Own Your Potential

Scot Wingo, Co-Founder & CEO of Get Spiffy and Co-Founder & Former CEO of Channel Advisor, tells us some of the critical success factors in scaling start-ups to IPO or acquisition, the importance in making sure your idea is 1 of 1 and not 1 of 10,  the value of understanding your skill stack, and also shares his perspective Vehicle 2.0 and the future of the automotive industry.

Sefu Bernard, Director of Player Development for the Washington Mystics, takes us through a deep dive of what a career in professional sports looks like and tells about how being raised in a family full of teachers shaped his perspective and helped make one of his key differentiators his ability to learn, about how leading with passion can be effective but eventually needs to be complemented by contribution, and how powerful of an unlock it was for him to understand that on some level everything is sales.

Maggie Adhami-Boynton, Founder & CEO at ShopThing and one of INC Magazine's Top 100 Female Founders, tells us about how she took her experiences helping scale a successful mobile product start-up and being a senior leader at one of the world's largest advertising agencies, and translated them into starting her own successful company perfectly poised to disrupt and evolve the retail experience as we know it.

Simone Nunziato, Co-Founder and Director of UNIMATIC Watches, tells us about how he recycled his product design skillset and education into a career in motion graphic design, and how his lack of fulfillment with his career intersecting with a deep passion for watches led him to focusing his skills and experiences towards bringing to life a brand with a truly unique design language that disrupted the industry.

Vanessa Vakharia, Founder & CEO of The Math Guru, Math Education Expert, Author and Professional Speaker, tells us about her journey from failing high school math multiple times to founding a disruptive boutique math tutoring organization and becoming one of Canada's foremost math education experts, while never losing site of her dream of being a music artist and even opening for Bon Jovi.

Farooq Kathwari, CEO of Ethan Allen, takes us through his incredible journey from an upbringing in Kashmir to the storied 37 year tenure leading Ethan Allen, and tells us about how leadership skills he developed leading cricket teams unlocked success for him as a corporate leader, and how his willingness to take on any challenge and deliver through resourcefulness accelerated his career growth.

Jim McCann, Founder & Chairman at 1-800 Flowers.com, tells us about how he transformed his organization's direct-2-comsumer strategy twice, about the importance of relationships in life and in business, and the power of humor.

Scott Stratten, Creator of UnMarketing, Professional Speaker (500+ paid conference keynotes) and 6x Best-Selling Co-Author, tells us about his path to professional speaking, how he has found success at the intersection of Luck, Timing, Skill, Effort and Other, and how never straying from his desire to help people treat each other better has served as a huge unlock across his career journey.

Ryan Slipakoff, Chief Transformation Officer at Klick, tells us about the importance of developing the ability to reshape your story throughout your career and tell it like a winner, how he has turned an obstacle into a superpower he calls mental agility, and how critical it is to recognize when you have hit your ceiling at an organization.

Jacqueline Grossman, Chief Marketing Officer of Just For Laughs, tells us about how being a value based leader has helped her build successful teams and communities, and how detaching her profession from her identity was a critical step along a self reflection journey that ultimately opened the door to her dream job.