Elevate Blue-SXSW

South By Southwest dedicates itself to helping creative people achieve their goals. Founded in 1987 in Austin, Texas, SXSW is best known for its conference and festivals that celebrate the convergence of the interactive, film, and music industries. The event, an essential destination for global professionals, features sessions, showcases, screenings, exhibitions, and a variety of networking opportunities. SXSW proves that the most unexpected discoveries happen when diverse topics and people come together. Listed below are the three proposed SXSW 2017 panels moderated by members of the Elevate Blue team. On the half of Elevate Blue, we would greatly appreciate if you took the time to vote for our panels.

Destination Innovation: Fresh Air and Fresh Ideas

CEO's from Incubators, Accelerators and Startup Studios share breakthrough innovations and funding opportunities for entrepreneurs who breakaway from the Silicon Valley and major markets, to create and innovate in environments where the sky is the limit.

-Speakers-

Elevate Blue- Jameson Stafford

Jameson Stafford

CEO and Founder of Elevate Blue

Elevate Blue- Human Ventures-Heather Hartnett

Heather Hartnett

CEO of Human Ventures

Elevate Blue- Mergelane- Sue Heilbronner

Sue Heilbronner

CEO of MergeLane

Elevate Blue- Stanley Park Ventures- Jonathan Bixby

Jonathan Bixby

General Partner at Stanley Park Ventures


Higher Education

At 6,200 feet above sea level, coding and creative expression combine to transform lives and career paths. The novel approach Code Tahoe uses in their immersive code school, whose location and balance of creative expression in and out of training has had out of the gate success for students. Discover the unique methods and the global strategy to roll the destination education and training concepts globally for great access and destination choice.

-Speaker-

Elevate Blue-  Kelly Benson

Tim Olesnavage

Co-Founder and General Manager of Code Tahoe


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Kelly Benson – KickParty Product Manager

Kelly is a highly motivated and enthusiastic young entrepreneur who is responsible for the early-stage initiatives and launch of KickParty, an event management platform designed to turn anyone into a professional party planner. A Northern California girl at heart, Kelly discovered her passion for the mountains while living in Vail, Colorado where she fell in love with the outdoor lifestyle. This fueled her desire to not only study but begin her career in the mountains, which brought her to Lake Tahoe in 2013. A graduate of Sierra Nevada College in Global Business Management, Kelly is now ecstatic to begin her entrepreneurial journey surrounded by talented peers and snow-topped mountains.

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Tim Olesnavage – Co-Founder and General Manager of Code Tahoe

Tim is originally from Grand Rapids, MI and has spent the last 10 years working in the New York, SF, and LA tech scenes, and has finally come to his senses. It IS possible to curate and work in a thriving tech scene and not have to give up your quality of life (or sanity) to do it. He’s been heavily involved in operations, marketing, and recruitment in a large number of technology companies, and has built software engineering teams at Google, Tinder, SpaceX, HBO, Snapchat, Goldman Sachs, New York Stock Exchange, TheChive, Snapchat, Activision, and so on…he’s sick of the rat race and as an avid skier, has fallen in love with Lake Tahoe.

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Jameson Stafford – Founder and Chief Executive Officer

Jameson, his wife Shanna and their beloved Rhodesian ridgebacks Murphy and Stella moved to Incline Village full-time in 2015. Jameson is passionate about technology, whether it’s consumer applications, SaaS platforms, or digital filmmaking. He has been fortunate enough to spend his days following this passion and has built a diverse career around it. He has founded multiple businesses, including several tech startups, two of which were acquired by larger public companies. He has grown and managed US and international teams in excess of 50 employees both pre and post-acquisition. As a full-stack developer, his cloud-based platforms have supported millions of users, creating user-generated content through a content publishing platform that he created from the ground-up. In his spare time, he enjoys making films and music videos and has had the pleasure of directing talented actors and musicians, ranging from Sean Penn, Kid Rock, Jada Pinkett-Smith and Erykah Badu. Most recently, Jameson has turned his energy and passion towards a new venture, Elevate Blue, a startup studio on the shores of Lake Tahoe. Here, Jameson has brought an ambitious team of developers, executives, investors and young entrepreneurs together to build technology-based businesses and drive economic growth for the Northern Nevada region.

