A seasoned veteran and well-established entrepreneur, Kevin Williams the CEO of the Black Squirrel Collective, is a dedicated “Thought Leader” actively engaged with developing the next generation of Founders. Kevin has been involved with small businesses and developing start-ups for decades here in Philadelphia, San Francisco, and throughout the Washington DC metro area. With his years of experience in training and developing small-to-medium businesses to be competitive, scalable, and sustainable, Kevin has learned to apply his business acumen to build systems for companies to successfully adapt to changing economic conditions. Now as one of the Co-Founders of the Black Squirrel Collective, he is working with major private and public sector partners to address the changing market conditions created by the Pandemic resulting in a severe impact on this area's small business enterprises due to COVID 19. His involvement includes multiple efforts but several major initiatives include the B-Smart Program at Drexel University, an Advisory role with the University Science Center investment Accelerators for startups in the Life Sciences, collaboration with the Greater Philadelphia Chamber of Commerce on multiple initiatives to improve the city’s contract access for local enterprises and support for its small business corridors, and a partnership with the City of Philadelphia on its innovation conference for black and brown tech startups, Project NorthStar.