2024 Speakers
Kalyn Faller
Kalyn Faller is an architectural designer at CannonDesign, and an active volunteer at her local church with all things hospitality. Kalyn deeply cares about the people around her and the space that she gets to share with them. Her talk will focus on the idea of rethinking sacred space through the story telling of a Buffalo Porch that has connected over a decade worth of tenants and friends. To onlookers from the sidewalk it just looks like an old wooden porch that is falling apart little by little, with two ferns and some twinkling lights. But to the variety of tenants and friends that have occupied it over the past decade it has been a place of sadness, and joy, of doubt and of faith, with moments of despair and of hope.
Jennifer Zeitler
As owner of Western New York’s first professional goat-grazing company, Jennifer has happily transitioned from the Board room to the barn! Her company, Let’s Goat Buffalo, rents out herds of goats to help public and private land owners manage vegetation overgrowth in an environmentally sound way.
No pesticides, no heavy equipment, just a hungry herd of goats!! Jennifer is also Executive Director of Let’s Goat Rescue, a non-profit Care Farm and goat sanctuary where unique programs promote the interconnection of people, animals and nature…to benefit all three!
Jennifer carries with her the experience gained over a 15+ year career focused on mental and occupational health. Drawing on her professional and entrepreneurial successes, she captures new lessons from the natural world and applies them to human healing and personal dynamics.
Duncan Kirkwood
Duncan Kirkwood is the Director of the Center for Resiliency at Villa Maria College, a best-selling author, speaker, and global resilience trainer who is a regarded as an expert in helping people develop the psychological resilience critical for success. Because of his work in education, Duncan is a recipient of the National Policy Innovators in Education Game Changers Award.
As a speaker, Duncan has conducted engaging, fun, and transformational presentations for over 200,000 young people and educators throughout the country around issues related to resilience and leadership. In the military, Duncan (or 1st Lieutenant Kirkwood) served as a Master Resilience Trainer tasked with helping to train Soldiers to become more resilient to combat Veteran depression and suicide. Serving as a resilience trainer was the catalyst for Duncan to publish his best-selling book Rerouting: Resilience Tools and Tactics.
Duncan holds a Bachelor’s in Communications from Alabama State University, and a Master’s in Publication Administration from the University of Arizona. The quote he lives by is “don’t wait to strike while the iron is hot. Instead, make the iron hot by continuously striking it.”
Elias Martinez
Elias Martinez is a first generation US citizen and military veteran. Notable experiences include being: the CEO/Founder/Farmer of Kubed Root, the world’s first Indoor Community garden based in Buffalo, New York. He is also currently serving as the President of I.F. Kids, a 501(c)(3) organization focused on teaching youth about indoor agriculture through a S.T.E.M. education perspective.
His roles span over 20 years of leadership experience in both the public and private sector, strategically developing multiple small businesses and earning multiple business degrees with honors.
Some his accolades include: being a 2022 Buffalo’s 40 under 40 and featuring in ep.381 on The Urban Farm podcast.
Elias decided to start his microgreenery at home and quickly realized the barriers that existed when it came to the entry, scaling, and exits that were associated with Indoor farm. This epiphany led him down a path in creating Kubed Root, a FarmSpace-as-a-Service company. Think of it like the WeWork for Indoor Agriculture. He is currently working on Kubed Root’s first product called DMTR (pronounced Demeter), which is Farmspace management software for communal growing spaces.
Nikki Ronan
Nikki is the founder and lead consultant of City of Light Creative and Consulting. She began the organization with over a decade of experience in various not-for-profit settings. With a Masters’s in Community and Economic Development and a second in Organizational Leadership, Nikki brings knowledge and experience to her work.
She became fascinated with how organizations function and how the people in them behave very early in her career. She jumped to consulting when she realized that she’d become the go-to person for people with questions about the nonprofit world, with a firm belief that there is nothing more energizing or fulfilling than helping an organization reach its full potential
Nikki is honored to support the incredible work of organizations locally and around the world. Today, her work is largely centered on strategic planning, facilitation and training, and leadership development.