Speakers 2017

Dana Apfelbaum

Dana Apfelbaum

Dana M. Apfelbaum, Tax and Estate & Succession Planning Attorney, Dean Mead

Dana Apfelbaum practices in Dean Mead’s Fort Pierce office in the areas of federal income, estate, and gift tax law and family business succession planning. She counsels individuals in estate planning, with an emphasis on implementing the client’s objectives, asset protection and minimizing wealth transfer taxes. Dana also represents fiduciaries through all stages of probate, estate and trust administration. In addition, she represents businesses and business owners in all types of business and tax matters, including choice of entity, mergers and acquisitions, reorganizations, other general business matters, and succession planning.

Bob-Blackburn

Bob-Blackburn

Robert L. Blackburn, Corporate Profit Solutions, LLC

Bob Blackburn is the founder of Corporate Profit Solutions, LLC.  Throughout his career, he has been involved in the internal workings of both publicly and privately held corporations.

During the last 20 years Bob has been primarily involved with the Florida Horticulture industry helping owners improve both their profitability and operational efficiency.

Bob began his career as an underground coal miner rising to various supervisory positions before starting his professional career with ExxonMobil.

Prior to his numerous years as a successful business consultant, Bob also served as Sr. VP of Operations for a top 100 energy company as well as overseeing several companies throughout the Eastern U. S. Bob received his Bachelor of Science and Masters of Industrial Relations from West Virginia University.

Steven Boyne

Steve Boyne, Co-chair of Insurance Practice Group, Gunster

Steven Boyne is co-chair of Gunster’s Insurance law practice group. He is an experienced corporate lawyer with a broad range of legal expertise, including serving as in-house counsel at multiple corporations.  He has years of experience representing insureds on a range of insurance issues, including coverage concerns and disputes, coverage declaratory judgment actions, claim denials and claim handling disputes, and bad faith claims.

Chip Henderson

Chip Henderson

Chip Henderson, Senior Security Analyst, Pondurance

Chip Henderson is a Senior Security Analyst at Pondurance with over nine years of experience conducting digital forensics and incident response investigations for a wide range of clients. His work focuses on network monitoring, host-based analysis, and incident handling. Chip is able to accomplish full chain of custody and acquisition of digital evidence to deliver meaningful results and convey risk. A versatile skillset allows him to accurately respond to incidents ranging from insider threat to malware outbreaks. Previously, Chip worked for Capgemini Government Solutions as a Senior Consultant; he also served as a Tier III SOC Analyst for Rolls-Royce Americas, providing support to more than 15,000 users across eight countries. In those roles, Chip routinely analyzed and mitigated advanced persistent threat (APT) compromises involving data exfiltration, snort signature creation, dynamic malware analysis, and memory analysis. As a full service incident handler, Chip supervised, directed, and collaborated with other sectors of the IT ecosystem to ensure complete remediation and safe return to normalcy. He also developed internal SOC policies and procedures to contribute to the ISO 27001 Compliance Standard. Chip earned his Bachelor of Science degree from Florida State University and is currently pursuing his Masters of Science in information security through Nova Southeastern University. He is a GIAC Certified Forensics Analyst (GCFA) and holds a Secret Clearance with the Department of Defense.

Harold_Lloyd

Harold Lloyd, H.Lloyd & Associates, Inc.

Harold Lloyd was the President and C.E.O. of a 14-unit retail organization for 10 years. The company consisted of 10 convenience stores with gasoline, two combo supermarket/discount stores, one conventional supermarket, and one deep discount health and beauty aid supermarket. His team of 1000 associates were market leaders. They were innovative and dedicated to superior customer relations.

Harold completed his formal education at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School with a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics and went on to earn his MBA with Honors in Marketing from the University of Chicago. His appreciation for the formal education process motivated him to teach part time at two community colleges over an 8-year period.

Anna H. Long

Anna H. Long, Real Estate and Environmental Attorney, Dean Mead

Anna Long has been practicing law for over 30 years primarily in the areas of environmental law, land use, zoning and administrative law. Before moving to private practice, Anna held numerous environmental managerial positions including, Director/Counsel for a large building supply company, Manager for Orange County Florida’s Environmental Protection Division, Director of Environment, Safety and Health for the largest semi-conductor company in the northwest and was In House Counsel and Manager of the environmental division of a major private electric utility company with services in nine states. She was also General Counsel and Director of Environmental Services for a multi-state environmental and engineering and consulting firm located in the Northwest.

Anna received a Certificate in Natural Resources from Lewis & Clark’s Northwestern School of Law and is licensed to practice law in Florida, Oregon and Washington. Anna has been very active in the Florida Brownfields Association for a number of years, as well as serving as Conference Chair for two of the FBA’s largest attended events. Anna is also an active member of the Central Florida Association of Environmental Professionals, Commercial Real Estate Women, and Urban Land Institute.

Michael D. Minton

Michael D. Minton

Michael D. Minton, Shareholder and Chair of the Agribusiness Industry Team and Solar Energy Team, Dean Mead

Michael Minton is the Chair of Dean Mead’s Agribusiness Industry Team, as well as the firm’s new Solar Energy Team. He represents family businesses with an emphasis on generationally-owned agricultural businesses. He assists with their organizational structure, federal income, estate and gift tax planning and business succession planning. He offers his clients extensive experience focusing on tax issues related to agri-business, as well as water resource issues and new innovative uses of land for value added propositions.

Michael’s clients receive the benefit of his 30+ years of experience in Florida agri-business and interaction with agencies that regulate the utilization and optimization of their assets and business opportunities. Michael is a member of the Solutions Committee of the Central Florida Water Initiative and has stayed involved in water related issues across the State of Florida. He’s also a past Vice-Chair of the Governing Board of South Florida Water Management District (1997-2001).

