2022 INNOVATOR OF THE YEAR AWARD NOMINEES

Financial Literacy, became a Wall Street Journal and Amazon best-seller. In addition, her forthcoming book, The Rise of Women and Wealth, offer a powerful and compelling message to all women. The message is simply the affirmation that women need to improve their financial literacy in order to achieve financial self-determination. Couyoumjian is currently working on her third book about the silent retirement crisis.

City of Hope Orange County, Irvine Annette M. Walker, President

Annette M. Walker is the visionary president of City of Hope Orange County who is bringing the next generation of cancer research and treatment to Orange County. This summer, Walker and her team opened City of Hope Orange County Lennar Foundation Cancer Center in Irvine - the most advanced comprehensive cancer center in our community. The comprehensive cancer center delivers innovations that will become a best practice for cancer centers worldwide. This includes an accessible academic medical center in the heart of a community, innovative and more inclusive phase 1 to 3 clinical trials, integrative medicine that blends Western and evidence-based complementary practices, an unprecedented bench of scientific minds, and full community involvement in almost every aspect of the center - from designing the patient-focused interior to planting a garden for future generations. Walker has a long history of innovating and inspiring others as a health care senior executive, mentor and sponsor, author and speaker, and tireless community leader. She has been twice recognized as one of the most influential leaders in American healthcare.

Codebreaker Technologies, Irvine Cheri Tree, CEO

Cheri Tree created a new personality assessment model based in BUY-ology, designed to predict buying behavior and human engagement, called B.A.N.K. She has won numerous awards, been voted entrepreneur of the year, written in Forbes, and has clients around the world. In 2019, her company, Codebreaker Technologies, created the world’s first artificial intelligence powered by B.A.N.K. and written in Forbes as “the future of sales”. Her company just became patent-pending with innovative and disruptive technology that can integrate into any membership or login portal and automatically capture the user’s personality type based on their values, giving the company the ability to better engage, retain, advertise, and monetize their relationship with the user. This will be a game changer with business intelligence and data analytics to supercharge results.

Colliers, Irvine Amanda Spangler, Managing Director

Joining Colliers in 2021 as managing director for the Inland Empire and Orange County offices, Amanda Spangler’s designation marked an industry milestone. She and Jodie Poirier, executive managing director, and Greater Los Angeles Market Leader became the first female duo to oversee a global commercial real estate services company’s operations in the Greater Los Angeles region. Spangler’s oversight extends to upwards of 70 brokerage professionals across two offices. In her role, she works diligently to strengthen business development, improve service delivery and recruit top industry talent. Among her many duties and objectives, Spangler places great emphasis on growth, focusing on organic growth through her sales professional’s business plans and unique client opportunities and offerings. She strategically aligns her recruitment of top industry talent with complementing Colliers’ culture and clientele and anticipating the needs of her professionals and markets.

Cyrano.ai, Newport Beach Scott Sandland, CEO & Founder

Scott Sandland is the former world’s youngest hypnotherapist. A few companies (and decades) later he is the CEO of a company focusing on artificial empathy and strategic linguistics. As a former executive director and CEO of a mental health clinic and longtime technologist, he has experience leading purpose driven organizations. He has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals and had his technology featured in the Harvard Business Review, Psychology Today, Forbes, and Entrepreneur Magazine. Sandland is the author of Cyrano.ai’s patent, which focuses on non-obvious language patterns associated with mental states like commitment, impulsivity, rationalizations, and more. Sandland has presented his AI work at the United Nations AI for Global Good Conference and is a frequent guest lecturer at multiple universities.

DAIM - Digital Asset Investment Management, Newport Beach Bryan Courchesne, Founder & CEO

The founder of Newport Beach-based Digital Asset Investment Management, Bryan Courchesne, is no stranger to managing risk and being on the forefront of innovation as we head into a new digital era and the 21st Century financial landscape. Impacted by the housing meltdown during the Great Recession, the Florida entrepreneur relocated to New York City to trade options in the pit of the exchange. Within a few years he was managing a desk of brokers as the head of equity derivative sales at a Broker-Dealer.

David Meltzer Enterprises, Ladera Ranch David Meltzer, Founder

As our world continues to evolve, David Meltzer prepares each day to meet those challenges head-on. While other business leaders may shy away from investing in themselves and their mission due to uncertainty caused by the pandemic, Meltzer has doubled down on his mission to empower over 1 billion people to be happy. Since shifting his focus towards content creation, Meltzer has created two business-focused television shows for Bloomberg and Apple TV, a pitch show called “2 Minute Drill” and the first late-night entrepreneurial show “Office Hours”. “Office Hours’’ is currently airing its second season while “2 Minute Drill is set to record its fourth season in July 2022. Meltzer recently announced a content & distribution deal with Apple TV as a featured influencer, which brings his shows, podcasts, and more to over 1 billion screens worldwide. In addition to recording locations at the Blue Wire studio in the Wynn Las Vegas and at SoFi Stadium, home of the NFL’s Los Angeles Rams and Chargers, David Meltzer Studios just launched its third location in Orange County.

