Speakers & Agenda: Serious Business- Chicago

Tom Gimbel is the founder and CEO of LaSalle Network, a staffing, recruiting and culture company headquartered in Chicago. LaSalle has been named to the Inc. 500/5000 list of fastest growing companies for the last 9 years, as well as Glassdoor’s 2016 list of “Best Places to Work” and to Inc. Magazine’s 2016 “Best Workplaces” list in America. Gimbel is an expert on hiring, career management and company culture, contributing to Inc. Magazine and The Wall Street Journal. Gimbel appears frequently on CNBC, TODAY, Bloomberg, Fox Business Network, and in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Crain’s Chicago Business, among others.

As a serial entrepreneur, Riana Lynn has developed high-growth, nationally recognized technology and food businesses. From her grandmother’s garden to the White House South Lawn, and travel throughout local and international agricultural pipelines, she was inspired to develop innovative supply chain management tools and create the food technology platform, FoodTrace. Her accomplishments have been featured on CNBC’s “The Profit,” as well as in USA Today, Wired Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, Crain’s “20 in their 20s”, and other local and national publications. While getting her hands dirty in the White House Kitchen Garden, her work included major policy initiatives such as Small Business and Jobs, STEM, and Women and Girls. Riana currently serves as the Google – Code 2040 Entrepreneur in Residence.

As vice president of Research and Policy at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Dane Stangler serves on the Foundation’s senior leadership team and leads a staff of economic research analysts and senior scholars who are conducting or funding hundreds of studies on entrepreneurship and youth education. Stangler is the author of several research reports and has written dozens of pieces for national news outlets, including The Wall Street Journal, Inc., The Hill, Real Clear Politics, and Huffington Post, and Forbes.com. He also is frequently quoted on broadcast news outlets and has been a featured speaker at meetings and conferences around the world.

Craig Wortmann is a Clinical Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago’s Booth School of Business. Craig designed, developed and teaches the award-winning course called “Entrepreneurial Selling,” recently ranked by Inc. Magazine as one of the “Top Ten” courses in the country. Craig is also the author of “What’s Your Story?”, a book that looks at how leaders and sales professionals use stories to connect, engage and inspire. Over the last twenty years, Craig has developed a set of sales and leadership tools critical to delivering results. This became the cornerstone of his company Sales Engine Inc.

The Proposition: Entrepreneurs are born, not made

Tom Gimbel

Riana Lynn

Dane Stangler

Craig Wortmann

James Ledbetter

AGENDA