Season 3 Podcast Guests

Brian E. Argrett

Brian E. Argrett, President & CEO / City First Bank and Broadway Financial Corporation

Timothy Bates

Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University

Professor Bates is the Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Labor and Urban Affairs at Wayne State University and is an expert in minority entrepreneurship in the United States.  

Marcia Chatelain

Professor, Department of History Faculty, American Studies Program

 Marcia Chatelain is a Professor of history and African American studies at Georgetown University. 

Topiltzin Gomez

Chief of Staff Honeycomb Credit

Topiltzin Gomez is the Chief of Staff at Honeycomb Credit, a loan crowdfunding platform where everyday people can lend directly to small businesses.

Caron Gugssa-Howard

Director of Programs / ICA

Caron Gugssa-Howard has over 15 years of strategy and entrepreneurial experience, beginning her entrepreneurial journey as a teen and operating several micro-enterprises after graduating from the Women’s Initiative for Self Employment. 

Kylie Jiwon Hwang

Postdoctoral Fellow - Stanford Graduate School of Business

Kylie Jiwon Hwang is  currently a Postdoctoral Fellow at Stanford Graduate School of Business. She received her PhD in Management from Columbia Business School.

Gerald Jaynes

A. Whitney Griswold Professor of Economics, African American Studies, and Urban Studies / Yale University

Gerald D. Jaynes is professor in the department of Economics and the department of African American Studies at Yale University.  He earned the doctorate in economics from the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, 1976.  

James Johnson-Piett

Principal and CEO, Urbane Development

James is an evangelist for a new kind of community development that emphasizes community anchor businesses and institutions as agents of change. As CEO of Urbane Development, a venture focused on building generational community wealth, James is an expert in neighborhood scale development and the revitalization of urban commercial and retail assets. 

Marissa King

Professor of Organizational Behavior / Yale School of Management

Professor King’s research examines social networks, social influence, and team dynamics. Her most recent line of work analyzes the role social networks played in the prescription drug abuse epidemic. 

Donna Lecky

CFO & Co-Founder, HealthVenture Managing Director

Donna Lecky, prior to founding HealthVenture, previously was VP, Chief Tax Officer and Tax Counsel at Omnicare, a CVS Company. She was also the Treasurer and Chief Benefits Officer. Prior to Omnicare, Donna was the VP, Chief Tax Officer and General Tax Counsel of HealthSouth Corporation. Before HealthSouth, for approximately 20 years, she operated in various roles with KPMG, Ernst & Young and Deloitte where she supported healthcare and financial services clients in the areas of finance and tax structures, mergers & acquisitions, due diligence, strategy and business development. 

Frederick McKinney

Co-founder / BJM Solutions, LLC

Dr. Fred McKinney is the co-founder of BJM Solutions, LLC an economic consulting firm specializing in supplier diversity and minority business development.  From 2018 to 2021, Dr. McKinney was the Carlton Highsmith Chair for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and the Director of the People’s United Center for Innovation & Entrepreneurship at the Quinnipiac University School of Business. At Quinnipiac, Dr. McKinney was responsible for teaching entrepreneurship and being a catalyst for entrepreneurship on campus with students, teachers, staff, and the business community.

Banu Ozkazanc-Pan

Professor of Practice at the School of Engineering and Academic Director of the IE Brown EMBA program

Banu Ozkazanc-Pan is Professor of Practice at the School of Engineering and Academic Director of the IE Brown EMBA program. She is also the Founder and Director of the Venture Capital Inclusion Lab at the Nelson Center for Entrepreneurship. 

Boris Sigal

Co-Executive Director / Community Purchasing Alliance (CPA)

Boris Sigal works to make sure CPA has the capacity to provide a great experience for member institutions and vendors alike. That includes building out operational systems to accommodate an increasing number of customers and service offerings, benchmarks that maintain financial strength, and strategies to continue to grow cooperative purchasing and social impact opportunities.

Dianna Tremblay

Chief Program Officer / ICA

Dianna Tremblay is the Chief Program Officer at ICA.  She is responsible for scaling the impact of the ICA’s programs and cultivating the support and capital ecosystem necessary for entrepreneurs to scale their businesses.  

Stanley W. Tucker

President, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder / Meridian Management Company, Inc (MMG)

Stanley W. Tucker has more than 30 years of diversified business experience with a strong emphasis on lending, venture capital investing and the development of socially or economically disadvantaged small businesses. Mr. Tucker is President, Chief Executive Officer and co-founder of Meridian Management Company, Inc (MMG). 

Zulema Valdez

Professor, University of California, Merced

Professor of Sociology and Associate Vice Provost for the Faculty, University of California, Merced