Speakers
Phil George
Phil George grew up around Columbus, Ohio, but has spent time living elsewhere in New York, Idaho, Armenia, and Los Angeles before returning home to Ohio to start a business and a family. Today, George lives with his wife and daughter in Worthington, Ohio.
George attended West Point and ultimately finished his education at the University of Idaho, where he received a degree in Economics and Accounting. After college, George went into the Peace Corps in Armenia, where he helped create the first Farmer’s Co-op in Armenia and founded a non-profit in partnership with Cornell University and the University of Idaho to educate women entrepreneurs in business topics.
After the Peace Corps, George went to work for McMaster-Carr supply company, a private billion-dollar logistics business with over 5,000 employees. He became one of the youngest leaders at the company, running five departments for the company’s West Coast operations in Los Angeles.
After his time a McMaster-Carr, George founded MentorcliQ, an employee mentoring software that helps companies manage and scale their mentoring programs. George has helped scale the business to over 125 employees serving hundreds of industry-leading enterprises around the world, such as Disney, LinkedIn, and United Airlines.
Phil credits his success to colleagues who have become friends and make the hard days’ worth it; a competitive childhood; and great mentors who have helped him see around corners he often didn’t even know were coming.
Andy Jenks
Partner at Drive Capital
Andy Jenks has been an entrepreneur for most of his life. Prior to joining Drive Capital, Jenks was co-founder of Formation Data Systems, a software-defined storage company based in Silicon Valley. Prior to co-founding Formation Data Systems, Jenks was an entrepreneur in residence at both Khosla Ventures and EMC Ventures where he worked on investing in Next Generation Data Center, Big Data, and Enterprise Software.
Over his career, Jenks has raised over $30 million in venture capital and has participated in over $1 billion in acquisitions as either a founder or member of an executive team.
His executive roles also include serving as Chief Executive Officer of Optimost; a pioneer in marketing automation, general manager and vice president of E-discovery at Interwoven (acquired by Autonomy), co-founder of Discovery Mining (now Interwoven), co-founder of Infinite Research (merged with Compete/WPP), and Software Engineer Team Lead at Amazon.
Jenks was also an active angel investor, investing in 41 early-stage companies with a greater than 10.0x cumulative return.
Jenks graduated from the University of Utah with a bachelor’s degree in science.
Lindsey Michaelides
Lindsey Michaelides is the CEO and co-founder of Strongsuit, a tech-enabled assistant that supports leaders in managing their lives and responsibilities outside of work. Since launch, Strongsuit has worked with leading employers like Google, Bloomberg, Orrick and Upwork to increase the performance, productivity, engagement and overall wellness of their key talent. Prior to founding Strongsuit, Michaelides spent 15 years as a corporate strategy leader and management consultant with McKinsey & Company, where she specialized in launching new ventures and large scale joint ventures within the Fortune 500. Her experience spans the healthcare, retail, media and tech industries. She has an MBA from Duke University and an undergraduate degree from DePauw University. Lindsey currently resides in Bexley with her husband and four young children.
Tom Walker
CEO and President of Rev1 Ventures
Tom Walker is the founding CEO and president of Rev1 Ventures, Inc. in Columbus, Ohio. With a nearly 30-year career in innovation and venture capital, Walker has broad expertise in supporting early-stage entrepreneurs in the successful start and scaleup of new companies. He is a leader in driving innovation within large corporations, research institutions and communities, especially where it aims to better lives through entrepreneurship.
Walker formed and managed multiple venture capital funds that have achieved or maintained top-quartile performance and has participated in more than 300 investments. Portfolio companies have generated more than $7B in successful exits, including grub, inc. (M&A- LookSmart); Novazyme (M&A-Genzyme); Weather Decision Technology (M&A DTN); Selexys (Board member) (M&A-Novartis); Myonexus (M&A-Sarepta); Celenex (M&A-Amicus); Updox (M&A EverCommerce); Alkami (Board Member) (NASDAQ ALKT); and Matterport (NASDAQ MTTR).
Walker earned a BS in Mechanical/Aerospace Engineering from the University of Oklahoma and a master’s degree in Business Administration. He is a frequent industry speaker and has received numerous awards, including a finalist in Ernst & Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year. iAuthor of The Entrepreneur’s Path: A Handbook for High-Growth Companies and contributing author to Biotechnology Entrepreneurship, first and second editions, he is also a regular contributor to Entrepreneur.com and a Forbes Council member and contributor. A founder and board member of the national Angel Capital Association, he has advised several regions in the United States and England on building entrepreneurial infrastructure and ecosystems. He has testified multiple times before the United States Congress on entrepreneurship, venture capital and the expansion of life sciences, applied research and commercialization.
Matt Wyckhouse
Matt Wyckhouse is an entrepreneur, embedded device security expert, and the founder and CEO of Finite State. As CEO, he leads the company toward achieving their mission to protect their connected world through better software supply chain risk management. In this role, he works with product and supply chain security teams worldwide to help them build scalable vulnerability and risk management solutions for complex product portfolios.
Prior to Finite State, Wyckhouse was the founder and CTO of Battelle’s Cyber Innovations Business Unit, where he oversaw dozens of intelligence and national security programs, many of which were related to the security of IoT, OT, and embedded systems.
Wyckhouse holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Computer Science and Engineering from Ohio State.