Vineeta Sawkar
Vineeta Sawkar is a five time Emmy award-winning television anchor who is now the Director of Public Relations at the University of St. Thomas. Vineeta spent twenty-three years in the television news business. She is best known for her eighteen years at KSTP-TV in Minneapolis. She left KSTP in 2013 and pioneered a new role at the Minneapolis Star Tribune as a video host. She and her family are proud St. Paul residents. Vineeta is a former Friends of the St. Paul Public Library board member and Children’s Hospital Association board member. She is now volunteering with the Minnesota Wild to recruit more kids of color to play the sport of hockey.
Wendie Pett
Wendie Pett, is passionate about motivating people to make fitness and good nutrition part of their daily routine. She teaches the balance of mind, body and spirit through her Visibly Fit™ wellness program. Wendie has a nationally syndicated television program that airs every Tuesday on the NRB Network. Her show also airs on Upliftv, WLCN, and IBN Television. She contributes weekly on KTIS radio in the Twin Cities as ‘Coach Wendie’ and is a featured columnist in VEGWORLD Magazine, The Christian View, Best Ever You, Refreshed, Vegan Lifestyle, and Diet.com. Wendie is a full-time business owner, a naturopathic doctor, wife, mother, author, speaker, TV host, advisory board member for Christian Women in Media and part-time volunteer. Her business consists of whole-food/plant-based wellness coaching, emotional healing, personal online training, fitness planning, educational and motivational speaking, and creating new products/tools to assist clients along their wellness journey. After a major injury to her shoulder, she resorted to body weight resistance exercises for strength and healing and hasn’t turned back to any other form of training since. She has helped countless others reach their fitness and health goals without ever compromising their joints, tendons, or ligaments – teaching that Your Body Is Your Gym™ and instilling new diet habits that have shown to reverse multiple diseases and allow people to get off medications.
Jesse Ross
Jesse is an international speaker, executive coach, & a diversity, equity, & inclusion leader, that works with leaders and organizations specializing in personal and professional development. He focuses on transformation from the inside out and believes that everyone he encounters should expect ascension.
Jesse has a keen ability to apply his education, training and certifications, over 15 years of business, nonprofit, and practical experience to motivate others to greatness, increase productivity, and to take their rightful place as a leader. Jesse has delivered over 600 speaking engagements at colleges, conferences, corporate and nonprofit companies, with a large number of Fortune 500 companies.
Jesse offers trainings, workshops, evaluations, assessments, and strategy development for your school, business or organization. Jesse has been engaging his audience with his Morning Minute call-to-actions on his Instagram and LinkedIn social media pages.
Theresa Rose
Imagine your to-do list is done.
Your day – no, your WEEK – is highly productive. And the energizer bunny is jealous of your energy levels. That describes personal development expert Theresa Rose on a slow day.
Like most people, Theresa used to look for more hours in the day and dreaded the tasks on her to-do list. And then she discovered how the power of mindfulness reduced distractions and increased her ability to get more done in less time. Since then she has worked with organizations from small businesses to Fortune 100 companies to increase productivity and boost bottom-line results.
Today, Theresa is an energizing catalyst who transforms cultures and mindsets for growth-minded organizations and individuals to play big and create the outcomes they want. She will help you cut through the noise to become a high performing ninja while figuring out how to actually relish life instead of enduring it.
Theresa has seen how the power of mindfulness can create exponential growth in your business and in your personal life. She knows the secret to milking more out of the day so you can enjoy every To-Do.
Clients, attendees and followers are magnetized by Theresa’s powerful-but-playful energy and the mind-body mastering strategies she shares on the stage, the page and the screen.
Billy McLaughlin
Billy McLaughlin is recognized internationally as a world-class guitarist, composer and inspirational performer who has appeared on Billboard’s TopTen Chart. Previously signed to Virgin Records’ Narada label, McLaughlin has 14 CD releases, 3 National Campus Entertainer of the Year Awards*, 5 Minnesota Music Awards and his decades of national concert touring earned him the Hall of Fame Achievement Award*.
