Philly Tech Week 2020

Some individuals are going through life, just living the everyday ‘grind.’ Then you have those who live with a purpose, who honestly want to improve their surroundings in their community. Dr. Leslie Grace is one of these people in the city of Brotherly Love, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Professor Grace has always been self-driven and a little more mature than her peers in her thinking. Even as a young girl, she clearly knew what her life goals were going to be. A younger Leslie Grace was in newspaper articles at the age of 16/17 years old. She had well thought out opinions even then, wise beyond her years by today’s standards. She was a young lady with determination and big dreams to chase, which fueled her mind daily.

Professor Leslie Grace is an educator, social entrepreneur, philanthropist, and will be a new author this upcoming spring. This amazing single mom lives to empower the young people in her community. The Elements Of The Community Inc provides educational, media relations, financial literacy and entrepreneurship programming to communities around the United States. Dr. Grace has taught thousands of young children & adults how to open their own businesses and manage their finances. “Why do we teach our young people to be good workers, instead of teaching them to be good owners? We must stop limiting the potential of our youth.” Dr. Grace truly understands that real freedom comes from being financially free, because that is the only way that those from the inner cities will have a chance to live the “American Dream.”

The exposure that the young people are getting about today’s financial situation here in America, and how to avoid those landmines, will surely result in a financial behavior change, totally different from what their parents had experienced in their youth. Dr. Grace is truly dedicated to increasing the financial capabilities of young Americans and their immediate family members. She is so committed to teaching her young students about ownership over their lives, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

Dr. Leslie Grace is well educated, but don’t be thrown off by how young this educator looks. She has definitely done her time in institutions of higher learning. She lives by the motto, “What Is The Point Of Having All The Degrees And You Are Not Helping Change Lives.” This young lady has more degrees than a thermometer and welcomes any information that will continue to educate her.

Dr. Grace has won numerous community and innovation awards from the business world locally in the city of Philadelphia. Dr. Grace was nominated to attend the United States Women Summit, hosted by the White House in 2016, because of her dedication to women and their families. The release of two books are on the horizon this spring for Dr. Leslie Grace, that will help change the landscape of children and their families globally. She is not afraid to step out in front and be the game changer in her community. She definitely won’t let grass grow under her feet (and that is just the way she likes it).

Natalie W. Nixon, PhD is a design strategist and a hybrid thinker. She applies her diverse background in anthropology, fashion, service design and dance to change lives through ideas. In her consultancy, Figure 8 Thinking, LLC she helps organizations design smarter processes and systems, build strategy, and develop leaders by teaching and applying the strategic design process. Natalie is the Founding Director of the Strategic Design MBA program at Philadelphia University and is a published author: the editor of Strategic Design Thinking: Innovation in Products, Services, Experiences and Beyond and a regular contributor to INC.com online magazine on creativity and design thinking.

Her public speaking invitations have included the Business Innovation Factory, 360 Possibles (Saint Malo, France), Creative Mornings, TEDx Philadelphia, The Copenhagen Institute for Interactive Design, The European Innovation Academy (Nice, France), SEB Bank (Tallinn,Estonia), FUSE and the Mayo Clinic's Transform conference.

She serves on the boards of the Philadelphia Art Commission, the Arts & Business Council of Philadelphia, CultureWorks of Greater Philadelphia, and the Alumni Association of Vassar College.

Natalie earned her BA (Honors: Cum Laude) from Vassar College with a double major in Anthropology and Africana Studies; an MS in Global Textile Marketing from Philadelphia University (USA), Shenkar College (Israel) & Reutlingen University (Germany); and a PhD in Design Management from the University of Westminster, London.

Lisa is Seer’s Data Strategy Lead based in Philadelphia. She harnessed a passion for data and her tenure within digital marketing and business operations to focus on pushing Seer forward in utilizing data-driven strategies. Her favorite thing to do is dig deep into data to help clients solve complex business questions. Her second favorite thing to do is convince Wil of the virtues of bridge tables & ngrams.

Before Seer, Lisa worked in roles across the board in digital marketing and software with positions at TIG Global, MICROS Systems, and Oracle. Recently hitting ten years in the industry, Lisa started her career in PPC before branching into SEO, product management, program management, R&D, and finally Data Strategy. She has experience with clients at all levels and across most major industries. In her role as Data Strategy Lead, Lisa gets to touch a ton of Seer’s clients in one way or another, which is one reason she loves what she does.

Lisa is a graduate of the University of Delaware. In her free time, she enjoys eating at every new restaurant in the city and doing all things outdoors with her husband Bernard, kids George and Annie, and their too-energetic pup Deacon.

Alex Campbell is a full-stack software engineer at AWeber, working on everything from legacy PHP sites to automated Slack bots in Python. After getting his undergraduate degree in Cognitive Science with a focus on artificial intelligence at Vassar College, he self-taught programming and was awarded the Developer Scholarship from Google to study Android app development at Udacity. Never a moment not in thought, you can find him pondering self-describing function names during the day, and pondering counters to mind-bending swing manipulations in the slasher game Mordhau at night.

