Join us for the headlining event of Asheville Entrepreneurship Week with a morning of learning and inspiration from John Lowe and discover how he scaled Jeni's Ice Cream from $1.2M to $120M and creating the fastest growing ice cream brand in history. 

We are so fortunate to welcome Jordan LaFlure, Executive Editor of The Onion to join us on September 12th right before John Lowe's keynote at the Corporate Innovation Summit. 
Jordan's talk will be full of humor and insight into the innovation lifecycle of this cultural landmark. Don't miss it. 

The Onion is on an incredible and surprising innovation journey. After pivots into video, digital news and social media, changes in ownership multiple times, and now a reverse-pivot into print - The Onion is changing the media landscape again! 

For more on #AEW24, visit ventureasheville.com/aew

Event Agenda: 

8:30-9: Breakfast and networking

9:00: Opening Remarks and Sponsor Comments

9:05-9:30: Jordan LaFlure of The Onion, Opening Keynote

9:30 -10:30: John Lowe, Keynote and Q&A

10:30-11: Networking

John's Bio:

John Lowe is Managing Director of Amok Consumer Growth Fund, the challenger brand of private equity funds. It’s small. It’s new. And it’s got a strong point of view. The fund provides equity and expertise for early-stage consumer brands, writing checks between $500k and $5m in priced rounds, with a very engaged board role. John’s partners in Amok include Rachelle Lynch, the CPG sales guru with exits at Burt’s Bees, Plum Organics and Hu Chocolate, as well as a stint at Jeni’s where she took Jeni’s national while John took all the credit, and Timmy McCarthy, the first franchisee of Raising Cane’s Chicken Fingers, which he grew to 44 restaurants in Ohio before selling them back to the parent company. John was CEO of Jeni’s Splendid Ice Creams for 14 years, helping take it from 4 scoop shops in Columbus to 90+ today, and creating the fastest growing premium ice cream brand in grocery, as well as the nation’s largest direct-to-consumer ice cream business. Specialty Food Association named John its Business Leader of the Year in 2016, and Jeni’s was featured on the cover of QSR Magazine in 2020. John stepped out of the CEO role after finding his successor, but remains a board member and active cheerleader for the company. John is also a long-serving outside director of White Castle Company, and was an advisory board member of Watershed Distillery until its sale in 2023. He was a founding board member of the Columbus Chapter of Conscious Capitalism and serves on the board of the Columbus Youth Foundation. He is a graduate of University of Illinois, The Ohio State University Moritz College of Law, GE’s famed Manager Development Course, the Human Performance Institute’s Executive Course, and most recently, Harvard Business School’s Young American Leaders Program.

Jordan's bio:

As Executive Editor of The Onion, Jordan LaFlure spends much of his time claiming credit for the work of the world's finest editorial staff. He began his career in newspapers as a page designer in order to fulfill his lifelong dream of being laid off in his early 20s. After a brief stint in the thrilling, cutthroat world of medical journal layout, LaFlure was able to talk his way into a position at The Onion in 2011. His regrets are few but trending upward.

Questions?  Please contact Jeff Kaplan at jkaplan@ashevillechamber.org or 828-258-6137.