Transforming Travel featuring Kevin Kleist, Emerging Trends Advisor, Southwest Airlines

Catherine Gray is a Producer, Keynote Speaker, Author, and the Founder of She Angel Investors. She's dedicated her career to empowering female entrepreneurs and addressing the underfunding of women in venture capital. We discuss her documentary "Show Her the Money," her TED Talk "Fund Women, Save the World," and her vision for the future of gender diversity and inclusion in the venture capital landscape. With women receiving less than 2% of venture capital the opportunity is immense for both impact and returns.

Ken Evans is the Managing Director of the Accelerator Program for Emerging Tech Startups at Tampa Bay Innovation Center. With a background in venture-backed startups and Fortune 50 companies, Ken is key player in Tampa Bay's tech ecosystem, co-founding the region's first full-time coworking space and leading initiatives to support local startups. Our conversation centers around their new Climate Tech Accelerator and the importance of Revenue First Innovation, taking a “Moneyball approach” vs. the Power Law Unicorn Hunters, why we need to evolve from petri dish science experiments to solving real world problems, and why most accelerators are promotional lipstick vs. creating true product-market-fit with tangible outcomes.

Maria Rodriguez is the Executive Director of the Valiente Fund, a donor and funder collaborative addressing the lack of investment of philanthropic funds for Latine leaders, organizations, and communities. They just launched the Valiente Accelerator to support emerging Latine groups with grants and operational capacity to accelerate their growth. We discuss why critical moments demand innovation, the need to scale bold solutions, the power of microecosystems, the value of starting before you are ready and how to change systems through collaboration.

Join us as we honor the 2023 Visionary and Venture of the Year. Nominated and voted on by their peers, these are the change agents embracing new opportunities to drive outsized results. They are intent on blazing new paths, discovering inventive solutions, and powering the future. Visionary of the Year: Marty Guay, Vice President of Business Development, Stanley Black & Decker With over three decades experience as a corporate innovator, Marty Guay has spent the past six years working with startups, academia, venture capital and global corporations to create business value opportunities for Stanley Black & Decker, a worldwide leader in Tools and Outdoor. At Stanley Black & Decker, Guay is responsible for the inception of the company’s accelerator program where he successfully connects startups with technological and commercial relationships inside the organization and throughout global ecosystems. Guay sits on the advisory boards of multiple startups and serves as a board member of the state of Connecticut Governor’s Workforce Council and as a liaison to the Business Roundtable. In addition to these roles, Guay also oversees the company’s global philanthropy program that is focused on closing the skilled trades gap through its Grow the Trades program. Venture of the Year: Inworld AI, represented by Co-founder, Kylan Gibbs Inworld AI, led by a team of conversational AI pioneers and experts, uses advanced AI to build interactive characters whose personalities, thoughts, memories, and behaviors are designed to emulate social human interaction. Founded in 2021, Inworld is a recent graduate of the Comcast NBCUniversal LIFT Labs Generative AI Accelerator run in partnership with VentureFuel. Last month, Inworld announced a multi-year partnership with Microsoft to develop AI toolsets to assist and empower creators in dialogue, story, and quest design. Kylan Gibbs has a background in turning advanced AI into products that naturally interact with humans. He came from DeepMind, where he led products for Conversational AI and Generative Models. Prior, Kylan worked on enterprise Machine Learning projects at Bain & Company. Kylan studied at the University of Cambridge and McGill University.

Disruptor, Founder, Envisioneer Mike Pell leads The Microsoft Garage in NYC, the company’s worldwide innovation program. Mike Invented PDF and Acrobat at Adobe and has been granted over 20 US Patents. We talk about why going fast is the only way to protect your business, the evolution of ai Co-Pilots, the art of hacking, the ROI of Innovation, why you can’t sit on the sideline as the pace of business accelerates, the Microsoft Garage Growth Framework and Mike’s new book Visualizing Business.

Sokwoo Rhee is the EVP at LG Electronics and the Head of LG's North America Innovation Center, LG Nova. From serving as a Presidential Innovation Fellow at the Whitehouse to leading groundbreaking IoT and smart city initiatives, Sokwoo brings a wealth of experience driving innovation forward. Today, we discuss why external innovation is important for a $60B+ revenue company, how to justify external innovation to internal stakeholders, and why growth and disruption insurance go hand in hand. We also dive into the LG Nova Commercial Accelerator Program.

MassRobotics is the largest independent robotics hub that accelerates robotics innovation and adoption, and they are launching their first Accelerator program, led by Director Marita McGinn. The unique, equity-free program combines funding, mentorship, and a collaborative community. We talk about the future of robotics, from Cobots to Ag Tech, as well as how equity-free accelerators enable a wider breadth of solutions to commercialize.

On today’s show, I am honored to have Pedro Antonio Guerrero, CEO of Guerrero - an executive advancement company at the intersection of media, professional networks, and executive search. Pedro specializes in executive advancement and corporate diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives – utilizing Guerrero Search and Guerrero Media to deliver on his mission. We talk about the intersection of diversity and innovation, why diverse perspective drives growth, and how to create pipelines through networks unfamiliar to your own.

This is quite simply a master class in collaborative innovation to solve meaningful challenges. Dr. Simon is a practicing cardiologist, the President of Academic & External Affairs and Chief Scientific Officer for the University Hospitals Health System (UH). We discuss the unique non-profit, for-profit model of The Oxford-Harrington Rare Disease Centre’s Therapeutics Accelerator. The Accelerator is a first-of-its-kind, transatlantic initiative to identify, fund and advance breakthrough academic discoveries to deliver new treatments for the 400 million people worldwide who suffer from rare diseases.

On today’s show we have Andrew Merinoff. Andrew is the founder of Dispact Ventures, which is disrupting industries with impact investing. What started off as a small fund to assist his close friends and confidants eventually grew into a 16-venture portfolio. Andrew is also a seasoned entrepreneur and the Co-founder and CEO of Chinola Liqueur. With a passion for building companies, particularly in the Wine & Spirits space, Andrew has made a mark through innovation. We talk about SPVs, impact investing, the future of wine & spirits and innovating in traditional, established industries.