Kel-Star Consulting and the Prosperity Business & Financial Resource Center are hosting the next SMALL BUSINESS & ENTREPRENEURS FORUM. This event will offer timely and practical information on subjects of interest to budding entrepreneurs as well as established businesses.
Our panel of successful business experts will cover a broad range of topics like:
Networking for Business Success
Business Marketing and Branding
Business Development Strategies
Business Financing Concepts & Principles
Business Opportunities with the Government and the Private Sector
Register for this event at:
https://www.eventbrite.com/e/small-business-entrepreneurs-forum-tickets-31893146259.
PANELIST
SUSAN KOHM - Business Success Coach
As a career and life design coach, Susan is committed to helping her clients to lead more authentic and fulfilling lives. After a successful career in travel and tourism, she worked as a founding partner for 15 years in a training and organizational development firm, focusing on teambuilding, leadership development, diversity and effective communications. Her work with numerous Fortune 500 international organizations, including clients in both Europe and Asia, inspired her to learn more about the impact of culture on individuals and institutions, and she earned a Master’s Degree in International and Intercultural Management. Eventually Susan realized that her strongest abilities and inclinations lay with helping individuals rather than organizations and in 2008 she founded The Handmade Life.
In addition to her work as a career design coach, she has trained extensively in expressive arts techniques, and has led retreats that help clients to listen deeply to their own voice, reveal more of their hidden potential and access the wisdom needed to bring their vision into being. She has a particular commitment to working with young people and giving them the tools they need to make great decisions about their future. Her passion for her work is based in her own process of self-discovery and her personal experience that the only way to fail is to quit.
RACQUEL SLAWINSKI - Financial Strategist
Racquel Ramlal-Slawinski is a financial advisor employed by Transamerica Financial Advisors in Greenbelt, Maryland. Racquel started her financial business over 15 years ago, while a full-time college student at the University of Maryland. She was accepted to John Hopkins medical school but had found a new passion of helping families through financial services. She is a certified financial educator and has a vast amount of experience in all aspects of financial services that has brought her high recognition throughout the financial services industry.
Additionally, Racquel is registered with FINRA as a Broker (sometimes referred to as a broker-dealer registered representative or RR). As a Broker, Racquel works with larger brokerage firms in the business of buying and selling securities such as stocks, bonds, mutual funds and other investment-related products.
Racquel works with her husband and Robert Slawinski. Racquel and Robert are have been married for 4 years with a beautiful little 2-year-old girl.
WILLIAM N. MAXWELL - Business Branding
William Maxwell is creative director and president of WM Graphics, a full service graphic design and advertising studio based in the Washington, DC area since 1992. Mr. Maxwell has over 35 years of experience in the graphic design and advertising industry, bringing a wealth of knowledge about the intricacies of how great design can affect a business, product or event. He has successfully helped businesses both large and small with experienced art direction to effectively reach their target audience time and time again.
Mr. Maxwell has always placed great service and quality first, from concept to finished product no matter the size or complexity of the project. He has created logo design and branding strategies, websites, book covers, publication design, annual reports, political campaign materials, package design, marketing materials, environmental design and photography, that have produced excellent results to an ever growing customer base. His motto being “We can help you use your company’s time and resources wisely in creating a dynamic visual brand”.
Mr. Maxwell was the founder of the “Black Entrepreneur Business Expo” that was held in the Washington, DC area from 1996–1998, radio talk show co-host on the "Marketing Pulpit Show" on Radio One, branding workshop presenter and guest lecturer at business workshops and colleges in the Greater Washington area.
OVEDA V. HANCOCK - Business Development Consultant
Oveda “Vee” Hancock is a Business Development consult and is an expert in growing company profits and business valuations. For the last 30 years, Oveda has assisted companies in growing business relationship bridges to Fortune 500 and Global 2000 companies using her extensive knowledge of each company's unique corporate environment. She has been instrumental in developing intellectual property protection and niche business strategies utilizing supply chain management skills to increase, improve, and leverage knowledge of the corporate supply chain structure.
Currently, she has been involved in growing businesses for her clients through digital marketing and social selling. As a digital marketing strategist, Oveda has consulted in the area of online personal branding for C-levels and sales directors for the past 17 years. Through her own developed processes, she has helped global executives build, grow and protect a strong online reputation that has led to increasing new business for their organizations.
She has been a resource for Washington-area law firms, the Federal Government, state and local governments, United States Senate, the U.S. House of Representatives, International Brotherhood of Teamsters, American Society of Actuaries, American Civil Liberties Union, National Association of Securities Dealers, Securities & Exchange Commission, PEPCO, Washington Gas Company, Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority (“WMATA”), arbitrations, Smithsonian Institute, consulting groups such as Arthur D. Little and Coopers & Lybrand (now PriceWaterhouseCoopers), Phillip Morris, Hallmark, Pfizer, Pepsico, Denny's, Sprint, and more.
Oveda “Vee” Hancock was born and raised in Washington, D.C where she attended Georgetown University at the age of 14. Oveda graduated from Georgetown University with a B.A. degree in sociology and economics, a Master's of Business Administration and a Juris Doctor from the Georgetown University Law Center with a specialty focus on intellectual property protection and media law.
In her spare time, she enjoys spending time with family and friends, travel, reading, and the arts. Her favorite passage from the “Bible,” is “The race is not given to the swift or to the strong but to he/she who endures to the end.”
KELVIN B. HARRIS - Moderator
Kelvin B. Harris is owner and founder of Kel-Star Consulting. Kel-Star Consulting is a fully integrated wealth strategy management firm. Kel-Star provides a variety of business and financial services to its client under a business aggregation business model. Through the companies core services and strategic alliances, Kel-Star offers strategic solutions and services in the following areas: business formulation, business credit, private financing, self-banking, tax mitigation, real estate investment, private pensions, lifetime income and tax-free retirement planning.