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Born in the mountains of West Virginia, Mr. Myers has come a long way with a distinguished career in show biz. He began singing Jazz and Blues with the touring company of “Negro Music in Vogue.” Mr. Myers received a Masters in Comparative Literature and is currently seeking a PhD in that field. He also reads, writes and speaks French, German, Spanish and several African languages.
As Chairman and Chief Enlightenment Officer for Global Business Incubation (501c3) and Chairman of the Lou Myers Scenario Motion Picture Institute/Theatre, Mr. Myers is a well respected futurist, historian, mentor, lecturer and trainer. He has toured colleges, universities and many other venues, performing, storytelling and speaking on panels with professors and business experts around the world about new trends in business and urban community economic development.
Mr. Myers also has extensive acting experience. He has performed at local New York concert halls, cabarets, night clubs, colleges and universities as well as on Broadway and off-Broadway. He won the NAACP “Best Actor” Award and off-Broadway Audience “Best Actor” Award for his role of Stool Pigeon in “King Hedley II.” He was recently awarded the coveted “Living Legend Award” from the National Black Theatre Festival. He previously won the off-Broadway Audience “Best Actor” award for the tap dancing bodyguard in “Fat Tuesday.” As founder and director of the “Shake Ensemble Players,” he for eight years during Black History month continually performed the historical and educational play “Foot Steps from Before,” which was written and produced by Mr. Myers.
Mr. Myers TV credits include: NYPD Blue, EVE, E.R., The Cosby Show, Touched by an Angel, J.A.G., The Jamie Fox Show and as a regular in The Cosby Show spin-off - A Different World - that starred Jasmine Guy.
His movie credits include: The Fighting Temptations, Lakawanna Blues (HBO), Wedding Planner, How Stella got her Groove Back, Bullworth, Friday after Next, Passions of Darkly Noon (Showtime), Cobb, Tin Cup, Volcano, Everything’s Jake, The Stand In, All About You and Goodbye Lover.
Mr. Myers is currently working with Debbie Allen and Jasmine Guy on a new sitcom entitled "My Parents, my Sister and me." He can also be seen performing his one man cabaret show, "Just a little bit of Somethin'" at Windows Over Harlem in New York City. His Cabaret show has been acclaimed in Berlin, Paris, Hong Kong, Tokyo, and New York, as well as Los Angeles at the Roosevelt Hotel. He recently completed his fifth appearance on Broadway in “Cat on a Hot Tin Roof” African American Style. “Oprah Winfrey’s The Color Purple” marked Lou Myers fourth Broadway appearance. Lou is best known as the irascible restaurant owner “Mr. Gaines” on the hit Television series “A Different World”.
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Ms. McDonald is President of The Lou Myers Scenario Motion Picture Institute/Theatre and Global Business Incubation, Inc. (GBI) (501 c3). Through her leadership, GBI provides a wide range of services from focus group development to arranging strategic alliances, from training leadership teams to facilitating executive board meetings.
Tonia McDonald was selected to be among 49 of California’s Top Women Corporate Executives, Business Professionals, Educators and State Government & Non-Profit Leaders in Leadership California, a prestigious, yearlong program for 50 women leaders from across the state of California. The Annual Issues Program (AIP) provides focused development of women leaders, exposing them to critical public and private sector issues and enhancing their competitive knowledge. It connects women leaders from across the state with each other and with top decision-makers, thinkers and practitioners.
Through GBI, she led the collaborative partnership with Los Angeles downtown community development agencies, corporations, colleges and universities to create a multi-media, entertainment, technology Incubator in the Historic Core of downtown LA. Over 50 companies were incubated which helped to create 300 new jobs in a depressed and high unemployment area. In April of 2000, she and her GBI partner received the White House Millennium Council Award for “...modeling hope, imagination and courage in incubating small businesses in Los Angeles.”
Also through GBI, she led the team collaborative partnership with the Port of Los Angeles to create a series of interactive cooperative workshops focused on Small and Mid-sized Companies partnering with and doing Business successfully with China. These workshops brought together Chinese buyers from China, U.S. Bankers, Export Officials and other partners crucial for trading successfully with China to over 400 small and mid-sized companies from southern California.
Ms. McDonald has also designed computerized telecommunication systems for the Chicago Board Trade stock market floor; worked in the electrical manufacturing industry; served on the Board of Directors of several technology companies; and as a corporate lobbyist for the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences (NCMS).
She has co-authored a book on business incubation and published many articles and niche market magazines that focused on future trends. Currently, she is launching The Urban Futurist Publication and Newsletter to address and track the economic, technological and educational trends of urban communities.
