2022 Vanderbilt
Entrepreneurship Conference
NEW YEAR. NEW IDEAS. NEW CONNECTIONS.
The Vanderbilt Center for Entrepreneurship presents its fourth annual Vanderbilt Entrepreneurship Conference.
02.18.22 | IN-PERSON & VIRTUAL
It’s an event you won’t want to miss. This year, the annual Vanderbilt Entrepreneurship Conference will be held both in-person and streamed virtually. Throughout the greater Nashville region, the entrepreneurial ecosystem is growing rapidly. The Vanderbilt Center for Entrepreneurship – in partnership with the Wond’ry and OVEC – is proud to help foster that growth by bringing you an exciting line-up of guest speakers for this year’s annual entrepreneurship conference.
During this one day event, you will have the opportunity to surround yourself and hear from some of the most successful individuals in our entrepreneurial and investor ecosystem: alumni, Nashville locals, and beyond. You’ll walk away with actionable, tactical strategies and insights that will elevate your own growth and even jumpstart your business.
It’s for everyone. Participants are able to customize their experience by choosing their preferred adventure from three tracks: Founder Insights, Investor Insights, and Startup & Partner Paths. Each track will feature distinguished speakers sharing unique insights from their own professional journeys.
CUSTOMIZE YOUR EXPERIENCE.
FOUNDER INSIGHTS
Hear from individuals who have followed their dream to build their own company.
INVESTOR INSIGHTS
Hear from a collection of investors who have all agreed to openly share how they work with entrepreneurs – and what they look for in an investment opportunity.
STARTUP ECOSYSTEM PARTNERS
Hear from partners who help entrepreneurs at various stages of their journey.
Meet our 2022 Speakers and Panelists.
Shawn Johnson East
At 30 years old, American gymnast Shawn Johnson has accomplished a 
lifetime of achievements that include Olympic Medals, a New York Times best-selling book, several businesses, a career in broadcast, and a mirror ball trophy after winning Dancing With The Stars. After retiring from gymnastics in 2012, Shawn made appearances on several TV shows including The Apprentice and Adventure Capitalists. Shawn married Andrew East, with whom she has documented her life with on their shared Youtube channel which has over 250 million views and a podcast which has climbed to #2 on the overall charts.
Andrew East
Andrew East is an NFL athlete who most recently played with the Washington
Redskins. He attended Vanderbilt University where he received his Bachelors in Civil Engineering as well as his Masters in Business while being a two time captain for the football team. East gained visibility through the YouTube channel he and his wife Shawn Johnson started together which now has over 250 million views. He and his wife Shawn launched a podcast which has climbed to #2 on the overall charts and separately his top 90 podcast titled Redirected focuses on those who, like him, have had interesting career pivots. The experience he has gained through his time in the digital space has led to coaching and consultation on behalf of Google for Fortune 500 companies for how to create engaging content. Andrew and Shawn recently welcomed their second child in July.
Jerome Edwards
Jerome Edwards is the co-founder and CEO of CardioNXT, Inc. Jerome 
studied Computer Science and Electrical Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines and began his career as a software programmer for Surgical Navigation Technologies (SNT), a company that was acquired by Medtronic. Jerome then attended business school at Vanderbilt – Owen and concentrated in Finance. While at Owen, he founded Veran Medical Technologies which was acquired by Olympus Corporation for $340M. Jerome is back at home just outside Boulder, CO working on building CardioNXT.
Woody Klemmer
Woody began his entrepreneurial career in 8th grade when he founded an odd
job company, WAK Jobs. Woody grew this business throughout high school and eventually expanded it into a full-year, multi-state operation while attending Vanderbilt. After college, Woody morphed the business into GladlyDo, an on-demand odd job app connecting college students with gig work. GladlyDo was acquired by a Philadelphia private equity group in 2017 and, together, they relaunched the business as Laborocity, a B2B on-demand staffing platform. Currently, Woody is the Head of Growth at ForMotiv, a Behavioral Science Platform that helps insurance carriers predict user intent by analyzing digital body language while users engage with digital forms and applications.
