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Brian Fox
Brian Fox, CPA, MBA, is the creator and founder of both the Confirmation.com and Rivio.com services and received the first seven patents granted on electronic audit confirmations. He sold his businesses to ThomsonReuters in 2019 and currently serves as the Vice President of Strategic Partnerships for ThomsonReuters. Prior to selling his businesses, Brian was the President of Confirmation.com and a former Adjunct Professor at Vanderbilt University. He is a Board member of Rivio.com, the joint-venture between the AICPA and Confirmation.com which created the first Edgar type secure clearinghouse for CPA firms and their private company clients for the exchange of validated financial statements in the U.S. Brian was instrumental at both the national and international level for getting electronic audit confirmations written into the world’s auditing standards. With 16 offices in 15 countries around the world, Confirmation.com now processes more than $1 trillion of confirmation data for more than 2 million customers in over 170 countries having transformed the audit confirmation space.
David Gibbs
David Gibbs is owner and former Vice Chairman of Alacrity Services LLC, a leading insurance claim services network provider and affiliates. He also serves as the principal of consultancy The West Bridge Group. A graduate of the University of Richmond and the Emory University School of Law, David has previously practiced law in Washington, D. C. with Steele & Fornaciari. In addition to his business career, David is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Brehm Foundation, which supports two comprehensive academic programs focused on children and young adults with complex learning disabilities located in Carbondale, IL.
Crom Carmichael
Crom Carmichael is a native of South Bend, Indiana and a 1971 graduate of Vanderbilt University. He now resides in Nashville, Tennessee. Over the last 10 years Crom has funded and participated in the founding of over a dozen companies in a variety of high tech industries. Crom currently serves as the Chief Executive Officer of Nashai Biotech. In addition to his business career, Crom has been an active political commentator in the Nashville media market for the past twenty years.
Jon Pirtle
As the president of e|spaces since 2014, Jon Pirtle helped launch the pioneering workspace company and has overseen its growth in becoming an industry leader. Under his guidance and with his understanding of key market and performance metrics, e|spaces has opened strategic locations throughout the Southeast, serving thousands of businesspeople and hundreds of corporations, firms and small businesses. Today, e|spaces has more than 300,000 square feet of office and meeting space that companies or individuals can lease on an hourly, monthly or annual basis. In today’s business environment, the e|spaces model, flexibility, cost structure and client-centric focus is perfectly suited to meet the changing needs of companies of all sizes.
Prior to e|spaces, Jon served as the vice president of sales for Grand Avenue, a charter bus and fleet management company. While there, he built and led an active sales team, diversified revenue streams, restructured sales processes to integrate cutting-edge lead generation initiatives, designed social media brand- building techniques, and developed networking strategies to gain traction within high-potential client organizations. He was also part of the leadership and transition teams that executed the sale of the business to Grayline Tennessee. Jon was also previously a regional sales manager with toy company KidPower, where built partnerships with retailers including Walmart, Target, Academy Sports and Walgreens. He drove millions of dollars in new sales and significantly increased the company’s market penetration. A native of Nashville, TN, Jon is a regular speaker on a variety of business topics, and is involved in Samaritan’s Purse and The Make A Wish Foundation.
Phil Gibbs
Phil was Co-Founder of e|spaces, served as CEO for four years and currently servers as a Director. In addition to his role with e|spaces, Phil works with executives on corporate innovation through The Disruption Lab. As a principal in early-stage investment firm Evergreen Investments and Management, Phil consulted with and was a board member of Passport Health Communications. The firm he founded and led for over a decade, Executive Learning, Inc., was one of the country’s leading change agents focused on continual improvement in healthcare. Phil holds a Ph.D. in organization communication from The Ohio State University.