Connect Us: Show Me The Money! Presented by @Switchitapp

DATE: June 08, 2017

TIME: 10:30 PM - 1:30 AM

COST: free

VENUE: Microsoft Store

ADDRESS: 677 5th Ave, New York, NY 10022, USA

Connect us is a panel and discussion series with a focus on empowering men of color pursuing business, creative and social entrepreneurship. Our series provides steps to start, develop and grow your endeavor.

Every other month we will gather industry leaders and explore the steps it takes to start your own creative endeavor and the essential keys needed to grow and sustain it. Not only a source for key information the Connect Us event series will serve as a networking experience where creatives and budding entrepreneurs can share ideas.

Click here to RSVP.

Theme:

Show me the money: Creative Ways On Financing Your Venture

Speakers:

John Henry

John Henry is a Dominican-American serial entrepreneur and investor. He started his first company at 18, where he grew the business and successfully lead it through an acquisition just two years later. He is now a Managing Partner at Harlem Capital Partners, an investment fund focused finding the next generation of great entrepreneurs. He also hosts Open For Business, a branded podcast from eBay and Gimlet Creative about building businesses from the ground up. The show debuted at #1 on the Business Podcasts charts on iTunes.

Erica Duignan Minnihan

Erica Duignan Minnihan is CoFounder and Managing Partner at 1000 Angels, a private venture investment network for select accredited investors, family offices, and venture funds. 1000 Angels enables accredited investors to build a high-growth venture portfolio free of management fees, carried interest or capital commitments. The digital platform is complemented by in-person member events with an exceptional community as well as live-streaming educational content and founder interviews.

Erica has been an active investor and advisor to early stage companies for 10 years, and worked on the public market side in investment banking for 8 years prior to that. Before launching 1000 Angels, Erica was a Managing Director at DreamIt Ventures in NYC. She also has served as a founding Executive Director at both STAR Angel Network and Golden Seeds. Prior to beginning a career in venture, she practiced Investment Banking at Citigroup, Credit Suisse and Cantor Fitzgerald.

Erica earned her BA in Business Economics from UCLA and an MBA in Finance with honors from Columbia Business School. She has also made regular appearances on network television for MSNBC and CNBC on “App Wars”, "Your Business" and "Crowd Rules" as a startup business expert.

Grady Spivey III

Grady Spivey III started his career in music, becoming President of A&R at Sony BMG and then transitioned to the business of philanthropy and social entrepreneurship. He is the Founder and CEO of Full Surface Management, an innovative marketing and consulting firm, defining popular culture globally. Grady, currently works alongside The Fund for HHC or now Health and Hospitals, which is New York City's largest municipal healthcare system in the United States. He also works with Smile Design Gallery, a non-profit group, which subsidizes the cost of child dental care through the sale of fine art.

Abran Maldonado

Entrepreneur, Scholar and music industry veteran, Abran Maldonado is the CEO and Founder of the tech startup NuSkool, an online learning platform that converts pop culture and entertainment media into relevant curriculum for the classroom. He has spent over a decade addressing the needs of underserved youth as a developer of new learning technologies, public speaker and educational researcher. After several years in the entertainment industry, Abran decided to further explore digital media and its impact on the advancement of 21st century education. Abran is a Gates Millennium Scholar, an award given to future leaders in the community. He is currently completing a Ph.D. at New York University where he is working on a study on diversity in tech and the lack of Black and Latinx representation in the tech industry.