Prime Time Pitch: Get IN the Game!

Industry: IT, Software, Dev, Tech, Cybersecurity, Staffing
Company Profile: Nitin Agrawal is CEO of Interstride, which connects employers to diverse, entry-level international talent from the top U.S. higher-ed institutions. Through Interstride, employers can fulfill their diversity initiatives and create a seamless infrastructure to source and sponsor international talent. Nitin has worked for numerous financial institutions, including the corporate & investment banking division of Citigroup. After 15 years of experience as an international student and professional, he wanted to make life easier for the next generation of international students. Interstride is the result of his conviction that technology can empower these students to chase their dreams with confidence.

Industry: Food & Beverage
Company Profile: Rosa Li is Founder and CEO of Wildwonder, a beverage company inspired by the healing tonics of Rosa’s heritage. Wildwonder crafts delightful, bubbly drinks that offer whimsical flavors with real ingredients to supercharge your gut. Wildwonder uses a science-backed formulation that combines the benefits of live probiotics, prebiotic plant fiber, superherbs and real fruit. Wildwonder’s sparkling wellness drinks quickly became the functional beverage of Silicon Valley, stocked at 300+ companies such as Google, Facebook, and Doordash. Five percent of profits from every bottle goes to empowering women and marginalized communities.

Industry: Healthcare, IT, Software, Dev, Tech, Cybersecurity
Company Profile: Richmond native Anita Darden Gardyne is CEO of Onēva, which provides trusted home care services through extensive caregiver background checks and enterprise grade security via GDPR compliance. The MS Azure cloud provides scalability to the platform while our tested launch program allows us to easily expand into new geographic locations. Piloted with Microsoft and currently remarketed with our partner Acrisure, the Onēva platform delivers on all the key elements of an enterprise-ready solution to employee quality of life issues. Burdened with caring for both a school-aged child and elderly parents, Anita recognized careers were adversely impacted by the lack of available trustee, safe care.

Industry: Marketing & Promo, PPE
Company Profile: Jammie Hsu, owner of Proforma element 7, started her journey in the promo and print world in 2006. Her company provides marketing programs and solutions. Proforma applies creativity and innovation to your business challenges—from the development of brochures and promotional items to the execution of marketing campaigns and ecommerce solutions—making us the one source for all your brand marketing and graphic communications needs. Jammie is passionate about helping customers, volunteering in her community and spending time with family, especially her 4-1/2 year-old son Trey, who is now her ex-coworker.

Industry: Consulting Services, IT, Software, Dev, Tech, Cybersecurity, Staffing
Company Profile: As CEO of Trident Consulting, Shabana Siraj works hard and plays equally hard. Shabana doesn’t believe in luck or chance, but in hard work and that it will get her everywhere. She instills that into every last member of her team. She is a woman on a mission. Trident Consulting is an IT and engineering staffing and technology company helping large corporates hire niche and diverse candidates. Trident has been inducted into Inc 5000 Fastest Growing Private Companies in America, and the Top 100 Fastest Growing Private Companies in the Bay Area by the San Francisco Business Times (ranked 45th)!

Brochure: https://brojure.com/shabanasiraj/trident-consulting-1602092698/

Industry: Healthcare, Professional Services
Company Profile: Regina Jones, BSN, RN, President of Accurate, has over 15 years of experience in the area of screening and testing. Ms. Jones’ experience ranges from clinical nursing, clinical research to business. Accurate C&S Services creates safer and healthier workplaces through COVID-19 testing, background checks, drug screens and personal protective equipment (PPE). We come to you utilizing one of our two mobile RV units to conduct on-site testing with personnel available for testing at your job site. As pandemic experts since the last H1N1 pandemic, allow us to vaccinate your employees as we vaccinated over 25,000 residents during the last H1N1 pandemic.

Industry: IT, Software, Dev, Tech, Cybersecurity, Value-Added Reseller (VARS)
Company Profile: Meijun is a technology solutions provider specializing in IT infrastructure, IoT, augmented reality, robotics, and software development. From traditional managed services to fully customized software, our team will solve your business problems through our consultative approach and develop the right solutions.

Roger Cheng serves as Meijun’s Chief Business Relationship Officer, building global business development and overseeing strategic partnerships with key OEMs and solution providers. He is also known as “the Voice,” has served as emcee for a number of organizations, including NMSDC, WBENC and their respective Regional Councils, Fortune 500 companies and multiple cultural Chambers of Commerce.

Industry: Construction & Utilities, Facilities Management & Janitorial, Staffing
Company Profile: Conchita Tucker is an Oakland native and President of Tucker Technology, Inc. (TTI) an Oakland-based national 5G wireless integration and telecommunications field service company. TTI works with wireless carriers on wireless construction, cable operators for field service fulfillment, and enterprise customers for network integration.

Prior to assuming the role of President of TTI, Conchita worked in various roles honing her general management and business development skills. She has consistently delivered impressive profit margins and year-over-year record revenue growth of over 200%. She serves in leadership roles in several organizations including Harvard Alumni Entrepreneurs, The Links, Inc., and Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Inc.

Industry: Food & Beverage
Company Profile: Robyn DeFina is Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Sugar Bowl Bakery. Previously she led Marketing for Once Upon a Farm. Prior to that, she has held a variety of marketing leadership roles for nearly 10 years at Annie’s. Sugar Bowl Bakery™ is a family-owned bakery based near San Francisco whose story begins with the five Ly brothers immigrating to the US from Vietnam and pooling their money together to purchase a humble retail bakery in 1984. They grew from baking and selling their high-quality baked goods like Madeleines, Palmiers, Brownie Bites and Duet Bites, from that one retail store to supplying many thousands of retail stores both domestically and internationally.

