Speakers
Morning Keynote – Roy Underhill
Since 1979, Roy Underhill has been the host of the PBS series The Woodwright’s Shop, a show dedicated to teaching viewers how to create beautiful woodcraft. As of 2011, the show was the longest-running PBS “how-to” show. Recently, Underhill has been working as a communications consultant, opened The Woodwright’s School, and he is also the author of several books, including: The Woodwright’s Eclectic Workshop and Woodwright’s Shop and Woodwright’s Shop: A Practical Guide to Traditional Woodcraft.
Lunch Keynote – Dennis Quaintance 
Dennis W. Quaintance is the CEO and CDO (Chief Design Officer) of Quaintance-Weaver Restaurants and Hotels. He partnered with Mike Weaver to form Quaintance-Weaver in 1988 and opened Lucky 32 restaurant in 1989, followed by the O.Henry and the Proximity Hotel. The Proximity Hotel is the first in the country to receive the highest level of certification, platinum, for the U.S Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program.
Collaborative Facilitator – Julia Simmons
Julia Simmons works with businesses as an artist and visual facilitator and owns and operates Dialogue Matters, a company focused on helping organizations to link their people, support their mission, and transform their challenges. They use drawing and graphics to create an alternate form of communication and understanding. Simmons brings forth more than 25 years of experience in consulting, community development, coaching, training, mentoring, and research to her working relationships.
Breakout Speakers and Panelists
Doug Borwick
Doug Borwick is author of Engaging Matters, a blog for ArtsJournal and author/editor of Building Communities, Not Audiences: The Future of the Arts in the U.S. He served as President of the Board of the Association of Arts Administration Educators, an international organization of higher education programs in the field, from 2010-2012. For three decades he was Director of the Arts Management and Not-for-Profit Management Programs at Salem College in Winston-Salem, NC. Dr. Borwick is CEO of Outfitters4, Inc., providing management services for nonprofits and of ArtsEngaged, offering training and consultation services to artists and arts organizations seeking to more effectively engage with their communities. Dr. Borwick holds the Ph.D. in Music Composition from the Eastman School of Music and is an award-winning member of ASCAP.
Laurelyn Dossett
Laurelyn Dossett is a singer/songwriter working extensively throughout the performing arts industry. Recently, Laurelyn partnered with the Triad Stage’s Preston Lane on four plays featuring regional folklore and original music such as Beautiful Star: An Appalachian Nativity (2006) and Brother Wolf (2006); Which have both been published by Play scripts and have gone on to have professional productions in cities across the U.S. Also, a song from Brother Wolf was featured on Levon Helm’s Grammy-winning record.
Annette B. Dunlap 
Daniel Ellison
Daniel Ellison is an attorney in private practice in Durham, NC. He has been working with artists and non-profit organizations for over twenty years. He is a frequent speaker and writer on a variety of arts law issues and regularly teaches a course in the Duke University Department of Theater Studies on “Legal Issues for the Performing Arts” and also teaches a course on “Non-profit Arts & Cultural Institutions.” This Fall he will also be teaching an arts law course in the arts management program at Elon University. He writes legal issues columns for the Southeastern Theatre Conference bi-monthly newsletter and for ArtSee magazine. He is on the board of the Durham Arts Council and Chairman of the Board of the North Carolina Central University Art Museum. He is former president and executive director of the NC Volunteer Lawyers for the Arts and former chair of the NC Bar Association’s Arts Law Committee. He developed Durham Arts Place, celebrating its sixteenth anniversary of providing affordable artist studio spaces. He is a 2007 recipient of an Indie Arts Award.
Scott Nicholson 
Scott Nicholson is a writer specializing in horror and thrillers. Nicholson believes the writer only creates half the story, and that you complete it by bringing your imagination, experience, and heart to the tale. He has written more than 20 novels, about 80 short stories, four children’s books, some comic books, screenplays, and a couple of non-fiction books, as well as five collaborations with J.R. Rain. Many of the tales are based on supernatural legends from the Southern Appalachian Mountains, and I also write mystery and suspense thrillers that are most often compared to the work of Stephen King and Dean Koontz. He is also active in the Mystery Writers of America and the International Thriller Writers and won the grand prize in the Writers of the Future contest in 1999.
