Jennifer Rankin Byrne is the founder and principal of MERIT Coaching Communications Consulting in Cincinnati, Ohio, where she coaches leaders and communicators to sharpen their voice, build executive presence, and lead with authenticity. She brings more than two decades of communications leadership, including years as Vice President of Corporate Communications at PBS and earlier roles at the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office, AOL, and Turner Broadcasting/CNN. Her practice blends real-world corporate experience with a curiosity-led, customized coaching approach summed up in her tagline: 'Communicate with purpose. Grow with confidence.'
The Aruna Project is a Cincinnati-based nonprofit athleisure brand that creates lifelong freedom for survivors of sex trafficking through employment supported by holistic care. Founded in 2014 by Ryan and April Berg after time spent in Mumbai's red-light districts, Aruna employs survivor artisans in India and the US to craft premium bags, totes, and hair accessories - with 100% of sales revenue reinvested into freeing, employing, and empowering women. Its 'Freedom Business' model reports an 86% sustained freedom rate versus a 23% industry standard, and its national Aruna Run 5K series mobilizes thousands of runners to 'Run for Her Freedom.'

Michael Green is the CEO and co-founder of Athena Security, an Austin-based company that builds AI-powered concealed weapons detection systems for schools, hospitals, casinos, and other public spaces. A Harvard-educated former family-business operator turned compliance-software builder, Green pivoted into physical security after surviving a close encounter with gunfire. He leads a roughly 110-person company that has raised $18.6 million to keep guns out of the places where people gather.
Ryan Berg is the co-founder and CEO of The Aruna Project, a Cincinnati-based athleisure bag and accessories brand stitched entirely by survivors of sex trafficking. With his wife April, he built a hybrid model that fuses a for-profit fashion label with nonprofit holistic care - transitional housing, counseling, healthcare and a living wage - to create what he calls lifelong freedom. The work started after a single TV news brief about children rescued from a brothel sent him hunting for that brothel on a business trip to India, where he found a two-mile stretch holding an estimated 15,000 enslaved women. The Aruna Project says it has helped free and employ more than 160 women across India and the Tri-State and contributed to an 86% drop in trafficking in that part of India.
Paul Powers is the co-founder and CEO of Physna, the Ohio startup teaching computers to understand the physical world by turning 3D geometry into searchable 'Physical DNA.' A homeschooled kid who entered Harvard at 16 and later passed the German bar exam in a foreign language, he turned an intellectual-property obsession into a geometric-search company backed by Sequoia, Tiger Global, and Drive Capital. Physna also runs Thangs, a community platform of tens of millions of 3D models that he describes as the GitHub for hardware. A Forbes 30 Under 30 honoree, Powers is one of the most prominent founders building deep-tech outside Silicon Valley.

Robert W. Jones is a Cincinnati-based venture investor who spent 30 years rising through General Electric - from GE Plastics to GE Capital to GE Aviation - before retiring as Senior Executive of Human Resources for GE Aviation's Global Engineering organization. In retirement, he founded Realm Capital Ventures, a family venture investment firm focused on global innovation, became a Limited Partner at Y Combinator and Kearny Jackson, and joined Queen City Angels as an Investor Member. He is also a community leader with board roles at the Urban League of Greater Southwestern Ohio, University of Cincinnati's Lindner College of Business, and more.

Jane Friedman is one of publishing's most trusted independent voices - a Cincinnati-based author, educator, and industry analyst who has spent two decades demystifying the business of writing. Through her newsletters Electric Speed (30,000+ subscribers, running since 2009) and The Bottom Line (8,000+ paid subscribers), her book The Business of Being a Writer, and her widely-read site janefriedman.com, she helps authors navigate a publishing landscape that keeps reinventing itself. She came to prominence beyond publishing circles in 2023 when AI-generated fake books appeared on Amazon under her name, making her an unlikely but authoritative voice on AI, authorship, and copyright.