Renée Benmeleh is a multi-cultural vocalist, composer, instrumentalist and teacher. She has been joyfully singing Improv, Jazz, World, Ritual, and her own Original music for more than 20 years in the San Francisco Bay Area.

She’s the founder and agile facilitator at Sound Nourishment where she leads monthly classes, workshops, and events. She is also a Drum Circle Facilitator, and a childhood music practitioner.

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Chris Keys has been in the restaurant business for just over 30 years and has spent almost 18 of those years with Melting Pot. He’s been an Owner/Operator of the Fort Myers restaurant since 2018.

Before he settled in with Melting Pot, Chris worked with a few different national restaurants that include Checkers, Lonestar Steakhouse, and TGIFriday's. But he says most places he’s worked at were independently owned - including spending 4 years at one called Crowley’s at Stonehenge in North Carolina where he started his management career. 

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Judge Michael Cicconetti is a retired Municipal Court Judge who served for more than 25 years in his hometown of Painesville, OH. He gained a nationwide reputation during his time on the bench for handing down sentences that could be accurately described as unique in certain cases.

For instance, teenagers who flattened tires on school buses were ordered to throw a picnic for the school children whose outing was cancelled because of their prank.

While some may have not exactly approved of his approach, the recidivism rate in Judge Chick’s court was around 10% versus the national rate which is around 75%

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Shirlette Ammons is a Durham, NC-based musician, writer, and producer who grew up in rural Eastern North Carolina in an area called Beautancus near the little town of Mount Olive (where they make the pickles). As a musician, Shirlette has released four albums including her latest, called Spectacles which came out in April of 2024.

She’s published several books of her poetry, and is currently working on a podcast called “Tending” that explores the stories of Black farmers who were claimants in the class action lawsuit, Pigford vs. Glickman. That suit alleged that the USDA discriminated against Black farmers in its allocation of farm loans and assistance from 1981 to 1996. It was settled in 2011 for $1.25B - the largest Civil Rights settlement in history, at the time.

Shirlette also served as a producer on the Emmy and Peabody Award winning PBS series A Chef's Life which starred episode 339 guest Vivian Howard.

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Mark Rodriguez is a stonemason who was born and raised and still lives in Sante Fe, NM. Mark is on a very short list of people who have received two double lung transplants. Mark’s experiences and trials have brought him to a place where bringing a message of resilience, perseverance, and great faith has become central to his perspective, which he brings to his work as an author, international speaker, and transformational empowerment coach. 

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Matthew Sabatella is a Hollywood, FL-based musician who performs regularly, both as a solo artist and as the leader of the Rambling String Band. He earned first-place ribbons in the 2019 Florida Folk Festival’s Old-Time Banjo Competition and the 2023 Florida Old-Time Music Championship’s Old-Time Banjo and Singing competitions.

Matthew also teaches about America’s music at Lifelong Learning Institutes, including at Florida Atlantic University, George Mason University, Florida International University, University of Miami, and Nova Southeastern University.

He's also founder of the nonprofit “Ballad of America”, and Vice President of the Southeast regional chapter of Folk Alliance International.

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Dr. Mark Schulman is an award-winning pollster and was co-founder & CEO of one of the nation’s largest survey research & polling firms, SRBI. He's has worked with news media, major corporations, foundations, and government. For news organizations he has tracked presidential job ratings, political campaigns, analyzed election results, and probed policy issues.
 
Dr. Schulman served as Time magazine’s pollster for almost ten years and was also on the ABC News Election Decision Desk for many years.

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Dr. Joe Kiniry (Mike's big brother) - is a Principal Scientist at a Portland, Oregon-based technology company called Galois. He’s also the Principled CEO and Chief Scientist of a Galois spin-out company called Free & Fair that works on high-assurance election technologies and services.

Prior to joining Galois in 2014, Joe was a Full Professor at the Technical University of Denmark where he headed up the Software Engineering section. He also held a guest appointment at the IT University of Copenhagen, and has held permanent positions at four universities in Denmark, Ireland, and The Netherlands. Joe holds five advanced degrees, including a Ph.D. from Caltech.

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Jeff Marks is a retired journalist and television executive who grew up and started his career as a radio reporter in Kentucky. He's held senior management positions in television newsrooms in Kentucky and Washington, D.C. including serving as general manager for television stations in Maine, New Jersey, Georgia and Virginia. Jeff became known worldwide in 2015 as the public face of WDBJ-TV in Roanoke, Va. when two of their journalists were murdered on live TV.

Jeff is a past chair of the Radio-Television-Digital News Association, and he's taught journalism and news production, in Ukraine, Romania, and the Republic of Georgia. 

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Marc Collins serves on The City of Ft. Myers Planning Board, the Ft. Myers Charter Review Committee, and since late 2022 he’s been the Executive Director of the Uncommon Friends Foundation. The list of the nonprofits and other local organizations he’s either directly involved with or that he supports somehow is far too long to list here.

Marc is very involved in the Southwest Florida arts and social scene, working to raise awareness and funds for those in need. He can often be found serving as emcee and speaker at local events.

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