August 03, 2022
It’s a summer of uncertainty for small businesses, as inflation continues to reach record highs. With a possible recession on the horizon, it is more important than ever for entrepreneurs to think strategically and bolster all facets of their business in order to withstand today’s turbulence, and emerge stronger for a better tomorrow.
The CNBC Small Business Playbook virtual summit will offer insight and advice from tops experts on how businesses can hedge against inflation, supply chain disruptions, labor challenges, and more.
For CNBC Small Business Playbook editorial coverage, stories and video, visit www.cnbc.com/small-business-playbook/.
Melissa L. Bradley is Founder of 1863 Ventures, a business development program that accelerates New Majority entrepreneurs from high potential to high growth. Melissa serves as General Partner of 1863 Venture Fund, Venture Partner at NextGen Ventures and serves an advisor to Reign Ventures, New Voices Foundation, as well as the Halcyon Fund. She is also a member of the Milken Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Asset Management Initiative, Goldman Sachs’ One Million Black Women Advisory Council, Launch with GS Advisory Council, Fast Company Executive Board, Square & Forbes Small Business Advisory Team, as well as the Target Accelerators Entrepreneurs Advisory Council. Melissa is the former Co-Chair, National Advisory Council for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and was named one of The Most Entrepreneurial Women Investors in 2018.
Melissa is a professor at the McDonough School of Business at Georgetown University where she teaches impact investing, social entrepreneurship, P2P economies, and innovation. In 2021 she was awarded Peter W. Gonzalez, Jr. Award for Excellence in Adjunct Faculty Teaching. In 2020, Melissa received The Ideas Worth Teaching Award which celebrates exceptional courses that are preparing future business leaders to tackle society’s largest challenges and create a more inclusive, just, and sustainable version of capitalism.
Melissa's educational background includes graduation from Georgetown University in 1989 with a Bachelor of Science degree in Finance from the School of Business, and a Master’s degree in Business Administration in Marketing from American University in 1993.
Bethenny Frankel is a self-made businesswoman, TV producer, multiple New York Times bestselling author, and mother. Bethenny recently made a multi-year deal with MGM Television and Mark Burnett to generate unscripted television projects that she will produce.
Coming to HBO Max, Bethenny is set to headline a new business competition series, The Big Shot with Bethenny, from MGM Television, Mark Burnett and her own B Real Productions. In the upcoming eight-episode series, the next generation of business moguls will compete for a chance to win a spot on her Skinnygirl executive team.
She is the Founder & CEO of Skinnygirl, a lifestyle brand offering practical solutions to women, including the launch of the Skinnygirl Jeanswear Collection, which sold out on HSN within its first few hours.
Bethenny has teamed up with Endeavor Content to create Just B, a podcast devoted to being a self-made mogul in business, lifestyle and beyond. Just B with Bethenny Frankel launched in September 2020, instantly topping the charts becoming ranked #4 on the Apple Podcast episodes chart and the #1 podcast in the society and culture category within the first week. Just B with Bethenny Frankel is available on Apple, Spotify and other listening platforms.
Laura Huang is a professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School. Laura’s research examines interpersonal relationships and implicit bias in entrepreneurship and in the workplace. She is the creator and co-founder of Project EMplify, an initiative dedicated to addressing inequality and disadvantage through personal empowerment.
Her award-winning research has been featured in the Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Forbes, and Nature, and she was named one of the 40 Best Business School Professors Under the Age of 40 by Poets & Quants, and to the Thinkers 50 Radar list as one of the leading management thinkers in the world.
Previously, she held positions in investment banking, consulting, and management, for organizations such as Standard Chartered Bank, IBM Global Services, and Johnson & Johnson.
Laura holds an MS and BSE in electrical engineering, both from Duke University, an MBA from INSEAD, and a PhD from the University of California, Irvine. Her first book is entitled EDGE: Turning Adversity into Advantage. Sign up and learn more about Project EMplify at: https://projectemplify.org.
Jill Martin is an Emmy Award-winning television personality and New York Times bestselling author. Martin is the Lifestyle Contributor on NBC’s TODAY show known for her wildly popular “Steals and Deals” segments. She also serves as a guest co-host for the 3rd Hour of Today. After writing three fashion self-help books, Jill wanted to create a line of products for women to bring ease, comfort, and accessible elegance into their lives. Jill created a lifestyle brand for QVC that is coveted by the world’s most famous celebrities and adored by women (& men) across the world.
Dr. Nada Sanders is the Distinguished Professor of Supply Chain Management at the D’Amore-McKim School of Business at Northeastern University. Dr. Sanders is an internationally recognized thought leader and expert in forecasting, predictive analytics, risk management and supply chain management. Her expertise is in identifying best practices in forecasting, developing a corporate technology strategy, and creating a resilient supply chain. She is author of the books Big Data Driven Supply Chain Management (Pearson), Foundations of Sustainable Business (Wiley), Forecasting Fundamentals (BEP) as well as Supply Chain Management: A Global Perspective in its 2nd edition (Wiley), and is co-author of the book Operations Management, in its 6th edition.
She has experience collaborating with industry and NGO leaders creating teams of both faculty and practitioners to jointly address research questions. As Research Director of the Supply and Value Chain Center (SVCC) at TCU, she was instrumental in developing a programmatic research agenda that unified business challenges of SVCC members with faculty research interests.
Dr. Sanders has authored over one hundred scholarly works and has served on the editorial boards of prominent journals in her field, including the Journal of Operations Management, Production and Operations Management, Decision Sciences Journal, Journal of Business Logistics, and International Institute of Forecasting.
