Talk With the Top: St. Louis

A BIT ABOUT STEPHANIE 

Stephanie Leffler has led multiple successful software startups. Most recently Leffler co-founded OneSpace, a virtual workforce platform that brings businesses in need of flexible, scalable talent together with freelancers seeking assignments that match their skillsets. OneSpace works with 14 of the top 30 online retailers and 3 of the top 10 publishers on the internet.

Connect with Stephanie

LinkedIn

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A BIT ABOUT JIM  

After building two market-leading companies, both now reside in Silicon Valley but started in St. Louis, Jim Eberlin is at it again in the race for market leadership in predictive analytics for opportunity management and sales forecasting. Throughout Jim’s career, he has founded and built companies to address today’s business leaders challenges, and TopOPPS is doing just that for sales management. Jim’s experience exudes throughout the product which is wrapped between machine learning and predictive analytics that literally supercharge sales organizations. Within the TopOPPS culture, Jim has embodied a mindset of continuous learning for constant improvement – which he has passed onto his entire team. Jim enables his team with great direction, constant gratitude and support for their own personal growth. He truly represents TopOPPS core values – high performance, respect, and truth. Jim’s current team is continuously absorbing Jim’s leadership and coaching which has fueled the company during its quick growth. In today’s cynical world, Jim’s leadership is just as effective and empowering, as wholesome and inherent. Jim is a board member and investor in the St. Louis startup community which he keeps a very active schedule!

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A BIT ABOUT WOMAN’S BAKERY

The Women’s Bakery offers women access—access to business education, life skills, and applied baking and nutrition skills. From this, social and economic empowerment are born.  That’s conscious capitalism.

Through education and vocational training, women learn to source local, nutritious ingredients to produce and sell affordable bread in their communities. Groups of women invest in our training fee and the appropriate bakery start-up costs. Once their bakery is in business, all profits are the women’s own.

Today, we’re working with women in Rwanda and Tanzania.

A BIT ABOUT MARKEY  

Markey Culver founded The Women’s Bakery after serving in the Peace Corps in Rwanda from 2010-2012, specializing in rural secondary education and public healthcare. Culver witnessed many plights in her rural Rwandan village, the most poignant of which were social inequality, malnutrition, and stunted opportunity. Culver views business as a medium: a solution-providing agency that consciously works for people, not exploitatively against them. Building bakeries have become her means of creating access to opportunity, namely financial independence and social empowerment, for women globally.

A BIT ABOUT NATALIE 

Hornsby brings a wealth of hands-on, practical global management and marketing experience to TWB. She launched her career in the private sector with the global toy phenomenon, Zhu Zhu Pets. Hornsby spearheads development and strategy for TWB, allowing for greater capacity for program scalability. Hornsby strives to recalibrate the traditional view of nonprofits, endeavoring to bridge the heart of the non-profit sector with the strategy of the for-profit sector.

Connect with Markey

LinkedIn

Twitter

Connect with Natalie

LinkedIn

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A BIT ABOUT JOSH 

It started with a passion for bringing healing to our city.

By July 2006, Mission: St. Louis’ Founder and Executive Director, Josh Wilson, had worked with inner-city kids and had seen first hand the effects of poverty; he had seen need. With a dedicated vision to restore St. Louis, Josh started several conversations with his church, The Journey. His conversations led to an internship, which eventually developed into a full-fledge mercy ministry designed to connect The Journey with residents in at-risk neighborhoods.

After a three-month flurry of unfocused volunteer activity, Josh realized that we were doing harm rather than good. Volunteers did not have personal relationships with any of the people they were serving. Everyone involved was burned out. It was time for a change.

His responsibility as the President/Executive Director at Mission: St. Louis is to lead our organization towards transforming at-risk communities. This includes fundraising, vision casting, strategy, and program development.

Josh is married to Leigh. They have two children: Morgan and Emmett. He also serves as an elder at “The Journey” in St. Louis.

A BIT ABOUT JASON 

The turning point came in the form of a relationship with a local school.

Mission: St. Louis organized a school supply drive for a local school, Adams Elementary. This began a relationship between Mission: St. Louis, Adams Elementary and the Forest Park Southeast neighborhood. We narrowed our focus, guided our volunteers, and put all our resources into one specific community. We built relationships in this community and were able to get to know the people and their needs.

Since our start in Forest Park Southeast, we have built deeper relationships with schools, businesses, neighborhoods, churches and organizations. We’ve created and grown life-changing programs for youth to older adults in order to empower people in our city with the tools needed to work their way out of poverty. Our two core programs, Beyond School and Beyond Jobs, are transforming lives. Kids in our Beyond School program are making 3 months reading and math growth for every month in our program. Men in our Beyond Jobs programs have a 75% chance of being employed within five months of graduation.

As the Director of Beyond Jobs Jason is in charge of the Job & Leadership Training program. When not teaching the men how to become better leaders in the community, he loves spending time with his wife and kids.

