2025
Ham Serunjogi ’16 (opening remarks) and Kevin Allen (presentation on pitching your idea)
Ham Serunjogi ’16 and Maijid Moujaled ’14 founded Chipper Cash, a platform that offers instant cross-border mobile money transfers, in 2018. They met while studying at Grinnell College, and both then ventured out to Silicon Valley, where Ham worked for Facebook. Find Ham Serunjogi on LinkedIn.
Kevin Allen is the bestselling author of The Hidden Agenda: A proven way to win business and create a following, an EdTech entrepreneur, executive coach, student success coach, and emotional intelligence expert. He has decades of experience in branding, psychology, and narrative design. Find Kevin Allen on LinkedIn.
Past Keynote Speakers at Pioneer Weekend
2024
Amelia Lobo ’99
2023
Kathy Clemons-Beasley ’95
Kathy Clemons, Director, is the Global Head of Talent Development and the head of HR for the Atlanta Innovation Hub. She leads the teams driving performance, culture and change through learning, from the earliest career analysts through our most senior leaders. In her iHub role, she is part of the Atlanta Leadership Team and partners with iHub leaders to bring BlackRock to Atlanta for employees and the community – and look for opportunities to bring the best of the iHub’s innovative culture to BlackRock.
Kathy also serves on the board of the Georgia Partnership for Excellence in Education and the Advisory Council for CHRIS180.
She was previously Executive Director, Strategic Projects at Morgan Stanley’s Institute for Sustainable Investing, where she managed mid- and long-term strategic priorities, the Institute’s external Advisory Board, and stakeholder engagement and communication. Prior to Morgan Stanley, she was a Senior Principal at Collective Next, a small consulting firm. While at CN, she did extensive work with BlackRock, including design and development of management and leadership programs, internal communications and change initiatives, and animations and high impact presentations.
Kathy holds an MBA from the Lorry I. Lokey Graduate School of Business and Public Policy at Mills College, and a BA in French and Gender & Women’s Studies from Grinnell College.
2022
Steven Elkes ’83: Mapping your Entrepreneurial Journey
What characteristics increase the probability of support and success in initiatives? The talk by Steve Elkes ’83 explained some “rules of the road” and provided attendees with concrete, executable steps for their own entrepreneurial journey.
Elkes is an entrepreneur, deal-maker, financial executive, and philanthropist. He is a seasoned executive with experience, as CFO of Azoogle, EVP at Healthguru.com, CEO of Makeover Solutions, Inc., co-founder of Curacity, and president of Surface Travel.
2021
Maijid Moujaled ’14 and Ham Serunjogi ’16
Maijid Moujaled ’14 and Ham Serunjogi ’16 founded Chipper Cash, a platform that offers instant cross-border mobile money transfers, in 2018. The company offers mobile-based payment services in seven countries in Africa. They met while studying at Grinnell College and both then ventured out to Silicon Valley, where Ham worked for Facebook and Maijid worked for Flickr and Yahoo!
2020
Kevin Allen: Leading in Challenging Times
Kevin Allen has had a 35-year career in the global ad industry. He is the best selling author of The Hidden Agenda: A Proven Way to Win Business and Create a Following. He is co-founder of E.I Games, which creates award-winning emotional intelligence-based business training games.