Inspiring Across Generations (IAG) Conference

Jason Bollinger is a Professional Coach and Leadership Consultant specializing in Life, Leadership, Business, and Team Coaching with a passion for helping individuals and organizations grow in vision, purpose, health, effectiveness, and performance. A graduate of the University of Houston, he is a certified instructor/facilitator of the Giant Worldwide platform and also holds a Solutions-Focused Coaching diploma from highly esteemed Erickson International (which is an approved International Coaching Federation program). Jason is the founder and owner of Capella Coaching and lives in the Houston area with his wife and 3 teenage children. When Jason is not coaching, he is giving direction to Links International - a Community Development Non-Profit focused on confronting poverty and creating potential in the developing world. improvement projects. His expertise includes compliance and risk management, IT strategies, emerging technologies, i.e., cloud, mobility, business intelligence. Nazif is skilled at reengineering business processes and implementing technology to increase efficiency, remove redundancy and improve working capital. Nazif also provides IT due diligence for companies as it relates to mergers and acquisitions.

Deborah serves as EY’s Americas Industry Leader and Americas Oil and Gas leader.  Deborah previously was the Houston Office Managing Partner, Managing Partner of the EY Americas Oil & Gas Tax Group and the Transactions Advisory Group in the Southwest Region where she focused on Energy transactions.

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 Deborah is a member of the Americas Markets Executive Committee and leads our Industry Markets leaders across our Americas region.  Her core responsibilities include setting strategic growth goals informed by economic and industry trends in each of the key market sectors, advising the EY executive board to shape near term and long-term investment decisions on resources and technology solutions, and recruiting and developing leadership talent for client serving teams.

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Deborah continues to directly serve clients in strategic transactions and has significant experience working with US and non-US based global firms, private equity funds, and sovereign wealth funds.  With over 30 years of experience, she is also highly versed in cross border transactions, reviewing tax and economic considerations in transactions involving complex Joint Ventures and corporate structuring projects, including initial review related to proof of concept, tax modeling, and structuring and execution of initial IPO, and a deep knowledge in tax and economic issues surrounding development of gas shale reserves in North America, Global LNG development projects and the impact of these developments on the Power sector.

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Deborah is a frequent speaker (and writer) on oil and gas industry issues, as well as on the the challenges in our new era of energy transition.  Deborah has been published and/or has appeared in Oil and Gas Investor, Oil & Gas Journal, Oil & Gas Financial Journal, Platts, Forbes, Bloomberg, Fox News, New York Times, Houston Chronicle’s FuelFix, the Houston Business Journal, Oil & Gas Monitor, Petroleum Intelligence Weekly and others.

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Deborah received a Bachelor of Business Administration in Accounting from Baylor University. Deborah is a member of the AICPA and Texas Society of CPAs and is licensed in Texas.  Deborah is also on the Board of Directors of Baker Ripley, Advisory Council member for the Bi-lateral Chamber and was previously a Board member of United Way and Greater Houston Partnership.

Dr. Christopher Govekar became the Command Executive Officer for the Army Reserve Innovation Command in January 2009. Prior to this, he served as the Command Executive Officer for the 104th Training Division in Vancouver, WA.

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Throughout a more than 30 year career in government, the Active Army, Army Reserve, and private industry, he’s held a variety of leadership roles in organizations from 40 to more than 10,000 employees across as many as 6 states. Deploying to the Middle East three times, Dr. Govekar served in a wide variety of positions, culminating as the senior logistics officer for the 19 countries supervised by the US Central Command, to include Iraq and Afghanistan. In his Civilian roles, he’s been responsible for organizations as large as 7,400 individuals and budgets in excess of $50 million.

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He is a Demonstrated Master Logistician and holds an earned Doctorate in Management from the University of Phoenix. He’s published in several academic journals and is a regular presenter at academic conferences on the subject of volunteer motivation. He has served as a board member for the Gulf Coast Chapter of American Mensa as well as Dog Lodge Sanctuary. He was a Senior Executive Fellow at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government. He is also a graduate of Texas A&M University at Galveston, the United States Army War College, and the University of Notre Dame. He is currently pursuing a Doctor of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine at the American College of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine in Houston.