But in 1999 McLaughlin vanished from sight as his career crumbled due to a little-known neuro-muscular disorder called Focal Dystonia. After suffering several years without a cure, he embarked on an unlikely attempt to regain his career by re-learning his instrument left-handed. His remarkable comeback is captured in the documentary film Changing Keys (airing on PBS 2010) and a concert film called Coming Back Alive featuring McLaughlin with string orchestra and a reunion of his longtime rock band.
Now serving as Ambassador for Awareness for the Dystonia Medical Research Foundation, McLaughlin is the winner of the 2010 Public Leadership in Neurology Award** whose previous winners include Paul Allen, Julie Andrews, Leon Fleischer and Michael J. Fox.
McLaughlin has resumed an international schedule of concert appearances and keynote speaking. He resides in his home state of Minnesota where he is proudly raising two boys.
Mike McKinley
Mike McKinley has the experience and expertise that people in business need to succeed from his history as a teenage entrepreneur which led to leadership positions in manufacturing, retail, radio, television, and ownership of a multimillion dollar publishing house, professional speaking, and consulting business. Mike helps people recognize the challenges to success, open their minds to new ideas and current methods, and helps business maximize performance and profitability.
Hired for the fun but paid for the content, Mike entertains while he teaches – presenting as the keynote speaker at corporate trainings, in-house programs, and for professional association meetings. An example of his client list includes Great Clips, The Toro Company, Subway, Gillette, and American Family. Many clients have Mike return multiple times for their organizations. Hundreds of companies – from construction to healthcare, high technology to the auto industry- have relied on Mike for insight into furthering today’s business growth, innovation, and success.
Mike’s performance ingredients (topics) include Change, The Customer Journey, Maximizing Performance, Teamwork, Leadership, Motivation, and Balancing Work & Home. Working with Mike’s consulting clients and his vast array of businesses gives him a breadth of real life experience and business expertise on which to draw when he shares his ideas and performs for large audiences, individuals, management teams and boards of directors across the country.
Education and training on the customer journey, partnership advocacy, generational and diversity issues, leadership and day-to-day business operations is the heart and soul of Mike’s presentation. It’s time to think fresh thoughts and seek new perspectives. Mike uses real life photos for fun and humor yet ties them into serious points about life and changing business creating the easy learning transition. He works to share his message of maximizing performance and enjoying the ride!
Eric Perkins
Never truly good enough to play college or professional sports, Eric Perkins decided to talk about them instead. Perk as he’s better known, grew up immersed in sports, but also in television. His father Jack was an NBC Nightly News correspondent for decades before becoming the host of Biography on A&E. Perk combined his two passions and became a sportscaster where he worked in Tupelo, Memphis and Atlanta before finding his way to Minnesota where he currently serves as the sports director for the NBC station (KARE-TV) in the Twin Cities.
Since joining KARE in the late 90’s, Perk has won several Emmy Awards for TV work. He’s covered Super Bowls, Final Fours, All Star Games and even five Olympic Games. But he’s perhaps best known for his Perk at Play segment, in which he’s taken part in everything from Skydiving to Demolition Derby, playing tennis with John McEnroe and being body slammed by Brock Lesnar during the decade long run of the segment.
Perk is very involved with local charities and often can be found serving as an emcee for galas, fundraisers, or awards ceremonies throughout the state. Over the last few years, Perk has emceed events for Gillette Children’s Hospitals, Children’s Cancer Research Fund, Second Harvest Heartland, Spare Key Foundation, St. Jude and many others. He even created his own charity event, Perk’s MessFest. The “slopstacle course” for kids is now in its fifth year, and benefits the Pinky Swear Foundation which helps families dealing with childhood cancer. Perk also regularly emcees that Foundation’s annual gala as well.
Perk lives in the western suburbs of the Twin Cities with his wife, three children and cockapoo.
