Michael E. Carter is a South Carolina native and 1992 graduate of the Citadel.

With close to thirty years in the public/private Information Technology sector, Carter founded and has successfully run his own IT consulting services company, eGroup, garnering the highest customer satisfaction ratings and repeat, multi-year industry-excellence awards.

Listed as one of the fastest growing businesses at the state, regional, and national level, appearing on the Inc. 5000 list multiple times, and an Inc. Best Places to Work, eGroup delivers speed and certainty with cloud and data center initiatives for the most sophisticated clients across the nation.

Carter is known for being financially responsible and socially progressive – regularly investing in socially responsible causes and civic-minded initiatives that drive South Carolina forward.

As the Chief Information Security Officer atBenefitfocus, Dan oversees the company’s security vision and enforcement. Hejoined Benefitfocus in January 2018 and is deeply motivated bytheir associates, customers and culture. Dan brings more than 20 years of experience as a cybersecurity leader for large and mid-sized global firms with complex portfolios. He leads a team of security professionals accountable for cybersecurity, security risk management, information protection, security testing and monitoring, incident response and investigations, regulatory compliance (PCI-DSS, SOC 1 & 2, HIPAA, HITRUST), third party assurance, business continuity and disaster recovery. Dan holds a Bachelor of Science in finance and marketing from Boston College. Prior to joining Benefitfocus, he served as Chief Information Security Officer of the Talent Management Solutions brand at IBM, and has held various security leadership positions at Kenexa, BrassRing and EDS. He maintains CISSP, ISSMP and CISA certifications.

Doug, a Physics major from Davidson College, began his professional career as a computer programmer and software engineer. His intellectual property career began in 1998 when he combined his business experience with his legal education and was involved with enforcing a client’s patent against multiple infringers. Since then, Doug has created a well-rounded IP practice that provides legal solutions and strategies tailored to each client from multinational corporations to start-ups. Doug provides his client with strategies to protect inventions (patents), brands (trademarks), websites, software, apps, music, photos, and websites (copyright, licenses and Internet law), and trade secret (the “secret sauce”). Through the creation of intellectual property rights and their enforcement, Doug seeks to develop legal strategies that fit clients’ business goals and increase the company’s worth. Doug also assist clients with drafting, negotiating and reviewing license, assignment, independent contractor and employment agreements as they pertain to intellectual property and ownership. Doug’s business background and legal education and experience make him well suited to understand the interaction between the legal services available to a client, a company’s available resources and the client’s business goals.

A graduate from the University of South Carolina’s Journalism and Mass Communication School, Laura stumbled into entrepreneurship and economic development. After starting her career with Palmetto Citizens Federal Credit Union, Laura joined the leadership team at the USC/Columbia Technology Incubator as their Director of Communications and Programs Manager.

The Incubator is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the Midlands startup community. Laura connected entrepreneurs with statewide resources, developed unique programs, and maintained critical relationships with media and community leadership. During her tenure, the Incubator experienced growth in technology startups with 45 tenant companies reflecting approximately $30M in annual revenue and over 200 employees paying an average salary of $65,000. This success gained the attention from media across the nation, including Inc. Magazine recognizing the Incubator as one of the top 3 university tied programs ‘to watch.’

As momentum continued, Laura transitioned to USC’s newly formed Office of Economic Engagement (OEE) as Director of Communications. OEE connects enterprise to the resources of the university to create jobs, accelerate innovation and drive economic prosperity. Specifically, Laura instigated strategies to highlight USC assets and infrastructure to private industry, resulting in partnerships with IBM, Boeing, and Fluor Corporation. 

With the itch to learn among her peers, Laura became a ‘weaver’ at Cyberwoven and managed a portfolio of clients, aiding in brand positioning, project management, and overall communications. The South Carolina Department of Commerce would soon become the new professional home for Laura and officially joined Team South Carolina in April of 2017 as Managing Director for the Office of Innovation. In this role, Laura is an advocate for innovation, exploring the best strategies to enable the relentless pursuit of transformational ideas for South Carolina’s citizens.

John Moore is Founding Principal with Momenteum Strategies, an economic development consulting firm specializing in helping communities and economic development organizations with innovation ecosystem development, entrepreneurship, and strategic marketing programs. Previously, John paused his private sector career and helped transform the Greenville S.C. Chamber of Commerce into a nationally-recognized leader in entrepreneur development through his founding and scaling of NEXT – an award-winning organization focused exclusively on supporting high-impact entrepreneurship and building the region’s innovation ecosystem. He launched NEXT in 2006 and grew it to support over 200 high-impact ventures producing 1,800 new, high-wage jobs and and attracting $125 million in new capital investment. Under his leadership, NEXT built a comprehensive startup ecosystem including three entrepreneur facilities, a thriving angel investor network, MIT’s mentorship program, a sold-out regional venture conference, and an
innovation-centric public high school. In earlier roles at the Chamber, John served as Interim President and CEO, restructured the organization’s Economic Development Division, and co-founded Accelerate!, a strategic impact program that raised over $2 million in operating capital for NEXT, a minority business accelerator, and a regional economic scorecard. Before entering the economic development arena, John held brand leadership roles with The Coca-Cola Company, Kimberly-Clark, and Zipit Wireless and began his career
in finance and accounting in the banking and media industries. His background includes a variety of community leadership roles including serving as Founding Board Member and Chair of Build Carolina Corp (Carolina Code School/SC Codes), former Trustee with the University Center of Greenville, and as an Elder at Greenville Associate Reformed Presbyterian Church. He’s also a monthly columnist with the Upstate Business Journal on innovation and entrepreneurship. John is a Greenville S.C. native and holds a bachelor’s degree in accounting from Clemson University and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Minnesota. He’s married to his favorite entrepreneur, Lucynda Moore, Founder and CEO of Rare Design, a residential design firm.

A native of South Carolina, Glen’s career in the information technology industry spans over 20 years. Glen is currently the co-founder and CEO of Agulus, a Greenville-based agtech startup. Agulus is transforming the agricultural industry through cloud-based communication and collaboration tools.

Before co-founding Agulus, Glen was the IT Manager for Henderson County in North Carolina. Glen was the project manager at the tech startup Croptell with then-CTO and Agulus co-founder Mathew Sanford. He was co-founder and CEO of the IT firm Atlantia Technology Group from 2005 to 2014. Previously, Glen oversaw the multi-state Common Land Unit project at the USDA, tasked with mapping America’s farmland.

Glen is a graduate of the University of South Carolina, where he studied computer science and GIS. He holds a Masters in Project Management from the University of Western Carolina and a Project Management Professional (PMP) certification. Glen is a 2019 alumnus of the South Carolina Department of Agriculture and Clemson Extension agribusiness program.