Sue Ann Hong joined the Center for Asian Pacific American Women (CAPAW) May 2018 as the interim Executive Director.  She worked at State Farm Insurance Companies for over 28 years in Data Processing, Diversity & Inclusion, Corporate and Auto Claims, where she led up to 600 leaders and employees in supporting customers in 23 states. Her passion for building trusting relationships infuses Sue Ann’s philosophy. A 2002 Asian Pacific American Women’s Leadership Institute (APAWLI) National Fellow, she continues her journey as a whole person leader in her belief it’s the journey versus the destination. Her goal is to support CAPAW’s vision to build whole person leaders, one at a time.  Sue Ann graduated from the University of Kansas with her BSB in Business Management and Western Michigan University with her MBA – Finance.  She is also a Certified Life Coach

Mandy Kao was born in Hong Kong and educated in Vancouver, Canada. In 2001, Mandy and her husband William moved to Houston, Texas. Together, they own Titan Management – a real estate investment, management and development company.

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Mandy believes in giving back to the community she lives and works in.  In 2009, Kao formed the Mandy Kao Foundation to further her goals in helping those in underserved and marginalized communities. The foundation serves as a “bridge,” leading those in need to better opportunities.  It supports outreach and education programs specifically for girls and funds after school programs in apartments and elementary schools in low-income neighborhoods.  It also supports scholarship programs for students to attend college as well as offers small matching grants for new projects which promote leadership, entrepreneurship and self-sufficiency for women and children.  She also helped her three boys start their own charitable fund. The Awesome Fund supports “AWESOME” projects and provides seed grants for projects, which will serve other kids in the community. Kao also helped to create the youngest Asian giving circle in the US. The Asian American Youth Giving Circle supports organizations which serve the Asian youth in Houston.

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Kao holds numerous board positions as well as working, taking care of her family, developing many personal business pursuits and in her “spare time,” mentors women both formally and informally.

Aurva Kapoor is a trained breath-work and meditation instructor and has been volunteering with the Art of Living foundation since 2007. He has been meditating for about 19 years and teaching meditation, stress-management tools and self-development workshops for the past 7 years. Since 2012, he has taught about a thousand people through these workshops. He was trained to teach these programs by His Holiness Sri Sri Ravi Shankar, the founder of Art of Living.

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He is frequently invited to speak at corporate and non-profit settings on the topics of stress management and mindfulness, sharing his insights and tools to enhance the quality of our life. He has also led the partnership of Art of Living and the Walk for mental health awareness Houston and was invited as guest speaker at their event in 2016. Recent talks at professional settings include Bechtel, Millenium Physicians and E&TS. From 2010 to 2013, he presented several talks and workshops at the University of Houston for student groups.

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He is a licensed and practicing structural engineer in the state of Texas. He graduated from Purdue with research in soil mechanics.

Youngro Lee is CEO/cofounder of NextSeed, an online investment platform enabling investments in local businesses by anyone, and NextSeed Securities LLC, an SEC/FINRA-registered broker-dealer.  

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NextSeed’s mission is to connect businesses and individuals to build vibrant communities. NextSeed completed the first ever Regulation Crowdfunding offering in US history pursuant to the JOBS Act in Aug 2016, and since then have assisted over 60 businesses across the country raise growth capital from tens of thousands of investors via the NextSeed platform.

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Prior to founding NextSeed, Youngro was a private equity attorney for 8 years at Cleary Gottlieb, Kirkland Ellis and Weil Gotshal in New York, Moscow, Shanghai and Hong Kong. Youngro received his JD and LLM in International and Comparative Law from Cornell Law School and undergraduate degrees from Cornell University and Simon’s Rock College.

laine Loo is a Principal in Deloitte’s Human Capital practice and is focused on serving Deloitte’s Life Sciences and Med Tech clients. With more than 20 years of consulting experience, Elaine has extensive experience in leading and developing organization and talent strategies, culture and change management programs for complex global workforce transformations. She has developed operating model, organization design, and role and talent solutions across R&D, Commercial, Operations, HR and IT functions focusing on growth and/or effectiveness at the function level and across multiple functions for M&A, Strategic Cost Reduction, Digital and business transformation needs. She is also the Life Sciences and Med Tech leader for Deloitte’s Human Capital practice and has responsibility for all the human capital services delivered to our portfolio of clients in this sector.

