Dennis Kimbro Ph.D. Educator & Best-Selling Author
Few individuals impact the day-to-day management of organizations and institutions as Dennis Kimbro. A tireless educator, author, and Business school professor, Dr. Kimbro is universally characterized as one of the most insightful and scholarly writers in the field today. As a lecturer and researcher in the field of management, entrepreneurship, and human potential, he encourages his readers to look within to extract the keys that underlie all accomplishments. He received his B.A. and M.A. degrees from the University of Oklahoma, and a doctorate from Northwestern University where he studied wealth and poverty among underdeveloped countries. With his course work behind him, Dr. Kimbro combed the country interviewing scores of America’s most notable achievers. Eventually, his inquisition led to the question: How can impoverished black Americans pull themselves out of their poverty and reach their full potential?
To broaden and enhance the scope of the project, Dr. Kimbro studied the methodology of Napoleon Hill, author of the phenomenal bestseller Think and Grow Rich. Using Think and Grow Rich as a reference, Dr. Kimbro decided to do what Hill had done in the 1930s. He developed a survey to use among peak-performing black Americans. Two years later, he learned from the foundation bearing Hill’s name that, Hill himself, had drafted a book in 1970 that explored the identical question. Moreover, Hill had written nearly one hundred pages on the subject, which turned out to be his last. After a personal meeting with W. Clement Stone, president of the Napoleon Hill Foundation, Dr. Kimbro was commissioned to update and complete Hill’s original manuscript. Think and Grow Rich: A Black Choice, the results of Dr. Kimbro’s and Hill’s efforts, distills the secrets of success contained in the lives of peak performing men and women and reveals how readers can use utilize these keys to make their dreams come true.
Dennis is married and the father of three daughters, Kelli, Kimberli, and MacKenzie. His honors include various awards bestowed by the business community as well as the Dale Carnegie “Personal Achievement” award. Currently, Dr. Kimbro teaches on the faculty at the Clark Atlanta University School of Business Administration. In 1996, he served as one of eight national judges for the prestigious Ernst & Young USA Today Entrepreneur of the Year held in Palm Springs, California.
Dr. Kimbro’s writings have influenced readers from the streets of Melbourne, Australia, to Johannesburg, South Africa to Seoul, South Korea, to Reykjavik, Iceland. From the boardrooms of General Motors, Walt Disney Corp., Frito-Lay, and Citigroup to name a few. He has addressed both the Notre Dame “Fighting Irish” and Ohio State “Buckeye” football teams as well as the Kansas City Royals Baseball team. He has appeared on the Today Show, Larry King, CNN, and has been featured in Success!, Wall Street Journal, New York Times, and USA Today on numerous occasions sharing the keys to success and achievement. Dr. Kimbro’s highest honor occurred when the Nat’l Black MBA Association presented him with the “2005 H. Naylor Fitzhugh” award, emblematic of the top black business professor in the nation. As the author of “Daily Motivations for African American Success” and the highly acclaimed “What Makes the Great Great: Strategies for Extraordinary Achievement,” his fourth book, “What Keeps Me Standing: A Black Grand-mother’s Guide to Peace, Hope and Inspiration” (Doubleday), has appeared on several bestsellers lists.
Tim Grover CEO, ATTACK Athletics, Inc.
For more than 30 years, Tim S. Grover has been the preeminent trainer, mentor, and advisor to sports’ greatest icons, including Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Dwyane Wade, Charles Barkley, and hundreds of champions in the NFL, MLB, NHL, golf, tennis, and the Olympics. He is the CEO of ATTACK Athletics, Inc., founded in 1989.
Tim is the New York Times bestselling author of WINNING: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness and RELENTLESS: From Good to Great to Unstoppable.
Tim appears around the world as a keynote speaker and consultant to business leaders, athletes, and elite achievers in any area, teaching the principles of relentless drive, result-driven performance, mental toughness, and the ultimate winning mentality.
He appeared throughout ESPN/Netflix’s THE LAST DANCE, and has been a featured columnist at SI.com and Yahoo.com. He also appears regularly on ESPN, FoxSports1, and other media outlets. He is also the creator of the digital training platform “The Relentless System.”
Tim earned his Master’s degree in Exercise Science and his Bachelor’s degree in Kinesiology at University of Illinois-Chicago. As a former NCAA Division I basketball player at the University of Illinois-Chicago, Grover was inducted into the UIC Hall of Fame with the Lifetime Achievement Award in 2010.
