Mara is a naming, positioning, and category design expert guiding companies to win and lead markets. She is a Global Startup Mentor with Techstars and Founder Institute in the US, Canada, Brazil, and Europe. She guided numerous startup founders in naming, branding, and positioning strategies, helping them stand out in competitive markets.

Mara has over two decades of experience and her expertise spreads across multiple verticals at top-tier agencies such as Ogilvy, Grey, OMD. This work has given her a broad perspective and allows her to identify competitor gaps to help position startups to win and lead markets, grow their brand equity, and become iconic.

As a branding and media strategist, she worked with multiple Fortune 50 and Fortune 500 companies, and with some of the world's most iconic brands: Dove, Heineken, Tuborg, Kraft, Milka, Toblerone, Cadbury, Gilette, Telekom, Nokia, HVB Bank, UniCredit, GSK, Pfizer.

Valentin has had a long creative stride in advertising and dedicated branding agencies such as Brandology, 121 Communication, EGGO, Mediaconsulta, Digital Contrast, and Arena Communications.

He has been the artisan of numerous branding, rebranding, and brand architecture creation and expansion for prestigious clients such as The Romanian National Theatre, ASIROM, ARDAF, Financial Week, The National Journal, and CEC Bank.

A creator at work and heart, Valentin is an accomplished painter and holds a Ph.D. in Arts and Design from the University of Arts and Design, Cluj Napoca, Romania.

A member of the Art Directors Club Romania, Valentin has received several national and international awards for his work in advertising and the creative arts.

Minu has learnt over the years in advertising, content strategy and development, and internal communications that the single most important entity that matters in any business is the user and his/ her journeys.

She believes in story-telling and uses it effectively to improve awareness and assimilation of brand tenets and concepts. Story-telling is her passion, her strength, and what she would love to spend the rest of her life doing.

Minu's passion for technology has led her to work with multiple technology brands and start-ups - an interesting engagement was designing and developing personality and UX content for Microsoft's Cortana. A few brands that she has worked with - Philips, Microsoft, Bosch, 3M, Google, ITC, Mindtree Consulting, Star Network, Columbia Asia Hospitals, Accenture, and Snap (camera), in addition to helping many start-ups with their branding, communication, and content.

Ryan has 20 years of marketing miles and worked with dozens of businesses of all shapes & sizes. He is most passionate about Customer Research, Content, Thought Leadership and Brand Story.

Ryan worked for large companies responsible for million-dollar budgets and bootstrapped startups. These days, he runs content lift, which helps B2B marketing teams run better customer research.

He conducted buyer research to understand why pharma companies choose to work with third-party innovation consultants and informed new messaging, personas, and content marketing. His research maps complete buying journeys and informs new messaging, personas, and sales scripts.

He also works with Invest Ottawa - an Economic Development Agency coordinating municipal, provincial, and federal initiatives for campaigns generating millions of social media impressions.