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Heather Hartnett – CEO of Human Ventures

Heather Hartnett is the CEO and founding member of Human Ventures. Heather leads a team at Human the parent company and advises each of Human Ventures’ portfolio companies. She was recently featured in Business Insider as "the first female-led startup studio in New York City" bringing a fresh new perspective to the tech scene. Heather was also named one of the 50 Most Influential Women in America by Marie Claire. Prior to Human Ventures, Heather founded a FinTech company incubated within City Light Capital — a venture capital fund that invests in companies seeking to generate measurable social and environmental impact in addition to financial returns. Heather serves on the Board of Directors of the David Lynch Foundation and is a long time practitioner and teacher of Transcendental Meditation.

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Sue Heilbronner – CEO of Merge Lane

Sue is a CEO, founder, speaker, advisor, investor, mentor, professor, former civil rights attorney, creative visionary, operator, and catalyst. Sue is the co-founder and CEO of MergeLane, a groundbreaking, award-winning startup accelerator targeting companies with at least one woman in leadership. Sue also runs a strategic consultancy that works closely with high-potential leaders, executive teams, and tech-enabled startups and growth companies. Sue has been a CEO, president, and chief marketing officer for digital marketing, technology, and ecommerce companies since the earliest days of the Internet. She began her career as an attorney – last as a federal prosecutor with the US DOJ Civil Rights Division. She transitioned to business by founding an online baby gift company in 1999, which she later sold when she joined Discovery Communications, parent company of Discovery Channel and 15 other international networks. Since Discovery, Sue has led companies in the interactive travel, digital publishing, ecommerce, and online education sectors. Two of these firms had successful exits. Sue has the privilege of serving as a mentor in the international Techstars Accelerator program and an adjunct professor of law and entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado Law School. Her class, Philosophy of Entrepreneurship, is taught to graduate students in law, business. She is an avid angel investor in companies with amazing founding teams working on problems she cares about. She has been mentoring tremendous young talent throughout her career.

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Jonathan Bixby – General Partner at Stanley Park Ventures

Jonathan is a serial entrepreneur, active angel investor, board member and speaker. Jonathan currently invests out of, Stanley Park Ventures, Oak Mason Investments and Flight International. In addition to his investing efforts, Jonathan has been active with several non-profit organizations and currently is involved in New Ventures BC and Launch Academy. Jonathan is a founder and on the Board of Advisors of HIGHLINE.VC a VC backed Co-Venture Platform with programming in four cities (Vancouver, Toronto, San Francisco, New York). HIGHLINE is a merger of GrowLab and Extreme Startups. Jonathan was the Executive Director of GrowLab before merging with Extreme Startups.

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Kelly Benson – KickParty Product Manager

Kelly is a highly motivated and enthusiastic young entrepreneur who is responsible for the early-stage initiatives and launch of KickParty, an event management platform designed to turn anyone into a professional party planner. A Northern California girl at heart, Kelly discovered her passion for the mountains while living in Vail, Colorado where she fell in love with the outdoor lifestyle. This fueled her desire to not only study but begin her career in the mountains, which brought her to Lake Tahoe in 2013. A graduate of Sierra Nevada College in Global Business Management, Kelly is now ecstatic to begin her entrepreneurial journey surrounded by talented peers and snow-topped mountains.

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Tim Olesnavage – Co-Founder and General Manager of Code Tahoe

Tim is originally from Grand Rapids, MI and has spent the last 10 years working in the New York, SF, and LA tech scenes, and has finally come to his senses. It IS possible to curate and work in a thriving tech scene and not have to give up your quality of life (or sanity) to do it. He’s been heavily involved in operations, marketing, and recruitment in a large number of technology companies, and has built software engineering teams at Google, Tinder, SpaceX, HBO, Snapchat, Goldman Sachs, New York Stock Exchange, TheChive, Snapchat, Activision, and so on…he’s sick of the rat race and as an avid skier, has fallen in love with Lake Tahoe.

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Ted Kelly – Chief Communications Officer

Career Marketer, C - Level Executive Management, Digital Media, Branding, Global Event Development, Public Relations, Communications & Sales Marketing Promotions. Ted delivers an expertise in Brand Development, Public Relations, Multimedia Marketing Strategies, Team Building, Competitive Analysis, Sales Promotion & Presentation. Ted Kelly’s over two decades at the forefront of music programming, marketing, public relations and media management/sales ranges from major market and international morning radio personality, format and event development to executive management, sales/marketing and promotion policy/procedure for some of the world’s largest media companies in New York and Washington DC. Ted is recognized by Association of National Advertisers as a Marketing Industry Leader of the year, published journalist in AND Society Magazine and the founder of FedMil.com the Business of Federal Military News blog and Tres Magazine. A resident of Incline Village, Ted sits on the board of Pet Network and Classical Tahoe.