Join us for our Small Business, Big Dreams: Women in Business Summit! Enjoy a morning of inspirational talks from women-owned business leaders and network with fellow business owners. Stay for a live business competition where businesses can win up to $15,000!

Event Agenda:

8:30 a.m. - Registration & Continental Breakfast

9:00 a.m. - Welcome

Lisa Shim, SEVP, Head of Consumer & Small Business Banking, BankUnited

Lisa Shim is the Senior Executive Vice President and Head of Consumer and Small Business Banking at BankUnited, overseeing the entire division supporting consumer and small business clients, with oversight of corporate strategy, digital banking, marketing and community development. Shim has been a part of the BankUnited family since the new bank was formed in 2009, when she joined the bank as vice president of corporate development, and has been involved in a wide range of critical initiatives throughout her tenure, including the bank’s merger and acquisition strategy, internal corporate strategy and digital transformation journey.

Shim leads several large initiatives, including a multimillion-dollar digital transformation program to enhance the customer experience, and a new branding campaign that positions the bank as one built to Go for More™ for its clients. She has set the vision to create the omni-channel experience, a multi-year journey to transform mindset, process, product and technology, and piloted the bank’s first collaboration workspace, a model of collaboration, agility and transparency.

Shim also leads BankUnited’s efforts to support the work of community organizations in the areas of economic development, affordable housing, neighborhood revitalization and financial literacy through volunteerism and CRA grant funding.

Prior to BankUnited, Shim worked in the financial institutions group at Merrill Lynch and the retail bank division for Countrywide Bank. She graduated with a B.A from Stanford University and an M.B.A. from Kellogg School of Management.

9:15 a.m. - Panel Discussion: Taking Risks and Overcoming Obstacles

Panelists:

Durée Ross, President/Founder, Durée & Company, Inc.

Durée Ross inspires, innovates and elevates the practice of public relations and marketing at the helm of her agency, Durée & Company, which she founded in 1999. A natural leader at the vanguard of the PR and marketing realm, she brings success to clients through creative, tactical and benchmark setting programs. Her guiding belief is that mutually beneficial and long-standing relationships are the key to businesses that thrive in today’s capricious economy.

Durée generously shares her passion for pioneering incomparable future-centric public relations and marketing strategies with her diverse client base of local, national and international consumer brands, landmark industries, business leaders and philanthropists.

She leads a team of communication professionals from varied backgrounds and hand-selects each member based on experience, skillset and the ability to work together seamlessly. Durée’s clear agenda and cultural leadership energizes a supportive environment for individual growth while catalyzing the desire to achieve a stellar ROI for clients.

An award-winning entrepreneur, Durée has been nationally recognized for her ability to manage crises and develop winning strategies that protect and build brand reputations. She is a 2021 honoree of South Florida Business & Wealth’s Prestigious Women Awards, Ragan’s 2020 Top Women in Communications Visionary award, PR News’ 2020 Agency Elite Top 100 award, Bulldog Reporter’s 2018 PR Professional Who Makes a Difference award and a 2015 South Florida Business Journal Influential Business Woman honoree, among many others.

Durée & Company is a longtime member of PR Boutiques International™, an international network of influential boutique PR firms and Durée sits on its executive board.

Ivelices Linares Thomas, Founder & CEO, HR & Beyond

Ivelices Linares Thomas is Founder & Chief Executive Officer of HR & Beyond, a leading human capital advisory firm specialized in providing expert, practical and cost-effective HR Outsourcing and Consulting solutions for small and mid-sized businesses. Through her leadership, HR & Beyond was recently ranked #13 by Florida State’s Seminole 100 which recognizes the 100 fastest-growing FSU alumni-owned or alumni-led business.

Ivelices is a passionate, results driven Human Resources Executive, an accomplished Labor & Employment Attorney, and a certified Florida Supreme Court Circuit Civil Court Mediator with over 20 years of combined legal and human resources expertise.

Ivelices is a big believer in paying it forward, and shares her experiences and expertise through her volunteer work as a mentor with Women of Tomorrow as well as a SCORE Broward volunteer helping entrepreneurs and business owners start, develop and grow their business. She has been recognized as one of South Florida’s Most Influential Business Women for 2018 by the South Florida Business Journal and was previously selected as one of South Florida’s Top 40 Under 40 Black Leaders.

Ivelices received her Juris Doctorate from Nova Southeastern University, graduating Cum Laude, and has been certified as a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR).

Ivelices is married and has two young boys, Zion & Zahir and her daughter, Zuri. They reside in South Florida with their dogs Hope & Faith.

Ramola Motwani, Chairwoman, Merrimac Ventures

Ramola Motwani has been a highly respected fixture on Fort Lauderdale for almost 40 years. She and her family enterprise have been credited by business and hospitality leaders with laying the foundation for the transformation of Fort Lauderdale beach into a world-class hotel and tourist destination.

The Merrimac Ventures story is one of triumph over adversity and how the vision and hard work of the Motwani family transformed a city.

The family business was started by the late Ramesh “Bob” Motwani and his wife Ramola. In the mid-1980s, they expanded into the hotel business by purchasing their first hotel along Fort Lauderdale’s famed A1A strip. With the elimination of Spring Break in the late 80’s, most hotel owners in the area either suffered foreclosure or were forced to leave; however, Bob and Ramola continued to acquire properties with a common vision of redeveloping and transforming the Fort Lauderdale Beach into a world-class resort destination.

When Bob died suddenly in 1994, Ramola was left to raise her two young sons, Nitin and Dev. She worked day and night operating the hotels and refinanced millions of dollars in mortgages. She continued to pursue the couple’s shared vision with a tireless determination, designing and entitling her first project single-handedly in a tough political climate. She formed strategic partnerships with developers, enabling her to build her first large, luxury condo hotel.

