Charm City Dreamers

Michelle Geiss is the Executive Director and Co-Founder of Impact Hub Baltimore. As a community workspace for 230+ social entrepreneurs, Impact Hub Baltimore and its members are building an innovative local economy that advances equity and addresses the city's complex challenges. Ms. Geiss is a specialist in program design and strategy for social innovation and social enterprise. She draws on fifteen years experience managing public health, social marketing, and collective impact initiatives to narrow health and wealth gaps. Her career has spanned four continents and she holds an MPH from Johns Hopkins School of Public Health.

Thibault Manekin is one of the co-founders of Seawall Development and original founders of Peaceplayers International. Learn how Thibault has been uniting communities through creative ideas and re-developing the built environment.

Fred "Big Fred" Watkins is a comedian, actor and show producer from Baltimore, MD. Known most notably as a member of "The Empire" on Oxygen Tv's hit show "Last Squad Standing". Fred is the founder of "Lil Laughs" which is an anti-bullying based mentoring program for kids that directly addresses public speaking, confidence, and various other enrichment opportunities.

In this episode we shared the live panel interview recording from the first ever Charm City Dreamers Gala. The panel features 6 past guests Alicia Wilson, Van Brooks, Rebecca Hoffberger, Chris Wilson, MaryBeth Hyland and James Bond

In March 2000, after practicing law for 14 years, Randi Pupkin founded Art with a Heart. Art with a Heart is a non-profit organization that provides 14,500 interactive visual art classes annually to children, youth and adults in Baltimore's most compromised communities. In addition to its core classes, Art with a Heart's efforts include a workforce development program, a leadership program, community service initiatives, large-scale public art projects and a retail/social enterprise store called, HeARTwares located in Baltimore, Maryland.

Joseph T. Jones, Jr. is founder of the Center For Urban Families, a Baltimore nonprofit service organization established to strengthen urban communities by helping fathers and families achieve stability and economic success.

Mr. Jones is a national leader in workforce development, fatherhood and family services programming, and through his professional and civic involvement influences policy direction nationwide. Mr. Jones has received numerous awards and honors including the Johns Hopkins University Leadership Development Program's Distinguished Leadership Award, the Walter Sondheim Public Service Award, the White House Champion of Change and was a 2013 CNN Hero. He served on President Obama's Taskforce on Fatherhood and Healthy Families and several boards including: the Open Society Institute-Baltimore, the Baltimore Workforce Development Board, and the National Fatherhood Leaders Group. He was a community advisor on fatherhood issues to Vice President Al Gore and contributed to First Lady Laura Bush's Helping America's Youth initiative.

Funlayo Alabi and her husband co-founded Shea Radiance, a natural beauty brand dedicated to transforming hair, skin, thinking and lives into something beautiful. She believes in the power of economic access and what can happen when women reach out to lift other women, regardless of their differences.

The grandson of four Holocaust survivors, David has made it his life purpose to leverage the power of collective memory to inspire collective action towards a world of "Never Again." David is the founder and CEO of Together We Remember (TWR) a non-profit focused on empowering the next generation to transform remembrance into action. TWR hosts dozens of live vigils around the world that brings people together from lines of difference to build resilience against hatred in all its forms.

Mary Miller spent 26 years in the investment management industry with T. Rowe Price in Baltimore. She was Director of the Fixed Income Division and also served on the firm's management committee, asset allocation committee, and as a trustee of the T. Rowe Price Foundation. After the financial crisis, Ms. Miller was recruited to serve at the Treasury from 2010 through 2014, first as the Assistant Secretary for Financial Markets and then as the Under Secretary for Domestic Finance under President Obama. Today Ms. Miller focuses her time and energy on helping figure out solutions to help finance growth in Baltimore.