She has served as the President and coordinator for the Greater Los Angeles Area Futurist, a partner and Chapter of the World Future Society and is a Strategic Business Futurist focusing on the human side of enterprise, education and communities. One way she is helping to inform and educate Communities about the future is through yearly conferences that focus on modeling positive scenarios of the future.
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Mr. McDonald is Founder and Chief Research Officer for Lou Myers Scenario Motion Picture Institute/Theatre and Global Business Incubation (GBI). He is a highly effective researcher, innovator futurist, communicator, facilitator, and change agent. Mr. McDonald has pioneered the incorporation of modeling, simulating and scenario planning experiential strategies into his work with cities, corporate executives, small business owners, educators and inner city youth.
Over a 25 year period, he has documented and benchmarked the blueprints of successful entrepreneurs, corporations, business incubators, cooperatives, teaching and testing factories, economic development programs, and community and business wealth creation models and systems used around the world including: Sunkist Corporation, Control Data Corporation, Mondragon, REACH, Silicon Valley, McDonalds, National Center for Manufacturing Sciences, The Irish Answer, The Ben Franklin Partnership, and The Austin Technology Incubator. His training and facilitating experience has enabled him to test and refine his research and futurists approaches to managing change and navigating the new economy.
As part of his research, Mr. McDonald has met and interviewed famous and notable wealth creators including Ray Kroc of McDonalds, Walt Disney of Disney, W. Clement Stone - the Father of Motivational Speaking, Jack Goldsen - founder of FTD Florist, MCI, and the AirPhone and Dr. George Kotsmetsky - founder of Teledyne Corporation and the IC2 Institute at the University of Texas in Austin.
Mr. McDonald serves as the "imagineer" of the blueprint for the implementation of GBI's Collaborative Demonstration Project which is based on the "world's best practices". This project is envisioned to serve as an economic engine for the development of multimedia "edutainment" based small businesses within underserved communities to power and broadcast the rebirth of viable new urban business communities in “Zero Time”. He is responsible for keeping this innovative project on track and focused on results.
As a nationally recognized urban futurist, Paul McDonald has taught students, conducted workshops, and participated in strategic alliance and think tank conferences at Loyola Marymount University, (a GBI sponsor and partner). He has also organized and presented at many other colleges and universities, corporations, and community groups including: Harvard University, MIT, Yale, University of Texas at Austin, Chicago State University, UCLA and San Diego State University's Minority Business Development Corporation and San Diego State Foundation.
Through his presentations and seminars, Mr. McDonald has influenced university professors, instructors, students and personnel. He also has consulted for cities, community organizations, small businesses, non-profit agencies and high level corporate personnel including several nationally known Corporate CEO's and scientists.
In his capacity as a "Zero Time Scholar," Mr. McDonald has served as a new business development consultant for Amway, Operation PUSH, IBM, Fidelity Union Life, Encyclopedia Britannica, the World Bank, Philadelphia International, Curton Records, Eddie Thomas Productions, the Jackson Five Productions, Major League Baseball and Professional Athletes, Equity Life Insurance, the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences, the Port of Los Angeles, and Economic Development Department for the City of Los Angeles among many others.
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Mr. Brown is Executive Director of The Lou Myers Scenario Motion Picture Institute/Theatre and GBI. He has followed his family's long line of successful entrepreneurs in San Diego. His grandfather opened Brown’s Market on Imperial Avenue in 1942 and his father established a manufacturing assembly plant in Logan Heights that was nationally recognized in 1968 by President Reagan as one of the Department of Defense’s first minority contractors.
In the early 90s, Mr. Brown was the first to develop and construct a major subdivision consisting of high-end quality homes in Southeastern San Diego. Additionally, Mr. Brown constructed the first two major subdivisions (Jarret Heights and Cypress Hills) for Carter Reese and Associates. He followed this success by orchestrating GBI’s establishment in 1994 of the Merge Project in partnership with the San Diego Neighborhood Housing Association and Michael Knox, the inventor of the Monday Night Football Game. Most recently he served as the Executive Director of the San Diego Urban League’s Urban Housing and Community Development Corporation. During his tenure, he oversaw the organization’s affordable housing and community development projects which targeted homeless veterans, low income, and first-time homebuyers..
Mr. Brown has served on various boards including the San Diego Planning Commission, the Private Industry Council (The Workforce Partnership) and the San Diego based California Southern Small Business Development Corporation, which provides loan guarantees to small businesses. He is a graduate of the National Development Council’s Affordable Housing Finance and Development Training, sponsored by Bank of America in 2000 and the 2001; and the Matrix Non-Profit Leadership Training Program, sponsored by the Anne Casey Foundation and the Stewart Foundation.