Steve Lyell is a Managing Director in KPMG’s State and Local Tax (SALT) practice in Houston, Texas. Steve has more than 12 years of experience and has been in public accounting his whole career serving clients across many industries. Steve’s current and past client base includes healthcare, oil & gas, chemical, manufacturing, retail, and financial services, among others. Steve is a graduate of Baylor University, where he is a campus lead for recruiting, and is a Certified Public Accountant licensed in Texas. He is married to his wonderful wife Leah, a registered nurse, and is the proud father of three, Drew (9), Matt (6), and Elise.

Farrukh is the Managing Partner and member of the HRSS CPA’s and Advisors. In this role, he has overall responsibility for the quality of services, the profitability operations, strategy execution and the welfare of the clients and employees. During his 26 year career with HRSS, Farrukh has built a reputation for value-added, creative and attentive service to entrepreneurial companies and their management teams. Farrukh specializes in entity tax planning and structuring, international taxation, federal, state and local tax returns, and IRS representation. Farrukh has worked with a wide variety of industries, including manufacturing, distribution, retail, healthcare and professional services.

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Prior to joining HRSS in 1993, Farrukh worked in the financial reporting department at Amerada Hess Corporation for three years

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He is Director of Ascend Houston Chapter, Advisory director, Houston Furniture Bank, and in past he has served as Director at Large for Texas State society.

Sanjiv Shah joined the energy services and equipment investment banking team at Simmons Energy | A Division of Piper Jaffray℠ in early 2008 and has worked on more than 100 successful M&A, strategic advisory, and capital markets projects during that time, including playing a key role in the majority of energy services and equipment U.S. IPOs during 2016, 2017 and 2018. Shah was named co-head of energy investment banking in July of 2019.

Prior to joining the firm, Shah worked for Citigroup for four years in London and Zurich, in fixed income credit markets and the financial institutions group, respectively. In Zurich, he worked as a corporate banker covering the banking and insurance sectors and in London, he worked as a controller for the European global loans and leveraged finance product groups. Shah has more than 15 years of investment banking experience.

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Shah is an active member of the Petroleum Equipment & Services Association (“PESA”), among the largest trade associations for the energy services and equipment industry, serving on its emerging leaders committee from 2015 to 2017 and on the advisory board since 2017. He received PESA’s Industry Innovated award in 2019. Shah has also served on the board of directors for the Association of Corporate Growth (“ACG”) Houston Chapter since 2018 and was part of the deal team that won ACG New York’s Cross-Border Transaction of the Year award in 2017. In 2018, he was named a 40 under 40 honoree by both the Houston Business Journal and Oil & Gas Investor, and a finalist for ACG Houston Oil & Gas Deal of the Year.

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Shah is originally from Manchester, England and graduated with a bachelor’s degree with honors in economics from the University of Manchester.

Nazif Sharique has over 22 years of public accounting experience, which includes the Big Four, plus two years of industry experience with a Fortune 500 company. His professional services experience is in a wide range of industries, including, but not limited to energy, manufacturing and distribution, technology, etc. Nazif has led and supported the execution of auditing processes, application reviews, IT security reviews, hands-on quality assurance reviews, board-level presentations, and numerous business process improvement projects. His expertise includes compliance and risk management, IT strategies, emerging technologies, i.e., cloud, mobility, business intelligence. Nazif is skilled at reengineering business processes and implementing technology to increase efficiency, remove redundancy and improve working capital. Nazif also provides IT due diligence for companies as it relates to mergers and acquisitions.