Leadership

---

---

Since being elected mayor in a record turnout election in April 2010, Mayor Steve Benjamin has made it his mission to create in Columbia the most talented, educated and entrepreneurial city in America. In addition to serving as Mayor of Columbia, Mayor Benjamin also served as the 2018-2019 President of the U.S. Conference of Mayors and as Chairman for Municipal Bonds for America, Member of the Federal Communications Commission’s Intergovernmental Advisory Committee, Member of the Accelerator for America Advisory Council and Co-Chair of the Mayors for 100% Clean Energy campaign. Mayor Benjamin is married to the Honorable DeAndrea Gist Benjamin, Chief Administrative Judge (General Sessions) for South Carolina's Fifth Judicial Circuit. The two are the proud parents of daughters Bethany and Jordan Grace.

---

Mayor David Holt took office April 10, 2018, as Oklahoma City’s 36th Mayor. He was elected Feb. 13, 2018, with 78.5 percent of the vote. It was the largest vote percentage achieved by a non-incumbent candidate for Mayor since 1947, and it made Holt the youngest Mayor of Oklahoma City since 1923, the first Native American mayor of Oklahoma City, and at the time of his election, the youngest mayor of a U.S. city with more than 500,000 residents. Mayor Holt’s “One OKC” message reflects his belief that Oklahoma City can continue to thrive only if its people set aside the things that divide us and find common purpose. In his second year in office, Mayor Holt recorded his signature achievement, shepherding the development and successful passage of MAPS 4, an ambitious, nearly $1 billion package that will address 16 critical challenges and opportunities. Mayor Holt has quickly emerged as a national leader among mayors. In 2020, he was elected by his peers as a Trustee of the U.S. Conference of Mayors, the highest level of leadership in the organization. He also serves as Vice Chair of the U.S. Conference of Mayors International Affairs Committee. He is a member of the National League of Cities 2020 Presidential Election Task Force, an advisory council member for Accelerator for America, and a member of the 2019-2020 Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative. Mayor Holt received his B.A. from George Washington University and his law degree from Oklahoma City University. Mayor Holt had already served a U.S. House Speaker, a U.S. President, a Lt. Governor and Members of the U.S. House and Senate when he became chief of staff to his predecessor, Mayor Mick Cornett, at age 26. He served five years in that position before being elected to the Oklahoma Senate, where he served almost eight years. Mayor Holt is a licensed attorney and works for a family-owned investment company in Oklahoma City. He and his wife Rachel, Interim Executive Director of the Oklahoma Office of Juvenile Affairs, have two children, George and Margaret. The Holts are members of St. Augustine of Canterbury Episcopal Church. Mayor Holt is also a member of the Osage Nation.

