Partners

Following is a list and brief summary of our current partners:

BURT WALKER

Burt is a retired Air Force officer with 20 years experience as a software engineer.  Following his service in a very bureaucratic organization, Burt was ready to explode with pent-up entrepreneurial desire.  After retiring from the Air Force he was brought into a family business, an electronic payments company.  Using his software background, he transformed the business by making the platform scalable enough to support rapid growth.  And grow it did.  After purchasing the majority stock in the company and after 14 years, he sold the company to a bank at a handsome profit and began other entrepreneurial efforts.  Some of those efforts succeeded, others did not.  But according to Burt, “I learned more from my failed projects than I could have ever learned from my successful ones.”   Today, Burt is actively involved in several entrepreneurial efforts, some of which are highlighted on this web site.

MO MILLER

Mo is a seasoned veteran of entrepreneurship as the founder of many successful small business enterprises.  He has also served in senior executive roles on several companies, some of them publicly traded.  His background is in software development/sales and financial securities.  Mo was the architect of the celebrated Entrepreneurial Academy of Excellence, establishing Kentucky’s first pilot program for educating adults in entrepreneurship in rural areas.  Mo continues to play a leading role in establishing a small business accelerator in Hardin County Kentucky, part of which included completion of a U.S. Department of Labor grant for a business accelerator demonstration project.

LISA WILLIAMS

Lisa is the quintessential entrepreneur.  She currently serves as the executive director of the Lincoln Trail Innovation Center, the top performing center in the state of Kentucky.  She assists entrepreneurs within a 10 county region in business development, obtaining state grants and patent applications, developing business plans, and soliciting capital from private sources.  She has founded and operated several businesses in Kentucky and serves on various commissions in Kentucky for youth business education, women in leadership, and other related fields.  She is the architect of the WIRED 65 Invention Convention and the Green Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute, programs to inspire youth in entrepreneurial initiatives.

SAM YOUNG

Sam brings 22 years of advertising, marketing and business experience to the table. He finds his diversity to be one of his strongest suits. Working with and for different businesses has helped him gain a great respect for many different businesses. He sometimes refers to his background as “From Barns to Banks and most things in between”. Since graduating from Murray State University with a degree in Advertising and Marketing, he has enjoyed working creatively in banking, retail, business to business, mail order, non-profit, e-commerce, graphic design, web design, direct mail, radio, and public relations. “There isn’t a business alive that cannot benefit from good creative and even better customer service. Those are two hallmarks I find necessary to success and growth.”