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Mike McKinley - President
Alive! Alive! Associates |
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Mike McKinley's 30+ years in business began at age 15 with his own garbage-hauling enterprise. Radio and television broadcasting followed. Then, for over a decade, McKinley was president and general manager of Happy Sleeper Mattress Company. Today, McKinley is president of Thinking Publications, his multimillion-dollar educational publishing house, and Alive! Alive! Associates, his professional-speaking and consulting business. Most recently, McKinley founded GEM, a pick your-own flower and produce operation.
Every year, McKinley draws on his business expertise to speak coast-to-coast at more than 100 seminars, conventions, in-house programs, and professional-association meetings. McKinley has 20 years of experience as a professional speaker. He has earned the designation of Certified Speaking Professional (CSP) from the National Speakers Association and has served as the president of this prestigious association. McKinley has been selected for the Council of Peers Award for Excellence Speaker Hall of Fame award. He is the author of four books and has written numerous articles. As a cancer survivor, McKinley shares his message of maximizing performance-and having fun in the process.
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Jim Epperson - Senior Vice President of External Affairs
SBC - Ameritech |
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Jim Epperson is Senior Vice President-State legislative and Political Affairs at SBC. He is responsible for legislative policy and strategy for SBC's 13 states. Epperson has served as president-Oklahoma for SBC Southwestern Bell, and as Pacific Bell's vice president over consumer sales and service for Southern California. Epperson began his career with Southwestern Bell in 1979 in Oklahoma City. He has served in a wide variety of positions related to state and federal regulatory issues, consumer research, marketing initiatives, customer services, and media relations across the country.
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Lance Fors - President
Third Wave Technologies |
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Lance Fors, Ph.D., is the co-founder of Third Wave Technologies and has served as President, Chief Executive Officer, and one of Third Wave's directors since its inception in 1993. Madison-based Third Wave Technologies, Inc. is a leading provider of products and technologies for analyzing genetic variations. Dr. Fors received his Ph.D. in molecular biology from the California Institute of Technology. He has more than twenty years of research and development experience and is the inventor on one patent, with an additional six pending in the area of DNA and RNA sequence analysis.
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Joseph Cortright - Consulting Economist
Impressa, Inc. |
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Joe Cortright is a consulting economist in Portland, Oregon, specializing in regional economic analysis, public finance, workforce, and small business issues. His firm, Impressa, Inc., works with state and local governments, private businesses, foundations, and advocacy groups in more than a dozen states.
Cortright is the author of numerous reports and studies including: "Workforce Myths and Realities," "The Economic Importance of Being Different," and "The Ecology of the Silicon Forest." He is a co-author of Understanding Your Regional Economy, and co-creator of the EconData.Net website, a leading internet resource for economic data. His most recent work, High Tech Specialization, was published by the Brookings Institution in January 2002. His current projects include a comparative study of information industries in Europe and the US, an analysis of industry clusters in metropolitan economies, and advising business and communities on strategies for knowledge-based economic development.
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Rebecca Ryan - President
Next Generation Consulting, Inc. |
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Rebecca Ryan is leading a changing conversation between talent and the companies and communities who work hard to attract them. Ryan's jaw-dropping say-it-like-it-is approach to managing and motivating young talent has catapulted her into the national media and America's most progressive boardrooms. As President of Next Generation Consulting, Inc., Ryan works with organizations including CBS, the American Bankers Association, and Fortune 1000 companies. Her fresh, feisty approach to attracting, managing, motivating, and retaining the next generation has earned cyber-ink in the Wall Street Journal, the Financial Services Journal, and the Million Dollar Roundtable. TV and radio audiences from Washington, D.C. to San Francisco know Ryan for her groundbreaking Hot Jobs-Cool Communities Report.
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Richard H. Mattoon - Senior Economist
Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago |
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Rick Mattoon is a Senior Economist in the Research Department of the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago. His research emphasis is on regional economic development and workforce policy, state and local government finance, and electricity and telecommunications restructuring and regulatory policy. Mattoon has authored more than 40 articles on these subjects.
Mattoon first joined the Chicago Fed in 1990. In 1997, he left the bank to serve as the economic development, energy, and telecommunications advisor to the Governor of Washington. In 1999, he was named the Director of Policy and legislation for the Washington Utilities and Transportation Commission. He returned to the bank in 2001, and is participating in a study of the infrastructure of the Midwest economy.
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