---

A proven leader with over 10 years in executive management roles, Chris Camacho serves as the President & CEO at one of the longest standing public private partnerships for economic development across the country. He most recently served as the organization’s Executive Vice President. During his tenure, GPEC has led the attraction of more than 175 companies creating 26,688 jobs and $2.2 billion in capital investment. Some of the more notable projects include Apple, Silicon Valley Bank, Zenefits, GoDaddy, Yelp, Amazon, Garmin, General Motors and many others. He oversees the domestic and international business development and market strategies while serving as GPEC’s executive leader in community interactions. He has particular expertise in emerging technology, tax policy and international economic development. Since 2008, he has taken an active role in addressing the region’s competitiveness position on cost and taxation. In 2015, Chris was named to Consult Connect’s Top 50 U.S. Economic Developers. In 2013, he was named among an international group of “40 Under 40” by Development Counsellors International, a New York-based firm recognizing rising talent in economic development. And in 2012, he also received a “40 Under 40” award from the Phoenix Business Journal, which each year identifies talent throughout Arizona. Camacho is the past president of the Arizona Association for Economic Development (AAED), the statewide association of economic development practitioners. In 2011, AAED named him Economic Developer of the Year. Prior to GPEC, Camacho served as President & CEO of the Greater Yuma Economic Development Corporation (GYEDC) from 2006-2008, after serving as the Business Development Manager for two years. During his tenure, GYEDC helped 35 companies and 3,500 jobs locate in Greater Yuma, resulting in more than $350M of capital investment in the region. Some of the larger manufacturing projects included Alside Window and Door, Northwestern Industries Inc., Johnson Controls, and Shaw Industries. Viewed as a dynamic community figure, Camacho was recognized as the Chamber of Commerce Leader of the Year in 2007. In 2006, he served on the Arizona Global Network Board, which was developed to create a foreign-direct investment platform for the State of Arizona. He also developed Yuma’s first Business Retention and Expansion Program to support the local manufacturing and food technology sector. Prior to moving to Arizona, Camacho worked as a research analyst at The Alliance, a regional economic development firm in Greater St. Louis. He is involved in community non-profits including Chicanos Por La Casa, and sits on the boards for the Arizona Business Education Coalition, the Arizona Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, the Valley of the Sun United Way, the Metro Phoenix Export Alliance (MPEXA) and the International Economic Development Council. Camacho graduated from Southern Illinois University with an undergraduate degree in Psychology and a graduate degree in Public Administration and Policy Analysis. He also attended the University of Oklahoma for the Economic Development Institute. He resides in Scottsdale with his wife and three children.  

---

Activist, entrepreneur, public speaker, Washington D.C. powerbroker, and passionate advocate of women’s political engagement — Sarah Chamberlain plays many roles. As President of the Republican Main Street Partnership, Sarah runs an organization that supports the governing wing of the Republican Party in Congress. In the judgment of most political observers, she is the only woman in the country who currently leads a major Republican organization. And as the creator and facilitator of the Women2Women National Conversation Tour, Sarah has become one of the most important national voices calling for women to become involved in the political process.

Sarah’s career has been marked by both accomplishment and tragedy. Born in upstate New York, she first gained political experience as an assistant to Rep. Amory Houghton Jr., a former CEO of the Corning Glass Company and a six-term member of Congress. She became the first executive director of the John Quincy Adams Society and helped to establish the Republican Main Street Partnership. She has written for the Washington Post, U.S. News & World Report, and other national publications. She has been featured on numerous media programs including “Morning Joe” and “Fox and Friends.” She recently undertook a course of study in the Women and Public Policy Program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

In 1999, Sarah married Michael Resnick, an agent of the Federal Bureau of Investigation assigned to the National Security Council. In 2011, he died of pancreatic cancer at age fifty. The FBI’s Michael D. Resnick Terrorist Screening Center is named in his honor. Sarah and Michael had one child, a daughter, who’s now eleven years old.

Sarah built the Main Street Partnership from the fledgling organization founded in 1997 into a thriving network of over seventy members of Congress and leaders from business, education, and the professions. All of its members share Sarah’s commitment to conservative, pragmatic government as well as compassion in our communities and character in our national leaders. Main Street is dedicated to electing and defending legislators who will govern effectively in the Republican tradition. Main Street and its members are solutions-oriented fiscal realists, advancing positive policies that can command bipartisan support.

Sarah’s experiences — as a single mother, as a woman involved in politics, and as an ordinary citizen frustrated with Capitol Hill gridlock — led her to start the Women2Women National Conversation Tour in 2014. Her training at Harvard provided a further opportunity to refine her vision of what the tour should be. The tour brings Main Street’s Congresswomen together with bipartisan gatherings of women across the country. Its aim is to spark dialogue between legislators and everyday citizens about how women are personally affected by what happens in government, take those ideas back to Washington, and implement them as the Women2Women Policy Agenda. Sarah urges women to educate themselves about politics and get involved by voting, taking part in local and national campaigns, and even running for office themselves. She firmly believes that more women participating in politics at all levels will lead to better and less adversarial government.

