Speakers

Liz Strauss of lizstrauss.com is a business strategist, product analyst, and master teacher who works with international corporations small business, and entrepreneurs to create high-growth strategy based on influence, impact, and irresistible difference. She's a dynamic speaker and a maven at engaging with the people who help a business thrive. Liz is co-founder of www.sobevent.com

SOBCon the business strategy workshop event that grew out of her popular Successful-Blog.com -- an online publication which carries 4300 articles and 94,000 reader comments. She has built strategies and products with an international network of businesses on four continents and teaches a yearly course session at the Masters Degree Level for Digital Publishing Program at City University of London.

In 2011, Liz Strauss was the awarded the prestigious title of Titan of Web 2.0 at the World Forum “Communication on Top” in Davos, Switzerland and is the highest ranked woman on Dun and Bradstreet's 68 Most Influential Small Business People on Twitter. Liz has been named twice to the Top 100 Social Media & Internet Marketing Bloggers Top 100 Most Influential Marketers and to Top Social Media Strategists To Watch In 2010.

I'm an artist, traveler, drummer, aunt, sister, daughter, friend, songwriter, partner, mom and to some...a very slim margin, a comedian.

I grew up exceptionally poor and we moved around a lot, living with various people. When I was 3 years old, I was involved in an accident that left my 1 year old sister severely burned. I was told that I had killed her.

Months later, I was able to see my baby sister for the first time and I started a long recovery from what they later called Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. After our healing began, my parents were finally able to buy some land and start building a house. When I was 6, we moved out to the country into our tiny little one room "shack" where I learned, with the rest of my siblings, how to live without running water, indoor plumbing or electricity. We were essentially a modern day "Little House on the Prairie" family.

By the time I turned 13 years old, my mom moved us to "the city". We had running water and electricity. It was here that I would learn my love for music. For the first time, I was able to have a radio and listen anytime I wanted. I was enamored with entertaining and I wanted to do it for the rest of my life. I only share all of this because, I am certain that these pieces of my life have allowed me to write the songs I write...and for that, I am grateful.

I write for the kids who have nothing, for the underdogs, for the broken-hearted and for the champions. I don't want to just write songs, I want to write songs that make people fall back in love with life again.

Becky McCray says that small businesses and small towns matter. She is a small town business owner, with a retail store and a cattle ranch in Woods County, Oklahoma. She also heads a consulting firm that helps small town governments in Oklahoma with project management. Together with Sheila Scarborough, she co-founded Tourism Currents to teach tourism professionals new ways of marketing their destination. She has been featured in The New York Times, BusinessWeek, and Entrepreneur Magazine. She publishes the popular website, Small Biz Survival, on small town small business, and she and Chicago entrepreneur Barry Moltz are the authors of the upcoming book, Small Town Rules. All of this from her home base in Hopeton, Oklahoma, a community of 30 people.

Carlos Moreno is a graphic designer, web developer, an entrepreneur, and a magic-bean buyer. He has built websites for the likes of Back Alley BBQ, Simple Simon's Pizza, Tulsa County, The Tulsa Oilers, Circle Cinema, Tulsa+, Fab Lab Tulsa, Blake Ewing, Kathy Taylor, and has worked with several local publishing companies, and entrepreneurship organizations.

Mr. Moreno now works at the Indian Nations Council, Boy Scouts of America as a graphic designer. He's also the president of Auryn Creative, providing design, website development, and consulting services for non-profit organizations and new startups.

Cheryl Lawson is the owner and founder of event planning and marketing firm, Party Aficionado, and creator of the Event Planning Tools mobile app. Party Aficionado helps companies develop social marketing strategies both online and face-to-face, using full event coordinating capabilities, and coaching to help companies engage their audience. Cheryl is also a self published Children’s book author of The Adventures of Precious the Dog series, and is the founder and head elf at Social Media Tulsa.

