June 15, 2009 - Monday

"Life Entrepreneurship: Creating an Extraordinary Life" with Gregg Vanourek; Panelists: Teah Bennett, Sam Pai, Bert Vermeulen Co-Hosts: Joy Milkowski and Allison Taylor

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"Life Entrepreneurship: Creating an Extraordinary Life"

Why we must lead ourselves first to be successful

Gregg Vanourek—entrepreneur and co-author of the nationally acclaimed book Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives—provides stories and strategies for extraordinary living and leading based on the novel concept of “entrepreneuring” your life and work. Based on interviews with 55 successful entrepreneurs worldwide, the book shows how the entrepreneurial mindset can create an electric attitude of what’s possible in all of our endeavors. Vanourek provides a compelling road map to success for entrepreneurs, business owners, community leaders, and those implementing big ideas or contemplating big changes in their life and work. The book has been reviewed in the New York Times, U.S. News & World Report, Business Week, Washington Post, Publishers Weekly, and other media outlets. Authors Gergen and Vanourek write regular columns and blogs for Harvard Business Online, Inc.com, and The Washington Times.

Entrepreneurs have to stay sharp in this age of “disruptive innovation”—learning from each other, drawing upon cutting-edge practices, leading their lives first, and building healthy support systems so that their efforts have maximum yield and are transformational. Vanourek draws out the secrets of successful entrepreneurs worldwide while also showing how a recession can be an excellent time to be entrepreneurial. Vanourek’s writings and talks draw upon the interviews he and his co-author conducted with successful business and social entrepreneurs worldwide, including Howard Schultz (Starbucks), Gary Erickson (Clif Bar), Linda Mason (Bright Horizons), Steve Ells (Chipotle), Billy Shore (Share Our Strength), Seth Goldman (Honest Tea), John Hickenlooper (Mayor of Denver and former brewpub entrepreneur), Larry Leith (Tokyo Joe’s), Jared Polis (U.S. Congressman and serial entrepreneur), and the founding visionaries behind RealNetworks, KIPP Schools, Build.org, and many more.

“Life Entrepreneurs captures the essence of the Creative Age where people are the true source of economic growth” --Richard Florida, best-selling author, Rise of the Creative Class, director, Martin Prosperity Institute, Rotman School of Management.

EVENT: Startup Junkie Underground
DATE: June 15, 2009 - Monday
TIME: 6:30pm-9:00pm
WEBSITE: http://www.startupjunkieunderground.com

LOCATION: MADCAP Theater, 10679 Westminster Blvd, Westminster, CO 80020
DIRECTIONS: Driving Directions

COST: $20, Members: Free, SuperMembers: Free

PHONE: 303-666-4133

TOPIC: "Life Entrepreneurship: Creating an Extraordinary Life" with Gregg Vanourek; Panelists: Teah Bennett, Sam Pai, Bert Vermeulen Co-Hosts: Joy Milkowski and Allison Taylor
SPEAKERS: Gregg Vanourek, Joy Milkowski, Bert Vermeulen, Samuel Pai, Teah Bennett, Allison Taylor

SPEAKER: Gregg Vanourek

Founding partner of New Mountain Ventures and co-author of "Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives"

Gregg Vanourek is founding partner of New Mountain Ventures, a personal leadership development firm working with clients nationwide, and co-author of Life Entrepreneurs: Ordinary People Creating Extraordinary Lives. Previously, he founded and ran Vanourek Consulting Solutions and served as Senior Vice President of School Development for K12 Inc. (NYSE: LRN), a national online education company (and market leader), where he helped launch the company during its start-up and led the team that started and managed eight statewide virtual schools with more than 100 employees.

Before that, he served as Vice President for Programs at the Thomas B. Fordham Foundation, a national education foundation, where he also helped to launch a scholarship program for underserved youth. Previously, Gregg was a Research Fellow at the Hudson Institute, a leading national think tank, where he worked on education reform issues and community-based solutions to pressing social problems. At Hudson, he participated in what was then the largest study of charter schools in the nation, including site visits to dozens of charter schools nationwide and surveys of thousands of charter school students and parents and hundreds of charter school teachers.

Gregg has co-authored a book on charter schools (Charter Schools in Action: Renewing Public Education, published by Princeton University Press), several national research reports and book chapters, and dozens of articles for leading newspapers across the country. Gregg holds an M.B.A. from the Yale School of Management, an M.Sc. from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a B.A. from Claremont McKenna College (where he graduated magna cum laude). He serves on the Board of the Vail Leadership Institute. Gregg lives with his wife and daughters in Colorado.

