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Guest Neil Jacobs is the president and founder of the 3Point Foundation, a non-profit organization that offers free educational, sports and dance programming to under-served youth in Boston. Working closely with the Boston Celtics, Boston Public Schools, UMass Boston and additional partners, Jacobs and 3Point are on a mission to improve the lives of Boston’s youth through positive reinforcement in the classroom and through group athletics. Prior to 3Point Foundation, Jacobs served as outside team counsel for the Boston Celtics for 30 years, making it no surprise that 3Point is a community partner of the Boston Celtics Shamrock Foundation. In fact, Celtics owner Wyc Grousbeck is one of the first people Jacobs pitched the idea of 3Point Foundation to. Toward the end of our podcast discussion, Jacobs shares a remarkable first-hand account of when the Toronto Blue Jays sued the Boston Celtics over the rights of Danny Ainge, including some incredible insight into the mind of Celtics legendary coach and general manager Red Auerbach (see the 59:00 minute mark). A retired partner of the WilmerHale law firm, Jacobs has spent decades involved in numerous education and basketball programs for youth. Now serving more than 250 students, 3Point runs after-school programs in Boston K-8 schools and operates summer programming at two locations. Jacobs is responsible for the overall management and strategic direction of 3Point, and he’s helped 3Point pivot to a virtual education model during the pandemic.

Guest Chris Vail is a Senior Account Executive for Political and Advocacy Partnerships at Snapchat. A former Amazon ad sales leader, Vail made the move to Snapchat to help onboard legislative, issue, and non-profit advertisers onto the Snapchat platform. His team recently launched an augmented reality lens for the Mark Kelly campaign in Arizona, which was the first Senate campaign to lean in on this new, experiential way of engaging voters. Snapchat has also made news waves recently for signing up more than 750,000 young voters via its Snapchat app (and now it’s crossed 1 million registered voters). Prior to Snapchat, Vail headed up sales for Downstream, a fast-growing Amazon product marketing startup. He began his media career as a planner and buyer for a large D.C. political shop. In 2014, he migrated from politics to ecommerce, moved from D.C. to Seattle and landed at Amazon to help build out its (at the time) small digital ads team. He spearheaded the expansion of Amazon’s ad business into New York, Toronto and Boston, where he eventually moved with his family.

Guest Ari Fine Glantz is the Director of Development & Strategic Initiatives at the New England Venture Capital Association (NEVCA), the regional trade association for the venture capital industry, with mission to foster a collaborative, inclusive, and prosperous innovation ecosystem. At NEVCA, Glantz leads the organization’s revenue generating activities, manages legislative strategy, and supports president Jody Rose on new program development. He has served as a coach and judge for a variety of accelerators and pitch competitions around Boston, and is an infrequent contributor to TechCrunch, BostInno, and TEDx. Glantz recently launched a lighthearted fundraiser -- Fund.Razor -- to decide the stylistic fate of his year-plus-long beard. All funds raised will support Hack.Diversity, a division of the NEVCA tackling the underrepresentation of high-skilled minority talent in Boston's innovation ecosystem. Glantz leans on an atypical journey that led him to the NEVCA: entrepreneurship, to international athletics, to social work; San Francisco, to Paris, to Australia, before returning to his roots in New England. He is a graduate of Vassar College and a native Cantabrigian (person from Cambridge).

Guest Veronica Armstrong is the cofounder and CEO of Isle de Nature, a Boston-based home fragrance startup that recently placed runner-up at Roxbury Pitch Night, a virtual pitch night hosted by Venture Café New England’s Roxbury Innovation Center. Isle de Nature offers a line of home fragrance products starting with candles made from beeswax and soy. Armstrong is driven by the belief that "unspoiled nature is a luxury" as climate change threatens the islands she draws inspiration from. Isle de Nature's signature fragrance, Pagua Bay, is inspired by the bay leaves indigenous to Dominica. Armstrong has deep expertise in e-commerce customer acquisition and product growth. As employee #4 and the former Head of Customer Happiness and General Manager at Lovepop, Armstrong helped the brand grow from unknown to Sharktank to dominating the specialty card market. She spends her free time mentoring female entrepreneurs and was named one of the top 20 female VPs and Directors in Boston tech by Rev in 2018. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest Veronica Armstrong is the cofounder and CEO of Isle de Nature, a Boston-based home fragrance startup that recently placed runner-up at Roxbury Pitch Night, a virtual pitch night hosted by Venture Café New England’s Roxbury Innovation Center. Isle de Nature offers a line of home fragrance products starting with candles made from beeswax and soy. Armstrong is driven by the belief that "unspoiled nature is a luxury" as climate change threatens the islands she draws inspiration from. Isle de Nature's signature fragrance, Pagua Bay, is inspired by the bay leaves indigenous to Dominica. Armstrong has deep expertise in e-commerce customer acquisition and product growth. As employee #4 and the former Head of Customer Happiness and General Manager at Lovepop, Armstrong helped the brand grow from unknown to Sharktank to dominating the specialty card market. She spends her free time mentoring female entrepreneurs and was named one of the top 20 female VPs and Directors in Boston tech by Rev in 2018. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest Veronica Armstrong is the cofounder and CEO of Isle de Nature, a Boston-based home fragrance startup that recently placed runner-up at Roxbury Pitch Night, a virtual pitch night hosted by Venture Café New England’s Roxbury Innovation Center. Isle de Nature offers a line of home fragrance products starting with candles made from beeswax and soy. Armstrong is driven by the belief that "unspoiled nature is a luxury" as climate change threatens the islands she draws inspiration from. Isle de Nature's signature fragrance, Pagua Bay, is inspired by the bay leaves indigenous to Dominica. Armstrong has deep expertise in e-commerce customer acquisition and product growth. As employee #4 and the former Head of Customer Happiness and General Manager at Lovepop, Armstrong helped the brand grow from unknown to Sharktank to dominating the specialty card market. She spends her free time mentoring female entrepreneurs and was named one of the top 20 female VPs and Directors in Boston tech by Rev in 2018. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest Veronica Armstrong is the cofounder and CEO of Isle de Nature, a Boston-based home fragrance startup that recently placed runner-up at Roxbury Pitch Night, a virtual pitch night hosted by Venture Café New England’s Roxbury Innovation Center. Isle de Nature offers a line of home fragrance products starting with candles made from beeswax and soy. Armstrong is driven by the belief that "unspoiled nature is a luxury" as climate change threatens the islands she draws inspiration from. Isle de Nature's signature fragrance, Pagua Bay, is inspired by the bay leaves indigenous to Dominica. Armstrong has deep expertise in e-commerce customer acquisition and product growth. As employee #4 and the former Head of Customer Happiness and General Manager at Lovepop, Armstrong helped the brand grow from unknown to Sharktank to dominating the specialty card market. She spends her free time mentoring female entrepreneurs and was named one of the top 20 female VPs and Directors in Boston tech by Rev in 2018. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest Veronica Armstrong is the cofounder and CEO of Isle de Nature, a Boston-based home fragrance startup that recently placed runner-up at Roxbury Pitch Night, a virtual pitch night hosted by Venture Café New England’s Roxbury Innovation Center. Isle de Nature offers a line of home fragrance products starting with candles made from beeswax and soy. Armstrong is driven by the belief that "unspoiled nature is a luxury" as climate change threatens the islands she draws inspiration from. Isle de Nature's signature fragrance, Pagua Bay, is inspired by the bay leaves indigenous to Dominica. Armstrong has deep expertise in e-commerce customer acquisition and product growth. As employee #4 and the former Head of Customer Happiness and General Manager at Lovepop, Armstrong helped the brand grow from unknown to Sharktank to dominating the specialty card market. She spends her free time mentoring female entrepreneurs and was named one of the top 20 female VPs and Directors in Boston tech by Rev in 2018. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest Veronica Armstrong is the cofounder and CEO of Isle de Nature, a Boston-based home fragrance startup that recently placed runner-up at Roxbury Pitch Night, a virtual pitch night hosted by Venture Café New England’s Roxbury Innovation Center. Isle de Nature offers a line of home fragrance products starting with candles made from beeswax and soy. Armstrong is driven by the belief that "unspoiled nature is a luxury" as climate change threatens the islands she draws inspiration from. Isle de Nature's signature fragrance, Pagua Bay, is inspired by the bay leaves indigenous to Dominica. Armstrong has deep expertise in e-commerce customer acquisition and product growth. As employee #4 and the former Head of Customer Happiness and General Manager at Lovepop, Armstrong helped the brand grow from unknown to Sharktank to dominating the specialty card market. She spends her free time mentoring female entrepreneurs and was named one of the top 20 female VPs and Directors in Boston tech by Rev in 2018. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Ashton Lattimore is the editor-in-chief at Prism, a BIPOC (Black, Indigenous, and people of color)-led nonprofit news outlet. Prism formally launched in August 2020 with a focus on coverage of electoral justice, gender justice, workers’ rights, criminal justice, racial justice and immigration. Lattimore is a longtime editor and writer whose work focuses on race, culture, and the law. Her writing has been published by the Washington Post, Slate, CNN, Essence, and other outlets. Prior to joining Prism, Lattimore was senior writer and managing editor at the University of Pennsylvania Law School, and previously was the lead editor at NewsOne. Also a former lawyer, Lattimore represented Pennsylvania’s Governor in the lawsuits that successfully challenged the state’s congressional map as an illegal partisan gerrymander, resulting in the implementation of a new map in time for the 2018 elections. Lattimore received a B.A. in English from Harvard College, an M.S. in Journalism from Columbia, and a J.D. from Harvard Law School, where she was an editor of the Harvard Law Review. She lives in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania with her husband and two sons. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest Rachael Rollins is the Suffolk County District Attorney, the chief law enforcement official for Boston, Chelsea, Revere, and Winthrop. She was elected by a landslide campaigning on a platform centered on criminal justice system reform. Taking office in January 2019 as Suffolk County’s 16th district attorney, Rollins is the first woman to be elected to that position in Suffolk County history, and the first woman of color ever to serve as a Massachusetts district attorney. District Attorney Rollins has been consistently outspoken in her pledge to effect meaningful, substantive reform to the criminal legal system as she prefers to call it. For example, instead of using her limited resources to prosecute low-level misdemeanor charges -- which are often symptomatic not of criminal intent but of mental illness, substance use disorder, and poverty -- DA Rollins seeks to hold them accountable while providing access to services and treatment to address the underlying issues that likely led the individual to offend. This progressive approach is designed to reduce the likelihood that an individual will reoffend and improve the safety and wellbeing of impacted communities. She also led the charge in filing an injunction in federal court to end civil arrests in MA state courthouses to ensure that all community members have equal access to justice through the courts. Prior to seeking elected office, District Attorney Rollins served as a field attorney with the National Labor Relations Board in Boston, safeguarding employees’ rights. Beginning in 2007, District Attorney Rollins served as an assistant United States attorney with the US Attorney’s office in Boston, handling cases that included fraud, employment discrimination, sexual violence, child abuse, gun trafficking, narcotics, and public integrity matters. In 2011, she was selected by Governor Deval Patrick’s administration as the first person of color to serve as the General Counsel of the Massachusetts Department of Transportation and was soon named the first female general counsel of the Massachusetts Bay Transportation Authority. In 2013, she was recruited to become the Chief Legal Counsel of the Massachusetts Port Authority. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest Martel Metellus is the founder of Soko, a discovery network for the Black community to connect, collaborate, and find new opportunities. Founded in September 2019, Soko began as a freelance marketplace for Black skillworkers. Like many great startups, Soko was created to satisfy the founder’s own pain points. Metellus developed Soko to solve his need of wanting to hire Black people to work on his various entrepreneurial ventures, including several fitness endeavors. Metellus moved from Arizona to Boston in 2015 to attend Babson College and play basketball. The budding entrepreneur also has aspirations to become a Venture Capitalist. He possesses a great combination of humility, ambition and intellect which is on full display via his blog -- Mind of Martel -- in which he opines about topics like what is a blockchain. Metellus is on the verge of introducing the next evolution of the Soko platform. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Angela Liu is the Director of Hack.Diversity, the workforce development division of the New England Venture Capital Association. Launched in 2017, Hack.Diversity partners with Boston’s fast growing tech teams to not only increase the representation of Black and Latinx technologists in the innovation economy, but also evolve organizational practices to support retention and promotion of that talent. By the end of 2020, Liu will have scaled operations, community, and curriculum to support a network of 150+ Hack Fellows to contribute to 25+ companies including Drift, Rapid7, Liberty Mutual, Tamr, and Vertex. Prior to joining NEVCA and Hack.Diversity, Liu spent three years at MIT building pipelines towards STEM education access for students historically underserved and underrepresented in STEM fields. A 2020 Spark Boston Impact Winner, Liu is a “1.5 generation” immigrant from Guangzhou, China and first-generation college student who studied Science, Technology, and International Affairs at Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest Pariss Chandler is a former aesthetician turned front-end developer. She transitioned into tech in 2017 after participating in Resilient Coders, a coding bootcamp for people of color. Chandler is the creator of the hashtag and movement #BlackTechTwitter, bringing awareness and exposure to the Black community in the tech industry. She is also founder of Black Tech Pipeline, a service-based platform focused on recruitment and retention of Black technologists and connecting them to jobs. Chandler runs a popular Slack and Discord community for #BlackTechTwitter, as well as a newsletter dedicated to shining a light on influencers within the community. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest AK Ikwuakor, also known as “Coach AK”, is an entrepreneur, educator, consultant, strategist, storyteller, and former Top 10 world-ranked athlete from the University of Oregon (hurdles; 400 meter). He’s founded several companies including Empower2Play, a sports diplomacy project working with the US Government; as well as ELETE Styles, a made to measure clothing provider for athletes and working professionals. He’s traveled to more than 30 countries working with students, athletes, coaches, governmental agencies, celebrities, victims of terrorism, and CEOs. Originally from Colorado, Ikwuakor has made Boston his home for the past decade. Much of his work aims to foster cross-cultural relations and maximize economic development in under-resourced communities through the power of sports and education. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest Christian Magel is the founder of Boston-based Venture Lane, a curated startup hub which houses up to 25 early-stage tech companies between two and 15 employees. Magel is an international startup veteran, business angel and go-to-market expert who cut his entrepreneurial teeth in Europe and Australia. He was the cofounder of amaysim, an Australian telecommunication company in which he served as CMO and Executive Director. Magel helped grow amaysim to and beyond IPO, and the company became Australia’s largest mobile virtual network operator (MVNO). Prior to amaysim, Magel was cofounder and CMO of simyo, a customer-centric challenger brand in the European mobile provider space that became the world’s largest online-based MVNO. Magel helped lead simyo to a successful exit to E-Plus, a subsidiary of KPN (Royal Dutch Telecom) in 2007. Prior to that, Magel was European Marketing Director at Letsbuyit.com and has held senior marketing positions at ProSieben Digital Media, Entertainment Media Verlag and Club RTL. Since founding Venture Lane in 2018, Magel has quickly become an active Boston tech community member. Recently, with so much uncertainty surrounding the economic impact of COVID-19, Magel decided to open up Venture Land’s typically member-only content and deployed a successful digital events series for Boston startups. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Wafaa Arbash is a Syrian immigrant who’s determined to restore dignity to refugees globally through her Boston-based startup WorkAround. The co-founder and CEO of WorkAround is working around the barriers to employment for refugees by providing them with an online microwork platform that helps AI and machine learning companies with human intelligence tasks. Arbash started WorkAround while working on her master’s thesis in Sustainable International Development and Conflict Resolution from Brandeis University. Prior to WorkAround, Wafaa served as a program manager for Startup Institute and refugee education in Jordan. She worked in Syria for more than five years in social development programs where she spearheaded several projects to empower local citizens and increase their leadership skills. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest Jesse Bardo is a director in Early Stage Practice for Silicon Valley Bank (SVB) in Boston, which banks upwards of 70 percent of Boston venture-backed companies. Bardo is active in the Boston innovation community and a proven entrepreneur turned angel investor and startup mentor. He was one of the founders of higher education SaaS company EverTrue (Techstars Boston 2011), which won the MassChallenge. After gaining Series A funding with Bain Capital Ventures, Bardo and his team grew EverTrue to 400-plus customers and 50 employees in Boston’s Seaport neighborhood. Bardo joined SVB in 2018. His role is to connect entrepreneurs with Boston’s accelerators, universities and additional partners. Since the COVID-19 outbreak, Bardo has been vocal on social media and via virtual events offering advice and support to the Boston innovation community. With the House recently passing a $484 billion supplement to the CARES Act, including $321 billion in fresh funds for small businesses through the Paycheck Protection Program, Bardo and his team have been working tirelessly to help Boston startups secure SBA loans. To that end, SVB recently shared it will be donating the net fees from the loans to COVID-19 relief. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest Bill Gianoukos is the co-founder and CEO of Goodpath, which emerged from stealth in April 2020 to launch its digital integrative TeleHealth portal. Goodpath accelerated its launch timeline to support health care practitioners (HCPs) who are struggling to manage the chronic care needs of patients during the COVID19 crisis. Goodpath can step in as an appropriate alternative to office visits by offering patients plans which include virtual meetings with a dietician, personalized physical therapy, yoga classes, cognitive-behavioral therapy, meditation, nutrition and supplements, and symptom relief products. To help provide people with access to care during the pandemic, Goodpath has discounted its healthcare programs by 30 percent. Gianoukos is no stranger to entrepreneurial pursuits and successful exits. He and his Goodpath cofounder Carl Nehme sold their augmented reality startup TrumpIt to Wayfair in 2016. He then spent two years running Wayfair’s mobile app team. Prior to that, Gianoukos was a co-founder and chief product officer at HeyWire, which was acquired by Salesforce in 2014. Gianoukos has local roots and studied computer engineering at Tufts University in his hometown Somerville, MA. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/

Guest Ryan Light is the CEO of Pistol Lake, a clothing brand where everything is ethically made in the U.S. The Boston Speaks Up community may recognize Ryan Light from his time in Boston in prominent executive and marketing roles at Kinvey and CoachUp. After seven years in Boston, Light moved to Los Angeles in 2018 to run Pistol Lake. In March 2020, Pistol Lake stopped manufacturing clothes at its Los Angeles headquarters, in favor of making masks for hospitals and urgent care workers treating patients with COVID-19. Well known for his creative marketing skills, Light’s creative business decision to help medical workers on the frontlines while keeping Pistol Lake’s factory workers paid during uncertain economic times really caught our interest. Discover more Boston Speaks Up at Boston Business Journal's BostInno: www.americaninno.com/boston/boston-speaks-up/