Keith Clinkscales CEO, KTC VENTURES

Media executive Keith Clinkscales — whose award-winning career has impacted media and urban culture across platforms — is highly regarded as an innovator, strategist, and thought leader.

Clinkscales has partnered with AT&T to create the “Humanity of Connection” series through his KTC Ventures. The partnership will pivot to deliver targeted content to the emerging field of streaming services currently impacting the media landscape.

That natural progression — relationships morphing into partnerships — has been a staple of Clinkscales’ career. His dedication to urban audiences has created never-before-seen outlets, like his brainchild The Shadow League, Since its inception in late 2012, The site has grown to become a leading destination for sports, race and culture.

An Emmy Award-Nominated and a two-time Peabody Award Winner, Clinkscales has earned over 60 credits as an Executive Producer of films and documentaries. Most notably Clinkscales was one of the creators of ESPN’s critically acclaimed “30 for 30” documentary series.

In 2013, REVOLT Founder and Chairman Sean Combs appointed Clinkscales as Chief Executive Officer of REVOLT Media & TV. With Clinkscales at the helm, REVOLT ushered in the third largest, independent network launch in cable television history.

In the 1990s, Clinkscales worked alongside the legendary Quincy Jones to launch Vibe magazine, the premier publication for hip-hop/R&B music, fashion and entertainment news. Clinkscales served as CEO of the publication and established Vibe’s successful digital presence, vibe.com.

Clinkscales earned an MBA from Harvard Business School and is a magna cum laude graduate

Lisha is a venture builder and investor, startup advisor, and business strategist and operator who has served on all sides of the business table. She is the founder of Arable Ventures LLC., a boutique innovation consulting and advisory practice helping organizations develop full scale operating models to deliver innovative solutions. Prior to launching Arable Ventures, Lisha was the founder and head of Vanguard’s Innovation Studio, where she led the vision for enterprise innovation and owned the ongoing delivery of a venture portfolio focused on addressing white spaces with the potential to transform businesses and disrupt the financial services industry.

Throughout her work, alongside crafting effective strategy and operations enabled through technology and data wherever possible, Lisha has always placed high emphasis on growing the best functioning teams and company culture. She is an active investor with 37Angels, an early growth stage women's syndicate focused on increasing representation of diverse founders and funders, and serves as mentor and advisor to startups across the consumer, enterprise, and fintech sectors. She is also an adjunct professor @ Temple's Fox School of Business, teaching on open innovation & strategic partnerships. Lisha currently lives in Brooklyn and travels often in pursuit of new adventures.

Christine Raetsch currently serves as Duolingo’s first Head of People, building the company’s HR practice. Duolingo is the most popular language-learning platform worldwide, with over 300 million users and the mission to make education free and accessible to all.

Prior to joining Duolingo, Christine was a senior executive at Vanguard, where she spent the first 20 years of her career. In her last role at Vanguard, she served as the Global Head of Culture and Inclusion, where she created and led the center of expertise on culture, employee engagement, diversity, and inclusion for Vanguard’s 15,000+ global employees. In addition to HR, Christine had roles in client management (managing a $50B book of business), risk management (creating the risk management program for our largest division), operations management (leading a team of 250+ employees), and process improvement (earning a Six Sigma Black Belt designation). Christine received her M.B.A. and M.A. from Villanova University. She maintains the GPHR and SHRM-SCP HR professional designations.

Christine is passionate about making her community strong and vibrant. She is a member of the Board of Directors for the Pittsburgh Parks Conservancy, and is a partner with Social Venture Partners Pittsburgh, a non-profit accelerator. She also provides HR consulting for many arts- and culture-focused non-profits in the Pittsburgh region. In what remains of her free time, she loves being outside: biking, running, playing tennis, and kayaking on all the great rivers in Pittsburgh. As a relative newcomer to the Pittsburgh area, Christine is enjoying all that Pittsburgh has to offer in terms of arts, culture, the outdoors, and so much more!

Three Times Dope was a hip hop/rap group from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania consisting of EST (Robert Waller), Chuck Nice (Walter Griggs) and Woody Wood (Duerwood Beale). 3xD, as they were called for short, were a part of the Hilltop Hustlers Crew (which also included Steady B, Cool C, Da Youngsta's, Mentally Gifted, and others). At first, they recorded under the name 3-D.

Their debut LP, Original Stylin' was well-received, peaking at #122 on the Billboard 200 Album Chart and the group became well known for the terminology they created, such as “Acknickulous” and “The Giddy Up”.

EST would eventually go on to become an award-winning songwriter for top-tier acts, most notably a Grammy nomination in 2005 for Destiny's Child's "Cater 2 U".