Sarah Chamberlain is a unique and powerful woman’s voice in the American political debate. Follow her posts on Facebook, Twitter, and her Main Street Advocacy blog, or see her on the Women2Women Conversation Tour.

 

---

Debbie Cox Bultan has twenty-five years of experience in center-left politics, public policy and non-profit leadership. She currently serves as founding Executive Director of the NewDEAL (Developing Exceptional American Leaders), a national network of 140 pro-growth progressive elected leaders at the state and local levels who are championing ideas to grow the economy, expand opportunity and make government work better.

Ms. Bultan previously served as Executive Director for the Civic Leadership Foundation, a Chicago-based non-profit that prepares underserved youth for college, career and civic life. Prior to helping launch NewDEAL, Ms. Bultan spent fifteen years at the Democratic Leadership Council (DLC) where she served in a number of capacities, including National Political Director and Chief of Staff. Among her accomplishments at the DLC was the development of a network of, and policy tools for, state and local elected officials across the country.

Ms. Bultan is also a veteran of numerous political campaigns in California. She currently resides in Santa Barbara, California with her husband and their two children.

---

John Dearie is the founder and President of the Center for American Entrepreneurship. He is the former Acting CEO of the Financial Services Forum, a financial and economic policy organization comprised of the chief executive officers of the largest financial institutions with operations in the United States. From 2001 to 2015, he was the Forum’s Executive Vice President for Policy, coordinating the group’s policy agenda, which included: financial supervision reform, the competitiveness of U.S. capital markets, free and fair trade, comprehensive tax reform, debt and deficit reduction, and accelerating economic growth and job creation. Prior to joining the Forum, John spent nine years at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York where he held positions in the Banking Studies, Foreign Exchange, and Policy & Analysis areas. He was appointed an Officer of the Bank in 1996. In addition to his regular duties, he served as the principal speechwriter for New York Fed Presidents E. Gerald Corrigan and William J. McDonough. He is the co-author of Where the Jobs Are: Entrepreneurship and the Soul of the American Economy (Wiley, 2013), which was called “one of the great economics books of the past few years” by the American Enterprise Institute. His writing has also appeared in the The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, The Financial Times, The Hill, Politico, American Banker, USA Today, and China’s Caijing Magazine.

---

Adrian Malik Fenty is a member of the business development team at Perkins Coie LLP and a special advisor at venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz. He served as the sixth mayor of the District of Columbia. Fenty holds advisory and business development roles with OpenGov, 2U, and Box. He also serves on the Board of Directors of three nonprofits: Genesys Works-Bay Area, College Track and Fight for Children. He has also embarked on a career as a paid speaker and part-time college professor. Previously, Fenty was a D.C. Council member for six years. A Washington, D.C. native, Fenty is a graduate of Oberlin College and Howard University Law School.

---

Taking bold action and disrupting the status quo to drive strategic innovation have defined John's career as a senior leader in government, the private sector and now as US Chief Innovation Officer and Partner for Dentons, the largest law firm in the world.

A chief executive with nearly 20 years of senior management experience, this former mayor, Federal economic development leader and collaboration expert has an exceptional ability to work with diverse constituencies, manage complex issues and produce compelling results.

John's approach has led to significant opportunities and visionary outcomes: Nominated by President Obama and confirmed unanimously by the Senate, John served as Assistant Secretary of Commerce for Economic Development. He transformed the office into a 21st Century organization and launched the Office of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, the "i6 Challenge" and the "Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge" to support innovative, high-growth strategies and entrepreneurship.

As Mayor of Bloomington, Ind., John worked with the private sector to develop a vibrant business climate that fostered more than $243 million in private investments and created 3700 new jobs.

As Senior Vice President/Partner with First Capital Investment Group, Inc. he directed a portfolio of more than $150 million in assets and closed $47.2 million in acquisition transactions.

