Mahoganee

Our Speaker this month is none other than Rob Bertschy, creator of the SWURFER. 

Rob Bertschy is the founder of Swurfer. Additionally he is a full-time puzzletier, barefoot adventurer, pusher of the limits, ceviche connoisseur that averages 4 hours of sleep per night. He believes all doors should be pulled instead of pushed, and that the word impossible shouldn’t be in the dictionary.

We will have the honor to hear about the “magic” he has seen along the way to making his dream into reality.

Our Speakers for August:

John Park is a Copywriter and Designer. He is the founder and Creative Director of Arts and Sciences, a Charleston-based Marketing firm.

He began his career at Arnold Worldwide in Boston, writing ads for Vonage, Radio Shack and Ocean Spray. In 2007 he created Flo, Progressive’s spokeswoman, who was elected into the Madison Avenue Walk of Fame in 2011.

Previous clients include MINI, GMC, athenahealth, Greater Boston Food Bank, French’s Mustard, Fidelity, Lysol, the Town of Mount Pleasant and Parabola.

www.artsandsci.com Insta: artsandsc Twitter: @artsandsc FB: /artsandsci

When Marcus Amaker was 10, he wrote “When I grow up, I want to be a rock star like Prince.” Since then, his love of the purple one inspired him to pursue art, in all of its forms.

He’s a well-known graphic/web designer and videographer, producing award-winning work for many local nonprofits and organizations. He’s also the lead designer for the national music magazine, No Depression.

Earlier this year, Marcus was named Charleston, South Carolina’s first Poet Laureate, as appointed by Mayor John Tecklenburg. His seventh book, Mantra, is also an app, featuring audio, video and new poems. Marcus’ poems have been featured on PBS Newshour, the Huffington Post, several journals and poetry collections.

As a musician, he’s recorded more than 15 albums. Of those albums, his most famous song is “Big Butt,” written when he was 10 years old.

He is also the former editor of the Post and Courier’s Charleston Scene entertainment section.

But, most importantly, he still loves Prince (RIP) and is obsessed with Star Wars.

marcusamaker.com Insta: @charlestonpoet

Announcing:

 KJ Kearney, June 24th, 8a at The Library Society

A native of North Charleston, KJ is a product of Charleston County public schools and a proud 2005 graduate of South Carolina State University, where he graduated with honors.

A 2015 recipient of the Summerville Councilmen’s Award for his work in the community, KJ has served as a basketball coach for elementary school students on the East side of the Charleston Peninsula, substitute teacher, and as a columnist for the Charleston City Paper where he routinely wrote about economic disparity, race inequality, social injustices, and hip-hop culture. His writing recently earned him two nominations for the AAN Awards, which highlights the best alt-news writing in the US and Canada.

KJ is also the founder of H1GHER LEARNING, a new non-profit organization that plans on using hip-hop culture to teach life skills to at-risk students and of the FAKE RACE, the world’s only “running themed trap dance party”. KJ recently won the Democratic nomination for South Carolina House of Representatives District 15 and is using his experiences to create a company that demystifies the political process for youth using the power of hip-hop culture.

He has a Twitter account that he barely uses but loves Instagram and you can follow him on both platforms via Twitter: @H1GHER Instagram: @h1gher

photo by: www.carolinero.com/

Announcing our speaker for RISK, on April 22nd!

He is none other than John Zinsser, a master in conflict resolution, and developing companies to be an environment where they can communicate openly. John is also a TEDx alumni, speaking all over the country, including a monthly engagement at Columbia University.

His work clarifies intentions, perspectives and messages, helping those I’m with to realize what they most need to say, to feel or to do. We don’t chase happy. Together we forge better.

That’s why Fortune 500 companies like Baker Hughes, IBM and Shell Oil, as well as global companies like Novo Nordisk and OMV-Petrom and others including Blackbaud, ICANN, and Fidelity Investments turn to John when they want to innovate their process and humanize their organizations.

