2025
Joe Vincent Management Seminar

Vanessa is Lead Investigator at Science of People. She is the bestselling author of Captivate: The Science of Succeeding with People, translated into 16 languages, and Cues: Master the Secret Language of Charismatic Communication. More than 60 million people watch her engaging YouTube tutorials and TEDx Talk.

Vanessa shares tangible skills to improve interpersonal communication and leadership, including her insights on how people work. She’s developed a science-based framework for understanding different personalities to improve our EQ and help us communicate with colleagues, clients, and customers.

Vanessa works with entrepreneurs, growing businesses, and trillion-dollar companies; and has been featured on CNN, BBC, CBS Mornings, Fast Company, Inc. Magazine, Entrepreneur Magazine, USA Today, The Today Show, and many more.

Millions visit her website every month for her methods turning “soft skills” into actionable, masterable frameworks that can be applied in daily life. Hundreds of thousands of students have taken her communication courses on Udemy, CreativeLive, LinkedIn, and her flagship course People School.

Vanessa is renowned for teaching science-backed people skills to audiences around the world including SxSW, MIT, and CES.  Her groundbreaking and engaging workshops and courses teach individuals how to succeed in business and life by understanding the hidden dynamics of people.

Speaking across the globe, Byron brings great enthusiasm and talent for deciphering our common destiny and unlocking business opportunities within it.

As a successful entrepreneur and award-winning futurist, Byron employs his perspective as a historian, futurist, and technologist to illuminate how the technology of today can solve some of our most daunting global challenges.

As a futurist, he understands the unprecedented technological change upon us and explores the dramatic transformation of society it will bring. As a technologist and entrepreneur, he knows how to manage change and inspire innovation, while still meeting the immediate obligations and realities of operating a business.

Byron speaks around world to both technical and non-technical audiences, and his keynotes and appearances include SXSW and TEDxAustin, Fortune500 companies (Google, Dell, FedEx, Nvidia, Johnson & Johnson), universities (Rice University of Texas, Queen’s University, TWU) and futurist conferences (TimeMachine, PICNIC Festival in Amsterdam, Wolfram Data Summit, and the IEEE Conference) among others.

Byron has enjoyed a wide range of success over 30 years, including two NASDAQ IPOs as well as the sale of three companies he founded. He has written six books that have been translated into a dozen languages. A highly sought-after keynote speaker, enlightening attendees across nations, Byron is an in-demand forward thinker in his field.

Andrew Cates is the owner of Cates Legal Group PLLC where he provides legal guidance to candidates, political action committees and nonprofits in local, state, and federal legislative & campaign law. He is the author of Texas Ethics Laws Annotated, the first and only complete legal annotation of campaign finance and lobby laws in Texas, now in the 8th edition. Cates is one of only 15 attorneys in the United States with a legal certification in Legislative & Campaign Law, and he serves as Founder & CEO of Sine Die Solutions, a new software platform that transforms the advocacy and civic engagement process for individuals and political organizations alike.

Cates previously served as General Counsel and Director of Government Affairs for the Texas Nurses Association, where he spent three legislative sessions leading advocacy efforts to secure over $25 million in state funding to end the nurse shortage. Prior to that role, he served as legislative attorney for the Texas Association of REALTORS® as well as lead attorney for the Texas Association of REALTORS® Political Action Committee, the largest PAC in Texas.

In the years leading up to this practice, Andrew spent three years at the Texas Capitol working for various state representatives and clerking the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence, lobbied for solar energy and healthcare clients, and worked in various areas of the law including mergers & acquisitions, healthcare, criminal prosecution, and criminal defense.

Cates is a Founding Member and Board Member for the State Bar of Texas Legislative & Campaign Law Section, where he spearheaded the petition to create the nation’s first legal specialization in Legislative & Campaign Law. Andrew received his B.A. in International Politics from Trinity University and his J.D. from Texas Tech School of Law in 2007. He currently lives in South Austin with his wife Nicole and son Dylan.