Jerry Parrish, Ph.D.

Jerry Parrish, Ph.D. , Chief Economist and Director of Research, Florida Chamber Foundation

Dr. Jerry D. Parrish is the Chief Economist and the Director of Research for the Florida Chamber Foundation. In that role, he is responsible for conducting in-depth analyses on economic trends, Florida’s industry clusters and on solutions to help secure Florida’s future. Dr. Parrish previously was the Chief Economist and Director of the Center for Competitive Florida at Florida TaxWatch. Prior to that position, he served as the Associate Director of the Center for Economic Forecasting & Analysis (CEFA) at FSU, and has many years of experience in management roles at international manufacturing companies.

Dr. Parrish is currently an Adjunct Instructor in the Masters in Applied Economics Program at FSU. He earned an M.B.A. from Bellarmine University, an M.S. in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, and a Ph.D. in Economics from Auburn University. He has published many research reports and articles on the Florida economy, Florida’s competitiveness, Florida’s property and casualty insurance system, and other economic topics of interest to Floridians.

Lynn Sedwick

Lynn Sedwick, Partner, Tax Services, RSM

Lynn Sedwick has over 20 years of experience serving middle market businesses and their high-wealth owners in the real estate, private equity, manufacturing, hospitality, and agriculture industries. Her areas of specialty include federal and state income tax planning and compliance for partnerships, S corporations, and high-wealth individuals, such as corporate executives, private business owners, and venture capitalists. Lynn has assisted in the analysis and planning of numerous acquisition and development projects, related to real estate and agricultural transactions.

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Dr. Edmond J. Seifried

Dr. Edmond J. Seifried

Dr. Edmond J. Seifried, Executive Director of the Sheshunoff Affiliation Program

Dr. Ed Seifried is Professor Emeritus of Economics and Business at Lafayette College in Easton, Pennsylvania.  He also serves as Executive Consultant and Chief Economist for the Sheshunoff CEO Affiliation Programs.

Dr. Seifried serves as the dean of the Virginia and West Virginia Banking Schools and has served on the faculty of numerous banking schools including: Stonier Graduate School of Banking, and the Graduate School of Banking of the South.

He frequently appears as a guest speaker at regional and national conferences and has delivered over 2500 economic presentation to various groups both in the United States and abroad.  Dr. Seifried is the author of the book “The Art of Strategic Planning for Community Banks.”  In addition to his academic and consulting experience, Dr. Seifried serves as a director of a community bank.

Justin Silva

Justin Silva, Senior Manager, Tax Consulting, RSM

Justin Silva is a tax senior manager for RSM in the Credits, Incentives and Accounting Methods practice and is the Northeast and Southeast Regional Practice Leader of RSM’s Accounting Methods practice. Justin serves as a technical instructor for firm-wide training to all levels from intern through partner. Justin is also an active developer of thought leadership at RSM, with numerous tax-related opinion and technical articles.

Spiro Stafanou

Spiro E. Stefanou, Professor and Chair of Food and Resource Economics, University of Florida

Spiro E. Stefanou is Professor and Chair of Food and Resource Economics at the University of Florida.  His research interests focus on production analysis, innovation and efficiency.  Prior to arriving in Gainesville in January 2015, he was Professor of Agricultural Economics at Penn State University since 1983 and currently holds a part-time appointment as Professor in the Business Economics Group at Wageningen University (Netherlands).   Dr. Stefanou is a Distinguished Fellow of the AAEA and was a Marie Curie Senior Fellow at the University of Crete (Greece), Mansholt Senior Fellow at Wageningen University (Netherlands), and Jean Monnet Fellow at the European University Institute (Italy).  Dr. Stefanou has served on the editorial boards of the American Journal of Agricultural Economics, European Review of Agricultural Economics and Journal of Productivity Analysis.  He has served as Managing Editor of Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy and the American Journal of Agricultural Economics.  He has been interviewed and quoted by local, national and international news media, including the Wall Street Journal, Philadelphia Inquirer, Reuters, South China Morning Post (Hong Kong), CBS News Sunday Morning, NBC Nightly News, Dan Rather Reports and Marketplace.

Dr. S. Elwynn Taylor

Dr. S. Elwynn Taylor, Agricultural Meteorologist, Iowa State University, Ames, IA

Dr. S. Elwynn Taylor is well known for his analysis of weather influence on the Midwest.  He is widely recognized for his clear explanations of the complexities of long-term weather variability.  Dr. Taylor is the Extension Climatologist at Iowa State University.

Before moving to Iowa in 1979, he was a meteorologist with the National Weather Service in Alabama.  He was educated in botany at Utah State University and completed his doctoral studies at Washington University in St. Louis in 1970.  He has published more than 200 articles reporting his research on the impacts of weather conditions.  His voice is well known from his regular Midwest radio broadcasts of crop-weather and other educational information.  His explanations of Global Warming, Ozone Depletion, the El Niño, and other weather events and how they impact life and our economy are clear, insightful and concise.  All persons concerned with climate associated risks will benefit from Dr. Taylor’s clear and often humorous explanations.

Kenton Thompson

Kenton Thompson, Senior Director, Valuation Services, RSM

Kenton Thompson is in the Valuation Services team and assists clients with business valuations, succession and business plans, merger and acquisition transactions, litigation support, strategic planning and consulting. He has over 30 years of professional experience spanning a broad range of areas including business valuation, audit, real estate, mergers & acquisitions, business consulting, corporate management, information technology, tax compliance, and financial management for both public and private companies.

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