Now with Dentons, John is a driving force in the firm's strategy to reinvent the business of law. As Global Chair of NextLaw Labs, an independent legal tech business accelerator, he works closely with the firm's lawyers and professionals to identify investment and co-development opportunities for new technologies that will transform the legal industry to deliver greater client value.

John holds a JD, MPA and BS from Indiana University, and his success was recognized with a 2014 Distinguished Alumni Award, the School of Public and Environmental Affairs' highest honor bestowed upon its graduates.

---

Donna Harris is cofounder and CEO of 1776, a global incubator and seed fund.  Under her leadership 1776 has grown from idea to a globally recognized brand at the center of worldwide startup activity.  Launched only two years ago, 1776 now has campuses in Washington, DC, Northern Virginia, and San Francisco, and operates a venture fund making investments worldwide.  Through 1776, nearly 300 young companies have been founded and are growing and creating jobs in the Washington, DC region with thousands of others being supported by 1776 around the globe.  With visitors ranging from President Obama and Prime Minister David Cameron to CEO’s of America’s top technology companies, 1776 has become the singular go-to-stop in DC for political and corporate leaders as they seek to engage in the innovation economy. Prior to launching 1776, Donna served as the Managing Director at the Startup America Partnership where, working in partnership with the White House, the Kauffman Foundation and the Case Foundation, she led the formation of entrepreneurial communities across the United States and integrated them into a national startup ecosystem. Her work was the precursor to the Startup Nations initiative, enabling informal knowledge sharing among economies to help accelerate new and young firm formation in their countries in order to create jobs, build economies and expand human welfare.  Donna remains on the board of directors of Global Entrepreneurship Network, which oversees the Startup Nations initiative. Prior to joining Startup America, Donna was Vice Chair of Interpoint Group, a government markets, government relations, and public affairs strategy and management firm, which generated nearly $8 billion in revenue while passing or defeating legislation, and executed public affairs campaigns for corporations, non-profits, foundations, and governments globally.  Under her leadership, the company grew 10x and was acquired by Pegasus Capital Partners. She was also previously Founder and CEO of Kinderstreet, which sold software in the education, sports, and recreation markets.  Donna grew the company from concept to a national leader with 900+ user schools in 41 states, and it was acquired by Arc Capital Development in 2005. She was also Vice President at Centromine, a provider of web-based clinical and fiscal systems in the Health and Human Services industry.  There, she led all product and market strategy and assisted in raising $11M in venture capital financing. Centromine was acquired by the Echo Group in 2000. Donna serves as a Trustee of the Federal City Council, is on the Board of Directors of the Global Entrepreneurship Network and is also an Entrepreneur-In-Residence at Georgetown University.  She is also an active angel investor as a cofounder of K Street Capital.  Donna is also a frequent speaker and contributor to publications such as the Wall Street Journal, the Washington Post, and Huffington Post.  Recognized as one of Washington, DC’s Power 100 by Washington Business Journal and Washington Life, and as a Tech Titan by Washingtonian Magazine, Donna has become one of the most influential leaders in Washington’s new economy. She holds a bachelor’s degree from Central Michigan University and MBA with distinction from the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.  

---

Ian Hathaway is an economist, quantitative analyst, and writer, with expertise in entrepreneurship, technology, and innovation, and at generating data-driven insights and communicating complex material to general audiences. He is also an experienced entrepreneur, having launched new ventures, helped young organizations get off the ground, and worked with established businesses to expand into new areas. Ian has recently worked with organizations in the Internet, software, medical technology, media, consulting, banking, venture capital, startup, non-profit, and education sectors, on a range of research, public policy, regulatory, and strategy issues. He has published for a number of research institutions, universities, non-profits, and businesses, and writes for noted periodicals, such as the Harvard Business Review and The Wall Street Journal. He is regularly cited in leading press outlets for his views and research on entrepreneurship, including the New York Times, Washington Post, The Economist, Financial Times, BusinessWeek, and countless others, and has been an invited speaker at the OECD, Kauffman Foundation, MIT, Urban Institute, National Association for Business Economics, and the United States Congress. Ian is a consultant at Frontier Economics, where he leads and develops work on technology, innovation, and public policy. He is also a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution, where he researches the links between innovation, cities, and economic growth, and is an adjunct professor at New York University, where lectures on startups and urban economic development. Previously, Ian was an economist at the Federal Reserve Bank, World Trade Organization, and Bloomberg, and founded Ennsyte Economics, a consultancy. He has also been an advisor to Silicon Valley Bank, Engine Advocacy, and venture-backed technology startups. Ian is a graduate of the University of Chicago, where he studied economics and political economy.  

