Chicago 2026
Join visionary entrepreneurs and veterans who led America’s hardest missions both on the battlefield and in the boardroom for 2 days at First Division Museum. Create 5-star relationships for human, technological and financial capital.
No Keynotes. No Pitch Fest. No Workshops
August 22–23, 2026 · 9 AM–5 PM · Cantigny, Wheaton, IL
Who is in the room
You’ll rub shoulders with founders and operators who have driven over $13 Billion in combined revenue, along with a handful of our veteran authors who have forgotten more about leadership than the typical CEO will ever know. They include:
This is not a lecture. You’ll have unfiltered, meaningful conversations you can’t get anywhere else.
The word for the people at this table is operator. It means the same thing in both worlds: someone who gets it done.
Only 30 Seats Available
Here are a few of the Visionaries you’ll be seated with. Click to get a sneak peak.
Inside the room
The format
The whole room moves through all three across the two days. You bring your challenge to each one, and you become a resource in everyone else’s. Human capital, financial capital, technological capital, worked in order.
Go-to-market, and the fight for your first real ground.
Bring your hardest challenge. The room becomes your board and goes to work on it: the positioning, the introductions, the resources, the next ten moves. You leave with a written go-to-market plan built for your business, revealed back to the room on day two.
Raising capital, with the people who write the checks in the room.
Pitch your business to founders and capital partners who have raised and deployed real money. Get your deck read honestly, your ask sharpened, and, when the fit is there, a conversation with someone who can actually fund it.
AI and the systems that let you scale.
What is working right now: AI agents, documented process, the operational build that multiplies a small team. The wins and the pitfalls, from people putting it to work today, not selling it.
What happens in the room
This is an invitation-only room, so what is said here stays here. Roundtable discussions are privately recorded for participant use only. We protect who said what. The outcomes below are real and recent. Discretion is strictly enforced.
A consultant closed $63,000 in business on day 1.
Members booked to speak at the American Cancer Society, Vistage, Kaiser, and Oxford.
A startup was introduced to a $500,000 angel investor.
3 members were offered seats on boards.
A founder was offered $2,000,000 in funding out of a 15-minute conversation.
A client was invited to the Presidential inauguration.
“This is not random networking. This is the room where meaningful relationships are engineered for your trajectory.
What you leave with
Every attendee walks out with a private, custom go-to-market playbook, built from your own session at the table. Not a template. Your positioning sharpened into the language your buyer actually uses. Your ideal client mapped in detail, down to where they spend their attention and what makes them buy. A named list of strategic partners who can open doors, with real contacts. And a 90-day plan of exactly what to do first.
The room works on your business. The playbook captures it, so the value does not walk out the door when the two days end.
Built from a recording of your hotseat, refined into a working document. Confidential to you.
Service before self
This room has always run on one rule: you give first. You show up to help before you ask for anything. That is not a marketing line. It is the reason the introductions here are real and the reason people come back.
It is also the exact code the leaders in this room lived by in uniform. Service before self. Take care of the mission and the people, and trust that it comes back around. We are not borrowing that idea for a weekend. We are finally holding the Roundtable in a place that already believes it.
We are meeting at the First Division Museum, on ground named for the Battle of Cantigny, the first major American offensive of World War I, fought by the 1st Infantry Division. In the year America turns 250, we are spending two days honoring the people who served, and doing the kind of work that builds something worth serving.
The venue
Cantigny is a 500-acre park in Wheaton, the former estate of Chicago Tribune publisher Robert R. McCormick, who served with the 1st Infantry Division in World War I. Today it holds formal gardens, the Cantigny Golf course, and the First Division Museum, built to honor the soldiers of the Big Red One from 1917 to today.
No hotel ballroom. No conference center. 2 days inside a place built around service, roughly 20 minutes from O’Hare and 35 from downtown Chicago.
Meals are on site. Coffee, lunch, and a working dinner are included both days.
1S151 Winfield Road, Wheaton, IL 60189
Stay nearby
Carol Stream and Warrenville sit just a few miles from Cantigny. Lisle and Naperville are a short drive south. Book direct with any of these.
30 seats
Every seat is vetted, and there are only 30 of them. When they are gone, they are gone. Our last Roundtable in Malibu sold out. Chicago will too.
If you want to be in the room where the front lines meet the bottom lines, apply now.
Applications are reviewed within 48 hours. Alliance members: your access is complimentary, and your first guest is included.
