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Kirk Hancock/North Highland 

Kirk Hancock is North Highland’s Chief Financial Officer. With more than 23 years of experience in the field, he is well versed in corporate finance and accounting.

Imagine a company that invests in you as much as it earns. One that has mastered a culture of ownership and puts employees directly in charge of their professional destiny. Global consulting company North Highland has not only unlocked the key to double digit growth and success in a mature industry, its unique culture of ownership fosters a team of ninjas and superheroes, delivering great returns for the largest and most well-known companies in the world.

Part of what makes North Highland successful is that, unlike traditional partnerships, every North Highland employee – from the receptionist to the CEO – owns a stake in the company and is personally vested in the company’s and clients’ success. In fact, the employee stock ownership plan (ESOP) saw a nine percent increase over last year’s mid-year valuation and is moving in the right direction for continued growth in 2013. In addition, North Highland’s retirement plan was recently ranked sixth on BrightScope’s list of the top 25 Atlanta-based companies 401k plans containing more than $50 million in assets, leading to even greater returns.

Bill Nussey/Silverpop 

Bill Nussey has 30 years of experience running technology and Internet companies. He started his first company in high school, creating and selling software that provided enhanced graphics for early text-based computers. In college, Nussey and several co-founders started Da Vinci Systems. As CEO, he grew this company to become one of the most widely used desktop email tools in the world. When he sold the company to publicly-traded ON Technology in 1994, Da Vinci Systems had more than 3 million users in 45 countries.

As CEO of Silverpop, Nussey has guided the company as it became the only digital marketing technology provider unifying marketing automation, email, mobile and social into a single solution available across the globe. During its lifetime, Silverpop has grown to 450 employees serving 4,400 organizations across 42 countries. During his tenure at Silverpop, Nussey has overseen the acquisition of leading marketing technology companies such as Vtrenz, PlacePunch and CoreMotives and helped lead Silverpop to seven consecutive years of profitability. He’s been the recipient of the Direct Marketing Association’s Marketing Technology and Internet Council Annual Award of Excellence and has been listed among the 50 Most Influential People in Sales Lead Management by the Sales Lead Management Association for the past two years.

Nussey has served on the board of numerous private marketing technology start-ups and nonprofits, lending his expertise to guide them in the development of successful business models. He is the author of several publications, including The Quiet Revolution in Email Marketing. Nussey holds a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Michelle Morgan/NEX Atlanta 

Currently the founder of NEX Atlanta, Michelle Morgan has been working in the sector to support development of social enterprise since 2009. Her first position was as the Director for the Academy of Sustainability at the Medici Center – a think tank attached to the redevelopment of City Hall East which was followed by founding HUB Atlanta – a local entity of the global social enterprise workspace. Her board experience includes the Green Chamber of the South, Enterprise 2 Empower (a student incubator at Ga Tech) and GreenPlate.

As the founder of NEX, Michelle has built unique programs and partnerships spanning business support services for entrepreneurs to social business models for Habitat for Humanity International. Michelle’s early career and education have been as an architect with 16 years in practice and an emphasis in morphology. All of that experience has been brought into the advisement process at NEX through design-thinking, critique and design-process techniques.

Richard Simms/Tech Talent South 

Richard Simms, Co-Founder of Tech Talent South, is an Atlanta native. After graduating from Washington and Lee University in Virginia, Richard went on to work in business development and strategic partnerships for a Saas software company in DC called Cvent. Looking to dive further into the world of tech and move towards a more entrepreneurial path, Richard then moved to Chicago to join a small tech startup. As a part of a small team, Richard helped to raise investment capital and became involved in overseeing product development. This is really where Richard’s desire to learn to code took over…not only in order to more effectively manage product development and be able to “talk the talk” with engineers but also to be able to prototype his own ideas and one day build his own products/business. At that time, Richard enrolled in an immersive program in Chicago learning web development with Ruby on Rails. In this program, Richard met Betsy Hauser, Co-Founder of Tech Talent South. As the only two Southerners in the program, Richard and Betsy quickly bonded over their love for startups, code, and the South. After seeing how empowering learning these skills could be, Richard and Betsy were disappointed to see that these types of immersive educational opportunities simply didn’t exist in Atlanta so, they decided to start Tech Talent South. With Tech Talent South, their goal is to help empower creative folks in the South to drive innovation and to put Atlanta on the map as the next big startup hub.