Connect with Josh

LinkedIn

Connect with Jason

LinkedIn

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A BIT ABOUT CHRIS 

Chris is the Founder and CEO of The Mission Center L3C, Founder and Managing Member of The Mission Center Management Services LLC, Founder of The Missouri Community Healthcare Co-Op Inc. and serves as Senior Lecturer of Social Entrepreneurship at Washington University in St. Louis.

After receiving his undergraduate degree from Truman State University and his Masters from the University of Illinois, Chris was a community organizer for the Illinois Coalition for Community Services (ICCS). Through this role, he assisted hundreds of low-income social entrepreneurs start, scale and sustain non-profit organizations that were organized to address issues of common concern in their communities.

In 2007, Chris joined Washington University in St. Louis’ Skandalaris Center for Entrepreneurial Studies. There, he helped develop the community based social entrepreneurship education program and oversaw the University’s Social Entrepreneurship and Innovation Competition (SEIC) which awards over $155,000 a year in social venture capital to startup social enterprises. As a direct extension of his work at the University, he began to develop the concept of The Mission Center, L3C in early 2007 with his colleague from the Brown School of Social Work, Barbara Levin.

On his path toward fulfilling the vision of The Mission Center L3C, Chris left Washington University in the summer of 2009 to join Yurbuds and worked with the rest of the management team to get through the initial product launch that ultimately resulted in the company being named Forbes Magazine’s “9th Most Promising Company in America” for 2009.

After helping to launch and scale Yurbuds, Chris went full time at The Mission Center L3C in April of 2010.

A BIT ABOUT THE MISSION CENTER 

The Mission Center L3C is the St. Louis hub for social entrepreneurs. We educate and coach those engaged in social start-ups and run an ongoing Accelerator for more mature ventures, Our job is to work ourselves out of a job by connecting Accelerants to the wider world of experts, mentors and investors.

Connect with Chris

LinkedIn

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LinkedIn

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A BIT ABOUT STEVE

Steve founded AVALA in 1997. AVALA is a Marketing Technology agency with 19+ years experience connecting consumers with leading brands primarily in the recreation and industrial space. AVALA provide our clients with strategic, digital and technical services and products to help them engage with their customers during pre-sale, sales consideration and post-sales advocacy phases of a client-consumer relationship. We have developed a Marketing Automaton product called Aimbase, which is designed to help our clients manage the entire digital relationship they have with their customers from the minute a consumer desires to own one of our client's products to the post-purchase phase when a delighted consumer becomes and advocate of our client's products or services.

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A BIT ABOUT STEVE

Steve Turner has appeared in videos and written many articles, blogs and PowerPoints on marketing and public relations.

He has appeared as a guest to discuss marketing trends on radio and television. His areas of expertise include architecture, construction, high-tech, professional services, retail and sports marketing.

He is an active member of the Public Relations Society of America, an active member of the Chesterfield Chamber of Commerce, Northwest Chamber of Commerce and is a former President of the Maryland Heights Chamber of Commerce. Steve Turner is a graduate of the University of Missouri School of Journalism.

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A BIT ABOUT MICH 

Mich Hancock is a dynamic presence in the social media scene. She is a sought after speaker, presenting seminars and workshops for organizations and associations, including the Olin School of Business at Washington University.

Her company, 100th Monkey Media, specializes in creating, developing and managing an active and engaging social media presence for both the B2B and B2C clients. But as Mich says, “We specialize in H2H, Human to Human, connection and communication,” which is a top best practice for using social media.

Mich is also the Co-Founder of TEDxGatewayArch, an innovative and thought-provoking organization that brings TED experiences to St. Louis.

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A BIT ABOUT JOSH  Josh Turner is the Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author of Connect and Booked, and is the founder of LinkedSelling, a B2B marketing firm specializing in outsourced LinkedIn lead generation campaigns. They represent clients (like Neil Patel and Microsoft) in a variety of countries and industries. LinkedSelling operates LinkedUniversity.com & TheAppointmentGenerator.com,  online training programs for lead generation. He is considered a leading experts in LinkedIn.

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Twitter

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A BIT ABOUT SLAM! AGENCY

SLAM! is a marketing and advertising agency that helps brands realize and reach their highest potential.  They use digital marketing, branding, and video to help brands excel in the digital age.

 

A BIT ABOUT INFLUENCE & CO.

We help B2B and B2C companies position key individuals within their organizations as experts and industry influencers. We focus on creating engaging content, coming from our clients, that reaches their target audiences online.

Our clients come from a variety of industries, ranging from technology to healthcare to marketing and nearly every industry in between. We work with venture-backed startups and Inc. 500 and 5000 companies, as well as enterprise brands.

Influence & Co. has been named to Forbes’ “Most Promising Companies in America” list and chosen as a Content Marketing Agency of the Year finalist by the Content Marketing Institute. We’ve expanded our offices from Columbia, Mo., to St. Louis and Kansas City, Mo., while constantly innovating our services to create the most value possible for our clients through the creation and distribution of content.

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