Kelly Burton is a political scientist, serial entrepreneur, change agent, and social critic. She is a modern-day renaissance woman who leads with passion, purpose, and vision. Burton is founder of Nexus Research Group, a social impact firm that works with foundations and large-scale nonprofits to help them catalyze change in local communities. She also created Founders of Color, a digital platform committed to helping minority entrepreneurs grow and scale their businesses.

Today, Burton is the executive director of the Black Innovation Alliance, a national coalition of ecosystem leaders committed to ensuring inclusion in the innovation economy.

Burton serves on several boards, including the board of directors at the Center for Action and Contemplation. She was recently added to the executive board of Fast Company magazine, where she is a regular contributor.

Burton has a bachelor’s from Clark Atlanta University and a Ph.D. from Emory University, both in political science.

Nicole A. Childers is an executive producer at American Public Media and oversees the production of Marketplace Morning Report, which reaches more than 8.5 million people nationwide. Before joining APM, she managed the launch of Fusion, the ABC News/Univision cable TV network venture.

Childers attended the University of Pennsylvania and began her journalism career at ABC News as an intern for Diane Sawyer. In 2004, Childers helped launch ABC News Now as a producer for the ABC News digital channel. Childers later became the chief content officer for LA Public Media and led the development of a multimedia service geared toward underserved communities in Los Angeles.

Childers spent part of her childhood in foster care and has worked to shed light on the plight of children within the system. She is also a judge for Fostering Media Connections, a yearly writing competition for youth in foster care.

Victor Hwang is an economic growth expert whose ideas have shaped the economic lives of millions of people worldwide. He is founder and CEO of Right to Start, a campaign fighting to make entrepreneurial opportunity available to everyone. Previously, Hwang was vice president of entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation, the world’s leading philanthropy supporting entrepreneurs, where he led initiatives that impacted more 200,000 entrepreneurs. His projects included efforts in catalyzing capital formation, transforming economic development practices, launching a national policy roadmap, and breaking barriers for underserved entrepreneurs. He is a serial entrepreneur and investor who has started and helped grow multiple companies, and he is an author whose book The Rainforest was named Book of the Year by Foreword Reviews. Hwang is a columnist for Inc., Bloomberg, The Hill, Make, and other media, and he is a former corporate lawyer. He has testified in Congress and state legislatures. He graduated from Harvard and the University of Chicago Law School.

Monika Mantilla has dedicated the last 20 years to pursuing societal transformation through entrepreneurial success. She provides capital and networks to promising entrepreneurs and financial and social impact returns to investors.

Mantilla founded Altura Capital, which offers institutional investors and strategic partners the opportunity to invest in and scale high-performing small and diverse businesses. She also co-founded Small Business Community Capital, which provides debt and equity capital to small and mid-sized companies. The fund focuses on diverse-owned firms and low- and moderate-income communities.

Mantilla has been recognized in multiple years by Latino Leaders magazine as one of the 101 Most Influential Leaders in Hispanic U.S.A. and one of the Top 15 Latinos in Finance.

Mantilla is capital adviser to the Billion Dollar Roundtable, which promotes supplier diversity. She sits on several boards, including the boards of Pasteleria Cidrines, Coastal Painting, the Stanford Latino Entrepreneurship Initiative, and the United States Hispanic Chamber of Commerce.

Sanjay Singh is an academic, entrepreneur, and investor. He has a Ph.D. in technology and strategic management from the University of Georgia, and he was a faculty member at the University of Alabama at Birmingham for 20 years.

Singh was a partner at CTS, a regional software company that merged in 2017 with CGI, a global software engineering firm.

He is a member of the executive committee for the Birmingham Business Alliance, the lead economic development organization for the seven-county region surrounding Birmingham, Alabama.

Singh serves on numerous company and civic boards, including at Pack Health, Oakworth Capital Bank, Prosper Birmingham, the Community Foundation of Greater Birmingham, the Rotary Club of Birmingham (where he is past president), and the Birmingham Museum of Art.

Carmen Tapio is founder and CEO of North End Teleservices LLC, the largest African American owned business in Nebraska. In 2020, North End Teleservice was number 677 on the Inc. 5000 list of fastest-growing privately owned companies.

Tapio is a servant-leader who focuses on creating pathways for others to fully participate in the economy. Tapio believes that individuals, families, and communities win through the economic development and the upward mobility of all people.

She has received numerous awards, including the 2020 Urban League of Nebraska African American Leadership Award for Business. Tapio serves on several boards and committees, and she is the 2023 incoming chair of the Greater Omaha Chamber of Commerce, where she will be the first African American woman to serve in that capacity.

Tapio is also a member of the Nebraska Department of Economic Development’s Get Nebraska Growing Taskforce and a director for the Federal Reserve Bank of Kansas City’s Omaha Branch.

Robert E. Weems Jr. has been the Willard W. Garvey Distinguished Professor of Business History at Wichita State University since fall 2011. He previously taught at the University of Missouri-Columbia and the University of Iowa and received his Ph.D. in history from the University of Wisconsin-Madison.

Weems, a Chicago native, has written four books on African American business history, including the recently published The Merchant Prince of Black Chicago: Anthony Overton and the Building of a Financial Empire.

Weems is a member and past president of the board of directors of the Kansas African American Museum in Wichita. He also served on the board at the Heartland Wichita Black Chamber of Commerce, where he established and coordinates its Wichita Black Business Hall of Fame.

Weems has received numerous awards and honors, including the 2017 “H.N. Sims Excellence in Education Award,” given by the Wichita branch of the NAACP.