Andrew Flamm, Director, Pace University Small Business Development Center (Pace SBDC)
Andrew Flamm serves as Director of the Pace University Small Business Development Center (Pace SBDC), which provides free high-impact consulting and training to small business owners and aspiring entrepreneurs. Among the services the Center offers are helping small business clients to access financing, develop business plans and financial projections, and identify procurement opportunities and strategies for increasing sales. In this role Mr. Flamm is responsible for strategic planning and capacity-building efforts, marketing and communications to build greater awareness of the Center' programs and develop collaborations with a wide range of financial institutions, and managing operations to help our clients leverage investment and create jobs in their communities.
Prior to joining the Pace SBDC, Mr. Flamm was Senior Director at Empire State Development, where he managed a number of small business lending programs and oversaw the State’s pro bono small business mentorship program. He has also served in senior economic development roles for a number of business groups, conducted merchant organizing in low-income communities, and implemented small business financial and technical assistance training programs and helped underwrite small business loans for community-based lenders.
Mr. Flamm has an undergraduate degree from Washington University in St. Louis, and received a Master of Public Administration from NYU. He lives in Brooklyn with his wife and two daughters.
Kumesh Aroomoogan, Co-Founder and CEO, Accern Corporation
Kumesh Aroomoogan is the Co-Founder and CEO of Accern, a startup applying artificial intelligence to derive trading analytics from 20 million news and blog sources in real-time. Accern currently serves some of the largest quantitative hedge funds worldwide. Kumesh has worked side-by-side with multiple hedge funds in helping them integrate social media data into their automated trading strategies. Prior to Accern, Kumesh worked in corporate finance at Citigroup, SIFMA, and Ford Foundation. He graduated Pace University with a BBA in Public Accounting in 2014. Kumesh also writes for Forbes Magazine covering Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Quant Finance.
Jeff Loehr, principal and Strategy Practice Lead, Stratist Group
Jeff is a principal and Strategy Practice Lead for the Stratist Group out of the New York office and a founder of / investor with the Westchester Angels. He brings extensive international and cross industry experience, strategic insight and problem solving skills to bear on complicated issues at companies of all sizes - from startups to some of the world’s largest companies. His experience covers product and corporate strategy development, innovation, new market entry, and mergers and acquisitions.
Some of the companies he has worked with include: Butterball, Daimler Benz, the Ford Motor Company, Borax and Rio Tinto where he has been a leader in developing strategy and innovation projects that lead to efficiency and growth. He also has extensive international experience having lived and worked in a number of countries including: Germany, the United Kingdom, South Africa, China, Mexico, Chile and Peru among others.
He is active in the advancement of the Strategy Practice and has been a leader in bringing new techniques and solutions to companies looking to reframe strategic challenges and discover new opportunities. He has also developed innovation processes that have allowed both industrial and also consumer firms to create new products, operating models and redesign operations.
Jeff has an MBA from the Anderson School at UCLA.