Founders of The Empowerment Plan, Duo Security and Armune BioScience, Inc. to share first-hand insights on building a company from the ground up
Detroit, Mich., Oct. 24, 2013 — Today, Business Leaders for Michigan (BLM) announced that three successful start-up entrepreneurs will be featured at its 2013 Michigan CEO Summit on Wednesday, October 30, 2013 at The Westin Book Cadillac Detroit. The full agenda and registration information can be found here.
The theme of the 2013 Michigan CEO Summit is “Putting Michigan in the Winner’s Circle.” The daylong agenda is designed to empower entrepreneurs, the business community and civic leaders with new insights & ideas to help their organizations compete and win – in today’s global economy. This is the second annual Michigan CEO Summit presented by Business Leaders for Michigan.
Joining a lineup of speakers that includes some of the state’s most respected leaders are three Michigan start-up CEOs. In a panel titled, “How do you win from the start?” these entrepreneurs will provide a “from the trenches” view of growing a business from the very beginning.
Veronika Scott, Founder & CEO, The Empowerment Plan Scott built an organization around a single idea: to design a coat specifically for the homeless. The result is a self-heated, waterproof garment that converts into a sleeping bag. Her idea has transformed into a system of empowerment in which homeless women are paid to learn how to produce coats for people living on the streets. She has received an IDEA Gold Award from the Industrial Design Society of America and is one of Crain’s Top Twenty in their Twenties. The Empowerment Plan story has been shared at events such as the Forbes 400 Philanthropy Summit with Oprah, Melinda Gates, and Warren Buffett.
Dug Song, Chief Executive Officer, Duo Security Duo Security is a mobile security company backed by Google and True Ventures. Song spent 7 years as founding Chief Security Architect at Arbor Networks, protecting 80% of the world’s Internet service providers, and growing to $120M+ annual revenue before its acquisition by Danaher. Before Arbor, Song built the first commercial network anomaly detection system (acquired by NFR / Check Point), and managed security in the world’s largest production Kerberos environment (University of Michigan). Song’s contributions to the security community include popular open source security (OpenSSH, libdnet, dsniff), distributed filesystem (NFSv4), and operating system (OpenBSD) projects, and co-founding the USENIX Workshop on Offensive Technologies (WOOT).
Eli Thomssen, President & CEO, Armune BioScience, Inc. Armune BioScience, Inc. is a personalized medicine company Thomssen helped found with the Apjohn Group in 2008. Armune BioScience products are based on technology licensed from the University of Michigan, and recently completed development and validation of an assay for early detection of prostate cancer. Prior to forming Armune BioScience, Eli was a co-founder of Azenic Dental, and prior to that, he was a co-founder and Chief Business Officer of Afmedica, Inc. until it was sold to Angiotech Pharmaceuticals. He spent most of his career at The Upjohn Company before becoming a founding principal of the Upjohn Group.
“Michigan has a rich history of innovation, from Henry Ford and William Upjohn to the legion of entrepreneurs working today, of turning ideas into viable businesses,” said Doug Rothwell, BLM President and CEO. “The founders of The Empowerment Plan, Duo Security and Armune BioScience represent the best of Michigan’s start-up community. We’re thrilled to have them share their winning formulas for building successful ventures from the ground up.”
Keynote speakers for the event are former Michigan Gov. John Engler and New York Times bestselling author Daniel Burrus. Engler, now president of Business Roundtable, is one of the nation’s top business policy leaders. His presentation, “A Nation that Wins” will cover the critical role that national policy plays in Michigan’s ability to compete and succeed. Burrus is the author of Flash Foresight: How to See the Invisible and Do the Impossible, and is a contributing writer on innovation and change for CNBC, Huffington Post and others. For the Michigan CEO Summit, Burrus will lead an interactive workshop on seeing hidden opportunities and creatively solving problems on the horizon.
The event will be held at The Westin Book Cadillac Detroit from 8:00a.m-3:00 p.m. The cost is $125 (which includes breakfast and lunch) and space is limited. For additional speaker information, the full agenda and registration, visit our events page.
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