small business resiliency ceo forum

Vivian Shimoyama has directed initiatives for public, non-profit, and private sector organizations setting strategic vision, and managing organization growth which resulted in economic impact. She is a recognized expert on small businesses and has advocated for thousands of small business owners through local, state, national and international initiatives. Dedicated to growing small businesses she heads two ventures (Growth Small Business and Scale Smarter Partners) that accelerate business growth through guided tools that allow companies to thrive. She advises and advocates for small businesses in a range of industries with outcomes that lead to opening doors of opportunity for entrepreneurs, strategic positioning, and focus on building operations infrastructure necessary to support growth.

Most recently, Ms. Shimoyama was the Regional Executive Director of the Goldman Sachs 10,000 Small Businesses (10KSB) Initiative for Southern California. She built a regional team and worked with national organizations to create jobs and economic growth by providing entrepreneurs with a practical business and management education program, access to capital, and business advisory support services.

She is on the boards of the California Small Business Education Foundation, California Small Business Association, and Long Beach Center for Economic Inclusion, Long Beach Accelerator. She was recently appointed by Mayor Garcia to the Economic Development Commission, and served as the Chair Emeritus of the Pacific Gateway Workforce Investment Board, National Association of Women Business Owners, and NAWBO Education Foundation. She is an advisor to the University of Southern California Small Business Supplier Diversity Office.

As a national and international leader, she has served as an appointee to the National Women’s Business Council, an independent federal government advisory council that advises the President and U.S. Congress on issues important to women owned businesses. Ms. Shimoyama has served as an elected delegate to the White House Conference on Small Business; was a member of the U.S. delegation and facilitator for the landmark 10 Downing Street Economic Summit headed by the U.K. government; U.S. delegate to the Asia-Pacific (APEC) Women and the Economy Summit, bringing together private and public sector leaders for women’s economic empowerment.

Ms. Shimoyama has been honored by the National Association of Women Business Owners, and received the National Women In Business Advocate Award from the U.S. Small Business Administration (SBA). In 2020, she was selected by the New York Museum of Arts and Design as one of 45 artists that have made significant developments in art jewelry since the mid- century: 45 Stories in Jewelry: 1946 to Now features pieces and jewelry artists in the past eighty years that have broadened the scope and reach of art as a wearable medium. Shimoyama Studio is located in downtown Long Beach where her fused glass artwork is displayed along with her creation The Glass Ceiling Pin that has received national recognition for breaking invisible barriers … glass ceilings

Clifton L. Johnson is a Founder & Managing Partner with Burch Capital Partners. Prior to joining Burch, Johnson was employed at Union Bank in Wealth Management as a Vice President and Senior Account Relationship Manager. Johnson has been employed in the banking and financial services industry for 47 years. His focus with Burch is on deal sourcing, execution and structuring.

Johnson is an Advisory Member of the Investment Committee for the California Community Foundation and an Advisory Board Member of the Foundation’s Centinela Fund. He served as a board member and Treasurer for the Magic Johnson Foundation.

Throughout his banking career, Johnson was extraordinarily active and committed to a number of civic and community organizations. Appointed as a Public Member of The California State Board of Accountancy, Johnson was the first African American to serve on the Board in its 103 year history. He is a past Chairman and Board Member of the Torrance Area Chamber of Commerce, a past board member of the Los Angeles Biomedical Research Institute at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center, a past President and board member of the Roy W. Robert II Watts/Willowbrook Boys and Girls Club, and a past President and founding member of the Los Angeles Urban Financial Services Coalition, formerly the Los Angeles Urban Bankers Association. He is the recipient of numerous awards to include the Los Angeles Urban League’s 2002 Community Responsibility Award.

Johnson received a Bachelor of Business Administration degree in Banking and Finance from the University of North Texas at Denton and attended graduate school at Pepperdine University.

Phyllis Evans Venable is the CEO of Silhouette Consulting Group, a San Pedro, California based consulting firm specializing in business development and non-profit capacity-building. She established Silhouette Consulting in 2005 after serving 18 years with the City of Long Beach, California as Business Development Manager.

With her 33-year career in the public sector, Venable held various city and state management positions, including Public Information Director for the State of Kansas Energy Office; Community Development Administrator for the cities of Torrance, California and Leavenworth, Kansas, and Legislative Analyst to the City Manager of Kansas City, Missouri. A graduate of University of Kansas (KU), she attended KU Law School and qualifies as an Economic Development Finance Professional (EDFP), certified through the National Development Council.

During 2010-13, Venable managed a Long Beach project under the African Urban Poverty Alleviation Program, funded by the Bill & Malinda Gates Foundation. The Long Beach-Mombasa (Kenya) Sister Cities Association competed successfully for the project grant – one of only 16 awarded that year to develop and implement health, sanitation and water improvements benefitting the urban poor residing in African coastal communities. As project manager, Venable established a local committee in Mombasa and developed projects that provided medical equipment and supplies to 19 public health clinics, replaced a destroyed sole paramedic unit, and delivered portable water purification plants for increased access to clean drinking water. Through her efforts, the original grant was leveraged 20 to 1.

