Constable Kicks Off Distinguished Speaker Series

The Distinguished Speaker Series for the Upper School's Design Thinking and Social Entrepreneurship class kicked off on Tuesday, November 6.

Giff Constable, Vice President of Product at Axial, was the first speaker. Axial connects medium-sized businesses with capital providers and buyers, overseeing product management, engineering and design. Prior to Axial, Constable was chief executive officer of Neo, a product innovation consulting firm that was acquired by Pivotal. At Neo, he worked with the Mayo Clinic, Time Inc., American Express and many others to help them test and build innovation programs or new digital business lines.

Constable has also worked with multiple software and internet startups, and even in the art world doing technology mergers and acquisitions (M&A) investment banking. He is the author of two books: the award-winning Talking to Humans, and the newly released Testing with Humans.

Constable's visit served as a fantastic opportunity for students to interact with someone directly involved in the world of entrepreneurship, business and technology.

"Students get very current boots-on-the-ground information on what it takes to start and run a business," said John Chiodo, Director of Innovation, Engineering and Computer Science.

Constable worked alongside students for a portion of the class.

"He did an activity with the students that helped them brainstorm experiment ideas for testing their product ideas," Chiodo said.

The following people are also slated to speak during the Distinguished Speaker Series:

Steve Marlowe, CEO of Bran-Zan Holdings LLC
Lisa Tretler, Founder/CEO of Business Boosters Consulting
Rob Feuer, Principle of Smart Energy Inc.
Ed Zapson, Partner with Edward Jones Financial
James Kinsley, Foreign Direct Investment & Management Consulting with ACG Consultants Inc.

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