Speakers

Keith Baker is the executive director for ReConnect Rondo, an umbrella advocacy organization committed to addressing racial disparities in Minnesota. Keith is leading the organization’s mission to revitalize the Rondo community of St. Paul with a 21-acre land bridge that reconnects the historic African American community and creates Minnesota’s first African American cultural enterprise district. Keith has more than 35 years of experience in the public, private, and nonprofit sectors. His 18 years with the Minnesota Department of Transportation included oversight of federal and state professional technical contract administration and construction compliance monitoring. Keith served as a member of the Ramsey County Blue Ribbon Commission in 2010, which was in the forefront of elevating Minnesota’s ranking as 50th in the nation for racial disparities. Over the years, he has identified and executed strategies supportive of equitable development, entrepreneurism, ownership, business and workforce development, and opportunity access. As a strategist, connector, and influencer, Keith has a reputation for seeing the big picture, along with the connective links needed for genuine progress. He’s known for skillfully navigating within constrained environments, creating outputs that result in equitable outcomes. These characteristics were instrumental in the successful orchestration of a collective impact approach that ensured equitable inclusion of minority- and women-owned engineering and architect firms on the billion-dollar U.S. Bank Stadium project. https://reconnectrondo.com/

Scott Schwefel works with organizations who want to leverage new communication strategies to increase sales, profits and productivity. As a serial entrepreneur, Scott founded and grew Minnesota’s largest technology training company to over $12MM, and then sold the company in 2003.

His company was named one of the 50 fastest growing private companies in Minnesota in 1997 and 1998, and he was named to Minnesota’s 40 under 40 list of successful top executives. Scott then founded and grew Insights Twin Cities to over $3MM and sold it to Insights in Scotland in 2014.

Scott Schwefel has been speaking and teaching new communication strategies to organizations globally for over a decade. He has presented in Paris, London, Amsterdam, Geneva, Shanghai, and Kuwait, and he has also trained and coached over 1500 CEOs personally.

He is a published author, has lived remotely with the Hadza and Maasai tribes in Tanzania, and is a featured speaker for Vistage, the largest organization of CEOs in the world.

https://discoveryourself.com/

Ethan Kehrberg, Sustainability Specialist, City of Golden Valley

Ethan Kehrberg graduated from St. Olaf College, interned at a renewable energy company, and completed a service year through Minnesota GreenCorps before joining the City of Golden Valley in 2022. He currently works on recycling and waste reduction, energy efficiency, electrification, climate resilience, and a variety of other sustainability initiatives.  Ethan grew up in Golden Valley and is passionate about protecting the planet while making Golden Valley a greener, healthier, and more equitable community for everyone.

Also presenting with Ethan is Andrea Knoll. Knoll is serving a one-year service term with Minnesota GreenCorps, a Minnesota Pollution Control Agency-coordinated program training a new generation of environmental professionals. As a GreenCorps member, Andrea assists City staff with environmental health-related projects and initiatives through community outreach, site assessments, and data collection and analysis. Following her service term, Andrea plans to pursue a graduate degree in environmental science and continue her work preserving and protecting Minnesota’s ecosystems and communities.

Beyond The Yellow Ribbon Quad Communities is a grassroots citizen group that engages the communities of Golden Valley, Crystal, New Hope, and Robbinsdale in support of military members, veterans, and their families. It joins nearly 200 Minnesota cities, counties, and businesses already proclaimed Beyond the Yellow Ribbon.

Beyond the Yellow Ribbon is a comprehensive program that creates awareness for the purpose of connecting military service members and their families with community support, training, services, and resources.

Jeff Molby is from Caro, Michigan. After becoming treasurer of his son's boy scout troop, Jeff went to visit the troop’s sponsor: the Rotary Club of Caro, Michigan. He was blown away by the warm welcome and the values embodied in the Four-Way Test, so a couple weeks later he had his red badge. Around the same time, Jeff attended his first Relay For Life. He loved the way they fight the global scourge of cancer in a profoundly local way. He started small and eventually took on an outsized role to help restart things after Covid. He recently turned his attention to the American Cancer Society’s Road to Recovery program. They too needed a post-pandemic boost, so Jeff combined his love of traveling and cycling to his fight against cancer, setting off on a multi-year bike tour around the country in order to raise money and recruit drivers to get patients to their lifesaving treatments. https://chemoriders.org/Rotary/