Ed Flaherty

Ed Flaherty is an experienced entrepreneur. Having built successful enterprises with Rapid Oil Change, Applebee’s and many others. Today, he is the president of Lariat Companies and joins his passion for education and business acumen as the founder of the Flaherty Family Foundation. Almost 30 years ago, Flaherty started the foundation as a way to be thoughtful and intentional about how he gave back to humanity. Today, he and the Flaherty team support over 400 active scholars with an innovative mentoring and scholarship program.

Albert Santalo

Albert Santalo is a computer scientist, internet entrepreneur and angel investor with experience in high growth, venture-backed technology companies. His passion lies in designing products and building companies that disrupt traditional business models. He is an advocate for empowering entrepreneurs everywhere to build Silicon Valley technology companies in their local communities and was standing alongside President Obama at the signing of the Jobs Act in 2012. He is founder and CEO of 8base, a developer acceleration platform that provides web and mobile developers an on-demand enterprise software backend that includes serverless computing and a GraphQL engine. He is also a board member and/or advisor to various technology ventures and has raised in excess of $100 million for his companies.
 

He is the former chairman and CEO of CareCloud, a company he founded in 2009 that is working to modernize the antiquated healthcare industry with a cloud-based platform. CareCloud reached No. 127 on the 2014 Inc. 500 list and is backed by NVP, Intel Capital, First Data Corp. and others. Previously, he was founder and CEO of Avisena, a revenue cycle management company for physicians. Prior to Avisena, he worked at the Hackett Group / Answerthink (NASDAQ: HCKT), a management consulting firm, where he served as a director in the IT Transformation and Strategy Practice. During his tenure at Answerthink, he worked with Global 2000 companies, assisting them with technology strategy and transformation initiatives.
 

He is the lead inventor and holds a U.S. patent for Avisena’s A/R Management Methodology. He holds a MBA degree from Florida International University. He is the recipient of the FIU 2004 Charles E. Perry Visionary Award for outstanding Alumni and was inducted to the FIU Entrepreneurship Hall of Fame in 2006. He also is an active board member of Goodwill Industries of South Florida.

Lloyd M. Sigel

Lloyd M. Sigel has more than 45 years of sales management, marketing management and senior management in specialty food and value added food product manufacturing businesses. Sigel previously served on several advisory boards, including The National Food Distributors Association, The American Meat Institute, The Sloan Endowed Chair for the Food Industry at the University of Minnesota, The Gary S. Holmes Center for Entrepreneurship Carlson School of Management – University of Minnesota, The Deli Express Corporation, Naples Botanical Garden, The Steak-umm Corporation, Wisconsin Cheese Co., and Little Harbour Homeowners Association. He currently serves on Boards of the Ryan Companies USA, Boelter Companies of Milwaukee, WI, Quaker Bakery Brands of Appleton, WI, and Sofia’s Cookie Company of Minnesota. He is a strategic planning and business succession consultant. He is a member of Young Presidents’ Organization Gold and Chief Executives Organization International.

Mark Crofton

Mark Crofton is global vice president and leads the Sales Coaching team at SAP SE. The team is responsible for programs that coach SAP sales executives and use data analytics to drive improved performance in the sales force.
 

Prior to his current role, Crofton led the SAP Academy for Sales, the flagship SAP sales training program for Early Talent. Previously, he was VP, sales, Latin America, launching and leading the mobility business in that region. He has also held positions in the North America Sales and Corporate Development organizations. His expertise is in leading sales teams and implementing go-to-market strategy with a focus on attaining revenue targets.
 

Prior to joining SAP, Crofton was a consultant with McKinsey & Company and worked at early-stage venture capital firms in the U.S. and Latin America. He began his career at Thomson Reuters with roles in client services, pre-sales and sales. When he left Thomson Reuters, Crofton was an account executive based in Argentina with territory responsibility for all of Latin America.
 

He has a BA from Tufts University and an MBA from Columbia Business School. He is fluent in Spanish and German and resides in Miami.

Joel Gandara

They say hard work pays off, and Joel Gandara is the definition of this statement. Born in Cuba, he came to the U.S. in 1980, arriving on an overcrowded boat full of hopes and dreams. Gandara attended Florida International University, earning a BA in international relations with a minor in business. He graduated through the Honors College, and finished with a 3.77 GPA.
 

Gandara grew up with a work ethic that was unmatched. While other kids were handed money, Gandara had to go out and earn it…and that he did, netting $30 a day by organizing his own arbitrage operation. As a fourth grader, he would buy things like stamps and trading cards, and sell them to his classmates.
 

The hustling never halted, in fact it did quite the opposite. After high school, Gandara worked up to 109 hours a week, leaving himself just enough time each day to eat and sleep. Joel went on to start his own apparel company, where he was able to turn a profit at flea markets and eventually on Ebay. His business, however, was not enough to count on, and Gandara found a steady job with Carnival Cruise Line. Gandara enjoyed his job and was on a clear path to a promising career, but felt that something was missing.
 

Gandara’s entrepreneurial spirit spoke to him, and he made a life-altering decision. He decided to go full steam ahead with his apparel company. The decision was risky without a steady income, but this never stopped him.
 

Gandara found a brand from Mexico, which offered him distributor pricing, which helped his bottom line tremendously. He would take samples to Las Vegas and began doing tradeshows, offering products to various companies. Over the years, Gandara built a following, and began increasing his sales. After years of selling other people’s brands, he successfully created his own underwear brand. Within his first 13 months of business, the brand retailed $1,000,000.
 

From that success, he and his growing team continued to create and develop more brands. Today, they own 21 men’s apparel brands. In October of 2013, Gandara made another impactful decision. His company began to acquire their ecommerce customers and competitors, and pivoted from a wholesale company to a direct to consumer brand. Now, forming his own capital company, Morro Capital has acquired 10 businesses to date and is in talks to procure more.
 

They say hard work pays off…and Gandara has proven that time and time again, ultimately with creating a company beyond what he could have ever imagined, whose inception was in a flea market! In 2013, Gandara received The Torch Award, his university’s highest alumni honor.
 

Gandara and his wife Jessica married in 2002, and together have four children and live in Weston Florida. After achieving semi-retirement, Gandara now has time to do the things he enjoys, such as lifting weights, running, and continuing his education.

Kiomara Hidalgo

Kiomara Hidalgo has more than 20 years of experience in global human resources, strategic planning, talent development and change management at Fortune 500 companies, including the technology, healthcare, education and retail sectors. She is highly experienced in the personnel components of organizational development, mergers and acquisitions, training and development, state, federal and international regulations, mobility management and more. Kiomara received her Bachelors and Master degrees in the Science of Human Resource Management from Florida International University. She is a certified Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR).
 

Chris McKenney

Chris McKenney is founder and CEO of Mango Media, an innovative book publisher based in Miami. Ranked the No.1 Fastest Growing Publisher by Publishers Weekly for 2018 and a finalist for Publisher of the Year in 2019 by Digital Book World, Mango has the ambition and drive to reinvent book publishing. In his 30+ year career, McKenney has worked in corporate publishing as well as participated in two publishing technology-based start-ups. He earned a BA degree in history from Brown University and received an MBA degree from UCLA. He is married to the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and editor Mary Rajkumar and they have two children.