Michael Polk is the President and CEO of Implus, the Durham, North Carolina maker of footcare, fitness and sporting goods brands like Sof Sole, Spenco, Yaktrax and TriggerPoint. A first-generation American and career consumer-goods operator, he spent decades climbing through Procter & Gamble, Kraft Foods and Unilever before running Newell Brands for eight years, where he led a transformation that roughly tripled enterprise value. Since 2020 he has paired the Implus job with an advisory role at private equity firm Berkshire Partners, trading the glare of a public-company quarter for the hands-on work of building brands shoulder-to-shoulder with a smaller team.
Andrew Curtis is the CEO of Clearco, the Toronto-based fintech that fronts cash to ecommerce brands without taking their equity. A two-decade Wall Street veteran of leveraged credit and restructurings - with stops at Merrill Lynch and Lazard Freres - he arrived as an advisor in 2022, took the top job in early 2023, and steered the once-troubled company through a recapitalization and a ground-up rebuild. Under him, Clearco has deployed billions across thousands of brands, tripled funding in 2024, and relaunched a platform he pitches as 'capital that thinks like a founder.'
Anthony Vidergauz is the former CEO of California Closets who turned a struggling $2 million acquisition into a $300 million-per-year national brand. A South African immigrant and trained lawyer who arrived in the US in 1986 with $5,000, he joined California Closets in 1987 as legal counsel, then acquired the company from Williams-Sonoma in 1994. Over the next 13 years, he transformed it through lifestyle marketing - including a magazine sold at Barnes & Noble - and franchise relationship-building, growing to over 100 locations across North America and six countries. After selling in 2007, he now runs The Paradise Group, a boutique consulting firm advising franchise businesses on strategy, culture, and leadership.
Joe Vernachio is the CEO of Allbirds, the once high-flying wool-shoe brand he is now trying to put back on its feet. A 30-plus year outdoor and athletic industry veteran who started as a product manager at Chouinard Equipment and has since steered product at Patagonia, Nike, Roots, Spyder, The North Face and Mountain Hardwear, he took the top job at Allbirds in March 2024 after three years as COO. He is part product geek, part operator, and an Everest aspirant who once spent a month getting through the Khumbu Icefall.
Steven Pease is the CEO of Clarify Health Solutions, a San Francisco-based healthcare analytics platform serving payers, providers, and life sciences companies with AI-powered patient journey insights. A seasoned operator with 25+ years of C-suite experience across industries ranging from toys to big data, Pease is perhaps best known for steering Hustle - a venture-backed peer-to-peer texting platform - from the brink of shutdown to a profitable $29M exit in under two years. He joined Clarify in October 2024 as CFO and COO before ascending to CEO, bringing financial discipline and operational rigor to a company that has raised over $400M and serves as healthcare's premier analytics intelligence platform.
Chris O'Neill is a veteran technology executive with 25+ years of leadership across Google, Evernote, Glean, and Xero. Best known for leading Evernote's turnaround as CEO (2015-2018) and doubling its user base, he joined GrowthLoop as CEO in August 2024, steering the composable CDP startup through its AI transformation and Series D funding. A Tuck School of Business (Dartmouth) MBA and former Google Canada Managing Director who scaled that business to billions in revenue, O'Neill is also a board director at Gap Inc. and a published contributor to Fast Company and Fortune on the themes of AI, leadership, and compound growth.