Announcing The Lunar Expert Awards!
We’re so pleased to announce our inaugural Lunar Expert Network awardees! Lunar Startups is awarding the first Lunar Expert Awards to three incredible professionals who have added so much value to Lunar Startups during our first year of operations.
Our awardees — Twila Dang, Julie Kucinski, and Nate Shubert — are part of the Lunar Expert Network, a group over over 75 highly-accomplished business professionals in 13 different business areas who agreed to volunteer their time providing high-ROI consulting and expertise to the startups in the Lunar program.
We created the Lunar Expert Network because we know that founders who are women and people of color start their businesses with less than half the capital of their white male counterparts. That makes it tough to access the critical business expertise — legal, financial, marketing, tech, and more — that startups need to survive and grow. We’re so grateful to the network of talented experts willing to share their knowledge with the Lunar founders.
We’ll be honoring Twila, Julie, and Nate for their exceptional contributions to Lunar Startups at our UnDemo Day celebration on Monday, September 30 at the Palace Theater. Without further ado, here are the awardees:
Twila Dang, CEO and Founder of Matriarch Digital Media
Twila is the creative mind behind the soon-to-be launched Lunar Startups podcast featuring the stories of the first Lunar founders and the creation story of Lunar itself. Twila, as a podcasting expert and host, has tirelessly dedicated herself to helping women podcasters succeed via her podcast production company, Matriarch Digital Media, her Women in Podcasting group, and as the founder of the Podcast du Nord conference. She brought her podcasting expertise to our founders via workshops and personal consulting. Thanks, Twila!
Learn more about Twila’s work here: Matriarch Digital Media
Julie Kucinski, CEO and Founder of Pitchwell
Julie took her years of expertise crafting multi-million dollar brands and distilled this experience down into her first-class Pitchwell program, which helps founders nail their pitch, their deck, and their delivery. Our Lunar founders rave about Julie’s ability to elevate their pitches by weaving a compelling narrative that investors and client prospects both remember and buy into. We’re so grateful to have had Julie’s help crafting Lunar’s brand story, and for her many hours of workshops and 1-on-1 consulting time with Cohort 1 and Cohort 2 founders. Julie is truly a pitch genius and we’re lucky to have her as a partner!
Learn more about Julie’s work here: Pitchwell
LinkedIn | Twitter
Nate Shubert, Partner at Lurie, LLP
One of the aspects of starting and running a business is that is most intimidating to startup founders is how to handle taxes. Figuring out how to navigate business strategies around taxes is complicated and confusing, but Nate’s unique ability to make this complex area simple and actionable has been so valuable to our founders. The 1099 workshop that Lurie hosted for our cohort companies was a big hit, and we’re grateful for Nate’s willingness to take the 1-on-1 time to unpack tax implications and to think creatively about how early-stage founders can mix the practical with the strategic. Thanks, Nate!
Learn more about Nate’s work here: Lurie, LLP
LinkedIn | Twitter