Robert Black

Melinda Brody

Melinda Brody, MIRM, is President of Melinda Brody and Company, Inc. and TheVideoShoppers.com located in Orlando, Florida. Her firm has evaluated over 10,000 salespeople through her time tested professional mystery shopping service.

The firm now celebrates it’s 23^{rd year} in the building industry working exclusively with builders to evaluate and motivate their on site sales team.

Laura Capps

Residential GreenBuilding Services Director, LEED AP

Laura Capps is the director, LEED AP, for Southface. She also served as program manager for LEED for Homes, Building America, Zero Energy Homes, Million Solar Roofs Initiative and ALA Health House. She is certified as a RESNET Trainer, Universal Refrigerant Technician and an eScan operator, and serves on the US Green Building Council LEED for Homes Faculty and NeighborWorks Training Institute Faculty. She graduated from Appalachian State University with a degree in Sustainable Development and Appropriate Technology.

Jerene Cruse

Jerene L. Cruse, CAPS, CGA, CGP, CSP joined the Housing Institute, Inc. (THI) in 2005. She is certified as an Aging-in-Place Specialist,Graduate Associate,Green Professional and a New Home Sales Professional. She teaches the Certified Professional Home Builder of Georgia (CPHB) orientation class,manages all aspects of THI and the CPHB programs and manages the HBA and CPHB consumer dispute resolution process and Consumer and Dispute Hotlines. She has a B.A. in English Literature for BrandeisUniversity.

Harold Cunliffe

Harold Cunliffe is Director of the National Home Builders Association and the Home Builders Association of Georgia, was a recipient of the Presidential Award and the Lewis Cenker Award from the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association, and is a former Executive Director and President of the Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association, where he is still on board. Cunliffe co-founded The Pacific Group Inc. with Michael Kilgallon. He graduated from the University of British Columbia with a degree in Applied Science (Civil Engineering).

Carol Flammer, MIRM, CAPS

Carol Flammer launched www.AtlantaRealEstateForum.com, is president of Flammer Relations, Inc., and managing partner of mRELEVANCE, LLC, an Internet Marketing, Social Media and Public Relations firm.

With 20 years of experience, Carol has established herself as the “go to” for real estate and construction products public relations and social media.

Christine Fortenberry

Christine Fortenberry, a graduate of Georgia Tech, has earned CAPS and CGB designations and is a NAHB course instructor. Fortenberry serves on NAHB BOD, CAPS Board of Governors, National 50+ Council, Professional Women in Business Council, Remodeler’s Council, BOD and on committees of State HBA and serves on the BOD and 50+ Council BOD of the Atlanta HBA.She is a guest lecturer for the Georgia Tech School of Architecture and other organizations on the subjects of Universal Design and Aging-in-Place.

Tom Gotschall

James B. Hackler

Jim Hackler is the creator of The Urbane Environmentalist, a new approach to communicating the benefits of green living and home construction. As the former head of two of the U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED for Homes and the Southeast’s EarthCraft House program, Jim brings an insider’s perspective on what it means to be green. His background also includes broadcast and print journalism working in local television news and CNN, editing GoodCents, and contributing to Green Builder, Delta Sky, LoftLife, and Natural Home.

Mitch Levinson, MBA, MIRM

Mitch Levinson is an Internet marketing expert with expertise in search engine optimization, Web site development, email marketing, social media and CRM consulting services. He creates programs that can be tracked through analytics to prove effectiveness and ROI. Levinson is founder and president of MLC New Home Marketing and MLC FlatFee Realty, as well as managing partner of mRELEVANCE LLC. He holds a Master's degree in Computre Information Systems and eCommerce.

Stephen McKay, Jr.

Stephen McKay Jr. is a Senior Designer with Dominick Tringali Architects. His designs have earned the company several significant awards. He designs a variety of projects, ranging from custom homes, multifamily buildings, specialty commercial buildings and active adult housing, as well as community design and planning. He is also the leader for DTA's "Green Team."

Patrick Miller

Patrick Miller is senior product designer for SMA Consulting, a financial and operational consulting firm that focuses on bringing advanced systems and plan designs to smaller and mid-size homebuilders. 

Patrick’s design philosophy focuses on simple design and easy to build homes that deliver more home for less price to his customers. Through careful cost control and new plan designs, real life clients are seeing reductions from $90 sq.ft. to $55 sq.ft. in markets nationwide.

Clay S. Nelson

Clay Nelson is a former “nail belt wearing” contractor who successfully ran his own company for over 14 years. Nelson's speeches address specific problems, not textbook generalities.

