[RE]MIX 2019

Sara Abou Rashed ’21

Student, poet, creator of ‘’Map of Myself’’

Called ‘’an inspiration,’’ by Marian Wright Edelman, Sara Abou Rashed is an exciting young voice in America. She is a speaker, poet, and storyteller. Sara is originally from Palestine, but was born and raised in Syria. In 2013, she moved with her family to Columbus, Ohio, escaping the Syrian War – and that’s when she first learned English. Sara has keynoted at numerous conferences such as the National Convention of Teachers of English, the United States of Women, and Senator Sherrod Brown’s Women’s Leadership Summit. Her literary works appear in over 12 publications, including The Voice of Youth Advocates and forthcoming high school-level language arts curriculum by McGraw-Hill. Some of Sara’s accolades include giving a TEDx Talk, getting nominated for a Pushcart Prize, and performing at the Tenement Museum …

Maddie Callander ‘09

Director of Operations, Boost VC

Maddie Callander runs operations for the pre-seed VR/AR & Blockchain accelerator, Boost VC, co-founded by Adam Draper and Brayton Williams. She loves working with the incredible founders in the Boost VC ecosystem, learning as much as she can every day, and staying curious at all times. As a deep believer in the power of emerging technologies, Maddie is on a mission to get more women into leadership in early tech sectors.

Prior to joining Boost VC, she built out the private aviation department for the Yellowstone Club in Big Sky, Montana, where she managed member air transportation: marketing, selling and arranging private shuttles (Boeing 737s), private flights (XOJET), and shared-ride options. Additionally, she’s held operation and marketing roles …

Byl Cameron ’90

Founder of Triquetra InfoTech, Inc.

Byl Cameron is the Founder of Triquetra InfoTech, Inc., a digital technology consultancy. He has nearly twenty-five years of experience in Digital Technology, with special focus on financial services technology.  In addition to being an advocate of using technology to produce a better world, Byl spends one hour each day off of all screens to enhance the amount of freethinking that he does.  Byl lives in Charlotte and has three adult sons.

Rick Coplin ’85

CEO, Rick Coplin International

Rick advises C-suite leaders, speaks internationally & consults with entrepreneurial companies and universities.

Rick’s background includes consulting with Fortune 500/100 companies in manufacturing, finance, marketing, and technology acquisition & deployment. Today, Rick advises executives in small (25-200 employees), rapidly growing companies as they transition from Founder to CEO.

Rick is a seasoned entrepreneur, having played a central role building & selling a start-up between 2001 and 2007.

Rick then invested eight years as VP, Community Partner Ventures with Rev1 Ventures, mentoring entrepreneurs and …

Emily David

Co-founder and Head of Education, Bites Media

Emily is a teacher, an advocate for special needs learning and an educational publishing specialist. She holds a B.S. and M.Ed. in early childhood and special education from the University of Maryland and has taught in mainstream and special needs classrooms and consulted for leading educational presses. As Head of Education for Bites Media, Emily ensures that Bites product reflects the voice and needs of the student and incorporates the cutting edge best practices for classroom engagement.

Mike Deegan

Denison Varsity Baseball Coach / Leadership Educator

As a baseball coach, Mike Deegan has won three NCAA National Championships and has mentored numerous all-conference and All-American athletes. As a student-athlete, Mike carried a career .393 batting average, led his team to two NCAA National Championship appearances and graduated as his college’s top scholar-athlete.

While his on-field accolades could surely fill a case or two, Deegan’s proudest accomplishments haven’t been rewarded by a trophy. His greatest achievements aren’t about home runs and he won’t tell you a story about that perfectly timed pitching change or a late inning pinch hitter. For Coach Mike Deegan, it’s all about people.

Baseball teams, like any organization, are …

Todd DeFeo ’01

Founder, The DeFeo Groupe

Todd DeFeo is an award-winning journalist, an avid traveler, amateur historian, a Civil War buff, a ferroequinologist and part-time folk singer.  He focuses on corporate communications, media relations and issues management for a variety of clients.  His client work includes managing media relations, which has enabled Todd to develop close relationships with reporters and editors throughout the Southeast.  He has developed and managed messaging for clients on a range of issues.  Before transitioning to public relations, Todd was a reporter for newspapers in Georgia and Tennessee.  During his tenure, he covered politics, local government, business and education.  He garnered numerous awards for his journalism, including “Story of the Year” from the Georgia Associated Press for his coverage of the Department of Defense’s Base Realignment and Closure process. …

Nick Farrell ’12

Co-Founder / CEO, Bites Media

Nick grew up in a family that owned and operated newspapers for over a century, so you could say a passion for news media is in his blood. After studying economics and communications at Denison, he worked with the Wall Street Journal’s digital strategy team on navigating the digital publishing landscape. He then joined Merrill Lynch as an investment advisor where he learned the ins-and-outs of corporate finance and capital markets. In 2017, when respect and engagement with trusted news organizations was at a low, Nick founded Bites Media, combining his financial experience and news background to develop a platform that aggregates news content and reformats for deeper civic engagement.

