2011 Silicon Bayou 100: 51-60

51. Jessica White Shahien

Jessica Shahien is the Executive Director of 504ward and lives to put the “elation” in “relationship” between you and the Big Easy, acting as the Go-To Guru and Answer Ninja for all questions beginning “how?” and ending “in New Orleans?” On LinkedIn. On Twitter.

52. Joe Ellis

Joe is the Lead Developer at Squarefour Digital Media, a New Orleans based web development firm specializing in building nice websites and rich internet applications. He is influential in the New Orleans developer community with a big hand in RubyBayou, HackDat code competition, and the RubyConf #ampblock party. On LinkedIn. On Twitter.

53. Megan Hargroder

Megan is the founder and CEO of Conversations LLC, a full-service social media strategy company, specializing in what’s most important when marketing your brand online: conversations. She works with small businesses and entrepreneurs on learning how to speak with their customers instead of TO them. As a former Launch Pad community manager, she’s plugged in on the Silicon Bayou and even writes a weekly social media column for us. On LinkedIn. On Twitter.

54. Shuchi Khurana

Shuchi has strong technical and business background with more than eleven years of experience.  He is a co-founder and current COO of Bioceptive, a producer of medical devices.  Recently, he has served as Product Line Manager at EWI Inc. and was responsible for the commercialization of six technologies. On LinkedIn. On Twitter.

55. Taylor Beery

Taylor is a serial entrepreneur and champion of entrepreneurship in New Orleans. Most recently Taylor co-founded and serves as CEO of VoteIt, a software that facilitates group decision making. With a background in business and government, Taylor has been exposed to all sorts of breakdowns in the group decision-making process. As a result, Taylor became determined to leverage technology and common sense to improve the way people make decisions.  On LinkedIn. On Twitter.

56. Chapter Spot: Brendan Finke & Joe McMenemon

Entrepreneurs Joe and Brendan founded ChapterSpot to solve the problems of group management. ChapterSpot’s online application allows groups (intially fraternities and sororities) to communicate efficiently, collect membership dues, share important files, maintain a member database and design a website all on one platform. On LinkedIn. On Twitter.

57. Tiffany Starnes

Tiffany is the Director of Social Media at FSC Inter@ctive. Tiffany has a strong marketing and PR background with a passion for emerging media and interactive strategy and the development of creative integrated marketing solutions. She is also a founding member of Net2NO, an original co-producer of TribeCon, and is unwavering in her support of the local interactive and technology community.  She was also chair of social media outreach for YLC with fellow FSC team member Andy Kutcher and loves teaching beginners how to use social media tools to accomplish their business goals. On LinkedIn. On Twitter.

58. Adele Tiblier

Adele  is the director of Interactive Strategy at FSC Inter@ctive. Adele brings an extensive background in search engine optimization, online marketing and promotion from over a decade of experience in the Internet industry. Her knowledge and expertise of online marketing has served the tourism, technology, retail and non‐profit sectors, among others. Adele also currently serves as an organizer for Net2NO and is organizing the Y@TPACK trip to SXSW. On LinkedIn. On Twitter.

59. Chris Laibe

Chris is a serial entrepreneur and experienced business executive. His passion for improving nurse job satisfaction is driven by the impact of healthcare shortages he witnessed as a citizen of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina. He founded Schedulist to bring tools to market that will help address this problem. Prior to Schedulist, he founded inFRONT in 2002, a leading provider of workforce management tools to the industrial, healthcare, and government markets. On LinkedIn. On Twitter.

60. Rebirth Financial: Xavier Cabo and Chonchol Gupta

Rebirth Financial provides a financial platform and assessment tool facilitating growth and small business lending in today’s difficult lending environment. The company’s founders created Rebirth Financial to reinvigorate local economies after the financial crisis of 2008. With beginnings in New Orleans, Louisiana, we are proving that financial innovation will be imperative to restarting the US economy. On LinkedIn: Chonchol & Xavier . On Twitter.

Support our sponsors:

  • Launch Pad is the premier co-working space in New Orleans with a variety of options to meet your workspace needs. Follow @launchpad on twitter and check them out in the IP Building!
  • VoteItrecently featured in TechCrunch, is making group decisions easy with a groundbreaking new web platform. Sign up for their Beta and follow them on twitter: @LetsVoteIt!
  • Flatstack is a development firm dually based in New Orleans and Kazan, Russia. The @Flatstack team works primarily in Ruby and if you can dream it up, they can build it for the web.
  • The Idea Village is a non-profit organization that has been helping entrepreneurs succeed in New Orleans for over 10 years. Follow @IdeaVillage on twitter to see them in action!
  • Baker Donelson provides top notch legal services across more than 30 practice areas including Business Technology, Intellectual Property, and Emerging Companies. With offices in New Orleans, Mandeville, and Baton Rouge they are the #1 source for entrepreneurial law. Follow them @Baker_Donelson.