Whitney Johnson to Keynote WIN Summit
The Wasatch Innovation Network (WIN), a partnership between the Salt Lake Chamber and TechBuzz News, announced today that the keynote speaker of the WIN Venture Summit is Whitney Johnson, CEO of Disruption Advisors, a tech-enabled talent development company and a 2020 Inc. 5000 fastest-growing company.
The WIN Venture Summit is an invitation-only event that will gather Utah’s leading venture firms alongside the next generation of Utah entrepreneurs, mentors, and key stakeholders from the state's entrepreneur community. The Summit will include inspiring speakers, relevant and timely panels to educate entrepreneurs on raising capital and growing your business under current market conditions.
“We are excited to gather this select group of investors and founders in an effort to bring purposeful capital to their new ventures,” said Derek Miller, president and CEO of the Salt Lake Chamber. “As one of the top business thinkers in the world, Whitney Johnson will be an inspiring voice for business leaders in helping shape the course of innovation in Utah’s ecosystem.”
“One highlight of any new venture is raising that first round of seed capital to help build your dream,” said Paul Ahlstrom, Co-founder of TechBuzz News and Board Chair of the Wasatch Innovation Network. “Whitney Johnson’s role as co-founder of the Disruptive Innovation Fund with Clayton Christensen teamed with her course Fundamentals of Entrepreneurship will offer a unique insight to the entrepreneur and the investor as keynote to the Summit. Utah is becoming a magnet for capital, talent, and opportunity and these individuals will shape the state for decades. We are thrilled to help support their dreams and build a new wave of innovation for the nation.”
Johnson is the Wall Street Journal and USA Today bestselling author of Smart Growth: How to Grow Your People to Grow Your Company (HBP); Publisher's Weekly described as "cogent... insightful... practical... inspiring." She also is one of the top #10 management thinkers in the world, according to Thinkers50, a 2020 Top Voice on LinkedIn with 1.8 million followers and hosts the popular Disrupt Yourself podcast. She understands how companies work, how investors think, and how the best coaches coach, all of which she brings to her work.
“Supporting the next wave of founders and learning about their businesses has been a tremendous honor,” said Elisabeth Nebeker, director of the Wasatch Innovation Network. “We could not be more excited to bring this group together with the opportunity to hear from Whitney Johnson as we help connect the dots across Utah’s innovation ecosystem.”
The WIN Venture Summit is hosted by the Wasatch Innovation Network and sponsored by WIN Partners Salt Lake Chamber, IsoTalent and TechBuzz News. Presenting Sponsors are Kickstart Fund and Frazier Group. The Venture Sponsors are Atomic, Pando Ventures, Sweater and Sorenson Ventures. Startup Sponsors are Diversified Insurance Group, Epic Ventures, EY, Hillcrest Bank, Mayer Brown and Peterson Ventures. The Entrepreneur Sponsors are Album VC, Assure, KHN Enterprises, Spacestation Investments and SpringTide.
The Wasatch Innovation Network is the sponsor of the Wasatch Innovation Network Top 100 Entrepreneurs (WIN100) an initiative that identifies and cultivates relationships among Utah's emerging and top Founders, CEOs, CTO, and venture talent in Utah. The WIN100 is a community-nominated and peer-selected organization of the top 100 tech venture entrepreneurs in the state's ecosystem. The idea of the WIN100 was based on the premise that the crowd would successfully identify the innovators and entrepreneurs that were “most likely to create a high growth company” in Utah. The WIN Venture Summit is a gathering of the voted-on and selected 107 WIN100 entrepreneurs and the hundreds of WIN100 nominees who were nominated by their peers, but were not selected this year to be on the WIN100 list.