Holly Wade is the director of research and policy analysis for NFIB, where she provides analysis on public policy issues and economic trends affecting small business. She also produces the monthly Small Business Economic Trends survey with NFIB’s chief economist. She is a member of the National Association of Business Economics, National Economists Club, and the Department of Commerce’s Industry Trade Advisory Committee on Small and Minority Business. She has undergraduate degrees in Political Science and Sociology from the University of Washington and a Masters of Public Policy from the University of Denver.
Astound Business Solutions provides businesses of all sizes with affordable high-capacity, secure connectivity to your mission-critical applications through award-winning service that increases overall agility and responsiveness to your customer needs. As a national telecommunications provider, we offer advanced communications solutions to eight of the top 10 metro markets that are delivered over a diverse, carrier-grade network that we own and maintain, providing the speed, bandwidth, and reliability you need to support your growing data demands. We maintain a local, customer-centric approach, with dedicated industry experts on-hand around the clock to help you stay on top of today’s evolving IT technology and remain competitive in their markets.
With over 20 years in the game, Staples is here to help our customers feel confident navigating the ever-changing world of work. With a wide selection of quality products and services specifically designed for how you work, and a knowledgeable team dedicated to our customers, our mission is to ensure you can get the job done and done right wherever and however you work.
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Stacey Abrams is the three-time New York Times bestselling author of While Justice Sleeps, Our Time is Now, and Lead from the Outside, an entrepreneur; and a political leader. A tax attorney by training, she served eleven years in the Georgia House of Representatives and seven as Minority Leader. Abrams has launched multiple organizations devoted to voting rights, training and hiring young people of color, and tackling social issues at the state, national, and international levels. She is the founder of Fair Fight, Fair Count, and the Southern Economic Advancement Project. A small business owner, Abrams co-founded the financial services firm NOW Corp. and Sage Works Productions, Inc., a media company. She has received degrees from Spelman College, the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, and Yale Law School.
Barbara Corcoran’s credits include straight D’s in high school and college and 20 jobs by the time she turned 23. It was her next job that would make her one of the most successful entrepreneurs in the country: She borrowed $1,000 and quit her job as a waitress to start a tiny real estate company in New York City. Over the next 25 years Barbara would parlay that $1,000 loan into a $5 billion real estate business, building the largest and best-known brand in the business.
Corcoran is the author of the best seller “Shark Tales: How I Turned $1,000 into a Billion Dollar Business!” and host of top podcasts “Business Unusual with Barbara Corcoran”.
Corcoran is a motivational and inspirational speaker. She is a frequent small business and real estate contributor on every major network. Corcoran has been an investor/Shark for the past twelve seasons on ABC’s four-time Emmy award winning show, Shark Tank, investing in over 80 businesses to date. Follow Barbara on Twitter and Instagram @BarbaraCorcoran.
Ravin Jesuthasan is a recognized futurist, global thought leader and author on the future of work and human capital. He has led multiple research efforts on the global workforce, the emerging digital economy, the rise of artificial intelligence and the transformation of work.
Ravin is the Global leader of Transformation at Mercer and a partner of the firm based in Chicago.
He has led numerous research projects for the World Economic Forum including its ground-breaking studies; Shaping the Future Implications of Digital Media for Society, Creating a Shared Vision for Talent in the 4th Industrial Revolution and HR 4.0: Shaping People Strategies in the 4th Industrial Revolution. He is a regular participant and presenter at the World Economic Forum’s annual meetings in Davos and Dalian/Tianjin and is a member of the forum’s Steering Committee on Work and Employment.
He has been recognized as one of the top 25 most influential consultants in the world by Consulting Magazine, one of the top 8 future of work influencers by Tech News, one of the top 100 HR influencers by HR Executive and was named to the Thinkers 50 Radar Class of 2020.
Ravin is the author of Transformative HR, Lead The Work: Navigating a World Beyond Employment and Reinventing Jobs: A 4-Step Approach to Applying Automation to Work. Transformative HR and Reinventing Jobs were winners of the Axiom silver and gold awards for business book of the year in 2012 and 2018 respectively. His latest book Work without Jobs came out by The MIT Press in spring 2022.
He has authored over 150 articles including 14 for the Harvard Business Review and his article in the HR People and Strategy Journal entitled Performance Management as a Business Discipline received the Walker Award for the most original and valuable contribution to the HR profession. He is also a regular contributor to Forbes Magazine.
Ravin is a frequent guest lecturer at universities around the world including Oxford University, Northwestern University, University of Southern California and New York University and an advisor to and featured prominently on PBS’s highly acclaimed documentary series “Future of Work”.
Gary Vaynerchuk is the chairman of VaynerX, a modern-day media and communications holding company and the active CEO of VaynerMedia, a full-service advertising agency servicing Fortune 100 clients across the company’s 4 locations.
In addition to VaynerMedia, VaynerX also includes Gallery Media Group, which houses women’s lifestyle brand PureWow and men’s lifestyle brand ONE37pm. In addition to running VaynerMedia, Gary also serves as a partner in the athlete representation agency VaynerSports, cannabis-focused branding and marketing agency Green Street and restaurant reservations app Resy.
Gary is a board/advisory member of Ad Council and Pencils of Promise, and is a longtime Well Member of Charity:Water.
Gary is a highly sought after public speaker, a 5-time New York Times bestselling author, as well as a prolific angel investor with early investments in companies such as Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Venmo, and Uber.
Gary is currently the subject of DailyVee, an online documentary series highlighting what it’s like to be a CEO and public figure in today’s digital world, as well the host of The GaryVee Audio Experience, a top 100 global podcast, and host of #AskGaryVee, a business and advice Q&A show which can be found on both YouTube and Facebook.
Gary also appeared as judge in Apple’s first original series “Planet of the Apps” alongside Gwyneth Paltrow, Jessica Alba and Will.i.am.