Theme: Rise and Reimagine

We had approximately 275 at the event and 10 speakers. This was our first event.

2600 Clifton Avenue
Cincinnati, Ohio, 45221
United States

Cole Imperi

Cole Imperi strongly believes in living your values and cultivating vibrant communities. Her comprehensive approach towards brand architecture and identity design has garnered Cole attention and acclaim for her work with clients across the board; in the luxury, retail, deathcare, wellness, yoga, automotive, food, pet care, architecture and non-profit markets. Cole is an award-winning designer, deathcare professional and yoga specialist. She is the Owner and Creative Director of Doth. She holds a post-graduate Certificate in Typeface Design from the Type@Cooper Condensed Program. Cole is a 200-hour Registered Yoga Teacher and is in the process of completing her Thanatology certification. Cole is a Certified Crematory Operator. Cole serves as a board member of several nonprofits and community organizations and is teaching faculty for the ICCFA Cremation Arranger Certification program.

Kanniks Kannikeswaran

Kanniks Kannikeswaran is an award-winning visionary composer, music educator, scholar and thought-leader whose productions have been performed in and have had a wide impact around the world. All of his creations are consistent with his vision of building bridges across cultures by celebrating threads of commonality. 20 years ago, Kanniks worked with a newly formed Indian community choir and other local choirs in Cincinnati to create a ‘new sound’ where Indian and Western trained voices would work together to create music in an Indian raga based paradigm. His pioneering work has created breakthroughs in the area of building community through music and has led to the founding of Indian community choirs in over 10 cities in North America and has led to collaborations with the Cincinnati Chamber Orchestra, the CSO, the Resident Orkest and the Dario Fo choir (Netherlands).

Karen Bankston

Karen Bankston believes that you are placed where you are supposed to be when you are supposed to be there and that the focus becomes using your passions to reach your goal. She has spent the past 35 years leading, coaching and guiding others in doing just; allowing others to find the “fire in their belly” and become their whole selves as they journey through life. A native of Youngstown, Ohio, Karen Bankston, Ph.D., M.S.N., FACHE, is the Associate Dean for Clinical Practice, Partnership and Community Engagement of the College of Nursing at the University of Cincinnati. Additionally, she is the president and CEO of KDB and Associates Consulting Service, a company she founded after completing 5 years as the senior vice president/CEO of Drake Center, Inc., part of UC Health.

Ken Petren

Ken Petren, Ph.D., is the dean of the McMicken College of Arts and Sciences, the largest college at the University of Cincinnati - home to more than 39 academic programs, 500 faculty and 8,000 students. Prior to being selected as dean in 2015, Petren made his mark at UC leading one of the college’s largest departments, Biological Sciences. During his tenure as a department head, Petren saw increased enrollment, championed minority hiring and launched new community engagement initiatives, all while establishing himself as a strong, trustworthy and dedicated leader. At the same time, he has remained a productive evolutionary ecology scholar and community-minded thought leader, publishing on the significance of Darwin’s finches in the Galapagos and teaching graduate-level data analysis classes for more than a decade. Ken has been at UC for 15 years. He holds an A.B. from Princeton University and a Ph.D. in biology from the University of California at San Diego.

Kyle Gundrum

Kyle Gundrum believes that we should talk more, experience more, and connect more. Ever since Kyle began his University of Cincinnati career in 2010, he has worked to motivate others to develop more authentic relationships and to build a connected community. After graduating, he started an initiative called Ignitus, which connects people to new friends, new passions, and the best events/venues in our region. Kyle currently works at a Fortune 500 company in a leadership program, has founded several startups, and serves as the chair of TechOlympics, a large technology conference for high school students. He is a resident and passionate advocate of the Cincinnati community.

Madeline Adams

Madeline has called many places home over the years however she has always found comfort and homely feeling in making people smile. She remembers being in awe of jokes for the first time when she met her father’s co-worker while she was in high school. He told her ten jokes in a row. Since then she has been hooked! Madeline is a firm believer that laughing adds back the years all the stress takes away, even if medical science has not figured it out yet.

Paul Miklautsch

Paul Miklautsch transforms the way companies understand innovation. He brings pioneering achievement within reach using a process that can be measured and repeated. Strongly influenced by a passion for efficiency, informed risk-taking, and dangerous questions, Paul has brought companies from idea to finished product - hundreds of times. For 15 years, Paul generated award-winning solutions within consumer, industrial, and medical device markets. As co-founder of Start Something Bold, he designs revenue growth by shifting company focus from what they can do to what they should do, then guiding the process from initial engagement with customer needs through to new product production. Paul is a designer, entrepreneur, speaker, multiple patent-holder, and graduate of the University of Cincinnati College of Design, Art, Architecture & Planning.

Tamaya Dennard

Tamaya is a native Cincinnatian. A proud product of Aiken High School, Tamaya is also a graduate of the University of Cincinnati. She is currently a member of the Junior League of Cincinnati, the National Coalition of 100 Black Women – Cincinnati Chapter and the Board of Directors for Mortar Cincinnati. She was honored as one of the 2014 Forty Under 40 Leaders to Watch by the Cincinnati Business Courier and named a 2015 Emerging Leader by Who’s Who in Black Cincinnati.

Vikas Mehta

Vikas Mehta is interested in various dimensions of urbanity through the exploration of place as a social and ecological setting and as a sensorial art. His work focuses on the role of design and planning in creating a more responsive, equitable, stimulating and supportive environment. This work emphasizes the sense of place and place distinctiveness, design and visualization of urban places and activities, and cities and regions as just, equitable and sustainable living systems. Dr. Mehta has developed new measures of sociability that have advanced existing methods to study human behavior in public spaces. Vikas Mehta is the Fruth/Gemini Chair, the Ohio Eminent Scholar of Urban/Environmental Design and Associate Professor of Urbanism, School of Planning, College of DAAP at the University of Cincinnati. He is currently completing a 4-volume anthology titled Public Space: Critical Concepts in Built Environment.

Zachary Sonner

Zack received his B.S. in Microelectronic Engineering from Rochester Institute of Technology in 2013 and is now a second-year Ph.D. candidate in the Novel Devices Lab at the University of Cincinnati. The NDL performs highly multidisciplinary research in electrofluidics and biosensors, spanning fundamental science to more applied work through industrial partnerships. Furthermore, the NDL has the practical knowledge, facilities, and a strong track-record for rapidly transforming novel concepts into commercially viable prototypes. Here, Zack's research focuses in continuous health monitoring devices with a specific focus on non-invasive techniques for biomarker extraction.