Cheryl Can be found on Twitter @SocMediaTulsa @PartyAficionado and of course @Imajackrussell

Doug Stewart is the owner of DSC Web Services, Inc. Doug built his first website back in 1998. At that time, he was working for an IBM Business Partner selling printers. As a commissioned salesperson good quality leads were extremely important to him. And the IBM Business Partner’s website wasn’t bringing in any leads. No one could find the company website on the search engines – until Doug built and promoted his first website for them. That first website ranked high on all the search engines and brought in a bunch of leads every week. In January 1999, Doug Stewart Consulting was born, which later became DSC Web Services, Inc.

Filiberto Gonzalez is founder and CEO of Social | Impact Consulting, LLC, a full-service consulting firm based in Los Angeles.
After a twelve-year career in the nonprofit sector as a social worker, community advocate, program administrator, grant writer, social media strategist, and development director, Filiberto launched Social | Impact Consulting in 2011 to harness the power of social media/new media for nonprofits. Social | Impact Consulting provides professional services in four areas: fundraising, social media strategy, community outreach, and research.

In September 2011, The Huffington Post named Filiberto as one of ‘39 Inspiring Men’ for his work with nonprofits and in the social good community. Later that same month, the social networking site LinkedIn invited Filiberto to represent small business owners and the social good community at the first-ever LinkedIn Town Hall with President Obama. He live-tweeted and uploaded photos from his Twitter account, @gofiliberto, while sitting in the first row.

Gina Schreck is a technology-enthusiast, social media expert and all around CHIC GEEK! Aside from being the co-founder and Digital Immigration Officer of SynapseConnecting, a technology and digital media company, she is an international speaker, author of several books including Getting’ Geeky with Twitter, and was the technical editor on the latest Complete Idiots Guide to Social Media! Gina also hosts the popular and fun tech shows, GETTIN’ GEEKY, and SCHRECK TECK, where she helps people use today’s technology to build business and engage communities. Gina was ranked as one of the top 50 women influencers on-line in FastCompany’s Influence project.
Gina is married and has 4 tech-savvy children (who are also featured on many of the Getting’ Geeky episodes) and was once featured on the cover of a magazine in a strait jacket! (Which she feels very comfortable in!)

She is known on the food scene as Foodie, with a capital “F”, and she will be the first to tell you there is no shame, in that name. She is a columnist for Tastebud magazine in Kansas City, where pens the popular restaurant recommendation column called Table Hopping each month. She’s a also writes the food blog that focuses on the restaurant and Chef culture in Kansas City called “The Making of a Foodie”. She is the Founder of Kansas City’s first underground supperclub called The Test Kitchen, which now boasts chapters in Kansas City, St. Louis, Tulsa and Oklahoma City. Her latest project is one she co-created with Chef Alex Pope, which brought Kansas City’s their first Pop-up Restaurant called Vagabond. With a 20 year corporate marketing background in retail and restaurants, Jenny is constantly working to promote the awareness of good food wherever she finds it and to push the food scene forward in the Midwest.

A native of Tulsa, Oklahoma, Judi Grove is the wife of Bob, mother of three grown children, and grandmother to ten. She spent 23 years in the insurance industry before launching Breast Impressions non profit foundation in January 2007.

A member of the Oklahoma Women’s Coalition, she was the 2010 recipient of a Tulsa Business Journal’s Women of Distinction award, and winner of the 2010 Civic Entrepreneur Tulseys Award.

Judi is the Oklahoma liaison for the national Pink Heals Tour, and instrumental in Tulsa having 4 pink emergency vehicles. Pink in this case is the color for women and children who have experienced ANY form of cancer. She had a dream to take Pink a step further and enlisted over 120 businesses, organizations, churches and schools to Care Enough to Wear Pink. Turn Tulsa Pink took on a life of its own, and will continue into the future!

