Ben Connealy is a passionate strategist with a decade of diverse project management experience. He has led teams of over 50 people in highly structured environments, and agile teams of five and fewer in his start-up, Connealy Insurance Agencies. As the founder of Connealy Insurance Agencies, Ben has researched, discovered, and implemented strategies aimed at improving customer acquisition, satisfaction, and retention. Connealy Insurance Agencies now has higher year-over-year customer retention than 93 percent of Agencies in Southern California. Ben has served as a guest speaker at multiple agency conferences in San Diego and Orange Counties and loves using what he’s learned to help others succeed. Ben holds a B.S. in Business Administration from the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. He is 2013 Fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in San Diego.

Fellow since

As an early member of the StyleCaster Media Group team, Emily Washkowitz has experience in leading a company through growth and financing. As the Director of Client Services and Operations, Emily managed projects for global media initiatives generating over $4 million in revenue. Emily also developed the company's sales processesluding inventory management, product development and campaign analytics. Emily holds a B.A. in History of Art and Architecture from Harvard University and is a 2014 MBA candidate at Columbia University. She is a 2014 fellow in the Startup Leadership Program in New York.

Fellow since

Jay is the founder of Shareaholic, Inc. (www.shareaholic.com), a company fanatical about making sharing on the web better, faster, and easier. Over 1 million people have used the award winning tools created by Shareaholic. Previously, Jay was Vice President of Products at Lookery, an online user-targeting network that offered lightweight, economical targeting data for over 200 million users. Before Lookery, Jay was the Product Manager and founding member of the small team that was responsible for creating and launching Compete.com, now part of the WPP Group [Nasdaq:WPP]. In addition, as co-founder of PopSignal, one of Boston’s largest professional networking organizations, Jay is actively contributing to the growth of Boston’s technology startup community. He was selected as a 2010 Fellow of the Startup Leadership Program in Boston. Jay earned a B.S. cum laude in Computer Science from Tufts University. He also minored in Entrepreneurial Leadership and Multimedia Arts. At Tufts he was awarded the MacJannet scholarship. He loves creating, lives for technology and innovation, and likes making things happen.

Fellow since