Mr. Brown has and will continue to focus on establishing strategic alliances with community-based non-profit organizations, small business owners and entrepreneurs, educational institutions, foundations and major corporations for the purpose of implementing GBIs Collaborative Demonstration Project in underserved communities.
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Mr. Morning is a “Start Up addict” born and raised in southern California, but now living in northern California. He is a web designer as well as an internet consultant who can be hired on an hourly or project basis through his firm, Blue Monitor. As a serial entrepreneur, he has been involved and invested in numerous start ups With Semantic Seed as his latest effort, he sees an opportunity to help web based entrepreneurs make that leap of faith from their day job to becoming their own bosses, “doing something you wake up everyday 100% stoked about doing for 8-12 hours.”
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Mr. Oetjen has 18 years of business development, strategic planning and fundraising experience. He has worked primarily in the high tech field, including domestic and international investment deals involving hardware, software and business solutions companies. Mr. Oetjen also possesses a substantial yet diverse background in programming, business systems design and financial investing.
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Mr. Doung is a serial entrepreneur who was originally from southern California, but now resides in “NorCal”. A social networking specialist, social media marketer, product evangelist as well as a contributing advisor to Blue Monitor, he has been involved in numerous Web2.0 start ups. This includes SocialURL, which he founded and over a handful of privately owned to Series A-C Venture backed Web + Consumer Electronics startups.
“Be scrappy, be genuine, be brave, get started young and take calculated risks while you have no obligations (mortgages, significant others) and while you can live off of top ramen.” - Henri
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Ms. Tang held positions in the areas of Government Alliances, Emerging Market Development, Sales Development and Executive Briefing and Communication and Cisco Foundation in Cisco. As a Cisco Fellow for community development, she gained specialized skills and knowledge in the field of development focusing on the areas of human capacity building, education, ICT4D, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), and culture learning. These skills were used to: assist the international educational program in Nigeria for Teachers Without Borders; develop OneEconomy.com as a venture to provide access to the Internet for low-income people in the inner city US; and consult in International Telecom Union’s Least Developed Countries Initiative to address the digital divide.
After leaving Cisco Ms. Tang focused her efforts on developing oneVillage Foundation. OVF’s mission is to harness the power of technology and information to empower people in developing countries so that they can live better and more fulfilling lives. With more than a decade of international development and ICT industry experiences, She led the design of oneVillage Initiative (OVI) into an integrated tool for facilitating community development.
A major effort of OVF right now is to develop The Winneba Open Digital Village – a telecenter in Winneba Ghana into a social enterprise franchise model to provide low cost Internet access to emerging markets. The process is to be replicated in Nigeria, Kenya and where there are committed social entrepreneurs: highlighting the role of ICT in building a interdisciplinary, bottom up approach; providing capacity building services for underserved communities by harnessing global resources to enable the creation of future workforce; designing, evolving and promoting sustainable models for global growth.
Ms. Tang is currently active as a consultant to major Taiwanese public/private partnerships, assisting them in designing appropriate information and communication technology (ICT) devices and solutions to facilitate collaboration and learning, promoting indigenous culture heritage through her blossoming Unity Drum program Taiwan and working with the National Tsing Hua University to develop an ecotourism and service learning program.
A core belief of Ms. Tang is of the need for multiplying global society’s capacity to change constructively through the building of an underlying collaborative architecture through social networks that are augmented by IT. She sees such efforts as a way to increase our “collective IQ”, and thus the world’s most critical opportunity for real and constructive change. Her experiences working with youth from around the world is a solid demonstration of her belief that youth coming together will make a difference for the betterment of our world.
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Kumar Neelabh specializes in usable, high quality web design and development, has been working with the Web since late 1998. A successful entrepreneur, he is the Director of Softsys Global Pvt Ltd, a renowned ISO 9001-2000 IT company of India. A graduate with Bachelor of Engineering degree, he has a thorough understanding of how the Internet works in the interest of the client.
His experience and perspective with the internet and web design and development has become a stepping stone in his career. Kumar's expertise as a Webmaster includes dealing with clients on a one-on-one basis to help them achieve their website goals. He has designed and developed several web sites and worked with various outside sources. In such a position as a leader, he understand that the communication between one’s co-workers is essential to accomplish and complete projects with high productivity and efficiency, as well as, creating a friendly and well constructed environment to make everyone feel comfortable as an individual and as a team.
Being a graphic artist, web designer and developer requires patience, an open mind and several levels of creativity. Kumar has gained great knowledge throughout his career in the work force and enjoys applying his skills and practical knowledge to the Graphic and Web Design world! |
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