Innovating City Living

Alpha invites you to a panel discussion to discover how forward-thinkers and innovators like you, help put the GO in Chicago.

Like never before, forward-thinkers are improving the everyday lives of Chicagoans by focusing on day-to-day activities ripe for improvement. Recent inventions, focused on everyday concerns like access to government and healthcare or quality of life, transform a term like “innovation” into something people can see and appreciate. The secret? Innovation with a people-first approach. We’ll host a dynamic and free-wheeling panel with innovators who are succeeding in making lives better.

Keynote Speaker

Tony Bombacino, Co-founder and CMO, Real Food Blends

Tony is Co-Founder of Real Food Blends, the leading provider of 100% real food meals for people with feeding tubes. Prior to co-creating Real Food Blends, Bombacino spent 15+ years in various digital and direct marketing leadership roles at companies of all sizes including Andersen, United Airlines, Resolution Media (acquired by Omnicom Media Group), where he was the 6th employee and part of the original leadership team, Restaurant.com, where he helped grow the company’s revenue 25X during his tenure and Signal (formerly BrightTag).

Aside from his day jobs, Bombacino has also spent much of his career helping, mentoring and working with aspiring marketers and entrepreneurs via associations and charities ranging from the Chicago Interactive Marketing Association (CIMA), Chicago Association of Direct Marketing (CADM), The CMO Club, Tech Stars and more. Beyond marketing and entrepreneurship, Tony is passionate about helping associations and charities that work to improve the lives of children with special needs, especially Jacob’s Ladder and A Rosie Place. Tony holds an MS in Direct & Interactive Marketing from Mercy College and a BS in Marketing from Saint Xavier University.

When he isn’t helping his life and business partner Julie create the next phase of Real Food Blends, he loves golfing, fishing, traveling, playing around with his kids and pretending like he is the next great chef.

Panel Speakers

The panel will be moderated by Matt Davis from Alpha, the on-demand insights platform enabling teams to make data-driven decisions about products, users, and new markets. Panelists include:

Caroline Coolidge, Director of Operations Systems, Farmer's Fridge

Mike Duffy, CEO and Founder, CityBase

Mike Duffy founded CityBase with the inspiration that technology could help public servants do what they do best: solve local problems and improve lives. Mike was driven to embrace local government’s distinct operational challenge of serving every person, regardless of their needs or demographics. His goal was to shatter the govtech status quo, creating a company incentivized by building tech with broader outcomes instead of bigger budgets, using a SaaS model instead of billing hourly, promoting cost efficiencies through standardization, and building modular technology that allows for continuous innovation, with or without CityBase. Today, more than 100 government agencies and utility service providers across the United States are using the CityBase platform for integrated payments and digital services. The platform equally serves people who want to complete a government interaction from their phones, those who are unbanked and must pay a bill in cash, and the public servants tasked with keeping government running smoothly. Mike brings a deep interest in behavioral economics from over a decade working in capital markets, including as a Federal Reserve analyst at Northern Trust. He concentrated in economics, econometrics and statistics, and entrepreneurship at the University of Chicago Booth School of Business before founding CityBase and embarking on his mission for humanity.

Jeff Judge, CTO, ParkWhiz
Jeff Judge is CTO of ParkWhiz, a company building the last mile platform for mobility. Prior to ParkWhiz, Jeff was co-founder and CEO of Bright (failed), co-founder and CEO of Signal (acquired), early engineer at Orbitz, and management consultant. Jeff is fascinated with technology and long on human innovation. He lives in the Lincoln Square neighborhood of Chicago with his wife and five kids.

More guest speakers to be announced shortly.

Agenda

6:30pm: Doors open.

7:15pm: Panel begins

8:00pm: Audience Q&A

8:30pm: Networking

*Light food and drinks will be served.