Speakers

Mary Book is the Community Business and Development Manager at Barnes & Noble, Galleria, one of 5 new concept stores in the United States. Mary has tremendous expertise and excellent need and skill assessment abilities that directly contribute to an unprecedented level of customer service that includes local School districts serving pre-k through 12^th grade on volume book orders, working with educator curriculum  and corporations training and development needs, fundraising for nonprofits , especially literacy and the arts.

A true passion for serving, volunteering which she has done for over 18 years with BSF International, Wooddale Church and Freeset USA.

Mark Coyle became the University of Minnesota’s athletics director in May 2016. A former athletic administrator at Minnesota, he returned to Gopher Athletics after serving as athletics director at Syracuse University and Boise State University and as deputy athletics director at the University of Kentucky.

During Coyle’s first year leading Gopher Athletics, Minnesota’s student-athletes recorded the highest grade-point average in school history, remained the top public institution in the country with respect to NCAA Academic Progress Rate (APR) Public Recognition Awards and saw 300 student-athletes recognized as Academic All-Big Ten. In addition, the Gophers won five Big Ten championships and had two teams (volleyball and women’s hockey) advance to the Final Four. Men’s hockey won its sixth straight regular season conference title, a Division I men’s ice hockey record, and men’s basketball engineered the largest turnaround in Division I last season and returned to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Overall, the department once again finished in the Top 30 of the Learfield Directors’ Cup standings, which measures athletics success across all sports.

While at Syracuse, Coyle guided the Orange during a year (2015-16) in which two of its programs won national titles and three, including both men's and women's basketball, competed in Final Fours. The Orange also won five Atlantic Coast Conference titles under Coyle's watch.

During Coyle's tenure at Boise State, Bronco teams posted the highest grade-point average in school history, with 18 teams setting team GPA records. Boise State also won 12 conference championships in six different sports during under Coyle's leadership. During the 2014-15 academic year, Boise State was the only Football Bowl Subdivision school in the country to win conference titles in football, men's basketball and women's basketball.

Prior to joining Boise State, Coyle served in several athletics roles at the University of Kentucky, eventually rising to the title of deputy director of athletics. At Kentucky, Coyle led a team that raised more than $140 million in annual donations and capital pledges, while also serving as a sport administrator for multiple teams, including the famed men's basketball program, which reached the NCAA Final Four in 2011 while Coyle oversaw the program.

During his first tenure at Minnesota, from 2001 to 2005, Coyle served as Associate Athletic Director for External Relations, a role in which he was responsible for managing the marketing and sales unit, athletic communications, the ticket office and licensing.

A former football student-athlete, Coyle graduated from Drake University with his bachelor degree in English in 1991. He earned his master's degree in teaching from Drake in 1992 and a master's degree in sports administration from Florida State University in 1993.

This is my 52^nd year being involved with the Twins baseball going back to a close friendship with the twins owner Clavin Griffith. I collect and display memorabilia, give pre-game tours and do more than 70 off site presentations.  I taught American History for 38 years and workd with the Twins during the Summer and went full time as a curator upon retiring 10 years ago.  At the time, I was the only full-time curator in baseball. 

Jane Oh grew up in Milwaukee, Wisconsin as a first generation Korean-American. She has been practicing medicine for over 20 years, but when she began practicing and teaching yoga, her view of healing fundamentally changed. She is currently becoming certified in SMART (Stress Management and Resiliency Training) through the Benson-Henry Mind Body Institute at Harvard Medical School, and she believes that we all have the ability to heal much of our suffering through the power of the mind-body connection.

Joy King joined Be The Match in 2016 and serves as Senior Vice President of Philanthropy and Executive Director for Be The Match Foundation. 

She is responsible for leading the Foundation staff and its Board of Directors to significantly grow revenue to advance the life-saving mission of Be The Match. Revenue raised by the Foundation is used to expand access to cellular therapy, provide support for patients and their families experiencing transplant, and fund life-saving research. 

With more than 15 years of experience in development leadership roles, King was most recently the Senior Vice President of Operations for the Midwest division of American Cancer Society overseeing 250 staff members with an annual fundraising goal of $32 million. 

In this role, she led operations for the division including community engagement, distinguished partners and health systems. King was also recently recognized by Minneapolis-St. Paul Business Journal as a 2015 Women in Business honoree.

Her career began with American Cancer Society as Field Representative for Relay for Life in Texas. She was quickly promoted to Regional Executive Director in Texas and then Regional Vice President for Nebraska, transforming the staff into a high performing successful team. In 2013, she took on the role of Vice President of Community Engagement for the Midwest division. 

King holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Tarleton State University.

This presentation provides a case study informing how a regional economy can create an opportunity rich landscape for investors.  With the state of Minnesota as our example, we will delve into how a regional business culture with self-reinforcing robust business climate evolves over time and what the drivers are for that development.  We will also examine the importance of diversity across sectors, as well as the impacts of cross fertilization of ideas and talents.

• How a regional economy can create an opportunity rich landscape for investors;
• How a regional business culture  with a self-reinforcing robust business climate evolves over time and what the drivers are for that development;
• The Importance of diversity across sectors;
• The impacts of cross fertilization of ideas and talent.

Steve Elkins, Metropolitan Council Member, District 5

Steve Elkins was appointed to the Metropolitan Council in March 2011 by Gov. Mark Dayton and reappointed in 2015.  He lives in Bloomington, and represents District 5, which includes the Hennepin County cities of Bloomington, Edina, Hopkins, and Richfield, and the unorganized territory of Fort Snelling.

