Melanie de Vries
,
@melanie-de-vries/
Melanie de Vries is a growth strategy guru with a history of successfully developing marketing and sales strategies that build and improve profitability. Her focus is on identifying plans and tactics for driving rapid growth and building new innovations that obtain and keep clients and expand market share. Melanie mixes her extensive knowledge of business strategy and entrepreneurship with effective processes to tailor solutions for each organization’s specific needs. She also brings her passion, enthusiasm, and compassionate shoulder to cry on to every client meeting.

Sessions
Catch the speaker at these sessions
Michigan Entrepreneur Summit (MES) was originally founded in 2021 by 5 five University of Michigan students (Ryan Morrison, Addison Viener, Adithya Sanjay, Adam Schreck, Brooke Dukellis) as a way to bring the winners of various pitch competitions across University of Michigan together to compete for the title of "most likely founder to pursue entrepreneur as a career" and "most likely startup to be successful post-graduation."Amulya Parmar, founder of LeaseMagnets won the competition in 2021 and used the $5k check to open his first HQ in Ann Arbor. That summer, he was accepted into YCombinator, and he is still scaling his startup 2.5 years later (delivering 500k tours and $100M in leases). Ryan led the charge with Adithya to bring the competition back in 2022 after 4/5 of the original team graduated and moved on to corporate / startup careers. Oliver Broacto and Tabs Chocolate won the competition in 2022, and they did over $1M in revenue selling their aphrodisiacal chocolate on Tik Tok. Today, MES is a part of Ryan's original vision for a community called Maximize, designed as a community for founders to join as students and grow together beyond the college classroom and campus. MES is one of three programs created by Maximize, including their non-profit Venture Catalyst incubator and Venture Studio. Michigan Entrepreneur Summit (MES) 2023 is a partner of Michigan Tech Week. Co-hosted by Ryan, Founder of Maximize and Michael Meadows, Co-Founder of Protein Pints, the vision for this year is to bring the top student startups from across the state of Michigan to compete for the summit in-person for the first-time. To learn more about MES, our community and programs supporting student founders, send us an email: info@michiganentrepreneursummit.com
Sessions
Catch this year's 70+ speakers at MTW 2023 from October 9-12.
Where’s the event?
MTW 2023 will take place at the University of Michigan football stadium - Big House! - on Oct 9-10 and at Venue 4M on Oct 11-12. Doors open at 8:00 am and the event programming experience will run from 9:00 am - 5:00 pm (EST.)
Food & Drinks will be provided!
Sharon Matusik
Peter Walker
Kathryn Snorrason, David Woessner, Sasi Prabhakaran PhD, Rahul Gayam, Rasmus Bendvold
Carla Walker-Miller, Lisa Lunsford, Maria Thompson
Charles Hudson
Jenn Onwenu & Tim Lewis
Lara Pender, Alison Accavitti, Edi Demaj, Kevin Heras
Priya Gogoi, Chase Lee, Ben Chehebar, Matthew Burns, Adrian Fortino
James Meeks
Priya Gogoi, Margarita Hernandez, Kalyan Handique, Roger Newton, Len Middleton, David Bloom
Lisa Katz, Sarah Gretter PhD, Maragarita Hernandez PhD, Tom Steward, Joe Thiel
Chris Yeh
Lieutenant Governor Garlin Gilchrist II
Hilary Doe, Mayor Christopher Taylor & Mayor Mike Duggan
Stacy Brown-Philpot, Greg Schwartz
Devon Townsend & Mike Vichich
Johnnie Turnage & Hill Harper
Justin Turk, Chelsea Plant, Kurt Baumgarten
Austin Yarger, Vanessa Lane, Natalie Fang, Ben Kvalo, Fred Schmidt
Terrance J.L. Reeves, Ashton Keys, Shalanda Armstrong
Dhani Jones & Ted Velie
Kelly Sexton, Jeni Olney, Kristen Wolff, Stewart Thornhill, Kurt Skifstad
Ryan Morrison, Michael Meadows, Melanie de Vries, Jonn Behrman, Ian Washington
Meagan Ward
Nia Batts & Sophia Bush
Ryan Landau, Chening Duker, Deirdre Roberson, Terra Osman
Lindsey Kilbride, Will Fung, Alison Todak, Jim Tenzillo, Chris Thomas, Joe Kaiser
MTW 2023 Now On Sale
Body: Tickets are on sale now until October 8. Tickets will be available at the gate.
Good news! Thanks to the generosity of our sponsors, we are pleased to offer a limited number of scholarship tickets for individuals to attend MTW 2023. If you would like to request a scholarship ticket, please complete this form and our selection team will contact you if you are eligible for a scholarship ticket.
If you’re interested, tell us about yourself by submitting a scholarship application by 10/4!