Industry: Software, Dev, Tech, Cybersecurity, Professional Services, Staffing
Company Profile: With over 25 years of experience providing managed services and staffing solutions to leading global technology companies, OSI Engineering CEO Javier Diaz has placed advanced engineers and R&D teams who have developed some of the leading products we use today. He has created a go-to firm for many of Silicon Valley’s top companies who need specialized experts in ground-breaking technologies.

OSI Engineering develops, implements, and manages workforce solutions through every stage of the product lifecycle, from early application development through final production. Capabilities include technical staff augmentation, managed service programs, and recruitment process outsourcing (RPO) solutions.

Industry: Construction & Utilities, Consumer Products, IT, Software, Dev, Tech, Cybersecurity, Value-Added Reseller (VARS)
Company Profile: Erwin Villanueva is a people friendly, knowledgeable and experienced relationship builder. He specializes in bridging gaps within an organization’s pain points and elevating them with Saitech Inc.’s strategic core strengths. Saitech Inc. is an innovative, value-added supplier for information technology hardware, software, supply chain services to support cloud computing, data center management, data storage, rugged mobility devices, marine electronics, and office equipment. We provide total solutions to IT acquisitions by providing multi-vendor hardware and software along with significant pre-sale and post-sale services. We provide significant value-added services consisting of configuration consulting and design, systems integration, installation of multi-vendor computer equipment, maintenance, and end-user support.

Cecil Plummer is the president and a member of the Board of Directors for the Western Regional Minority Supplier Development Council. Plummer formerly worked with Robert Half for 17 years and left his most recent position as the Director of CSS Strategic Solutions to join the Council. Plummer has over 13 years of executive leadership experience and possesses a solid background in strategic sourcing, change management, performance and process improvement, Supplier Diversity, strategic planning, and risk management.

Event Host for Prime Time Pitch Contest

LaSandra Hunt is a Commercial Banker and a 12-year veteran with the firm. She brings the most relevant experts in the firm together to help her customers achieve the highest success. LaSandra has a passion for technology and innovation, which is part of her motivation for leveraging the firm's annual $11B investment in technology to help customers drive operational efficiency. She leverages the treasury payments experts to help examine workflow processes, introduce innovations in payments and advocate for integrated systems helping reduce cost and improve cash-flow. A native of the San Francisco Bay Area, LaSandra earned her bachelor’s degree from Golden Gate University. LaSandra enjoys traveling and learning new languages like Tagalog and Croatian.

Brittany Schmid is the CEO of Dale Carnegie of the Bay Area, Los Angeles and San Diego. She is a certified small-woman owned business and is passionate about helping individuals and teams reach their full potential. Utilizing an engaging and empowering virtual, in-person, or hybrid approach, Dale Carnegie Training supports organizations with leadership development, sales training, customer service excellence, presentation skills, and a variety of soft skills that drive the culture and business outcomes of their over 9 million customers globally.

Training Topic: Storytelling Your Way to the Perfect Pitch

Training sponsored by:

Dana Griffin is an implementation architect at Dropbox. Her work focuses on helping businesses who purchase Dropbox, ensuring they have a successful roll-out and seamless adoption of the product. She guides IT administrators through technical configurations that enable end users to easily and securely use Dropbox. Dana has worked in the Software as a Service (SaaS) industry for six years. She loves seeing how technology can eliminate tedious tasks and allow people to focus on getting their job done.

Training Topic: Get IN the Game: Leveraging the Power of Dropbox

Sharon Hall has over 25 years of experience leading sourcing & procurement teams in manufacturing, retail & distribution. In her current role, she is focused on centralizing and driving process improvements, building and managing the framework for project management governance, leading the business analytics team in support of cost savings initiatives and manages a multimillion pipeline of projects with stakeholder alignment. Sharon is a Certified Project Management Professional, Green Belt, Certified Supply Chain Professional, life coach and a U.S. Navy veteran.

Kimberly Chastang-Lee is a Sourcing/Procurement leader with 20+ years of experience. Currently, she leads a team who supports Corporate and Professional Services for Salesforce, managing a large and complex portfolio of spend. A Sourcing warrior by day, Kim enjoys free time with her family and traveling as much as possible to places with sandy beaches and clear waters (yes, the pandemic has slowed this down).

Edna Zapata-Fuller has been in her role as Supplier Diversity Manager since 2016. She joined State Compensation Insurance Fund 30 years ago and started her procurement career in 1999. With over 17 years of Procurement and Contracting experience; Edna believed that her Procurement background plus the support she gets from her senior leaders has enabled her accomplish and exceed the company’s Supplier Diversity spend goal year after year. As a former small business co-owner; she whole heartedly relates to the many challenges diverse suppliers face.

Layne Larsen is a Purchasing Supervisor with 12 years of experience working with Southwest Gas in Inventory Management and Procurement. The most important piece of advice that Layne has received in his career in Supply Chain is, “Be fair, be reasonable, and treat other people the way you want to be treated.” He tries to reflect that advice in supplier relationships.

Rolawe Bakare is a technology professional with over 15 years of experience, specifically in datacenter design, enterprise architecture and Managed Services. His experience includes working as a Principal Solution Architect at Oracle and EMC Corp where his focus was on datacenter and hybrid cloud architecture. He currently manages the Western Solution Architecture team for Zones Inc, a managed and professional services partner. He has domain expertise in Healthcare and Utilities, working for the last 10 years with customers in Western Canada and USA. He is passionate about cultural inclusivity of thought on both sides of the negotiation table, and is proud to lead a diverse team of technical experts.