People Behind the Innovation

Chris LeBeau is the vice president of Entrepreneurial Services for Eagle Bank and Trust Company. A business strategist with a flair for all things cool, Chris is a person who breaks ideas down into manageable and easy to understand chunks. In Chris' new role with Eagle Bank, he gets to bring several parts of his world into alignment. Since 1911, Eagle Bank has served the St. Louis area and is considered one of the region’s best small business banks. With emerging focuses in agriculture and entrepreneurship, this 100 year old organization, is evolving alongside our community. I sat down with Chris to dig a bit deeper and learn more about how innovation is more than a buzzword for him.

Marie Carlie is such a nice person. That might not be what you think about when you hear that she is a Tax Partner for a major firm, but she brings an entrepreneurial spirit to BDO. I first met Marie when she was mentoring startups and leading the Missouri Venture Forum (now simply MVF). I sat down with her to learn more about her exciting career, her passion for supporting the innovation community, and the resources available when part of a large firm.

Katie Boody (Photo by Paul Andrews, 2014) is the co-founder and CEO of The Lean Lab in Kansas City, MO. The Lean Lab is a community of educators, entrepreneurs and innovators who are growing, testing, and launching ideas to build the future of Kansas City education. I had the chance to chat with Katy about the future of education and the opportunities that exist for innovation. She understands the importance of pulling from several different disciplines and engaging a broad array of stakeholders when it comes to innovative and systemic change. Spend a few minutes listening to this podcast and get to know this cool innovator.

Allie Cicotte is the programs manager for The Clark-Fox Family Foundation and oversees the Blueprint4SummerSTL program. I'll get to the program in a moment, but first I tell you about how awesome Allie was. With a background in German and Spanish, Allie constantly finds ways to translate the complex options of summer activities into a manageable slate of engagement for young people. An educator at heart, Allie finds ways to make sure information is readily for young people and their families. Blueprint4SummerSTL is an easy-to-use mobile tool that connects St. Louis metro area families to summer opportunities for children ages 3-18. This tool is FREE for families and FREE for providers to list. The fine people at The Clark-Fox Family Foundation believes that all children deserve an opportunity to learn, experiment, and explore all year round. This requires an innovative person, and innovative organization and progressive focus. After you listen to this episode, connect to Blueprint4Summer on social media:

• Follow Blueprint4Summer on Twitter
• Like Blueprint4Summer on Facebook

Michelle E. Murray is a Certified Public Accountant and the managing director of Segue Partners. Segue Partners is a specialty accounting firm providing financial consulting and accounting services for start-ups, venture capital funds, private equity firms and their portfolio companies. What sets Michelle apart is her strong background in helping ventures scale. Not only that, she helps venture capital funds with portfolios full of ventures scale. Just over five years ago, Michelle founded Segue Partners and I was able to get a behind-the-scenes explanation of how she's build Segue to be innovative from day one. This is more than a group of accountants, the team at Segue Partners has been "in the trenches" operating their own funds, raising capital, and reporting to investors. Anybody can add, but not everyone can really be additive. Michelle and her team seeks to add real value. After you listen to this episode, connect to Michelle and Segue Partners on social media:

• Follow Michelle on Twitter
• Connect with Segue Partners on LinkedIn

Josh Leesmann is the Director of Data and Analytics Task Force at RubinBrown. When you think about the power data has, it makes sense for companies to take advantage of tools that can help improve business. I found it refreshing to chat with Josh and learn more about the way he and the team and RubinBrown can be innovative within a traditionally conservative industry.

RubinBrown is one of the nation’s largest accounting and business consulting firms, with 500 team members working from offices in Denver, Kansas City, Nashville and St. Louis, including a satellite office in St. Louis’ CORTEX Innovation District. Founded in 1952, the firm’s team members establish best practices within specific industry segments and work to serve the community both inside and outside the workplace. The company's mission is to help clients build and protect value, while at all times honoring the responsibility to serve the public interest. RubinBrown is an independent member of Baker Tilly International, a high-quality, dedicated network of 154 independent firms in 133 countries

Perry D. Drake is an Assistant Professor of Digital and Social Media Marketing at the University of Missouri St. Louis College of Business and the a large part of the brains a the Midwest Digital Marketing Conference (MDMC). Some might find it strange to consider a large bureaucracy like a university to be innovative. but the College of Business at UMSL continues to push the boundaries to find a greater way to engage students, impact the community and serve industry. The College of Business Administration at UMSL provides research- and practice-based programs that prepare students to enter and succeed locally and globally across a wide range of business professions including marketing, accounting, finance, IT, international business, and more. The school is the only double AACSB accredited business school in the St. Louis region. This puts the College of Business in company with the top 10% of business schools in the country.

For the past few years, the university has hosted/produced the #UMSLdigital conference. This year it has grown to become the Midwest Digital Marketing Conference. I sat down with Perry for this episode to discuss the cool stuff going on at UMSL, the excitement of the MDMC, and how he got speakers from Buzzfeed, Pinterest, Google, UnderArmour, Refinery29, Salesforce.com, LinkedIn and more to participate in this land-locked conference (HINT: it's because the Midwest is sneaking up on the rest of the world). After you listen to this episode, connect to Perry on social media:

• Follow Perry on Twitter
• Like what Perry does on Facebook
• Connect with Perry on LinkedIn
  • Read the UMSL Digital Blog

Michael Palmer is the founder and CEO of Code Red Education. Code Red Education develops integratable and customizable instructional materials to allow K-12 institutions to teach computer science and coding skills. That's fancy for: making it easier to teach coding in schools. Boom! We can all agree that is a cool thing. Our conversation includes a couple of random pop-culture references, a philosophical discussion of coding as a foreign language, and exploring the moment Micheal put everything on the line to become an entrepreneur because he believed education could be improved through innovation.

Nate Marschalk is the executive director of The Disruption Department and an all around great guy. The mission of The Disruption Department is to provide a platform and resources for students to learn, to build, and to share innovative things. During our conversation, Nate introduced me to the term Creative Confidence. We rarely think about what it takes to build an environment where students feel safe to grow creatively and explore innovation.

In this short episode, Travis introduces you to what you can expect from People Behind the Innovation. We have a fantastic series of shows lined up that we're really excited about!