Shonté Jovan Taylor Founder, OptiMind Institute
Shonté Jovan Taylor is a Neuroscientist, Success Trainer, Author & founder of the OptiMind Institute who is igniting minds and hearts around the world through coaching, training, & speaking. The mind and brain are the keys to our ultimate fulfillment, creativity, productivity, focus, happiness, success & humanity. The ability to get out of our comfort zones to pursue new adventures, professions, and entrepreneurial heights is 90% brain management and the rest is LEARNING new skills, taking ACTION, and being held ACCOUNTABLE.
Shonté has shared the stage with success expert Jack Canfield, transformed minds at TEDx, and is a part of the Forbes Coaching Council. Her 007 mission: To guide ambitious people to harness their brainpower to reach their full potential in life, profession and business.
Lamar Tyler Founder Traffic Sales and Profit
Using his motto “The Gatekeepers Are Gone,” Lamar has leveraged social media to move his online brands from small personal blogs to an international brand with over 650,000 social media fans and 55 thousand plus customers in all 50 states and 43 countries around the world.
Among the recognition received for his work, Lamar, along with wife Ronnie was named one of Ebony Magazine’s Power 100, a list of the top 100 movers and shakers in the black community, finalists for Black Enterprise’s Family Business of the Year, finalists for Infusionsoft’s Small Business ICON award and winners of the ClickFunnels Two Comma Award.
Ronnie Tyler COO, Tyler New Media
Recognizing the need for positive images of black marriage in the media, Ronnie founded BlackandMarriedWithKids.com (BMWK) in 2007 along with husband Lamar. Over the last twelve years, she has grown the site from a personal blog shared by one couple to an international brand with over 600,000 social media fans.
Under the couple’s Tyler New Media company umbrella, Ronnie has co-produced seven films that deal with the challenges and triumphs of marriage in the black community. The couple was named one of Ebony Magazine’s Power 100 in 2011 and 2012.
Prior to running BMWK, Ronnie spent 17 years with IBM as a Certified Project Management Professional (PMP) managing projects with 30 million dollar budgets and up to 30 developers spread across 4 continents. She now uses her skills and expertise to manage 7-figure product launches and events for Tyler New Media, LLC.
Ronnie believes that, by default, every entrepreneur or small business owner is a project manager at some point in their business. Therefore, she has made it her mission to share project management best practices that will not only increase efficiency but profitability in your business.
Karen Baxter Ms. Creative CEO
Karen Baxter, A.K.A Ms. Creative CEO is an outspoken voice in the crafting industry. As a creative she knows how hard it can be to focus the creative mind in a corporate world. Her mission is to help creatives bridge the gap between their creativity and their coins.
Known for giving it to you straight, no chaser, she will snatch you up and get your mindset together and help you get on the path to creative success. She is passionate about creatives, especially women, getting out of their way and getting to the BAG.
Karen has been an entrepreneur for over 25 years and she has been a professional crafter for over 10 years. She is a Michaels Stores influencer and national instructor. She is the first person and person of color to have a video series on the Michaels Stores platform. Executives of top companies in the crafting industry have mentored her. She has helped grow a community of crafters to over 200k and counting. She has built her own thriving community, The Creative Boss Collective. She is most proud of helping her clients find their confidence and coaching them to six-figure success.
Shadé Y. Adu Award-Winning Digital Brand Strategist & Bestselling Author
Shadé Y. Adu is an award-winning Digital Brand Strategist, Bestselling Author, and an International Speaker with a passion for people and a love for helping others succeed in life. Driven by the desire to support women entrepreneurs and facilitate the creation of generational wealth, Shadé is truly committed to offering a comprehensive range of services which is oriented towards achieving the 3 I’s; Income, Influence, and Impact. Whether working with a company or a brand, she will stop at nothing short of ensuring desired outcomes.
Shadé has had the pleasure of being featured on Hello Beautiful, Black Enterprise, The Network Journal, and the Rachel Ray Show. She has also spoken at and facilitated numerous workshops in Kazakhstan and Ghana as well as in universities, high schools, and institutions throughout the United States. In addition to being a full-time entrepreneur, Shadé is a full-time doctoral candidate and the recipient of the prestigious Gates Millennium Scholarship. She attributes her success to great mentoring and spiritual favor, paying it forward with the goal of inspiring positive change in the world around her.