Venable has received numerous awards and honors including an honor on the 2019 “Wall of Excellence” of Forgotten Images, Inc.; the 2011 International Champion Award from Harbor Area Links, Inc; 2002 “Business Associate of the Year” from the South Bay American Business Women’s Association; and a listing in the 2000 Edition of the National Reference Institute’s Who’s Who of Women Executives. She received the ‘Friend of the Dream” award from the Long Beach Central Area Association in 1998 honoring her dedication to the legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. She was named an Outstanding Young Woman of America in 1994 by the National Reference Foundation, and in 1993, received the prestigious Savvy Award from the City-County Communications & Marketing Association (3CMA) for creative marketing and communications in local government.

Venable is active in community and civic affairs, serving on Community Advisory Boards of Long Beach Freedom School and Los Angeles County Natural History Museum; Executive Boards of the Tom Bradley Legacy Foundation, Angels Gate Cultural Center and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Rolling Hills/Palos Verdes Alumnae Chapter. She currently serves as President & CEO of Sister Cities of Long Beach, Inc., a nonprofit organization that oversees the eight (8) global partnerships of the City of Long Beach, CA.

Philip Borden, Ph.D. trained in history, mathematics, and political theory in the U.S. and at Oxford, Borden joined the full-time faculty at UCLA in 1968. He left academic life in 1974 to found or co-found high technology ventures in artificial intelligence applied to learning theory and advanced manufacturing, electronic and electro-optical design, and forensic image processing. His companies were cited for their excellence in IBM’s Baldridge award, in Business Week and Entrepreneur, and on NBC, CBS, and other national media.

Borden entered the non-profit world in 1993 to head Asian American Economic Development Enterprises. In 1995 he became the first male CEO of a major woman’s organization, Woman’s Enterprise Development Corporation. By 2007 he had helped found/establish five city and county wide business and civic organizations, an L.A. City/County transportation consortium, and Active Capital, a national matching service for fast growth entrepreneurs and investors under a special SEC exemption.

Throughout his career, Borden has consulted in museum/exhibit design, arts financing, technology, and the creation of “innovation communities”. He has trained entrepreneurs in Russia, advised a U.N. agency in Brazil and technology zone officers in China, and keynoted an international management conference in Japan. He has presented to over 100 popular and professional association papers on management and technology topics. Some of his work has been translated into Japanese, Arabic, and Kurdish.

In four trips to Iraq for the Department of State (2006-7), Borden consulted on small business development. He wrote studies of national and provincial economic development, handbooks for business start-up and business support centers, and a guide for evaluating entrepreneurial training programs. His book, Shaku Maku: On the Ground in Occupied Iraq (2008), was named as one of the five essential works on Iraq by a leading war correspondent. His work also was instrumental in forming a business development center in Nigeria.

In 2007, he co-founded Essergy Consulting, bringing together top-flight consultants to advise socially and environmentally responsible small companies, and to conduct economic development studies for universities plus state, regional and local governments. He has taught nonprofit management at the MBA level and counseled minority, woman owned, and nonprofit ventures. Borden retired in 2018, but continues informal small business advising and some board activities. He still actively publishes, including a recent article on the impact of artificial intelligence on small business development and one in press on the history of presidential management of epidemics.

A former senior executive in two Fortune 100 Corporations, Dr. Hawkins’ business background includes early-in-career tenure at the Rand Corporation Think Tank as a Project Analyst and as the first woman of color to be designated as a Rand Project Manager. Notably, a significant early-in-career highlight was her Presidential appointment as a White House Fellow. She served as Special Assistant to Cabinet Secretary Cecil Andrus, Secretary of the Department of Interior. Dr. Hawkins was assigned significant special projects by the Under Secretary James A. Joseph. Her operational responsibilities included implementation of technology systems supporting bilateral and multilateral trade agreements.

Dr. Hawkins spent the last several decades as a small business entrepreneur. Through 2006 she headed a business process re-engineering and supply chain firm that developed and implemented proprietary software (intellectual property) as a best-of-breed supply chain component of ERP systems. Dr. Hawkins has served as a Director on the Boards of service and technology companies at various stages of growth. She has also served as a C level officer in turnaround and restructuring situations.

Currently Managing Partner of One Source Fiduciary Solutions, a Professional Fiduciary services firm, Dr. Hawkins provides expert witness testimony and litigation support in the areas of: Business Disputes, Breach of Fiduciary Duty, Fiduciary Bad Conduct, Trusts, Estates and Conservator Mismanagement, Partnership Dissolution, and Corporate Governance.

With a long history of community and professional activism, Dr. Hawkins has provided testimony before legislative and regulatory entities. She has served on numerous Boards that include Protestant Community Services, the Brotherhood Crusade, United Way (Los Angles & Pittsburg), Northeast Midwest Institute (policy arm of the Northeast Midwest Congressional Coalition), Indiana State Commission for the Humanities, CORO [Leadership] Foundation, Forensic Expert Witness Association (National & Greater Los Angeles), So California Gas Company’s Multi-Cultural Issues Panel, California Special Commission on Economic and Job Development [CEO’s of California headquartered Corporations], and the California African American Political and Economic Institute. Dr. Hawkins was member of the Executive Committee of the Board of Directors, L.A. County Sheriff’s Youth Foundation where she chaired the Audit Committee of the Board.

Dr. Hawkins received a Masters and PhD from the University of Southern California and her Bachelors and Masters from the University of California at Los Angeles. Dr. Hawkins is a California Licensed Professional Fiduciary (CLPF).