Coaches/Mentors
Here is a sample of some of the great folks that volunteer to use their business skills to help our ministries
Bill Banner is mentoring his third LEAD Ministry this year. He has 20 years commercial real estate experience, and has owned and operated four art and custom framing stores. He brings his experience in small business planning, budgeting, marketing and operations to our Ministries. Bill is a Vietnam Veteran, serving as a helicopter pilot.
Ralph Bowlin is a repeat mentor having mentored a ministry that graduated in October 2009. Ralph has had an extensive career in both the high tech industry and real estate. He has been an early stage investor, strategic consultant, Board Member and capital raiser, as well as a COO and CFO.
Richard Burnette is a retired Deloitte partner having spent thirty-five years with that firm. Richard’s early career was in auditing and serving emerging businesses in multiple industries. His last two assignments were as the managing partner of the Southeast and the national managing partner of the firm’s nontechnical infrastructure. Since retirement, he has owned and sold a small technology support business and he does consulting to professional service firms. Richard has served on the boards of numerous not for profit entities.
Glenn Carson brings 25 years of professional experience with companies like General Electric, Home Depot and Fiserv. During his career, Glenn has led finance and customer service operations as well as launched, and led, company wide six sigma process improvement initiatives. Additionally, Glenn has extensive international experience having led business operations in both Japan and India.
David Eckoff specializes in developing and launching game-changing online consumer media businesses. He has been an innovator in Fortune 500 and start up companies alike. Eckoff is currently co-founder of Spitter, Inc. an early stage company dedicated to aggregating the explosion of news and discussion on the web and filtering and organizing that content by niche topics of interest to passionate fans. He is also an advisor to media & technology companies, helping companies take revolutionary ideas from the drawing board to market. He has advised companies included Kleiner Perkins backed Zazzle.com, live interactive broadcasting platform Ustream.TV, 3D Virtual World innovator Kaneva, and more. Previously, he served as Vice President, New Product Development & Innovation at Turner Broadcasting (CNN, TBS, TNT, Cartoon Network); Senior Director at RealNetworks; Senior Vice-President at Rivals.com; and Founder of Inside Carolina. Eckoff holds an MBA from the University of North Carolina and a bachelors degree in accounting from University of Massachusetts.
James Garvie is an experienced management consultant specializing in sales force effectiveness and sales management issues across a variety of industries. Prior to consulting, James spent several years in a leadership position with a large distribution company managing all aspects of Sales Strategy, Sales Operations, Sales Force Effectiveness, Human Resources, Payroll and HRIS. In addition, James has held management positions in accounting/finance and compensation functions. James received his Masters of Business Administration degree from Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and received his Bachelors of Finance degree from the University of Incarnate Word in San Antonio, Texas
Ed Hoppe spent 38 years with Eastman Kodak primarily in finance and international management. He had extensive international experience having lived in Latin America, Europe, Asia and Australia for over 20 years.
Kimberly Hyde is a return volunteer to the LEAD Institute. She has extensive experience as a management consultant – helping both for-profit and non-profit organizations develop growth strategies and implement performace improvement initiatives. She currently works on strategy for a healthcare internet-based start-up organization.
Randy Maner has over 15 years experience as an M&A/investment banker, advising middle-market business owners, CEOs and public boards, as well as private equity firms, on strategic direction and shareholder value creation. Throughout his 20-year career, primarily with firms such as Robinson Humphrey and Wachovia Securities (including starting his career as a CPA with Arthur Andersen), he has completed transactions totaling over $3 billion in value. He recently joined Mensura Capital as a member of the firm’s executive committee and head of investment banking.
Bob Negri has 25 plus years in banking having worked for several large regional banks He currently has a small consulting business. Bob has been very active on non profit boards such as Junior Achievement, Inroads, Gordon Conwell Theological in Charlotte as well as several independent schools and numerous churches.
Bruce Noel: After serving in the Air Force, Bruce moved to Atlanta and began his career in banking. Over the next 35 years, he worked in Branch Banking, Commercial Lending, National Corporate Banking, Corporate Trust Administration, and Performance Measurement. Bruce’s most recent position with the Bank of America was National Manager, Private Portfolio Services; in that position he managed approximately 75 Portfolio Managers, who, in turn, managed portfolios for trust clients nationwide totaling $25B.
Chris Rowen: is an investment banker at VRA Partners, where he manages mergers, acquisitions and capital raises for mid-market companies in the distribution, industrial and technology sectors. Prior to VRA, Mr. Rowen spent eight years at SunTrust Robinson Humphrey, a leading regional investment bank, where he received national awards from both the Wall Street Journal and Institutional Investor Magazine for his work in technology and the supply chain. Earlier in his career Mr. Rowen spent nine years as a management consultant and helped restructure and optimize distribution and supply chain operations for a variety of industry leaders, including Coca-Cola, Motorola, Henkel AG and Celanese Corp. Mr. Rowen also helped start RepairPal, a venture capital backed company and the leading web provider of independent auto repair estimates, with more than one million monthly unique visitors. Mr. Rowen earned his Bachelor’s Degree in Mechanical Engineering from North Carolina State University and his Master’s in ME from Georgia Tech. Mr. Rowen also studied towards a Ph.D. in Marketing at Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business.
Nancy Rowen:is a marketing consultant with 25 years of experience, primarily in the healthcare sector. Her clients include Piedmont Healthcare, a $1.4 billion health system and Peachtree Orthopaedic Clinic (team orthopaedists to the Atlanta Braves and Hawks). Her firm, Wright Angle Communications, helps clients manage complex internal projects, create and implement effective marketing strategy, execute ongoing web development initiatives and conceptualize/execute projects to meet revenue goals, increase market penetration, enhance brand awareness. She has worked in the non-profit sector as the director of marketing and development for Family Service, a United Way agency in Palo Alto, California. Nancy holds a B.S. in graphic design from North Carolina State University and received her Masters degree in marketing from the Robinson College of Business at Georgia State University.
Steve Walden is a marketing-savvy CEO, a successful entrepreneur and a private-equity investor. His chief passion is building business from scratch to multimillion dollar levels. As Executive Director of the IBM/Sears joint venture called Prodigy, he helped launch the first consumer online service and grew it to a revenue level exceeding $100 million.
Amy White has a management consulting firm specializing in strategic planning and leadership development and previously has held various management and executive positions leading key internal functions and business transformation efforts.
Mike Wolfensperger is a new LEAD mentor. He brings critical thinking skills and a passion for helping others to the program. Mike has international business experience formerly in a Product Manager role. He is now a Research Director at the local office of a international advertising agency. Mike recently completed his Masters of Business Administration at the Goizueta Business School at Emory University and received his Bachelor of Chemical Engineering from Georgia Tech.