Shana Campbell Chief Learning Strategist, Launch Your Brilliance
When it comes to bringing ideas to life in the form of compelling premium courses and digital products, no one does it better than Shana Campbell, founder of the brands ThinkLearnEngage and Launch Your Brilliance. Known as Your Brilliance Strategist, Shana has worked with countless coaches, consultants, and course creators, transforming their expertise into profitable new income streams by developing custom courses and digital products. In addition, she has also taught them how to effectively pivot to corporate using courses.
Shana is a certified Master Trainer and Instructional Designer with a track record of getting results for brands like Hilton, State Farm and Cox Communications. With the combination of serving both entrepreneurs and corporate organizations she is uniquely qualified to elevate her clients’ content so that the world can see them shine. She walks the talk in sharing her brilliance as a sought-after global speaker and trainer who has served in over 12 countries.
Samuel Genus Founder, Funnel Goal, LLC
Samuel Genus is the founder of Funnel Goal, LLC.
He provides strategic consulting and software tools to help small business owners predict the outcome of their funnel before it’s ever built, so they can launch more effectively and reach their funnel goals with less financial risks.
His motto… “The Funnel Goal… is the goal.”
His aim is to help 1,000 businesses not just build a funnel but build a funnel that achieves their business goals.
Joy Pittman Founder, HR For The Culture
Coined “Your HR Connect” Joy Pittman is a Human Resources Strategist and Thought Leader working to close the racial wealth gap for Black business owners and the people they employ.
To this end, in 2017, Joy founded HR For The Culture, the premier HR Consulting & Outsource Firm for black women-owned start-ups and small businesses. Joy has been featured on several podcasts, panels, and publications, including the She Leads Podcast, State Of Young Black New York Annual Conference hosted by the NY Urban League & Thrive Global, to name a few.
Currently, Joy sits on the Advisory Board of the Transformational Leadership Program at Pace University in NY. In addition, she facilitates the “Boss Up Your Business” virtual community, where she supports over 800 Black women as they build the teams they need to scale their businesses by the end of 2021.
Before founding HR4TC, Joy served in the for-profit and not-for-profit sectors as an HR Leader across industries including social services, health care, education, real estate management, and corporate finance for over 15 years. Joy holds a Master’s degree in Human Resources Management, Bachelor’s degree in Economics, SPHR, and SHRM-SCP certifications, and is a 2023 JD Candidate at Rutgers Law School in Newark, NJ.
Ephraim Egbele Founder and Managing Director, EFS Group
Ephraim Egbele is Founder and Managing Director of EFS Group, PLLC where he focuses on client relations and business development. Ephraim has been a Certified Public Accountant since 2012.
Previously, Ephraim was an Audit Associate at Pricewaterhouse Coopers, where he worked on financial audit engagements of large Fortune 100 companies. Since 2009, Ephraim has dedicated his career to helping small business owners strategize on how they can maximize their profits while lowering their tax liabilities. Ephraim’s dedicated work has helped hundreds of entrepreneurs improve their business finances which in turn has helped them grow their businesses.
Ephraim holds a Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting from the University of Houston. Ephraim is a Gold level Xero Certified Advisor. He is also a proud member of the National Association of Black Accountants (NABA) and the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA). For fun, he enjoys traveling, dining out and spending time with his wife and twin boys.
Brandy Woods-Smith TSP Live Emcee & CEO, Imagine Me Academy
Brandy Woods-Smith is a charismatic and passionate educator, entrepreneur, speaker, author and consultant. She is known as a thought leader, change agent, community developer and to many she is hailed the Millionaire Midwife.
After serving the public school system for 13 years, Woods opened Imagine Me Academy in 2013 and now has multiple locations.
In her quest to help other aspiring entrepreneurs achieve success, she founded Powerhouses United (PHU). PHU is a business incubator designed to give education, resources and profit producing strategies to businesses owners. The Childcare Millionaires Association is the fastest growing division of PHU helping hundreds of Childcare owners achieve optimal success.
Believe BIG! Expect BIG! Do BIG! is the mantra she lives by. Woods says, “Although BIG is not the most eloquent word, it gets the vision across clearly! With belief in my heart, the work of my hands, and the words in my mouth. I will accomplish what I am commissioned to do: Motivate! Educate! Produce!”