Julie Chin is an Emmy award winning Meteorologist and Journalist with nearly two decades of television experience. She has reported, anchored, and forecasted the weather across the country both on the local and national level. She has also been the host of show produced by the Do It Yourself Network.
Julie has been named by both the Tulsa Business Journal and Oklahoma Magazine as one of the state's Outstanding 40 Under 40. She has also received national recognition for her commitment to community service with the prestigious Scripps-Howard Burleigh Community Service Award.

Julie is a keynote speaker and emcee for galas, graduations and charity events in the community. She also does freelance talent work and is writer for Tulsa Lifestyle Magazine.

On top of it all, Julie is a blogger. She blogged as she jogged her way through her training as the "Celebrity Runner" for the 2011 Tulsa Run. Just recently Julie started her own blog that mixes her love of weather with her sunny outlook on life. You can check it out at www.TheSunshineStand.com.
Julie is a New York native, but an Oklahoman by choice. In fact, one of her proudest moments was when the city of Muskogee proclaimed her an honorary "Okie from Muskogee". She'll be happy to show the certificate if you'd like to see it.

Laura Moss joined Tulsa's Channel 8 in 2011. She co-anchors Good Morning Oklahoma from 4:30 to 6:00 AM and Good Day Tulsa from 9:00 to 10:00 AM. You can also catch her reporting whenever she gets the opportunity!

Before landing in Green Country, Laura was a multimedia journalist out of KWKT FOX 44 in Waco where she was the lead reporter, assignment editor and an associate producer.

Before working in news, she was a fashion, trends and entertainment host/ reporter for a college content website called ThePalestra.com. Laura specialized in new media, producing web content, managing college interns and co-hosting a summer tour where she did everything from being kicked by kangaroos to holding a 4 ft long crocodile. While at the website, Laura regularly contributed content for The FOX News Channel for Shephard Smith's U Report segment. Leading up to the 2004 election, Laura appeared live on The FOX News Channel as a political analyst to discuss the college student vote.

Laura graduated with distinction from the University of Oklahoma with a degree in Journalism, Broadcasting and Electronic Media. While in school, she earned the prestigious Howard Price Journalism Scholarship, became a Gaylord College of Journalism and Communications Ambassador and studied media in England and France. She anchored the live student newscast, OU Nighty, that took home the OBEA Best College Newscast award. Laura also hosted an entertainment segment called "Sooner Scene" and solo anchored a couple of political specials.

Laura is also a wanna-be-holistic-cook/nutritionist who loves short cuts, southern comfort food, sneaking veggies into ANYTHING and food label reading, all the while sharing her experiences on her blog, www.mealswiththemosses.com.

Laura loves volunteering, meeting strangers and telling their stories. She enjoys wakeboarding and all other lake activities, reading, the fine arts, shopping and eating at local hot spots, walking with friends, and playing with her and John Moss's two dogs, Rufus and Beckham.

Mandy Vavrinak often says that Crossroads Communications, LLC, is a business she never intended to start, though it now defines professionally who she is and personally how she interacts with much of the world. Mandy has extensive experience in connecting people to markets, places, spaces and to the ideas they need and want to explore. She uses an integrated marketing and public relations approach that includes traditional media and new media, visual mapping and social media planning and execution, and she's passionate about strategy before tactics. She gets a "tingly, bubbly" feeling when she hears a story that she knows needs to be told, and she loves finding the right audiences and avenues to tell the personal and professional stories of other people, brands and businesses. She's been doing what she does for almost 20 years, she's a busy mom of 4 and an unashamed lover of chocolate and shoes. She blogs about marketing and PR on her website

Marty Coleman is the blogger/owner of The Napkin Dad Daily. He became the Napkin Dad when he was unemployed and making his daughters’ lunches for them to take to Middle and High School. Being an artist he would draw a drawing with a quote on the napkins he put in their lunches. His hope was that he could impart a bit of wisdom, humor and insight to his daughters in a way that wouldn’t require them sitting down and having to suffer through a lecture from dad.