As could be expected, Ramola had passed her entrepreneurial skills to her sons, Nitin and Dev, who combined these skills with their Wall Street pedigrees and launched the company into unprecedented growth, expanding the company’s development portfolio into hotels, condominiums, luxury apartments and complex mixed-use projects.

Today, Fort Lauderdale has emerged as a world-class, upscale resort destination, helped through no small effort by the Motwanis.

Marie Gill, Founder and CEO, M. Gill & Associates

Marie Gill is a Jamaican Businesswoman with a penchant for service and a passion for helping small, minority and women business owners achieve their business goals. One of Florida’s successful entrepreneurs, Marie has blazed several trails throughout the U.S. to bring information, funding, and economic development initiatives and opportunities to hundreds of small businesses. She advocates for the revitalization of urban communities, and assists small, minority, and women-owned businesses to successfully compete in the domestic and global markets.

Under the aegis of M. Gill & Associates, Inc. - a management and economic development consulting firm which she founded in 1990, Marie and her team provide specialty consulting services to small, minority, women, and veteran-owned businesses, and international firms. She works with government agencies, corporations, educational and financial institutions to advocate for the inclusion of minority programs and participation goals in contracts and financing. Always a Champion for the under-served and marginalized in her own country, Jamaica, Marie took that passion with her as she traveled abroad. She began making a name for herself in the U.S. as a community organizer and advocate for small and minority businesses in Newark, New Jersey and Denver, Colorado in the 1970’s. Upon settling in South Florida in the 1980’s, Marie was tapped by Miami Dade County as the managing consultant to oversee the County's $150-million Federal Empowerment Zone (EZ) program. She attracted cost-share investments from the State of Florida, and a consortium of 18 banks in Florida, resulting in a $300-million leveraged EZ Program that ran for five years, helping hundreds of inner-city residents and businesses.

Marie was later hired on several other economic development projects in South Florida. She was the Section 3 Consultant for the U.S. Department of Housing & Urban Development's $180-million Scott Carver Housing Project in Miami. Marie was later hired as the Community & Economic Development Consultant on the $1.2 Billion Biscayne Landing project--a 125-acre mixed use development in North Miami. As a result, Marie wrote the City's first Local Preference Plan, which was adopted by the City of North Miami in 2015, as the official guide to incorporating Local Preference in City-funded Development Projects.

Marie is the first Black business owner and the first woman entrepreneur to have been awarded the federal contract in 2000 to operate the MBDA Programs throughout the state of Florida. After 16 years as a productive MBDA Operator, her company was awarded over $8 million in Technical Assistance Grants, to operate the Miami MBDA Business Center, the Florida MBDA Export Center, a CARES Act and a Coronavirus Initiative, and recently, the MBDA Federal Procurement Supplement (Infrastructure) Center, serving Florida, Puerto Rico, and the U.S. Virgin Islands. To date, Marie’s services through her MBDA Programs have helped over 24,000 MBEs, facilitated over $6.9 Billion in contracts and financing for minority and women-owned businesses, with over 19,500 U.S. jobs created and retained. Before migrating to the U.S., Marie held senior management positions with the government of Jamaica, including Sugar Industry Housing, where she advocated for, and assisted hundreds of Jamaica’s impoverished sugar workers throughout the island to obtain new, affordable housing, and established sugar workers cooperatives that evolved as thriving economies in rural Jamaica.

Marie is guided by her personal belief in a “Higher Calling,” and by a lifelong motto to "Give Selflessly, and Never Compromise your Integrity!”

10:00 a.m. - Keynote Speaker

Rachel Sapoznik, Founder, President, and CEO of World Insurance Associates

Rachel A. Sapoznik is the Founder and Principal of Sapoznik Insurance, A World Company, and is an industry leader in employee benefits solutions. Rachel relentlessly pursued her entrepreneurial vision to revolutionize traditional employee benefits through education. In doing so, she rapidly expanded the company from her home office into one of the largest independently owned agencies in South Florida. Thirty-four years later, Sapoznik Insurance was acquired by World Insurance Associates (WIA), which has been named one of The Most Successful Companies in America by Inc. 5000, a Top 100 P/C Agency by Insurance Journal and Business Insurance, and a five-time honoree of NJBIZ Fast 50.

Rachel is recognized as one of South Florida’s leading healthcare experts. She has been featured in several national networks, including CNBC.com, Yahoo! Finance, MarketWatch, Reuters, MorningStar, Employee Benefits Advisor, and Automotive News. Locally, she has been interviewed by Invest Miami, The Miami Herald, The Sun-Sentinel, The South Florida Business Journal, Crain’s Miami, South Florida Business & Wealth Magazine, and Miami Today.

A true visionary, Rachel has always emphasized the value of education, wellness, and building strong programs for her clients. Driven by these guiding principles, Rachel has helped hundreds of companies across the country improve their employees’ health while positively impacting her clients’ bottom line. Her book, A Passion for Wellness: Healthy Employees, Healthy Bottom Line, was featured on Amazon’s bestseller list for new releases upon its publication.

In addition to her professional accomplishments, Rachel has made it her mission to help the communities around her. As a devoted philanthropist, she is deeply involved in many charities, especially those dedicated to improving children’s lives. Whether spearheading a fundraiser for developmentally challenged adults or children, mentoring future business leaders, or educating children about the importance of healthy eating, Rachel derives the greatest pleasure from supporting her community.

11:00 a.m. - Live Business Competition

12:15 p.m. - Winner Presentation

12:30 p.m. - Grab & Go Lunch