Guest Ryan Light is the CEO of Pistol Lake, a clothing brand where everything is ethically made in the U.S. The Boston Speaks Up community may recognize Ryan Light from his time in Boston in prominent executive and marketing roles at Kinvey and CoachUp. After seven years in Boston, Light moved to Los Angeles in 2018 to run Pistol Lake. In March 2020, Pistol Lake stopped manufacturing clothes at its Los Angeles headquarters, in favor of making masks for hospitals and urgent care workers treating patients with COVID-19. Well known for his creative marketing skills, Light’s creative business decision to help medical workers on the frontlines while keeping Pistol Lake’s factory workers paid during uncertain economic times really caught our interest. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest Chris Savage is the CEO and co-founder of Wistia, a video software company based in Cambridge, MA. Wistia is the software behind original video initiatives from brands across industries. Wistia also has its own slate of original video series, which includes Brandwagon, One, Ten, One Hundred, and Low Views High Impact. Savage and his co-founder, Brendan Schwartz, started Wistia in Schwartz’s living room in 2006. Wistia has since grown into a multi-million dollar business with more than 100 employees. Before Wistia, Savage helped produce an Emmy Award-winning feature-length documentary and was named a Top Young Entrepreneur by BusinessWeek. He graduated from Brown University with a degree in Art-Semiotics, and was a winner of the Weston Fine Arts award for excellence in filmmaking. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest Dr. Emily Reichert is CEO of Greentown Labs, the largest clean technology startup incubator in North America. As the company’s first employee, Reichert has spearheaded the rapid growth of Greentown Labs into a global hub for climatetech and cleantech innovation, attracting visitors and partners from around the world. She started her career at the international management consulting firm Arthur D. Little as a Ph.D. scientist and progressed into R&D, business development and general management roles. Prior to Greentown Labs, she was the Director of Business Operations at the Warner Babcock Institute for Green Chemistry where she helped grow the angel-funded startup into a sustainable contract R&D business with a mission to minimize environmental impact of chemical products. She has served as a board member or as a key advisor for a number of innovation and entrepreneurship-focused organizations including the Northeast Clean Energy Council, Alliance for Business Leadership, Cleantech Open Northeast, Cyclotron Road, the Incubatenergy Network and the MIT Enterprise Forum. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest Rahkeem Morris is the cofounder and CEO of SYRG, a service for employers to hire former workers for shifts and projects on-demand. Morris’ long-term vision for SYRG is to empower a flexible, liquid, universal workforce of hourly workers where any person can work for any place at any time. Morris took an unusual journey into entrepreneurship and has unique gig economy experience having dropped out of high school at 14 years old to help support his family, working 13 jobs over nine years. He then journeyed into academia and tech. He graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University, worked at GE and Google, and then went on to earn his MBA from Harvard Business School. Morris cofounded SYRG to help people like his mom, a single parent with a shifting nursing schedule, to more easily secure relevant short-term gigs. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest Sean Cantwell is a founding team member and Managing Partner with Boston-based Volition Capital, a technology-oriented growth equity and venture capital firm that raised $600 million in separate funds for new investments in 2019. While Volition invests in companies across America, Cantwell has distinguished himself as a growth equity professional dedicated to Boston’s startup community where he focuses on software, technology-enabled services and Internet investments. Cantwell and Volition have invested growth capital in a wide range of Boston-based companies including GRAX, TraceLink, JazzHR, and VisualIQ, among others. Prior to joining Volition Capital, Cantwell was an investor at Fidelity Ventures and worked at Summit Partners where he focused on technology growth equity investments. He began his career at Arthur Andersen. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest Dave Melville, the founder and CEO of The Bowdoin Group, has built his company into one of the largest executive search firms in Massachusetts. For 25 years, local VCs and PE firms, growth-stage startups, and large enterprises have relied on The Bowdoin Group to meet their executive search and hiring needs. Melville leads The Bowdoin Group’s BioPharma practice along with overseeing general strategic initiatives, and is involved as a key resource for the firm’s growing client base. His expertise includes executive and strategic searches within the Clinical/Scientific, Medical Affairs, Commercial roles, Finance and HR fields, in addition to large-scale commercial team expansions for pre-clinical trial BioPharma companies. Melville is also constantly in the community, speaking at the Boston BioTech Forum and as part of Goodwin Law's JumpStart Bio breakfast series. Further, Melville is committed to helping people who are underserved in the Greater Boston community. He serves on the boards of Life Science Cares, Hack.Diversity, and Health Equity International (formerly St. Boniface Haiti Foundation). He’s also been involved with dozens of volunteering programs throughout his career, most recently YearUp, Rosie’s Place and Big Brother, Big Sister (a 4-time big brother). Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest Larry Gennari is general counsel for a wide range of Boston-based businesses. He has a reputation throughout New England as a trusted and beloved business advisor to public companies, venture-backed companies, early-stage ventures, entrepreneurs, investors and board members. Many in the Boston innovation community rely on Gennari for expert legal counsel on financing strategies, partnerships, and mergers and acquisitions. He is a founding partner of Gennari Aronson Law Partners, which has consistently been named a New England Super Lawyer for mergers & acquisitions, securities and corporate finance. Having served as a corporate and transactional lawyer for more than two decades, Gennari’s work includes countless mergers and acquisitions, private offerings, venture capital financings, joint ventures, and public offerings as well as SEC compliance for public companies and their directors and officers. He’s also an Adjunct Professor at Boston College Law School, and developed one of the Law School’s newest courses, Project Entrepreneur, a student-led business fundamentals bootcamp for entrepreneurs with criminal records, many of whom were previously incarcerated. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest A.J. Marcinek co-founded CropShop while attending Endicott College and hasn’t looked back since graduating in Spring 2019. The young entrepreneur’s hot startup is already thriving at fulfilling its mission to bridge the gap between chefs and local sustainable sources of food in the Boston area. As the CEO of CropShop, Marcinek is responsible for the business and customer facing roles -- including personally picking up and delivering products from farms to kitchens -- while cofounder Cam Bleck is responsible for software engineering with an operational knack. While at Endicott, Marcinek competed in the college’s Spark Tank, a startup competition in which CropShop won first place. He has a tenacious attitude that may come from his years playing junior hockey and collegiate hockey. As an Endicott undergrad, Marcinek worked closely with previous Boston Speaks Up guest Deirdre Sartorelli at the Angel Center for Entrepreneurship where he learned what investors would be looking for and how best to position CropShop for the future. Now, CropShop works with local restaurants and farmers all over the greater Boston area including Ledger, Oak + Rowan, La Chanterelle, Alprilla Farm, Appleton Farms, and Mehaffey Farm. CropShop recently unveiled its new digital platform at https://cropshopmarket.com/. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest Pam Erlichman is the Chief Marketing Officer at Jebbit, a first party data company that facilitates volunteered, declared data exchange between consumers and brands. She has more than 20 years of marketing experience, most recently serving as the VP of marketing at Oracle Data Cloud, a role she assumed following the Datalogix acquisition. Prior to Datalogix, Erlichman worked at Digitas, leading relationships with world class brands including Delta Air Lines, AT&T, FedEx, Ahold USA, Celebrity Cruise Lines and Progressive Insurance. The mother of three (13, 11, 3) still finds time to mentor working new moms and other female professionals on advancing their careers. She also recently joined the Leadership Council of the AdCouncil so that Jebbit can help advance causes that are important to the collective team at Jebbit. Most recently, Jebbit helped support the summer anti-buzzed driving campaign with Anheuser-Busch. Additionally, Elrichman is very active in her Bridgetown, MA community, having spearheaded a local "Put It Down" campaign against texting and driving, and currently working on an initiative to combat teenage vaping issues. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest Michael Skok started his first software business as a teenager, spent 21 years as an entrepreneur and then the past 15 years as a venture investor. The Underscore VC cofounder has founded, worked with and invested in startups, and created thousands of jobs and billions of dollars of value. Along the way, he also mentored and taught for 4 years at Harvard University, and created the Startup Secrets series. As an entrepreneur and an investor, Skok has focused on breakthrough technologies and disruptive business models including Open Source, Cloud, IoT, and emerging domains such as Blockchain, Virtual/Augmented Reality, and Artificial Intelligence/Machine Learning. He has served on or is active on many private and public boards such as Acquia, Demandware (now a Salesforce company), Mautic, Salsify and Zaius. He has also participated in leadership roles in many industry groups such as the Software Publishers Association where he was Chairman for many years in Europe. In 2015, Skok co-founded Underscore VC, which has built a reputation as an active investor aligning talent from its Underscore Core Community with startups. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/