Harvey Robinson
Harvey Robinson is a part of MonkeyWhale Productions, a media company comprised of short filmmakers, documentarians, commercial producers, and music video creators. Their work has been featured on Mashable.com, E! News, Paste Magazine, AOL-Spinner, NPR Music World Café and over one hundred websites worldwide!
Marianne Gingher and Debbie Seabrooke 
Marianne Gingher and Deborah Seabrooke, MFAs, make no apologies for their no-holds-barred, adult-only puppet theater, Jabberbox. Jabberbox, now in its fourth season, helps support a school in Zambia, Africa, by making people laugh. “It’s a chance for adults to enjoy cornball humor like we remember,” says Deborah, who teaches at UNCG. “We like doing salon-style theater in friends’ living rooms. We like meeting people and knowing people. It’s local, local, local. We like to say it’s an evening in a box, a Jabberbox.”
Ken Thompson
Ken Thompson is a sculptor and holds a Master of Liberal Studies in Sculpture from the University of Toledo and a Bachelor of Fine Arts in painting from Sienna Heights College. He has been making sculptures for more than thirty 30 years.
Stephen Van Vuuren
Stephen van Vuuren is an award-winning filmmaker, musician, photographer and ubergeek. He grew up in Johannesburg, South Africa and Knoxville, Tennessee. His father purchased him a manual 35mm camera when he as 12 and his love of image-making began. He’s directed, produced and/or shot over twenty feature and short narrative, documentary, experimental and animation films that have screened at numerous festivals and in cyberspace. Stephen founded SV2 Studios in 2000 which focus in indie film production and post-production, including digital cinema mastering. van Vuuren has created many films from his home. These films include: In Saturn’s Rings, Still Life, Lost Souls, The Lowering, The Golden Girl and the Sea of Tranquility, and Lunatic.
David and Deb White – Click here for resource material.
Deb Hosey White is the author of Pink Slips and Parting Gifts, a workplace novel. She is co-author of Beyond Downton Abbey, a guidebook to great houses in Britain. Deb is currently writing her second novel and researching the next edition of Beyond Downton Abbey. Deb has more than 30 years management experience with fortune 1000 companies working as a human resources executive and consultant. She is also an executive coach specializing in inter-generational workplace issues and organizational change management. She serves on the board of directors of Habitat for Humanity of Greater Greensboro.
David Stewart White is a travel writer whose articles have appeared in The Washington Post, AAA World magazine, AAA Traveler magazine, Travelmuse.com, BootsnAll.com, and other publications. David is the author of the Let’s Take the Kids to London guidebook series and co-author of Beyond Dowton Abbey guidebook. In his previous career, David was the budget director for one of the country’s top ranked public school systems. David has more than 30 years of experience in the local government administration and finance. He is a public finance consultant and serves as a webmaster for the Friends of the Greensboro Public Library.
George Scheer 
George Scheer’s theoretical and artistic projects explore creative communities as political constituencies. He is a co-founder and Collaborative Director of Elsewhere, a living museum, international residency program, and educational laboratory set within a former thrift store. George is currently pursuing a PhD in Communication/Performance Studies at UNC-Chapel Hill, and holds an MA in Critical Theory and Visual Culture from Duke University and a BA from the University of Pennsylvania in Political Communications. His current research explores the aesthetic context for social change and political practice.
Tom Philion 
UAC President & CEO Tom Philion has over 30 years experience as an arts administrator and performer, earning the respect of arts industry executives, performers, and artists across the country for his innovative approach to the challenges facing the creative community – by thinking outside the box.
