When it comes to leadership and organizational refinement, Doug Cooper is much more a product of hands-on experience than of academia.

For 25 years, Cooper has worked in leadership roles within retail, manufacturing, service, professional and media-related business environs, where he has gained and tested great perspective on motivating and mobilizing people in large and small profit-driven companies. Cooper’s entrepreneurial leadership tendencies and philosophy were nurtured, reinforced, and proven in these realms.

Cooper currently hones his own and others’ skills as executive director of a leadership development organization and as a social entrepreneur and founder of Goldberry Roasting Co., a for-profit corporation supporting the well-being of coffee growers and their communities.

One of Cooper’s adopted credos is “laziness is the mother of invention” and it is his love of ease, quality of life and simplified solutions that drives him to de-construct and re-think the ways things get done.

The leadership role that Cooper finds most fulfilling is in serving his wife, four grown children, three children-in-law and five grandchildren in Ashland, Ohio.

Sergio T. Ruiz had an extensive background in chemical engineering. During his life as a lab rat, he ended spending a great deal of time behind the keyboard writing software for all manner of business and process control applications. Tiring of the danger of giant chemical systems, he made his way out of lab, and into a life of software development of all sorts. He hasn't looked back since.

An avid follower of tech and confidant to many CEOs and execs, he found that his conversations revealed many patterns. Business owners were hungry to use technology. Not to understand the depths of the machine or every possible object model, but to quickly use technology to optimize their workflow.

After a dozen of these conversations, he realized that there was a real need for targeted and simple information.

He currently writes for several blogs and can be contracted for projects via his company, Coding for Hire.

Jarrod Higgins has worked in the tech industry for over 15 years. Starting out as a bench tech in a small computer store, Jarrod has gone on to provide corporate level IT support all over the country as well as overseas.

In 2009 Jarrod left the corporate world to start his own IT firm, Higgins Computer Services. Since then Higgins Computer Service has specialized in serving small businesses and non-profit organizations.

Jarrod believes that while there is a place for the latest and greatest new technology, low tech and sometimes no-tech solutions can still be the best ways to streamline both business and everyday life.