Chris Booker
Chris is a healthcare venture capitalist and Vanderbilt University graduate. 
He’s been an investor in over 75 innovative healthcare companies over his career, the common goal of each being a dedication to improving the quality of healthcare.
Matthew Charette
Matt Charette is a long time Hospitality Veteran, with over 25 years in the 
business. For the past 18 years he has owned and operated restaurants and bars totaling over 50 million in sales. Matt is a life long learner and is passionate about helping fellow entrepreneurs learn the skills and tools required in running and growing a successful business.
Mark Harris
Mark spent 12 years here at Vanderbilt studying Cancer Biology and Business. 
Since then he has founded three companies, including Concert Genetics, and his most recent venture, HeroWear. He is passionate about supporting the entrepreneurial community as an angel investor and startup advisor. He also sits on Vanderbilt Technology Transfer’s Advisory Board, with the aim to help create a smooth pathway for more startups and spinouts to come out of Vanderbilt.
Chris Mioton
Chris Mioton has spent his career in investment banking and private equity. 
He is a Partner at Shore Capital Partners, a lower-middle market, growth oriented private equity firm headquartered in Chicago and focused on platform investments that start with $1-10 million of EBITDA. Chris focuses on healthcare investments and moved to Nashville 2.5 years ago to open the Shore’s Nashville office.
Joshua Mundy
Joshua Mundy is the CEO/Co-Founder of Pivot Technology, a 20 week 
accelerator teaching Data Analytics, Software Development, & Cyber Security. His mission is to get more minorities trained and engaged in Technology Careers.
Caroline Howard
Caroline Howard is a co-founder at Walker Brothers, a Nashville-based craft 
kombucha brand that brews both non-alcoholic and hard kombucha. Prior to Walker Brothers, Caroline worked for Index Exchange, an advertising technology start-up. There she was responsible for partner development and international expansion, working throughout Europe and APAC. Caroline graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Vanderbilt University and holds an MBA with Distinction from the University of Oxford.
Beth R. Chase
Beth R. Chase is a Board Director, Strategic Advisor and Entrepreneur with a 
career in driving transformational change across industries. Beth founded c3/consulting growing it to $30M in annual revenue and becoming the largest consulting firm in the Nashville area prior to selling the firm to Ankura Consulting Group. Beth currently serves as an Independent Director on two corporate boards – Ingram Industries and Tolko Industries. She also spends time mentoring early stage entrepreneurs and emerging leaders.
Rhonda Cammon
With over 20 years of hospitality experience. Rhonda left a 20 year nursing 
career to pursue her passion to create three distinctive companies all with a focus on food and beverage: Perfectly Cordial, a fruit first, female founded and female sourced beverage company. Barseat, one of the first African American spirit education and consultant companies in Nashville, TN. And co-owner of the CAMP Conference, a conference focusing on the mobile beverage community held in Nashville, TN.
Alana Mann
Alana Mann is a Principal on the Investment Team at Cultivation Capital where spends most of her time developing a diverse deal pipeline of early-
stage software & IT startups. Prior to joining Cultivation Capital, Alana spent the past 5+ years driving outlier growth at iconic consumer brands such as: Saks, Saks Off Fifth, Gilt.com, Jet.com, Walmart.com, & most recently Club Monaco. In 2018, Alana launched her own venture, VER CO., a DTC fashion brand making sustainability more accessible & affordable to millennial women. Alana is an early stage founder turned investor, and has also spent time in a variety of roles within VC: as a Summer Associate at Starta Ventures, a highly active Scout for GVC Partners, and advisor to several Technology companies.