Kelly Greer ’85

Owner / Managing Director, Strategy Workplace Communications

Kelly Greer founded Strategy Workplace Communications 26 years ago as a training organization. Strategy has evolved into a workforce development organization focused on helping California companies access training funding and set up incumbent worker training programs. Strategy manages over 20M of workforce development grants annually. Supporting employee training programs in the 5th largest economy in the world means keeping up with new technologies, state goals and business needs.

Heather Harris ’94

Co-Founder of NorthStar Collective

Heather Harris is the Co-Founder of NorthStar Collective, a global company that focuses on consulting, developing and expanding brands and businesses.

Prior to NorthStar, Harris was President of CycleBar Global Franchising, a Cincinnati based boutique fitness company. Before returning to her hometown of Cincinnati, Harris spent 20 years in Manhattan building and driving many top global brands such as; DKNY, Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren, Chaps, NineWest, Liz Claiborne, and Ghurka. …

Winters Heafey ’14

Prior to embarking on his career in commercial real estate, Winters proudly served in the United States Army for the 75th Ranger Regiment. Drawing from this experience, Winter’s expertise is working as an account manager for clients with global, national and regional portfolios to develop and implement corporate real estate strategies. He takes a consultative approach in providing Cresa clients with an integrated service platform that allows a tenant to analyze different real estate scenarios that are mapped to their business priorities and objectives. He serves on the Board of Directors for the Colorado Youth for a Change as well as the AUSA Denver Centennial Chapter as well as the Board of Advisors for Mountain Time Media. Winters received a bachelor’s degree in communication and educational studies from Denison University.

David Howitt ‘90

Founder and CEO, Meriwether Group, Author of Heed Your Call

David M. Howitt, founder & CEO of Meriwether Group, and author of Heed Your Call, is an inspiring thought leader and guiding mentor in the world of commerce. He is an accomplished entrepreneur and published author with over twenty years of experience providing business strategy and brand counsel to startups and Fortune 100 companies.

Through a unique brand ethos and delivery system, he and Meriwether Group provide strategic vision and support to entrepreneurs, disruptive, authentic, and iconic brands, and provide counsel, operational support, and advisory services for the next wave of innovative consumer-focused companies. …

Terry Jones ‘70

Founder of Travelocity and co-founder of Kayak.com

Best known for founding Travelocity.com and serving as founding Chairman of Kayak.com, Terry Jones has become a powerful voice in the world of entrepreneurship through his numerous speaking engagements and the publication of his book, ON Innovation. His career path has established him as a thought leader on innovation in our increasingly digital world.

Jones began his career as a travel agent, spent 24 years at American Airlines in marketing and information technology, capping his career as Chief Information Officer of its SABRE division. While at SABRE he led a team of six working on a project that became Travelocity.com. …

Richard (Rick) Kienzle ’85

Founder and Managing Partner at Steep & Deep Ventures

A Medical Device Executive and Board of Directors with 30 years experience at a variety of Medical Device and Orthopedic companies, multi-national enterprises to start-ups.  Including; Globus Medical (GMED, NYSE – 4.8B), Synthes (now a J&J Subsidiary), US Surgical Corp, Trice Ortho, Synergy Bio-Medical and Medicrea  International.  Currently Mr. Kienzle is the Founder and Managing Partner at Steep & Deep Ventures, a private boutique VC/PE group specializing in nascent and early commercial stage Orthopedic and Medical Device Technologies.  Concurrently he is an active investor / consultant to the SDV portfolio companies. Prior to this, Mr. Kienzle was co-founder of Globus Medical, and served as the Executive Vice President of Global Sales and Marketing. …

Emily Merrell ’09

Founder, Six Degrees Society

Emily, also lovingly referred to as “20 questions” has always loved figuring out people’s stories.  Born in Florida she moved to Connecticut at the ripe age of 12.  In middle school she became famous for being Frida Khalo’s doppelganger, and after being asked what Latin American country she yielded from she decided to study Spanish and Communications (girl needed to communicate!) at a small Liberal Arts school in Ohio.

Upon graduating from Denison University she moved to Buenos Aires to master her Spanish and worked in various industries (ask her about Malbec).  Following her return to New York City, she landed in the Fashion world specializing …

Sarah K. Peck ’05

Founder and Executive Director, Startup Pregnant

Sarah Peck is a writer, startup advisor, and yoga teacher based in New York City. She’s the founder and executive director of Startup Pregnant, a media company that looks at the future of work and women’s leadership. She is the host of the Startup Pregnant podcast and runs deep dive masterminds, events, and retreats for entrepreneurs and business leaders. Previously, she worked at Y Combinator backed One Month, Inc, a company that teaches people to code in 30 days, and prior, as a writing and communications consultant.

