Ohio University-Sponsored Conference Focuses on Growth Firms In Appalachia
ATHENS, Ohio - An upcoming conference will explore how companies can acquire the venture capital and high-level technical assistance they need to grow and prosper in Appalachia and other rural regions. Ohio University's Appalachia Regional Entrepreneurship Initiative (AREI) is hosting "Raising Gazelles: Financing High-Growth Firms in Central Appalachia" from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Tuesday, Oct. 2, at the Lafayette Hotel in Marietta, Ohio.
The first of its kind in southeastern Ohio, the conference will bring together financial professionals, investors, chamber of commerce professionals, attorneys and selected growth companies-established companies or firms with sales exceeding $500,000 per year and anticipated growth rates of 20 percent. Attendees will come from southeastern Ohio, West Virginia and other regions.
"This conference is the first in a series of AREI activities that will help us build the type of infrastructure here that successful companies in the nation's largest commerce centers have at their disposal," said AREI Associate Managing Director Jeff Doose. "The speakers, panelists and participants at this conference will help us do just that."
The program features a lineup of nationally recognized experts. Laura Brege, a partner with Red Rock Ventures in Palo Alto, Calif., which manages $130 million in capital, will speak on the dynamics of growing and funding gazelles -- firms that grow at least 20 percent a year for four consecutive years.
Whitney Johns Martin, founder and CEO of Capital Across America, a leading small business investment company based in Nashville, Tenn., will answer the question, "Can capital transform a region?" She is chairman of the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta, Nashville branch, and was a presidential appointee to the last White House conference on small business.
David Wilhelm and Lynn Gellermann, founder and president respectively of Adena Ventures, a new $25 million venture capital fund dedicated to this region, also will speak. Other speakers include Brian Kelley, director of Economic Opportunities Programs of the Heinz Foundation, Pittsburgh; and Nathaniel Henshaw, president of CEI Ventures Inc, Portland, Maine.
The full conference brochure, including registration information, is on the Web at www.arei.org/vchome.htm. For more information, call Kate Leeman, (740) 597-1686.
AREI, part of Ohio University's Voinovich Center for Leadership & Public Affairs, provides professional services and technical assistance for businesses and economic development agencies throughout southeastern Ohio and the adjoining region. AREI's services include business planning, technical assistance to prepare for raising capital, market opportunity development, information technology capacity building and more.