Presenting our speaker this month…

William Dudley Gregorie
March 25th
@Rewined Candle
in collaboration with Vaga

William Dudley Gregorie has been a part of every major change within within Charleston in the last 30 years. He joined the Executive Branch of Government, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) in Washington, DC as an Urban Intern in 1974. Nationally, Gregorie advanced to Office Director managing programs, and the development and implementation of National policy for $30 billion dollars of housing and community development programs. If anyone can represent the theme of CHANGE is this gentleman. We are very excited!

Sign up on Monday, March 21st, 10a.

Photo by the amazing: Caroline Ro

Coming in HOT! Tim Wolf will grace our stage on February 19th! 

Originally from Southern California, Tim moved to Wyoming pursuing his career in technology in the Front Range. After seeing through the HP/Compaq merger he moved to Charleston in 2004 where he is now with his wife and 5 kids. His latest start-up, Mediocrity, is an ironic manifestation of a life that is far from mediocre. “I have a relentless passion for people so I decided to take the thing that comes most natural to me, giving advice, and turn it into a business I can be proud of.“

CEO’s call Tim when they’re ready to get serious about investing in their people. “I don’t take on every case. After an initial phone interview I can tell if a company’s leader is really committed about healing the wounds in their organization and if they are willing to do the work it takes to do it.” While every situation is unique, Tim usually conducts a 2 day on-site that culminates in a happy hour and a series of follow-up phone calls to complete the work that was started in person. “My job is to make myself obsolete. I don’t want to create dependencies but a program for people to learn and graduate.

Prior to launching Mediocrity, Tim co-founded local HR- tech start-up Echovate, led the development team at Boomtown from 2010-2014, and wrote software for Blackbaud from 2004-2010. When he’s not busy mentoring or spending time with his family, you’ll find him cruising the harbor on his boat, The Mediocre Life.

Follow him on Twitter @lowcountrywolf or connect on LinkedIn.com/in/lobohombre

This Month we bring Maestro Ken Lam from Charleston Symphony Orchestra, interpreting the global theme LANGUAGE! Surprises to come, fun to be had.

January 22nd @ Launchpad

David Merritt and Jaime Tenny founded COAST Brewing in 2007, but the dream began well before that. David attended the American Brewer’s Guild at 20 years old and has been a brewer in Charleston for as many years. Jaime founded Pop the Cap SC (now the SC Brewer’s Guild) a non-profit that helped steer the craft beer culture through beer laws. COAST was the 2nd brewery to open in Charleston, in a time where the beer movement was strong but very small. Jaime and David are proud to have been involved in the infancy of an industry that they believe is an asset to the community in both social, economic and philanthropic areas. Cheers to South Carolina beer!

Come join us for our December 18th talk on TIME. At the Cedar Room.

For our WORK theme, we invite: 

Susan Walker from IBU Movement

Susan Hull Walker, who founded IBU in 2013, studied World Religions at Harvard Divinity School and served for eighteen years as a minister in Maine, San Francisco, and Charleston, SC. Returning to school to study Fiber Arts, she learned to weave and speak in the language of cloth. It opened her eyes to the very thing she had been looking for in her previous work - a woman’s way of recording her mind and soul. What she didn’t find in parchment and page, she found in textiles. A woman’s text.

Catch her at REDUX Contemporary Art Center, Nov 20th | 8a

Sept 18th we invite esteemed writer and professor, Bret Lott. 

Bret Lott is the bestselling author of fourteen books, most recently the nonfiction collection Letters and Life: On Being a Writer, On Being a Christian (Crossway 2013) and the novel Dead Low Tide (Random House 2012). Other books include the story collection The Difference Between Women and Men, the nonfiction book Before We Get Started: A Practical Memoir of the Writer’s Life, and the novels Jewel, an Oprah Book Club pick, and A Song I Knew by Heart. His work has appeared in, among other places, The Yale Review, The New York Times, The Georgia Review and in dozens of anthologies.

From 1986 to 2004 he was writer-in-residence and professor of English at The College of Charleston, leaving to take the position of editor and director of the journal The Southern Review at Louisiana State University. Three years later, in the fall of 2007, he returned to The College of Charleston and the job he most loves: teaching.