Dr. Alicia Robb is a Senior Fellow with the Kauffman Foundation and a Visiting Scholar with the University of California, Berkeley and the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is also the Principal Investigator on the Kauffman Firm Survey and a Visiting Scholar with both the Basque Institute for Competitiveness in San Sebastian, Spain and the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta. A leading expert in small business financing in the U.S., she has participated in SME financing initiatives by the Organization for Cooperation and Development (OECD) and the G20 Working Group on SME financing. She is also a leading expert in entrepreneurship by women and minorities. In addition to numerous journal articles and book chapters, she is the co-author of Race and Entrepreneurial Success published by MIT Press and A Rising Tide: Financing Strategies for Women-Owned Businesses by Stanford University Press. She serves on the Board of the National Advisory Council for Minority Business Enterprise and is a guest contributor for venues such as Huffington Post and Forbes. Dr. Robb received her M.S. and Ph.D. in Economics from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She has previously worked with the Office of Economic Research in the Small Business Administration and the Federal Reserve Board of Governors. She is the Founder and past Executive Director of the Foundation for Sustainable Development, an international development organization working in Africa, Latin America, and India. She is currently working on her third book: The Next Wave: Financing Strategies of High Growth Women-Owned Businesses.

Dr. Robert Eyler is Interim Dean of the School of Extended and International Education at Sonoma State University. Dr. Eyler is Professor of Economics and Director of the Center for Regional Economic Analysis at Sonoma State University, where he has been teaching since 1995. He earned a Ph.D. from the University of California, Davis in 1998. He earned a B.A. in Economics at CSU, Chico in 1992. Dr. Eyler also serves on the board of directors of Redwood Credit Union, a $2.3 billion nonprofit financial cooperative. Robert also serves on the board of directors of SommSelect, a wine curation company.

Dr. Eyler is the author of two books and several academic articles concerning economic sanctions, the economics of the wine industry, and monetary economics. He is often called up by the media for his expert input into the economic climate, acted as an expert witness in interstate trade litigation, and as a forensic economist. Dr. Eyler has also acted as the CEO of Marin Economic Forum from 2009 to 2015. He also provides economic impact analyses for both private firms and public entities to help guide public policy at the local and state level and has been a visiting scholar at both the University of Bologna and Stanford University. He is married and has one daughter, Luciana, and is a native of Sonoma County, California. His family have been sheep and cattle ranchers in Marin and Sonoma counties since 1910.