A successful knack for marketing the arts to both traditional and new audiences led to senior management positions with major orchestras in Hartford, Cleveland, Kennedy Center, Seattle, Vermont, Oklahoma City and Buffalo. It was in these positions that his wide-ranging knowledge of music, programming and marketing techniques brought innovation to an industry steeped in tradition. While Philion attracted classical music’s top names as guest artists, he also reached out to collaborate with performers as diverse as Tony Bennett, 10,000 Maniacs, Debbie Harry, Ani DiFranco, and many others. His creativity and vision led to many new and unusual projects, including rare performances of orchestral music by Frank Zappa, and in 1999, a popular PBS special “The American Seasons” with Grammy-winning fiddler Mark O’Connor.
Taking over as CEO of the Eastern Music Festival in 2000, Philion transformed EMF by creating the popular EMFfringe series, and by inviting the world’s greatest artists to appear at the Festival, from Branford Marsalis, Joshua Bell, André Watts and Hilary Hahn, to Bruce Hornsby. At the United Arts Council of Greater Greensboro, Philion has collaborated with local arts organizations and artists to create 17 DAYS Arts & Culture Festival, attracting audiences in excess of 70,000.
Student Panel
Woody Cavenaugh 
Delwood( Woody) Cavenaugh grew up on the NC coast where barbecue wasn’t a business but a lifestyle. Three events turned him on the path to Delwoods Barbecue LLC. First was moving to the Piedmont where the barbecue culture was very different, next was inheriting his family’s pig cooking gear when his father died, and last was his Piedmont friends unbound by Eastern NC tradition discovering amazing new uses for the old family recipe. Knowledge, ability, and inspiration turned “Something we do down East”, into joyful business.
Caroline Chu 
Caroline Chu is majoring in Art with a concentration in Sculpture and minoring in Religious Studies and Women’s & Gender Studies at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She is currently interning at the Spartan Trader after completing the Art Department’s Practicum course with the store last semester. The store’s identity and core values in the local community truly embody the goals of the future career she hopes to pursue. Chu is also working to coordinate projects and assignments for both the Art Department and Consumer, Apparel, and Retail Studies Department practicum classes.
Sarah Greer 
Sarah Lindley Geer is a junior at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. She is studying Entrepreneurship. Working with the IRC in Greensboro, she has helped individuals who are homeless get back on their feet by developing a business plan that is centered on their specific skills. Prior to her education, she grew up in a family business. Starting at the age of 13 years old, she took on many responsibilities. She has worked every position in the family’s restaurant, became assistant manager at their marina, and was the office assistant for the whole company. Currently, she is interning at the Spartan Trader Retail Store.
Ivy Rutledge 
Originally from Rhode Island, Ivy Rutledge lives and writes in the Piedmont of North Carolina, where she shares her life with her husband and two children. Her work has appeared in The Sun, Home Education, Ruminate, The Copperfield Review, and Tilt-a-Whirl, and she recently had a story included in the Main Street Rag anthology, Altered States. She is currently a graduate student at UNCG studying writing, entrepreneurship, and environmental studies, and she edits a local nature journal called The Friendly Naturalist. As if that weren’t enough, along with her husband, she also runs a small soap business named Lady Scrubbins.
Joseph Toney 
Joseph Toney is a 21 year old junior at Appalachian State University who owns and operates Jea Creative which specializes in brand identity, illustration, merchandise design, and fine art. Mr. Toney’s focus on the action sports industry has helped him to seek out clients by specializing in fields that he actively pursues and knows very well. Within the last few years, he has worked with clients from North Carolina, Wyoming, Washington, and Michigan as well as countries outside of the U.S, such as Germany and Austria. Most recently, he has been creating graphic assets for two internationally distributed snow sports documentaries produced by Teton Gravity Research.
Moderator – Justin Strueli 
Justin Strueli is the living learning community coordinator for the Entrepreneurship and Sustainability program at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro. He has also created the “True Life-I am an Entrepreneur” speaker series with other events and national trips for Living-Learning Community students. He also manages the Spartan Trader, which is a student-run consignment retail store selling student. Faculty, and staff made products built around experiential learning.
