puts it—“everything imaginable in between.” His founded his first startup, later named Dorf+Stanton Communications, in his living room at age 22. It grew from a staff of two—Bob and a St. Bernard—to more than 150, when Bob sold it in 1989.

Bob co-founded Marketing 1to1 (later Peppers&Rogers Group) in 1993, growing it to 400+ people. The March 1999 Fortune magazine raved about The One to One Fieldbook he co- authored, saying, “if your company is launching a customer-focused strategy…it sets the agenda.” As founding CEO, Dorf spearheaded major strategic customer programs at a veritable “who’s who” of companies including 3M, Bertelsmann, Ford, HP, Jaguar, NCR, Oracle, and Schwab. Bob has published dozens of articles including an in–depth Harvard Business

Review CRM treatise.

Dorf lives in Stamford with his wife Fran, a therapist and thrice——published novelist. An avid bicyclist and skier, Bob’s proudest startup by far is daughter Rachel, a psychologist who also twice made him a grandpa.

Jonathan Ortmans-President, Global Entrepreneurship Week Senior Fellow, Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation

Jonathan Ortmans

Jonathan Ortmans

Jonathan Ortmans serves as president of Global Entrepreneurship Week, now in more than 140 countries, chair of the Global Entrepreneurship Congress, senior fellow at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation and president of the Washington, DC-based Public Forum Institute.

In addition to the national Boards for GEW around the world, Jonathan also serves on the Boards of several non-profits including the Board of the Center for Entrepreneurship in Moscow.
Trained as an economist, with two startups and exits under his belt, he blogs weekly on high-growth entrepreneurship at entrepreneurship.org, and has emerged as a chief global strategist in building startup ecosystems around the world. Jonathan lives in Washington, DC, with his wife and three young children.

Dash Dhakshinamoorthy – Founder of StartupMalaysia and Global Startup Youth

Dash Dhakshinamoorthy

Dash Dhakshinamoorthy

Dash is a fire starter behind various initiatives and programs in the startup ecosystem both in Malaysia and in Australia.

Since 2008, in his capacity as the host for the Global Entrepreneurship Week, he has been hustling and ‘hacking’ the ecosystem to bring government, private sector and the entrepreneurial community together to create a more vibrant ecosystem. A Cambridge University alumni, Dash’s is a global connector with a personal mission to help create more fundable startups. Dash is the founder of StartupMalaysia.org : a not-for-profit organization he created to help fuel and achieve this mission. If not globe trotting to meet cool startups and other catalysts, Dash lives mostly in Australia (Perth) and in Malaysia (KL).

Rasmus Wiinstedt Tscherning – Managing Director CKO

Rasmus Wiinstedt Tscherning

Rasmus Wiinstedt Tscherning

Rasmus Wiinstedt Tscherning has been the Managing Director of CKO since its establishment in 2008. Rasmus is also chairman of the European Creative Industries Alliance -ECIA- appointed by the European Commission DG Enterprise.
In addition to CKO’s responsibility to promote entrepreneurship and growth in the creative industries and cross sector innovation, Rasmus is also responsible for several initiatives under the Nordic Council of Ministers initiative KreaNordon policy development and financing opportunities for creative businesses.
As Director for CKO, Rasmus has launched Creative Business Cup, the world championships for entrepreneurs from the creative industries. He is an external lecturer on the subject “Creative Industries: Business, Innovation and Politics” and lectures internationally in French, English, German and Swedish. Rasmus has 19 years of experience related to the creative industries.

To be announced soon…