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Christopher Richardson
General Counsel and COO
BDV Solutions
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Christopher Richardson is an immigration attorney, consultant, and former U.S. Diplomat. As a U.S. diplomat, Richardson served in Nigeria, Nicaragua, Pakistan, and Spain. He won numerous State Department awards including Superior and Meritorious Honor Awards. He is a native of Charleston, South Carolina.
Richardson is currently the General Counsel and COO of BDV Solutions, a Greenville-based consulting company specializing in legal immigration solutions to help resolve labor shortages in industries across the United States. His company works with hundreds of companies including Chick-Fil-A, McDonalds, Wendy’s, and thousands of foreign nationals from around the world. He also the founder of Argo, LLC, a consulting firm of former U.S. diplomats who provide advice on the immigration process. Richardson also manages his own immigration law practice - Cooper Richardson, PA.
Richardson is a thought leader on race and immigration. He has been featured in Mother Jones, Slate Magazine, Reuters, NPR, Embedded, All Things Considered, SCOTUS Blog, BBC, Georgia Public Radio, ProPublica, Intercept, and the Atlanta Constitution Journal. He has also been interviewed on MSNBC, CNN and CBS. Richardson has written several well-received opinion columns for the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, San Francisco Chronicle, Slate Magazine, Chicago Sun-Times, The Hill, and the Nation about immigration policy and race under Presidents Trump and Obama. His New York Times op-ed on diversity at the State Department spurred a Congressional bill on diversity which Richardson helped write. In addition, the Biden Administration, based on that op-ed, created the first ever Chief Diversity Officer for the State Department.
He has advised U.S. Senators and House members on a wide range of immigration and State Department issues including the Fairness for High Skilled Immigrants Act, the various travel bans, and diversity. He chaired the team that Mayor Pete Buttigieg’s immigration policy proposals and worked on immigration policy for Joe Biden’s campaign.
He is a graduate of Duke University School of Law and graduated summa cum laude from Emory University in 2003. He is also the co-author of the Historical Dictionary of the Civil Rights Movement (2014).
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Kelly Lockwood Primus
CEO
Leading NOW
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Kelly Lockwood Primus, Chief Executive Officer, oversees the strategy, research development and client relationship management to help our clients reach their global diversity goals.
Prior to being appointed CEO of Leading NOW, Kelly was CEO & President of its Leading Women brand.
Prior to joining Leading Women, Kelly was a member of the executive team for WFF, a national non-profit women’s leadership organization. As Vice President for Marketing & Communications, Kelly was instrumental in returning the organization to prominence in the foodservice industry as the authority for women’s leadership development, and drove participation in the organization’s live and virtual events to “sell-out” status.
Before her time working within women’s leadership development organizations, Kelly was a member of the executive team at Primo Water, a publicly held CPG company, in the role of Vice President, Marketing & Communications. Recruited pre-IPO, Kelly was challenged with articulating the brand promise, creating the brand communication strategy and instituting integrated marketing campaigns to drive retailer and consumer brand preference.
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Karen Worthy
VP of Talent Acquisition and Employee Experience
Booster
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Karen Worthy enjoys solving the most challenging problems in the industry and is known for her ability to make difficult problems seem simple. As VP of Talent Acquisition and Employee Experience at Booster, she leads a team that is revolutionizing how the industry hires for both field workers and corporate employees. With Booster’s accelerated growth trajectory, her team has mastered high volume recruiting in hard-to-fill roles such as CDL truck drivers.
Karen is a self-proclaimed data geek, an engineering and business graduate, and a mom of three amazing boys. Her resume boasts companies such as Amazon and Procter & Gamble, which have prepared her for her role leading change and growth within the startup world of Booster.
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Hari Kolam
CEO
Findem
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As the CEO and co-founder of Findem, Hariharan is responsible for driving the company’s overall direction and strategic growth, as well as overseeing its day-to-day operations. He’s a serial entrepreneur and accomplished technologist, with nearly two decades of experience building companies and creating trailblazing technology solutions.
Hariharan was previously the co-founder and CTO of Instart, where he led the company’s technical vision and translated customer requirements into realizable, innovative solutions. During his time at Instart, he co-authored more than 50 patents. Hariharan has also held senior-level engineering positions with Aster Data, where he worked on all features across the entire development stack, as well as with the Solaris Cluster group at Sun, where he contributed critical modules of software.
Hariharan holds a master’s degree in computer science from Stony Brook University and a bachelor’s degree in Computer Science from NIT Nagpur, India.