Distressed Capital Resources, Costa Mesa William Lobel, Founder & President

Led by renowned bankruptcy attorney William (Bill) Lobel, the sole mission of DCR is to help business leaders solve the problems caused by financial distress, with a focus on avoiding Chapter 11 bankruptcy and the reputational damage that it causes. Lobel has decades of experience providing clients in financial distress with bankruptcy options in California. He uses this knowledge and wisdom to create each DCR Smart Plan. Each Smart Plan becomes a roadmap that helps guide you to your desired goals, with step-by-step instructions and suggestions regarding services and individuals who can assist with viable bankruptcy options. Lobel’s goal is to maximize value and, in the right circumstances, to assist the client to restructure existing debt, repurpose assets or modify business to allow for the retention of assets. With their help, clients are able to resolve their financial distress while maintaining the hard-earned professional reputations they have spent years building.

Edwards Lifesciences, Irvine Katie Szyman, Corporate Vice President, Critical Care

As corporate vice president at Edwards since 2015, Katie Szyman leads her teams with one goal: help patients get home to their families faster. She has done this while adeptly leading Edwards’ global critical care and vascular business through nearly a decade of growth. Szyman continues to lead, motivate, and engage sales, marketing, R&D, clinical, regulatory, and dotted-line manufacturing - and in recent years, through the COVID-19 pandemic. Motivated to bring predictive and artificial intelligence (AI) technologies into medical technology, Szyman has led the launch of numerous groundbreaking products, including the Acumen Hypotension Prediction Index (HPI) software, which leverages AI and machine learning to help clinicians understand a patient’s hypotension (low blood pressure) risk. This predictive software drives informed decisionmaking and improved outcomes. Szyman joined Edwards after a 20-year career at Medtronic, where she advanced in Global Finance and Business Development, eventually serving as senior vice president and president of Global Diabetes Research from 2009 to 2014. There, Szyman oversaw research, development, operations, sales, and marketing for Medtronic’s insulin infusion pumps and continuous glucose monitoring systems.

Ephesoft, Irvine Ike Kavas, Founder & CEO

Ike Kavas is the founder and CEO of Ephesoft, a leader in intelligent document processing (IDP) focused on accelerating productivity with automation. He helps customers in 50 countries with his global team in the Americas, Europe and Asia. Kavas’ entrepreneurial drive fuels him as a passionate technology innovator, AI and machine learning advocate, speaker and customer-obsessed trailblazer. As Ephesoft’s leader, Kavas has pushed the boundaries of innovating what was once a stagnant industry - document capture - into an AI-powered technology that is necessary to build the foundation of any digital transformation or hyperautomation initiative. He has taken a common process that is often complicated, time-consuming and inefficient and automated it, building AI into its inner workings to make it simple, fast and efficient. Workers no longer need to manually enter data, worry about mistakes or duplicate their efforts. Ephesoft is a solution that captures data, classifies it (organizes it), extracts the data, allows validation if necessary and exports that data into any other system or repository. IDP enables companies to be data-driven, quickly and without much effort.

e-Plan Inc., Irvine Michael Chegini, Chief Executive Officer

Michael Chegini is a visionary whose drive to innovate and commitment to improving how public agencies and the AEC industry perform plan reviews led to the foundation of e-PlanSoft. His vision drives the company to lead the way in technology and leading-edge advancements in the company’s offerings. Mr. Chegini has over 40 years of practical experience in civil and structural engineering design, design management, program and project management, and construction of buildings and supporting facilities for public transportation, educational, and municipal agencies, public works agencies and the private sector. His experience in the Compliance Management includes plan review, code analysis, seismic and facility condition assessments and ADA evaluation and design of new and renovation, expansion, improvement, and upgrade designs of all types of building systems. He has diversified experience in all project delivery methods. Under his leadership and vision, the company has been awarded three patents in the last year, bringing its total to 12, with more under consideration.

Eyedaptic, Laguna Hills Jay Cormier, CEO

Jay Cormier is CEO and founded Eyedaptic in 2016 with the mission of revitalizing the quality of life for people with AMD (Age related Macular Degeneration). This is one of the biggest unmet needs in eye care today with over 150 million people worldwide affected, with no existing cure or therapy. AMD leads to a loss of central vision which make many everyday tasks like reading a bill or finding canned goods in a grocery store difficult or impossible. Together with cofounders, with deep technology backgrounds as well as ophthalmology retina specialists, the team set forth to use augmented reality with embedded natural vision software to accomplish this goal. After three years,