MODERATOR: Joy Milkowski

Founder of Access Marketing Company

Joy Milkowski is the Founder of Access Marketing Company where she specializes in bringing search engine marketing and web marketing intelligence to her clients in a way they can understand and measure. She has over a decade of marketing, sales and professional copywriting experience in a variety of areas including tech, industrial, direct to consumer sales, commercial real estate ventures, professional and collegiate athletics and Internet-based marketing. In addition, Joy trains small businesses and entrepreneurs who want to leverage the power of search engines as an advertising tool to reach their audiences.

PANELIST: Bert Vermeulen

Senior Fellow at the DaVinci Institute, and the Founder of Corp21

Bert Vermeulen has worked around the world for a variety of businesses, both large and small, and both successful and not so successful. This includes:

Helping to build a $160M/year tape drive business for Hewlett Packard in Bristol, UK.
Partnering with a Colorado based-entrepreneur to grow a manufacturing business to over $25M/year in revenues and then successfully selling it. He then helped the new parent company acquire and build other similar businesses in Ireland and Hungary.
Providing in depth help and guidance to over 30 startups and smaller enterprises during the last 5 years, some of which have done quite well. This has provided exposure to a number of excellent entrepreneurs as well as some that were flawed and others that were lucky.
Creating an industry association in an emerging retail field (meal prep) and providing consulting support to over 400 enterprises in this field.
Doing independent research on why some companies succeed while others don’t.
Serving as a guest presenter on entrepreneurship at a number of universities and industry groups.

PANELIST: Samuel Pai

Veteran of multiple high-tech startups

A veteran of multiple high-tech startups, Sam Pai has spent over 20 years in a variety of roles from individual contributor to executive management; developing management, engineering, and marketing skills that encompass the broad range associated with the management and development of successful products. These products range from telecommunication devices for the deaf and Internet based real-estate services, to drug infusion devices and digital magazine publishing services.

Mr. Pai's career includes positions at Plantronics, Telebit, Kaleida Labs, Baynet World, Bridge Medical, Zinio Systems, andADT Security Services. Consulting clients (as part of IDEO Product Development and independently) include Microsoft, DataCard, eGreetings, iGo, Audible, and 3com.

Mr. Pai has an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a M.S. in Electrical Engineering, Computer Systems from Stanford University, and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering with honors from Stanford University.

PANELIST: Teah Bennett

CEO/Founder of I*LEVEL Incorporated

Ms. Bennett has more than 18 years experience of successfully building organizations in the Software, Technology Consulting and Business Process Outsourcing markets.

Ms. Bennett is the CEO/Founder of I*LEVEL Incorporated, a software company (SaaS) in the Human Capital Management space. I*LEVEL’s product collects information about what Motivates people towards Performance and Retention. Gartner Group recognized I*LEVEL in 2006 as one of “The Coolest Products” in the Human Capital management market place. Ms. Bennett has been building and providing leadership for the organization for the past 5 years.

Bennett also founded InnerCircle(formerly IT Jazz) a regional Executive Search and Outsourced Recruiting firm based in Colorado. InnerCircle still going strong and expanding into 3 new markets in addition to Colorado, Arizona, Minnesota and Wyoming.

Prior to her work in Human Capital Management, she successfully built Sai Software Consultants by driving the expansion of a $2.0M technology consulting firm to $40M in 5 years. Bennett led this development by building a national practice with 10 offices and consequently, building an installation base of employees in some of the largest national corporations. While at Sai Software, Ms. Bennett also crafted an international strategy that resulted in the award and recognition – for the firm - of an ISO 9002 certification and her ISO 9002 auditor certification.

Ms. Bennett enhanced her career as a member of the expansion team for Minneapolis-based Connect Computer Consulting. Her work resulted in the firm transitioning from a regional practice to a national consulting company. Connect Computer Consulting was ultimately acquired by Norstan (NRRD, Nasdaq).

Ms. Bennett’s career started in sales management for Harris /3M.

HOST: Allison Taylor

Business Consultant

Allison Taylor is a Business Consultant specializing in relationship selling, referral marketing, customer and employee retention and non-traditional sales training. Through her business, Paravox, she offers innovative marketing and performance tactics to significantly improve business growth and profitability.