Joel Smyer serves as the founding President and General Counsel of the National Christian Foundation North Texas. Before helping launch the Foundation, he was a partner in a Fort Worth law firm where he practiced in various areas of civil litigation. Since the Foundation’s inception in 2008, Joel has specialized in asset-based giving and serving as a thought partner to hundreds of families who integrate charitable giving into their business exit, estate, and succession planning. Joel graduated from Baylor University and Baylor University School of Law. He is married to Laura, and together, they are the parents of six young adult children.

Aimee Minnich serves as Chief Impact Officer and General Counsel of Impact Foundation. Prior to founding Impact Foundation, she served as President and General Counsel for the National Christian Foundation, Heartland, where she designed and implemented the foundation’s Missional Investing Program to allow the investment of donor-advised funds in social impact companies. A recovering attorney, Aimee also serves as a Trustee with Praxis Mutual Funds.

Henry Kaestner co-founded the Faith Driven Entrepreneur and Faith Driven Investor ministries, and has been a catalyst behind both movements. He and his team seek to serve faith driven entrepreneurs, investors, funds, partners, and advisors through content, community, and connections.

Henry is also a Co-Founder and Partner at Sovereign’s Capital, a private equity and venture capital management company that invests in faith driven entrepreneurs in Southeast Asia and the U.S. from its offices in Silicon Valley, Durham, Nashville, Chattanooga, Atlanta, and Jakarta, Indonesia. Prior to co-founding Sovereign’s Capital, Henry was Co-founder and previous CEO, and then Chairman, of Bandwidth (NASDAQ:BAND) and its sister company, Republic Wireless (which spun out of Bandwidth in 2016). Together the companies have grown from $0 to more than $600 million in revenue. The founding values of Bandwidth are: Faith, Family, Work and Fitness (in that order). Prior to co-founding Bandwidth.com with David Morken, Henry founded Chapel Hill Brokers (a predecessor to ICAP Energy), an institutional energy derivatives broker that became the top ranked electricity broker in the country.

Justin has inspired business leaders see their Work as a part of their Calling for the past 15 years. As Executive Vice President he was a part of dreamers and doers that built RightNow Media, which serves 20,000 churches and 3 million people through this "Netflix of Video Studies". During that time he was a part of creating the Work as Worship Retreat and RightNow Media @ Work's tools to help business leaders equip their people to be better at home and at work. Along the way their teams captured dozens of short films from business leaders at companies like Hobby Lobby, Popeyes Chicken, Interstate Batteries, SeaWorld, NatureSweet, David Weekley Homes and business leaders like Patrick Lencioni, Dave Ramsey and many others. Today he and his wife own several small businesses in Dallas and serves as Executive Director of the Faith Driven Entrepreneur.

Becky Cullum has been actively serving on both sides of the generosity machine to expand charitable giving for over 20 years. Becky works with individuals and families to develop creative strategies for their generosity, such as through non-cash gifts and succession planning. Prior to her role at NCF, she served in various leadership positions with Young Life. Becky is passionate about helping others maximize their impact through strategic giving. She lives in Dallas with her husband, Christian, and their two children, Andrew (11) and Caroline (9).

During his 25-year tenure in vocational ministry, Lucas served for 16 years in churches in the Phoenix area and for nearly 8 years as the Lead Pastor of an historic church in Toronto, Canada, widely recognized as the world’s most multi-ethnic city. Under his leadership, the church experienced exponential numerical growth (from 400 to more than 2000 attendees), renewed vision and passion for ministry, and increased organizational health. In July of 2021, Lucas accepted a role with Redline Athletics, a franchise concept youth sports performance brand and, as the Chief of Staff, helped the organization grow from 32 to 55 locations in just 19 months. In February of 2023, Lucas accepted a role with the National Christian Foundation (NCF) as the Vice President of Network Relations.

Katherine shares her business acumen with Impact Foundation as the Director of Innovation. In this role, she leads The Table investing sessions and educational opportunities for our Donor/Investors. Additionally, Katherine partners with various team members on special projects to create investment products, content, and new initiatives.

With a Bachelor of Arts in International Affairs and Public Policy from Princeton University, Katherine has a global vision. She studied abroad at the University of Oxford and Reichman University in Israel and has traveled extensively throughout the world. Katherine most recently served as the Director of Partnerships and Investor Relations for Faith Driven Investor. She piloted the first Faith Driven Investor Groups and spearheaded investment initiatives across Africa.

Will Thomas serves as the Managing Director and Founder of Ambassadors Impact Network, a nationwide angel investing group founded in 2018 that connects faith-driven investor members with gospel-advancing entrepreneurs. The network has 65+ members who have collaborated in deal-vetting and diligence, investing over $24M in private faith-forward companies and funds. Will has been an active investor in private, gospel-advancing companies since 2012. He also served as President & CEO of Marketplace Chaplains, was a private equity investor and a pilot in the U.S. Air Force. Will and his wife Christa live in Dallas and are blessed with three children.

Kate Gardner is next-generation philanthropist with a passion for holistic stewardship and community-building. Originally from Washington DC, and based in Nashville, she focuses on ministry, prayer, and helping other Next-Gens through a faith-based community called Magnify and running a podcast called Ascendants (with a book now as well!). She seeks to encourage other inheritors and business families to seek relational health, creativity, and purpose in the way they both wrestle with and embrace stewarding resources and "living a legacy.”

Parker Samelson is the co founder of Ivywild Capital, a boutique real estate private equity group in Colorado. He is also the co author of Becoming Ascendants with Kate Gardner. This book explores “Next Gens” honoring their family legacy while also ascending into their own identity and impact. Parker is passionate about impact investing, international missions, mountaineering, and is learning how to play polo.

Dana views all of her treasure, time and talent as gifts from God that are meant to be stewarded towards three ends - for God's glory, the good of others and for our own well-being. She increasingly directs a sizable portion of the charitable capital in her family foundation towards impact investing.

Dana is an international development professional with 20 years at USAID and Department of Commerce. She has years of experience advising nonprofits engaged nationally and globally across many sectors, including micro-finance and private sector engagement. She is active in The Gathering, Generous Giving, Praxis, and Lion's Den. She is an FDE small group facilitator and is on the FDI leadership team launching a citywide network in the DC Metro area to develop a local community of faith driven entrepreneurs and investors. She holds an M.A. in International Affairs from Columbia University.

Ed has a long history of supporting entrepreneurial businesses in the city of Dallas as a corporate executive for two separate publicly traded computer software companies, as a partner in a Dallas based venture capital firm, and as an owner of a company providing information management solutions to Energy companies and companies in other vertical markets. He is active as a member of the executive team for Movement Day Greater Dallas, a city transformation ministry, and teaches a young married small group at Park Cities Baptist Church in Dallas.

Vip Vipperman is Vice President at Eagle Venture Funds and is cofounder of The Lion’s Den DFW pitch competition. He was also one of the early team members at Faith Driven Entrepreneur & Investor co-creating projects like Marketplace, Demo Days, and Unmuted. He previously worked for one of the nation’s largest faith based multifamily developers and spent his early career doing missions works alongside underground church planters in China. He has been married for 20 years to Carrie and they have 3 kids and a yellow lab. His spends a lot of time at volleyball games, on Boy Scouts camping trips or at gymnastics meets.