Brent Beshore

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CEO/Founder | Permanent Equity

Brent leads the firm, and more specifically the acquisition and diligence teams, while supporting portfolio company operators.

Brent serves on the board of Love Columbia, a mid-Missouri-based non-profit.

Brent is raising three young daughters with Dr. Erica Beshore, participating in church activities, and occasionally enjoying competitive tennis and bad golf.

Brent Burgess

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Managing Partner | Concentric

Bio:

Brent is responsible for fundraising, investor relations, deal sourcing and overall strategy.

Prior to co-founding Concentric, Brent founded and served as the President of Granville Advisers, a boutique advisory and investment firm. Granville advises insurance companies and banks on their private credit investment strategy, advises early stage funds and companies on capital formation strategies and also invests in early stage companies and funds. Prior to Granville, Brent co-founded Triangle Capital Corporation. From 2002-2016, Brent was engaged in starting, taking public and building this investment company which focused on direct lending to lower-middle market companies. As the Chief Investment Officer and Chairman of the Investment Committee, Brent led $2.3 billion of investments in 165 private companies. Prior to Triangle, Brent worked at Oberlin Capital and Cherokee Investment Partners.

Since 2011, Mr. Burgess has served as an advisor and investment committee member of Sovereign’s Capital, an early stage venture fund with offices in Palo Alto, CA and Jakarta, Indonesia. Mr. Burgess is also an advisory board member of CoFounders Fund, an early stage venture fund based in Raleigh, NC, FMI Investment Partners, a private equity fund based in Raleigh, NC, and Cypress Hills Partners, a boutique merchant banking firm based in Vancouver, BC. Brent also serves as an advisor or board member of numerous small businesses. In addition to his for-profit ventures, Brent also serves on a number of non-profit boards, including Freedom United, the largest anti-slavery and human trafficking advocacy organization in the world.

Mr. Burgess earned a B.Ed. in History and Social Studies from the University of Regina, Canada in 1989, where he graduated with Great Distinction. He earned an MCS/MA from Regent College/University of British Columbia in Church History in 1993, where he was awarded the Board of Governor’s Prize and the History Prize.

Life:

Brent has been married for 25 years and is the proud father of two awesome kids. He likes to read, is an avid cyclist, ever hopeful Carolina Hurricanes fan and will generally do whatever his daughter Anna asks him to do.

Brett Johnson

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Founder | The Institute for Innovation, Integration & Impact

Brett is the Founder and President at The Institute for Innovation, Integration & Impact, whose goal is to help companies optimize their impact, not their bottom line. The Institute describes itself as having a hybrid identity: “Head of a Think Tank, Hands of a Business, Heart of Philanthropy”.

Brett has worked with Fortune 500 through startups, but is currently focused on repurposing privately held corporations to discover the real purpose of business, and how this ties to the CEO/owner/leader’s personal passions.

Brett Smith

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Cintas Endowed Professor of Entrepreneurship | Miami University

Bio:

Brett R. Smith, Ph.D. is the Cintas Endowed Chair of Entrepreneurship, Founding Director, Center for Social Entrepreneurship, and Founding Research Director, Leading the Integration of Faith & Entrepreneurship (L.I.F.E.) at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. His research interests focus on social and faith-based entrepreneurship. His research has been featured in a number of leading academic journals including Academy of Management Journal, Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of Business Venturing, Leadership Quarterly, and Long Range Planning.

Smith has won several international awards including the GCEC Award for Best Social Entrepreneurship Program. He has been awarded more than $500,000 in grants from the U.S. Department of State to host seminars on social entrepreneurship for Fulbright students from Afghanistan and North Africa and has been invited to speak around the world at the United Nations, Nelson Mandela Foundation, Tedx Youth, and a number of leading universities including Columbia, Duke, Harvard and Oxford. His work has been highlighted in Time, Business Week, Financial Times, CNN, MSNBC and 100 other media outlets.

Education:

  • Ph.D. University of Cincinnati, 2007

  • M.B.A. Georgia State University, 1999

  • B.S. Miami University, Business, 1991

Brian Fikkert

Author, Founder and Executive Director | The Chalmers Center

Bio:

Dr. Brian Fikkert is the founder and executive director of the Chalmers Center for Economic Development, a research and training center that is dedicated to helping churches and missionaries to declare the kingdom of God by bringing economic development and spiritual transformation to the poor.

Brian also serves as a professor of economics and community development at Covenant College. Brian received a Ph.D. in economics with highest honors from Yale University, and a B.A. in mathematics from Dordt College. Specializing in Economic Development and International Economics, Brian has been a consultant to the World Bank, the Inter-American Development Bank, and the United States Agency for International Development.

He has published articles in both leading academic and popular journals and has recently co-authored the book When Helping Hurts: How to Alleviate Poverty without Hurting the Poor…and Yourself (Moody Publishers). Prior to coming to Covenant College, he was a professor at the University of Maryland and a research fellow at the Center for Institutional Reform and the Informal Sector.

He, his wife Jill, and their three children live in Chattanooga, Tennessee where he is an active member of New City Fellowship Presbyterian Church (PCA).

Brian McClard

Director of Investments | RonBlue

Brian McClard is the director of investments at RonBlue. He is responsible for managing the company’s Investments Strategy Group (ISG) and overseeing the Investment Operations team. Brian and his team develop and implement investment strategies for the company that seek to increase the probability of successfully meeting clients’ financial planning goals. The ISG is responsible for constructing model portfolios, selecting investment instruments, and performing ongoing due diligence of those investments. The Investment Operations team executes daily investment operations and manages relevant operational business partners.