That small, insignificant daily effort for his daughters lasted over 4 years and ended up getting him national and local attention, exhibitions, speaking engagements, and is a major component of his work as the owner of MAKE Studio – a creative studio of art, photography and design in Tulsa, Oklahoma. In response to requests he has created Napkin Dad merchandise including books, t-shirts, cups and greeting cards. He continues, over 12 years after the beginning of the story, to draw a napkin every day that goes out to an international audience on his blog and other social networks.

Mike Petras is an author, career advisor, and veteran executive recruiter. His popular website, http://www.job-interview-wisdom.com, has been coined: a soft place to land for job seekers and career changers. Prior to Mike's 16 years in executive recruiting, he enjoyed a 20 year career in the recreational vehicle industry as a regional sales director and national sales manager for Fleetwood Enterprises and Damon Corporation. Mike has also conducted numerous local employment workshops on a volunteer basis for hundreds of job seekers and career changers
resulting in breakthroughs when their job search had reached a dead end. Mike currently resides in South Bend, Indiana.

Patrick Allmond, an in-demand social media leader, speaker and frequent consultant for Fox 25 TV and KSBI TV, has been running his business Focus (http://allaboutfocus.com) for over 13 years. He is a recognized leader in the online marketing industry that is called upon to show businesses how to make the best use of social media and online marketing. The vast majority of social media and technology speakers talk in abstract theories that sound great, but leave you even more clueless that before you heard them talk. Patrick is not "that guy". He rolls up his sleeves and shows you exactly what you need to be doing in your business and in your life to grow and prosper. Forget "Old Media" and "new media". What you learn from Patrick will apply across the ages, and allow you to grow "Your Media" and a raving fan base that will live your products and services.

Every day Patrick is intently focused on helping companies find the right solution - technological or otherwise to their business challenges. He loves to share his insights as far as how best to use all of these wonderful tools that we have been given . He is also a huge advocate of networking and connecting the needs of people his knows with those that can fill those needs. Fewer things bring him more joy that helping people become successful by finding the right person to fulfill their needs. The recent growth of social media has produced amazing tools, and Patrick speaks and teaches businesses how to get the most bang for their time. There is a lot of noise out there with these new buzz words "Social Media" and "Social Networking". His goal is to get you through that noise into being productive ASAP.

When he is not yapping on and on about the internet you can find Patrick hanging out with his wonderful wife Angela, or picking on his daughter. He is also an avid pilot always looking towards the sky.

Tulsa Food Guy conceived Tulsa’s Home For Manly Food in October, 2009 at a greasy little burger joint (known only by locals at the time) called Bill’s Jumbo Burgers. Five months later, TulsaFoodGuy.com was born, giving the people what they needed… a website dedicated to all food that is Manly. TFG has made it his mission since he moved to the Tulsa area in late 2007 to seek out the finest eating establishments around. BBQ, Fried Chicken, Steak, Sausages, Pizza and so on… If it’s greasy, meaty, saucy or spicy, TFG will eat it.

While Tulsa Food Guy cannot guarantee that every experience at every restaurant that gets “TFG’s Seal of Awesomeness” will be AWESOME for you, he can guarantee that your odds are much better that you’ll find great, not just good, food at the establishments he recommends. What you will get is an honest, Manly and often entertaining account of his experiences and recommendations of all things food in Tulsa, the rest of Oklahoma, and anywhere else TFG and/or his trusted companions travel in search of the most AWESOME food and the greatest dining experiences in the universe! When you’re looking for something that won’t just satisfy your natural desire to fill your belly, but will leave you walking away with chest pains… just ask TFG. And if you can’t find what you’re looking for on TulsaFoodGuy.com, you can find his attention span deprived, intellectually challenged brother, @TulsaFoodGuy, hanging out on Twitter to fulfill all your Manly Food needs.

Though sometimes picky, often crude, and almost always offensive, TFG looks for the best experience he can get anywhere he goes. And if you don’t agree with what he says, you won’t hurt his feelings… but you will be wrong!