Regina Gwynn
Regina Gwynn is the co-founder & CEO of TresseNoire, the leading on-location beauty booking app designed for women of color in New York City and Philadelphia. The app lets users arrange to have natural hair stylists come to them in their homes, offices, and hotel rooms—it lterally brings the salon experience to your doorstep. Launched in 2014, TresseNoire has been featured in Black Enterprise, Essence, Centric, Madame Noire & ABC News as well as Google for Entrepreneur’s first Exchange for Black Founders program. Regina and co-founder and friend, Octavia Pickett-Blakely are on a mission to bring quality stylists to women.
Esosa Ighodaro
Esosa Ighodaro is the co-founder of CoSign Inc., which was founded in 2013. CoSign is a mobile application that transfers social media content into commerce giving cash for endorsing and cosigning products and merchandise like clothing, home goods, technology and more. The free app is the first of its kind that gives users the technology to allow followers to shop directly from posts across multiple social media channels by tagging retailers directly. CoSign gives incentive to the consumer and brings more exposure to a brand or company.
Jasmine Lawrence
Jasmine Lawrence currently serves as a technical program manager on the Portal (formerly Building 8) team at Facebook. Portal builds products that make it easier for people to connect with their loved ones. She has served as a technical program manager at SoftBank Robotics America where she led a multidisciplinary team to create software for social, humanoid robots. Lawrence was also a program manager at Microsoft, where she created customer driven Mixed Reality applications for enterprise partners. Prior, she worked on the Xbox Engineering team, creating cross-platform social experiences for millions of gamers around the world.
Amanda Spann
Amanda Spann is a marketing consultant & app entrepreneur, who helps brands get their ideas off the ground and create buzz. Prior, Spann co-founded Tiphub, an impact driven innovation community for entrepreneurs in Africa and the African Diaspora and the hosts of Diaspora Demo Day, once the largest US-based pitch competition for African led startups. She has also served as CMO of Blerdology, a tech social enterprise to support and engage the black tech community and the first organization to host hackathons targeting African Americans. The company helped to spark interest innovation and assisted minority entrepreneurs build their apps or web-based ventures for little to no cost. Spann has been honored as one of Business Insider’s 30 Most Important Women In Tech Under 30, Walker’s Legacy 2016 Power50, Rolling Out’s 25 Women you should know, as one of BET’s Blacks on the Brink of Greatness, as well as one of the 5 future leaders in technology by Black Enterprise Magazine.
Angela Benton
Founded in 2011 by Angela Benton, NewME has accelerated hundreds of entrepreneurs through their online platform, residential “boot-camp” accelerators, and equity portfolio. NewME has pioneered diversity in Silicon Valley by guiding underrepresented entrepreneurs to material advantage in achieving growth and sustainability for their businesses. Their programs have led founders to more than $47 MM in funding, including venture capital. She has been honored by Goldman Sachs’ 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs, in addition to Fast Company’s Most Influential Women In Technology, Business Insiders’ 25 Most Influential African Americans in Technology, Marie Claire’s 50 Women Who Rule, and many more.
Corvida Raven
Corvida Raven is a writer, technological artist, entrepreneur and public speaker who lives and works out of New York City, New York. She created a blog, SheGeeks to create a bridge between people and technology. She has stated that her passion is helping people understand technology. Raven wants to help people understand technology to empower them to use it. SheGeeks.net acts as an archive where readers can find insights and perspective on various tech tools. Raven has been recognized by Essence Magazine, theGrio, and Glamour Magazine among others. She was ranked among the 20 Most Influential People in Social Media, 50 Most Influential Women in Tech and Social Media Curator to Watch. SheGeeks ranks as one of the Top 100 Social Media, Internet Marketing and SEO Blogs. Raven has been referred to as the “Oprah of the Web.”
Lena West
Lena L. West is an award-winning social media consultant, blogger, speaker, journalist and technologist. She is also one of the leading experts on how women entrepreneurs can monetize social media. She is the founder of InfluenceExpansion.com, the home of the Influence Expansion Academy, the only social media mastermind program created specifically for women entrepreneurs. As the CEO and chief social media strategist of Influence Expansion, West has helped thousands of entrepreneurs profit from the power of social media and the internet.
Brian W. Carter contributed to this article.