While at Denison, she was a 20-time All-American swimmer and later swam the Escape from Alcatraz nine times, once wearing only a swim cap and goggles to raise $33k for charity: water. She writes for Forbes, Inc, Harvard Business Review, …

Meghan Powers ’01

Vice President, Pace Public Relations

Meghan Powers is Vice President at Pace Public Relations, where she is charged with crafting strategic and creative media relations plans. She has served as a booker, writer, and segment producer for various top-rated national news programs at FOX News Channel and CNBC Business News, and was the lead Interview Producer for Al Jazeera America’s Real Money with Ali Velshi. At FOX News Channel, she traveled for the network’s coverage of major news stories, including Hurricane Katrina, the Sago mining accident, and the disappearance of Natalee Holloway. She received her Bachelor’s Degree in Media, Technology, and Arts from Denison University in Granville, Ohio, and studied abroad at the National University of Ireland in Galway, Ireland. She is currently attending American University’s Master’s in Strategic Communication graduate program in Washington, D.C.

Lucy B. Reynolds ’94

Olerai Leadership Founder

Lucy is an experienced business Coach and Facilitator who recently lived and worked abroad for six years in Amsterdam, Moscow and Tokyo. She has coached and facilitated across cultures and countries and has the ability to quickly understand complex dynamics.

Lucy coaches her professional clients through transformational change in the workplace, pursuit of their full potential as leaders, and development of high performing team dynamics. She brings strong communication skills to her work designing and delivering leadership development workshops and coaching programs. Her style has been described as astute, fun, and energetic. …

Duncan Riefler ’81

Manager, European & American Capital Advisors

Duncan has spent his post Denison career in the financial services industry. He spent 19 years in the United Kingdom where he co-founded a credit trading brokerage that focused on below investment and distressed credit. Since returning to the US last year he is raising capital and advising smaller companies who may benefit from cross ocean expertise. He has interests in agtech and renewable initiatives among others.

Heather Stouffer ’96

Founder & CEO, Mom Made Foods

Eating healthy, well-balanced meals have always been an important part of Heather Stouffer’s life.  She left Denison not sure what she wanted to do but she knew she wanted to work in a field related to children’s health.  In 2006, as a new parent, she launched Mom Made Foods at a local farmer’s market to offer frozen organic meals for children. She has since expanded the company’s frozen food lines into thousands of grocery store freezers nationally.  Mom Made Foods works with some of the nation’s most celebrated grocery retailers including Whole Foods, Kroger, Walmart, Safeway and HEB to name a few.

Not only has her dream for making healthy children’s foods been realized, but she’s been awarded Progressive Grocer’s …

Jack Tankersley ’72

Founder and Managing Director, Meritage Funds

Jack is a co-founder of Meritage Funds with 40 years of experience as a private equity investor, having raised, invested and managed more than $1.0 billion of capital during his career.  Jack is responsible for a number of highly successful investments in companies such as Crown Castle and Brooks Fiber Properties.  Prior to Meritage, he co-founded Centennial Funds in 1981 and served as its CEO and/or CIO until 1997.  He serves or has served as a director of numerous Centennial and Meritage portfolio companies, both public and private.

Jack is a member of the Board of Trustees of Denison University and the National Trust for Historic Preservation. …

Greg Taylor ’86

CEO, Mason Company

Greg Taylor is President & CEO of the Mason Company, a leading designer and manufacturer of animal enclosures for humane societies, veterinarians, pet resorts and other animal facilities. Mason sells around the world, has installations in over 35 countries, and has worked with many of the largest and most successful animal shelters, pet resorts and veterinary hospitals to develop animal housing unique to their facilities. Prior to joining the Mason Company in 2008, Greg spent 11 years with Blue Chip Venture Company, a private equity firm headquartered in Cincinnati, OH. Greg started his career as an Associate and was subsequently promoted to Partner. Responsibilities included sourcing and analyzing opportunities, leading investments, serving on portfolio company boards and directing follow on financing’s and exits. Greg began his career at Omnicare, Inc., a former NYSE healthcare company located in greater Cincinnati. …

Matt Walker ’06

Co-Founder and CEO of Pinch Inc.

Matt Walker is always on the relentless pursuit of growth, whether personal, team, or business.

He has spent 12 years as a demand-side Consultant, helping global companies like Apple, CocaCola, Disney, Ford, Google X, Microsoft, and PepsiCo increase demand for products and services through new product development/innovation, optimizing customer understanding and targeting, and marketing/communications development and refinement.

Matt is also a Mentor with the Founder Institute, helping early stage startups in the Los Angeles area with idea refinement, reaching product-market fit, go to market strategy, and marketing/communication strategy. …