Don Shelby
Don Shelby is widely considered the most decorated and honored local television journalist in the country. He has won three national Emmys, the Columbia-duPont, the Scripps-Howard, the National Distinguished Service Award from the Society of Professional Journalists and he has been honored twice with the Pulitzer Prize of broadcasting, the George Foster Peabody.
Don continues his 45 year career in reporting after retiring from daily journalism in November of 2010. He continues to write for MinnPost, on the online daily, and is often read in Salon and dozens of other internet news aggregators.
Don was inducted into the Broadcasters Hall of Fame in 2008 and into the National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences Silver Circle. He was named the Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Humanitarian of the Year, and honored by B’nai Brith with the Great American Traditions award. In 2010 he was named Distinguished Minnesotan, an honor he shares with other luminaries such as Sigurd Olson and Will Steger.
Don’s reporting has taken him around the globe from Romania to Egypt, Venezuela, Australia and the Arctic Circle. He originated the I-team concept of investigative reporting and served on the board of directors of Investigative Reporters and Editors (IRE), the county’s preeminent investigative journalism organization.
He has served as a war correspondent covering conflicts ranging from the Yom Kippur War in 1973 to the war in Iraq in 2009. Major General Richard Nash, commander of forces in the southern half of Iraq called Don, “…our Ernie Pyle,” referring to the noted combat correspondent of World War II.
Don is the author of The Season Never Ends, a collection of stories about teamwork. It is currently ranked as the #2 best seller in the coaching section of Amazon.com. He is in the middle of writing his second book on the developing failure of American journalism to meet the needs of voting citizens in a democracy.
Don is an avid outdoorsman and primitive survival specialists. He spends much of his free time climbing ice falls, mountains, hiking and canoeing his beloved BWCAW. He has a wife and three grown daughters.
Elizabeth Ries
Elizabeth Ries is a television and radio personality in the Twin Cities. She spent years as a news anchor/reporter, but is now the co-host of Twin Cities Live weekdays at 3 pm on 5 Eyewitness News (KSTP). She chats about pop culture, celebrity gossip and manages to get a few pro-kale statements on the air when she co-hosts the Margery & Elizabeth show on myTalk 107.1. Elizabeth also frequently contributes articles on food and urban farming to Edible Twin Cities magazine.
Elizabeth is an uplifting speaker who inspires attendees and she is an excellent Emcee as well!
Ian Leonard
Ian has been Chief Meteorologist at FOX 9 in Minneapolis since 2006. His science is the great outdoors and his passion is forecasting the weather. His passion has taken him from Alberta, Canada to Mississippi, Iowa and finally Minnesota. For over 20 years he has used the phrase “stay sky aware” to help viewers stay ahead of the storm. It now is a regular “hashtag” in Ian’s social media updates during severe weather season to his 35 thousand Facebook and Twitter followers. He calls his work at FOX 9 a dream job because of the 4 incredibly diverse and always entertaining seasons of the Upper Midwest. Ian graduated from the Broadcast Meteorology Program at Mississippi State University and is a member of the American Meteorological Society, The National Weather Association and The Canadian Meteorological and Oceanographic Society.
Ian is an extremely active supporter of persons with intellectual disabilities. He is on the road every month supporting the incredible athletes of Special Olympics Minnesota. You can find him “freezin’ for a reason” on most late winter weekends taking the Polar Plunge into lakes across Minnesota. In the past 8 years he has plunged 103 times and helped raise over 15 million dollars.
Ian has had his share of personal storms – making it through a traumatic brain injury in 2013 and adding the line “cancer survivor” to his resume in 2016.
Ian is a humorous and impactful Speaker who motivates organization’s teams to move through their business and personal storms – toward finding passion and purpose.
His high energy and quick wit also makes him the perfect Emcee or Live Auctioneer for your next event. He has assisted organizations in raising millions of dollars at their Fundraiser Events over the years. Attendees love him!