For more than two decades, Nelson has been providing leaders, and their teams, from all types of industries with business and professional coaching, mediation, facilitation, planning, system analyses and seminar leadership. He founded Clay Nelson Life Balance™, a division of Consulting Services Network LLC.

Meredith Oliver

Creating WOW™ Speaker, Author and Consultant, Meredith Oliver has been WOWING audiences for over ten years.

Meredith is the founder & president of Meredith Communications, Inc., a sales seminar and marketing services firm located in Orlando, FL.

She is an approved instructor for IRM Course III & IRM Course IV and for CSP (Certified New Home Sales Professional), Essential Closing Strategies and Marketing on a Shoestring Budget.

Ken Peterson

Ken has 40+ years of industry experience and is both a Certified Kitchen Designer and a Professional Business Coach. His passion is to teach others how to make serious money in the kitchen and bath industry.

Peterson was a Director and National President of the National Kitchen & Bath Association, and launched the kitchen and bath industry's first buying group in August 1994. He is President of SEN Design Group.

Rick Porter

Porter began his homebuilding company in 1975. Currently, he builds about 100 single family homes a year in the $130,000 to $280,000 price range in northeast Atlanta.Porter has diversified over the years and currently is involved in land development and real estate brokerage as well as homebuilding.

He has also been an Instructor at the Georgia Institute of Technology- College of Architecture/Building Construction since 2006.

Langley Respess

Senior Vice-President, Investments / Private Wealth Advisor, UBS Financial Services

He began his career with UBS Financial Services Inc. in 1991, and uses the Firm’s extensive resources in equity management, fixed income and hedging strategies to help his clients pursue their financial and estate planning goals.

Respess graduated from the University of North Carolina (UNC) – Chapel Hill with a bachelor’s degree in economics. After serving as a Lieutenant in the U.S. Air Force, he returned to UNC – Chapel Hill and earned his M.B.A. in business administration.

Steve Robinson

Steve Robinson formed Axios Architecture in 2006 to focus primarily on single family residential projects.

Steve graduated from AuburnUniversity's Architecture program and was awarded the Humphries Scholarship as the Outstanding Graduating Senior.His design work has been featured in exhibitions, magazines and books, including “Inside the Not So Big House” and “Remodeling Not So Big”. Of particular note is Steve’s expertise in botanical garden projects, including CallawayGardens, GarvanGarden and the Atlanta Botanical Garden (ABG).

Nate Schoen

Nate Schoen grew up in his father’s design/build company, Bridgewater Construction. He received his history degree from JohnCarrollUniversity, he spent six years as a Marine Corps officer before returning to Bridgewater Construction, co-authoring the Custom Builder Management Solutions program with his father.Since then he has worked as a consultant and business coach with a client base of over 200 Builders.

Charlie Scott

Charlie Scott has more than 20 years of first hand home building business experience. He is a principal at Woodland, O'Brien & Scott, which provides sales education/ training, customer satisfaction research, consulting, referral sales leads and performance benchmarking services to 100 of the top quality and brand conscious homebuilders in the industry. 
 

Leslie Shiner

Leslie Shiner has more than twenty years experience as a financial and management consultant. She is the owner and principal of The ShinerGroup, a consulting firm. She works with both small and large businesses to help them better understand their business practices and maximize their profits.

She is also the author of numerous publications that focus on the construction industry including “A Simple Guide to Turning A Profit as a Contractor.”

Shiner recieved her MBA from UC Berkeley.

Stephanie Thomas-Rees

Stephanie Thomas-Rees is a Research Architect in the Buildings Research Division at the Florida Solar Energy Center. She is a member of the Building America Industrialized Housing Partnership, sponsored by the US Department of Energy, where she conducts research and provides technical assistance to the manufactured home building industry to improve the environmental performance. She is a board member of the Florida Green Building Coalition and Green Home Certifying Agent.

Rees also co-authored Eco-House: A Design Strategy, has taught at the University and has worked as a project architect.

John Tooley

John Tooley, who has been hailed as a visionary in energy efficiency, has diagnosed and repaired more than 5,000 homes. He has participated in the weatherization of more than 10,000 homes.

Before joining Advanced Energy in 1996, Tooley led a number of companies through quality building practices. 

Today, Tooley is responsible for business development with the organization’s Applied Building Science team.

Philip D. Zaleon

Philip D. Zaleon is the founder and president of Chapel Hill (NC)-based Z promotion & design, Inc. – a full service integrated marketing, advertising and creative agency.

He served as Vice President of Research & Development for a technology-based communications firm and spent over 12 years in the television industry. Zaleon is a contributing writer to Kitchen & Bath Design News and is the author of the recently published “A is for Advertising… B is for Branding… a hands-on guide to improved profits through marketing your kitchen & bath business – volume 1.