FEATURED SPEAKERS Image Eric Smith Eric Smith is the founder of The EKS Group, LLC, aka The Financial Literacy Coach and The Money Game Literacy Program. With over 28 years of high performance in the financial industry, Eric has the expertise needed to teach others how to succeed financially. For nearly thirty years, Eric Smith was a successful lender and banking executive in the Atlanta, Georgia area. During the nineties, Eric was one of the highest producing mortgage originators in the metro area originating over one half billion dollars of residential mortgages. As a commercial lender and manager, he originated and managed nearly one billion dollars of loans, making him one of the highest producing commercial lenders in the metro Atlanta market. As the youngest executive officer of a regional banking company, Eric was involved in the credit review of thousands, many of whom were professional athletes. Eric has a formal background and education in finance and banking having attended the University of Georgia, Georgia State University and the Graduate Banking School at LSU. He currently serves as Chairman of the Board of his County Water Authority. As a national presenter, Eric was the first ever financial literacy speaker to be included on the NCAA’s national Speaker Registry. As a financial literacy presenter and speaker, Eric has shared his financial education programs with over 100,000 collegiate students all across the country. He has also presented at numerous NFL rookie camps including the Miami Dolphins, Seattle Seahawks, Denver Broncos, Tampa Bay Buccaneers, Tennessee Titans, Indianapolis Colts and Carolina Panthers. Eric was an invited presenter at the NCAA-NFL Life Skills Summit, the NCAA Leadership Forum, and the NBA Draft Program. Eric has also been hired twice by the NBA to teach money skills to their G League players..Eric has also presented to thousands of high school students as well the corporate wellness groups and the US Army. Eric currently has the highest reviewed live financial education program ever created for college students. Eric's passion is helping to empower, educate and inspire everyone that he meets how to make the most of their financial opportunities. He is very passionate about using his skills and abilities as a cash flow expert to help others increase their chances of winning their own "Money Game." Making money fun and engaging is what Eric does best! Image Dr. Jessie Guinn A native of Houston, Texas, Dr. Jessie Guinn is a KSU McNair alum and graduate of Alcorn State University with a B.S. in Biology and Kent State University where he earned the Ph.D. in Physiology studying circadian rhythms and reward pathways in the brain. He has also been a postdoctoral fellow at Northwestern University’s Feinberg School of Medicine where he researched the neural biology of associative learning in the mammalian brain and an administrative postdoctoral associate at Kent State. Dr. Guinn was the assistant director of the former STEM Research & Education Center and scholarship administrator of a National Science Foundation STEM Scholarship (NSF S-STEM) program at Kent State University. As Assistant Director, he was responsible for collaborating and establishing partnerships with faculty, staff and external entities to promote, develop and execute STEM initiatives on and off-campus within the Colleges of Arts and Sciences and Education, Health and Human Services. Dr. Guinn also worked with the Upward Bound Math-Science Trio Program at Kent and was responsible for the development and administration of STEM education and outreach initiatives to pre-college, collegiate and graduate students via the Department of Biological Sciences and the Urban League of Greater Cleveland. Dr. Guinn is now the Assistant Academic Dean of STEM in The College of Global Studies at Arcadia University. In this role, Dr. Guinn is responsible for coordinating, researching, developing, promoting and recruiting for The College’s international academic programs in science, engineering, technology, and mathematics. He also serves as the lead of the Diversity & Inclusion Taskforce within The College of Global Studies and is a member of Arcadia University’s Presidential Commission on Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI). 0