Dan Stephenson
Dan is Co-Founder and COO of Daily Crunch Snacks, a sprouted snack 
company based in Nashville, TN. He is a Cleveland, OH native that graduated from Vanderbilt University with a Bachelor’s degree in Economics. After graduation, Dan took a position as Chief of Staff for Reagan-economist, Art Laffer, before moving on to work in Corporate Finance and Strategic Planning at Ingram Industries & Ingram Barge. While at Ingram, Dan took his passion for America’s favorite comfort food and began crafting and selling his artisan “Mac Pacs” in the Nashville Farmers Market, which “Dan the Mac Man” grew to over 3000 stores with 6 unique frozen SKUs. Dan consulted for and then became a co-founder of Daily Crunch (which has 5 Vandy interns). Dan lives in East Nashville with his wife Mandi, baby Braden, and boxers, Dino and Boomer.
John Nevel
At Compass East, John builds high quality outsourced finance and accounting
functions. In his client-facing role, John has worked with hundreds of early stage and high growth companies across various industries, leading financial systems and process implementation, managing financial reporting, and spear-heading financial strategy through projection model developments, cash forecasting, revenue and productivity analysis.
As CEO of , he is focused on employee engagement and developing high quality culture of remote and hybrid teams.
Sherry Deutschmann
Sherry is a serial entrepreneur, having sold her first company, LetterLogic , 
2016. A passionate advocate for women business owners, Sherry is founder and CEO of BrainTrust, a company dedicated to helping women grown million-dollar businesses, and is and angel investor in 17 women-owned businesses.
Joe Maxwell
Joe Maxwell is the Managing Partner of FINTOP Capital. Prior to founding 
FINTOP Capital in 2016, Joe led the Private Capital Markets division at Ipreo, Inc. Joe holds an MBA from Vanderbilt University, is active in multiple charitable organizations and lives locally, in Brentwood, with his wife, Juliana, and their 3 sons.
Ethan Fedida
Ethan has been at the forefront of digital media strategy and execution for
years. Ethan cut his teeth at the Huffington Post where he led their Audience Development, Editorial Partnerships and Social Media teams. After HuffPost, Ethan was the Vice President of Audience Development for Entercom, leading the digital business for the radio giant through its merger with CBS Radio, focusing on content strategy, distribution, social and platform building. Ethan knows how to drive any digital campaign forward, strategically determining the proper audiences to reach and employing the best strategies to connect with them.
Matthew Hertz
Matt is the co-Founder of Second Marathon, an eCommerce Logistics 
consultancy he started after spending the first marathon of his career building and scaling complex supply chain operations as a founding employee at Rent the Runway, Birchbox and Shyp. At Rent the Runway Matt was the 5th employee where he led warehouse operations. At Birchbox, Matt was the 1st employee where he oversaw Supply Chain and helped the company scale from 500 monthly orders to 1 Million across 5 countries. Matt began his career at a hedge fund in New York, and is now living in Nashville.
Kendra Kawala
Kendra Kawala is the COO and Cofounder at Maker Wine, a venture-backed, 
direct-to-consumer canned wine company. Maker has raised funds from some of the best investors in Silicon Valley, business, entertainment, and sports, and is quickly changing the way the way we experience wine. Kendra did her undergraduate at Vanderbilt followed by her MBA at Stanford, where she was bit by the startup bug and put down roots in Marin County, California.
John Murdock
John Murdock is the Chief Operating and Chief Program Officer of the 
Nashville Entrepreneur Center. John joined the Nashville Entrepreneur Center in its first year of operations, and has helped support more than 10,000 entrepreneurs in the 11+ years since. John graduated from Owen’s EMBA program in 2016, earning the Founder’s medal.
You won’t want to miss this opportunity to engage with others like you, make new connections, and walk away with actionable insights designed to elevate you and jumpstart your business.
For more details, visit vanderbiltc4e.com and make sure to subscribe to our newsletter to receive the latest conference announcements and speaker reveals.
Have questions? Email c4e@vanderbilt.edu and a member of our team will get back to you within 24 hours.