Born and raised in rural Kerala, India, with no electricity, Mohan earned a BE in Mechanical Engineering before moving to the U.S. for an MS in Aeronautics from Caltech and a PhD in Astrodynamics and Control from UCLA. He also earned a JD and has served over 38 years on the California Bar.
At NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory he developed navigation algorithms for the Viking, Pioneer, Voyager, and Mariner missions to Venus, Mars, and Jupiter. Later, at the Aerospace Corporation, he helped design and implement the Global Positioning System (GPS).
He founded and led Stamps.com (NASDAQ: STMP), raising over $450 million and culminating in a $6.6 billion acquisition by Thoma Bravo. As co-founder of Envestnet (NYSE: ENV), acquired by Bain Capital for $4.5 billion, he built its India operations to over 2,000 staff. He has authored five books and today advises startups, investment banks, and VCs as an angel investor and board member.
Kevin Leonard is President and CEO of Satellite Services, Inc., supporting the DoD, DHS, and other clients across the United States. He previously served as CEO of Technica LLC and senior vice president for Contingency Operations at Fluor and Vectrus, supporting the largest IDIQ in DoD, the LOGCAP V program.
Kevin brings 33 years of distinguished service in the U.S. Army, retiring at the rank of Major General. In his final assignment, as commander of the Military Surface Deployment and Distribution Command, he led over 4,000 employees across a global defense distribution enterprise providing end-to-end deployment to meet the nation’s objectives.
He earned an MBA from Oklahoma City University and a master’s in strategic studies from the U.S. Army War College. In 2014 he received the NDIA ‘Logistician Emeritus’ award for his work countering the IED threat in Southwest Asia.
Sally is a 3x Inc. 5000 CEO, keynote speaker, and leadership devotee with decades of experience in coaching, leadership development, and recruitment. As CEO of Bryant Group, a global leadership and recruitment firm, she has guided the company to record growth, serving many of the world’s top colleges, universities, healthcare systems, and nonprofits.
Before Bryant Group, she served on the President’s executive leadership team as Dean of Advancement at Marymount College, where she grew annual fundraising 15-fold over five years, and founded her own philanthropy consulting practice serving some of the largest universities in the country.
She has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, highlighted by Vistage Worldwide on Women in Leadership, and awarded CASE’s John T. Shamblin Jr. Top Hand award, bestowed only eight times since 1991. She holds a BA in English/Business summa cum laude from Washington State University, where she graduated Phi Beta Kappa.
Veronica Deraleau is a multidisciplinary entrepreneur with a career spanning the military, opera, and B2B startups in energy, real estate, private equity, and financial technology. What drives her across these fields is a deep commitment to serving others and making a difference in the lives of her clients.
As an implementation leader, she applies a creative lens to operational excellence, beginning with a deep understanding of her clients’ pain points and anticipating their needs, to create simple, elegant solutions that unlock lasting success.
In her book ‘Making Money Is Simple,’ she details how she paid off over $100,000 of debt in three years on a single median salary. Her Money Simple program pairs financial education with implementation, tactical asset management, and coaching accountability. In her free time she enjoys coaching, singing, and time outdoors with her husband Mike and their dogs.
Craig Henzel is Chief Operating Officer and CFO of Blue Orb LP, a renewable infrastructure platform focused on turning high-quality energy opportunities into financeable, executable projects. His work sits at the intersection of operating discipline, capital structure, governance, and project execution.
Before Blue Orb, he held senior finance, transformation, and operating roles across Genpact, Accenture, GE, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, and AstraZeneca.
He also served 30 years as a U.S. Coast Guard officer, where he learned to lead teams under pressure, manage risk, and execute in high-consequence environments. He connects with investors, infrastructure operators, family offices, and capital providers who understand project finance and the value of disciplined execution.
Doug Crowe won the Dale Carnegie Highest Achievement award in high school and became one of the organization’s youngest trainers. He graduated from Northwestern University with a B.S. in speech.
He is a personal brand specialist, media insider, and publisher. His ghostwriting company, Author Your Brand, has launched over 500 books to #1 bestseller status on Amazon. His clients include C-suite professionals from Apple, NASA, P&G, Touchstone Pictures, Louis Vuitton, Stamps.com, the NFL, Bank of America, and the U.S. Coast Guard, Navy, and Marines.
Doug has contributed to Entrepreneur Magazine, the Chicago Tribune, MSN Money, and Yahoo Finance, and been featured on Bloomberg and CBS News. His team has collectively transacted over $16 billion in mergers, acquisitions, and public offerings. He is an avid scuba diver, instrument-rated private pilot, photographer, magician, husband, and father of three.