---

Jimmy Kemp is President of the Jack Kemp Foundation. He created the Foundation and its programs which are based on the American Idea, which is that the condition of your birth doesn’t determine the outcome of your life.

Mr. Kemp also co-founded and is the Managing Partner of Kemp Partners, a strategic consulting firm based in Washington DC. Mr. Kemp has assisted Fortune 500 companies as well as burgeoning firms before Congress, the White House and several federal agencies. He has been representing clients providing government relations and corporate affairs services since 2002.

Mr. Kemp is also an Executive Vice President at Group 47, a digital data storage company which is bringing to market an archival, media called DOTS (Digital Optical Technology System).

Prior to Kemp Partners, Mr. Kemp spent eight seasons as a quarterback in the Canadian Football League, finishing his career in 2001 with the Toronto Argonauts.

Mr. Kemp also serves as Chairman of the Board for the Hope Community Charter School located in NE Washington DC. The school serves 735 pre-k through grade 8 students and has been operating since September 2005. Mr. Kemp is a graduate of Wake Forest University. He and his wife, Susan, have four boys and reside in NW Washington DC.

Michael Lythcott is Cofounder and Partner at Obsidian Investment Partners in New York City. Mr. Lythcott is widely renowned as a recognized innovator, investor, entrepreneur and leader in media, technology and real estate development industries. As a Founding Partner, Mr. Lythcott directs Obsidian Investment Partners’ investment strategy and key decisions. Following investment banking and asset management positions at both JP Morgan (JPM) and Bear Stearns (JPM), Mr. Lythcott founded the Private Equity firm Uplift Equity Partners, retiring in 2011. Mr. Lythcott’s business achievements and philanthropic works have been featured in numerous publications, including the New York Times, GQ Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, and Chicago Sun Times. His philanthropy includes major gifts to enhance and diversify the permanent collections of the Smithsonian’s National Portrait Gallery and National Museum of African American History and Culture. In addition, Mr. Lythcott continues to serve as the Chairman of the Board for the National Black Theatre and as Vice Chairman of East Harlem’s placemaking, advocacy and merchant association, Uptown Grand Central. Mr. Lythcott graduated from the University of Pennsylvania and Columbia Business School with distinction in corporate finance. A lifelong learner, practitioner of personal development, transcendental meditation and traveler, Mr. Lythcott lives in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, with his wife, Jennifer, son Xavier and goldendoodle Jax.

---

Andrew Yang is the Founder and CEO of Venture for America, a fellowship program that places top college graduates in start-ups for 2 years in emerging U.S. cities to generate job growth and train the next generation of entrepreneurs. Andrew has worked in start-ups and early stage growth companies as a founder or executive for more than twelve years. He was the CEO and President of Manhattan GMAT, a test preparation company that was acquired by the Washington Post/Kaplan in 2009. He has also served as the co-founder of an Internet company and an executive at a health care software start-up. He has appeared on CNBC, Morning Joe, Fox News, TIME, Techcrunch, the Wall St. Journal, and many other media outlets. Andrew was named a Champion of Change by the White House for his work with Venture for America and one of Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business.” He is a graduate of Columbia Law and Brown University. Andrew’s first book, “Smart People Should Build Things,” was published by Harper Business in early 2014.