Featured Speaker(s)

SPEAKER
Allyson Tirado, Intel Corporation - Business Development Manager
Allyson K. Tirado manages Intel’s strategic relationships with corporations, institutions and partners in the Southeast. As part of Intel’s Customer Solutions Group she advises customers in the best applications of Intel client and server technologies and ecosystem solutions to solve business problems. This includes helping CIOs and their organizations reduce total cost of ownership and gain competitive advantage by helping them adopt new technologies, best known methods, and by helping firms migrate from proprietary to industry standard platforms.

Tirado joined Intel in 1994 and has held several influencer/sales roles including territory manager providing videoconferencing solutions by creating marketing and training programs and driving through to the reseller channel. She was also the Southeast Networking manager driving Intel e-Business solutions. Prior to joining Intel, Tirado held technical sales positions @ Monarch Marking Systems (division of Pitney Bowes) specializing in barcode data collection systems. She also held an executive sales role at Group 1 Software specializing in customer solutions around data warehousing, database marketing, list management, and marketing analysis through software and professional services. Allyson holds a Bachelor of Network Communications Degree from DeVry University in Atlanta, Georgia.

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SPEAKER
Adrienne Graham is CEO & Founder of Empower Me! Corporation, a media, publishing and professional development company. She is the voice behind Views From the Top Radio Show and the creative social media visionary responsible for creating Empower Me! Networks, Empower Me Institute, Empower Me! (formerly Fearless Woman) Magazine, Next Level Business Coaching Program, Empowered Woman TV, the Power Brok(H)er™ Club, and the Empower Me! Radio. She has taken a small professional network and turned into an international multimedia and networking power brand.

Graham, a 17 year recruiting veteran, is CEO of Hues Consulting & Management, Inc, a diversity recruitment, recruiter training and employment branding consulting firm.

She is known as a Networking Power Broker who has mastered traditional and social networking. Her Blackberry contains some pretty powerful people she can turn to at any time for advice or just to chat. She wrote THE BOOK on Fearless Networking and set the bar for how to network in the 21st century.

She has been featured in numerous publications, radio shows and blogs including Black Enterprise, Financial Times, Essence Magazine, and more. She recently spoke on a panel for Women in Tech-Social Media at the Darden School of Business and a small business tech panel for Black Enterprise Magazine’s 2010 Entrepreneurs Conference. In 2010 her radio show was elected as a Top 100 Heavy Hitter Radio Show for Small Business (one of only 8 shows from BlogTalkRadio) by Small Business Trends and Empower Me! Corporation was selected as a Top 10 Savviest in Social Media by StartUp Nation. Catch her blogs at Examiner.com and Work in Progress on Forbes.com.
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SPEAKER
Sarah Perez is a professional blogger who writes for ReadWriteWeb.com, a technology news publication which is syndicated daily by the New York Times. ReadWriteWeb isn’t just one of the top tech blogs in the industry, it’s one of the top blogs in the world, currently ranked #10 on Technorati’s list of the top 100 blogs, a list based on popularity, traffic and authority.

ReadWriteWeb offers insight and analysis on Internet industry news and is read by millions of thought leaders and consumers alike.

Sarah has been blogging professionally with the ReadWriteWeb team for two years, having previously worked as a pro blogger for Microsoft and, prior to that, in I.T.

While in I.T., Sarah worked in a number of different industries, including everything from banking to furniture, a diversity of experience which has given her a wide perspective on technology trends and consumer adoption behavior.

Sarah recently started writing for ReadWriteMobile, too, a dedicated channel on ReadWriteWeb which features expert analysis and discussion pertaining to the mobile business as a whole and its developer community.

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MODERATOR
Lisa Duke began her Information Technology career by accepting a job as a Business Analyst with TSYS in Columbus, GA. After relocating to Atlanta, Lisa changed careers to go in to sales.

In the spring of 2005, Lisa was hired to head the sales team for Simplified Technology Solutions, Inc., also known as STS, which allowed her to draw on both her IT and sales experience. She was instrumental in developing both the business and the marketing plans, and was later promoted to CEO.

Currently, Lisa is leading STS in developing a Social Marketing practice to compliment their Collaboration, Mobility, and Virtualization practices.