Presenters

Lifter Award: Justin Grammens & Dan Atkins

We are honored to recognize Justin Grammens and Dan Atkins as 2026 Lifter Award Recipients at the 15th MN Entrepreneur Kick-off.

Justin Grammens and Dan Atkins are respected business leaders and community builders in Minnesota’s technology and entrepreneurial ecosystem. In addition, through their personal leadership, they have created organizations and initiatives that strengthen the region’s innovation community and expand opportunities for entrepreneurs, technologists, and students alike.

In these personally led initiatives, Justin and Dan exemplify the spirit of the Lifter Award through their dedication to building community, sharing knowledge, and creating opportunities for others to succeed. Their leadership continues to elevate Minnesota’s entrepreneurial and technology ecosystems and inspire the next generation of innovators.

Justin Grammens

Justin Grammens is the Founder and CEO of Lab651 and Managing Partner of Recursive Awesome, which help organizations across healthcare, finance, and retail apply artificial intelligence to improve operational efficiency and automate processes.

He is the Initiator of Applied AI, a Minnesota-based nonprofit dedicated to building the next generation of artificial intelligence leaders, where he serves as the President and Board Chair. A lifelong technologist, entrepreneur, and educator, he has guided this community through many technological developments over the last decades, forming communities of interest and learning, including Mobile Twin Cities, IoT Fuse and Emerging Technologies North and more. He helps founders and business leaders translate emerging technologies into practical products and real-world solutions.

Dan Atkins

A classically trained capitalist with a deep appreciation for startup culture, Dan has spent much of his career leading, consulting and working in enterprise organizations of national stature bringing to bear the strategic benefits of quality data analytics. When doing so, he simultaneously maintained the perspective and independence of an entrepreneur.

Dan Atkins is the President and Co-Founder of MinneAnalytics, a nonprofit organization dedicated to advancing the data science and analytics community in Minnesota.

Under Dan’s leadership, MinneAnalytics has become one of the region’s most influential technology communities, hosting large-scale conferences and events designed to be accessible, organic, and engaging. FASTCon and MinneMUDAC – multi sector data integration and application in the first instance and student, academia and industry connecting over applied data analysis experiences in the second – are both recognized nationally. MinneAnalytics also invests heavily in developing the next generation of talent through scholarships, student data challenges that support community causes, and by showcasing more than 150 startups through its events.

Opening Keynote: Ross Bernstein

Building a Legacy Through Relationships, Integrity, and Accountability

In America’s Coach, best-selling author of The Champion’s Code and Hall of Fame business speaker Ross Bernstein goes beyond performance metrics and winning formulas to explore something far more enduring: legacy.

The legacy of capable leaders is at the heart of the impactful messages Bernstein shares in his new acclaimed book: America’s Coach.

He will share these insights during the Opening Keynote of the 15th MN Entrepreneur Kick-off on March 24th at Schulze Hall, University of St. Thomas, Minneapolis.

Drawing from nearly 50 books, thousands of interviews, and his newest deeply personal work on legendary hockey coach Herb Brooks, Ross brings audiences inside the stories that shaped one of the most iconic leaders in sports history—and reveals why the greatest leaders aren’t remembered for what they achieved alone, but for how they made others better.

Herb Brooks believed that character is revealed under pressure, culture is built one relationship at a time, and winning the right way matters more than winning at all. In his new book, Ross shares never-before-told stories, lessons, and moments that defined Brooks not just as a coach, but as a mentor, teacher, and standard-bearer for integrity and accountability. Those same principles—earned on the ice—translate powerfully to today’s business world.

Through interviews with more than 1,000 championship athletes and coaches, Ross uncovered a striking truth: the DNA of championship teams in sports mirrors the habits of peak-performing organizations in business. The most successful teams—on the ice or in the boardroom—win consistently because they prioritize trust, servant leadership, personal responsibility, and culture over ego and shortcuts.

Blending unforgettable sports stories (including lessons from Herb Brooks’ life and legacy) with real-world business case studies, Ross shows why the organizations that separate themselves from the pack do so by:

Creating cultures of excellence rooted in values
Developing deep, authentic relationships
Holding themselves accountable to a higher standard
Delivering extraordinary service—internally and externally

At the heart of America’s Coach is a simple but powerful idea:

People don’t follow titles.
They follow trust.
And legacies are built not by what we demand—but by what we model.

In this engaging, provocative, and dynamic keynote, attendees will learn how to:

Build a lasting culture of excellence through service, trust, and accountability
Generate momentum by leveraging the “currency of karma”
Win the right way by following a clear moral compass rooted in integrity and respect
Create stronger leadership buy-in by embracing change, adversity, and failure
Evolve from transactional relationships into trusted partnerships that endure

Ultimately, America’s Coach and the Champion’s Code challenge audiences to ask a deeper question than “Are we winning?”
They ask: “What will our legacy be—and what stories will people tell about how we led?”

Ross Bernstein is the best-selling author of nearly 50 SPORTS books, he’s a peak-performance business speaker and proud member of the Speaker Hall of Fame, who has keynoted conferences on ALL SEVEN CONTINENTS. He’s been featured on CNN, “CBS Mornings,” MSNBC, ESPN, and Fox News, as well as in the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA Today. His mission today is to get us all thinking DIFFERENTLY about how we can raise OUR games to the next level.

Technical Keynote: Matthew Versaggi

Exploring and Explaining the Edges of Technological Understanding – Enabling Doers to Envision

White House Presidential Innovation Fellow, Special AI Cohort of ’24.

Matthew Versaggi enables those with whom he speaks to grasp information that is out of their direct purview, but the implications of which they would be well served to understand. He is accordingly a much-sought presenter from classroom to corporate board room, to academia, AND to international and Washington, DC halls of government.

His experiences include:

a Senior Leader in the Artificial Intelligence space with Federal Government and Fortune-5 Healthcare experience;
a successful Entrepreneur of 16 years with 60+ clients nationwide;
an established Strategist in the AI business/technology space;
a noted Public Speaker of 20+ years globally, and
a seasoned Educator of decades in the academic and professional domains. He has chaired multiple Patent Review Boards; been awarded multiple individual patents; championed impactful Cognitive AI Technology and Quantum Computing initiatives; seen hundreds of AI Healthcare use-cases, and he possess International Business experience.

Matthew Versaggi’s appreciation of people and their unique gifts and his keen interest in applied technology problem solving, together with his range of life experiences from farm laborer to White House Presidential Fellow working at the forward edge of Applied AI in our nation’s healthcare systems, and the numerous noted experiences in between, provide the foundation for his keynote: Exploring and Explaining the Edges of Technological Understanding – Enabling Doers to Envision