Prior to his appointment to the Metropolitan Council, Elkins served on the Bloomington City Council for nine years, and the Bloomington Housing & Redevelopment Authority for five years. He has been active on committees with Metro Cities, the League of Minnesota Cities and the National League of Cities (NLC). He was chair of the NLC Transportation Committee in 2010. Elkins has served as a member of the Minnesota Department of Transportation’s Complete Streets Advisory Committee and the Mileage-based User Fee Task Force. He has served on both the I-35W Solutions Alliance and the I-494 Corridor Commission, including a year as chair of the I-494 group (2010).

Elkins has also served on three Metropolitan Council advisory and policy groups. He was a member of the Land Use Advisory Committee (2003-2011); the large cities representative on the MetroGIS Policy Board (2008-2011) and the Transportation Advisory Board (1996-2001).

On the Metropolitan Council, Elkins serves on the Transportation, Community Development, and Litigation Review Committees.

“I look forward to fostering an effective collaboration between the Council and local governments to pursue strategies that improve the region’s economic competitiveness and quality of life,” Elkins said.

“One of mytop priorities is working with local governments to effectively coordinate regional transportation plans with local land-use plans to maximize the access of regional employers to the widest array of workers.”

Elkins is a Senior Enterprise Data Architect with Optum Health. He is a member of the Bloomington Chamber of Commerce and represented the City of Bloomington on the board of directors from 2004-2011.

Elkins has a bachelor’s degree in economics from the University of California, Berkeley. He lives in Bloomington with his wife, Judy. He has two grown daughters: Michelle, an art historian, and Danielle, a transportation engineer.

Jim Nelson serves as District 5950 Rotary Foundation Chair.   He  joined the Rotary Club of Minneapolis City of Lakes in 1999, served as club president in 2009-2010, and served as District Governor for Rotary District 5950 in 2014-2015.  Jim is also active in Rotary water and sanitation projects in Honduras.

Jim and his wife Ellen live in Edina.  Jim and Ellen’s daughter is a sophomore at Fordham University in New York, and Jim has two grown kids and 6 grandkids.  The family has served as host parents to three Rotary youth exchange students, from New Zealand, South Africa and Japan. 

Jim practiced law for 43 years, the last 32 of those years with the Minneapolis firm of Briggs and Morgan, where he specialized in commercial real estate law.  His retirement activities include his Rotary work, volunteering with the Minnesota Historical Society, and service as chair of the Edina Human Rights and Relations Commission. 

Mark C. Gordon is the President and Dean of Mitchell Hamline School of Law in St. Paul. Prior to his arrival in the Twin Cities in July, 2015, Gordon served as President of Defiance College, a small, liberal-arts based undergraduate institution in rural Northwestern Ohio, and before that as Dean of University of Detroit Mercy School of Law in Detroit.

Gordon is originally from New York, where he worked as an aide to New York’s Governor Mario Cuomo in the mid-1980’s and then, during the first Clinton Administration, as Chief of Staff to Andrew Cuomo at the US Department of Housing and Urban Development.

Gordon has also served as Associate Professor in the Practice of Public Affairs at Columbia University’s School of International and Public Affairs. He received his B.A. and his Masters in International Affairs from Columbia University, and his law degree from Harvard Law School.

Microsoft Technology Center Site Visit

February 19^th, 2019

Location: Centennial Lakes Plaza, 3601 West 76^th St, Suite 600, Edina, MN 55435

7:30-8:30 a.m. Bagels and Coffee, Tour and Microsoft Applications/Technology

This program requires pre-registration by 1/19/19 to attend. Sign up will be at our weekly meeting starting in December.

Bio: Bart Sneary

Bart Sneary is a Business Applications Architect at the Microsoft Technology Center in Edina.  He’s a veteran of this space, having worked professionally with CRM and ERP solutions for 25 years and the Microsoft one for the last 11.  As a technical architect, although he specializes in the business applications space, he enjoys working with a robust breadth of technologies that all play a part in helping ease business challenges.

Business success is about making the right moves in times of upheaval, opportunity, or threat to the organization. Will your leaders know what to do in their next high stakes situation? Terry Moore shows decision makers how to lead their teams to not just survive, but to profit from crisis. His proven Strategic Prediction method takes strategic leadership to the next level, so that your audience will discover opportunities where others see only danger. In this talk, audiences will learn the methods and tactics to turn their next crisis into gold.

They will:

• Know how to predict what everyone else will do in any crisis situation

• Understand advanced levels of strategic thinking and leadership

• Seal their success with new and winning end-game tactics

Stela Center is the Director of Development with Wallin Education Partners. As a former Wallin Education Partners scholar, Stela brings a student perspective to the team and is able to speak to the impact of the program. Stela was a recipient of the Rotary Ambassador for Peace Scholarship in 2006. With this support from Rotary, she completed her Masters degree in International Peace Studies from the United Nations Mandated University for Peace, in Costa Rica. Stela is originally from Bosnia, but her family left Bosnia during the war that took place in the 1990s. After living in refugee camps for about a year and a half, Stela moved to Minnesota with her family. Because of the support of these two programs, Stela was able to pursue a career working in the non-profit sector in Minnesota. Through her work, she has supported organizations such as Global Volunteers, American Refugee Committee, and American Red Cross before joining the Wallin Education Partners team in December of 2015. Stela recently joined the University of Minnesota Rotary Club as a member.