Ethiopian Legacy Professional Development and Consulting Firm

Gelila Sebhatu is an entrepreneur, career coach, and community leader. She has 15+ years of consulting experience serving US Federal Govt. and Fortune 500 clients such as the DoD, Gartner, DirecTV, BlueCross BluShield, as well as various political campaigns. She currently is President and Principal Director for GPS Management Consulting, providing strategic advisory services for the private and public sector, supporting major transformational efforts for project management, process improvement, enterprise architecture. She is also the Owner and Head Coach of GPS Professional Coaching, providing career enhancement services to individuals and non-profits. In these roles, she is visible in both traditional and social media. Gelila holds a Bachelor's in Business Administration (Information Systems) from Old Dominion University and an Executive MBA from Virginia Tech. She also holds certifications as a Project Management Professional (PMP), Lean Six Sigma Black Belt (LSSBB), and TOGAF Level 2. Her doctoral dissertation/research focuses on early-stage entrepreneurship, decision making and narcissitc behavior. She is also interested in the role of gender and race.

Mickias (Mickey) Solomon is a Co-Founder & Investor of Silicon Beach Investment Group. The first democratized seed investment fund providing founders capital, collaboration, and community and seek to be early investors in the most innovative start-ups in Southern California and beyond. Mr. Solomon is also a VP and Business Manager at MUFG. Prior to his current role, he worked in Business Development as a Senior Associate where he developed strategic marketing/sales plans to increase new business opportunities in the middle market space. Before that, Mr. Solomon worked in San Francisco as an Associate at Bank of America providing treasury solutions to tech companies. As part of the USC Marshall Venture Fund team, Mr. Solomon worked with pre-seed startups and took on an active role in running due diligence for startups coming out of USC. Mr. Solomon is passionate about FinTech startups that enable economic inclusion for underrepresented communities. His goal is to launch his own pre-seed investment fund that focuses on addressing financial inclusion and growth in the emerging markets. Mr. Solomon is an MBA graduate from the Marshall School of Business at University of Southern California and resides in Los Angeles, CA with his wife Veronica and his chocolate lab, Zoey.