Wilmington Renaissance Corporation announces Keynote Speaker for meeting

Tanya Menendez, Co-Founder and Chief Marketing Officer for Maker’s Row, will be keynote speaker at Wilmington Renaissance Corporation’s 2016 Annual Meeting: Wilmington’s Future Is in the Making, planned for May 10 at World Cafe Live at The Queen.

Maker’s Row, is a Brooklyn-based online marketplace for American manufacturers with a network of more than 10,000 manufacturers and 100,000 brands creating products in the USA.

“We are thrilled to have Tanya Menendez joining us as our keynote speaker,” said Carrie W. Gray, WRC’s Managing Director. “Maker’s Row is an incredible example of how start-ups and entrepreneurs can take an idea, make it come to life, scaling up their manufacturing and creating a thriving, sustainable business that can become an economic driver. Maker’s Row is achieving their vision of growing and expanding American manufacturing.”

Growing up in California, Menendez studied technology and its socioeconomic impacts on rural economies at UC San Diego. Her research in ethnography and sociology was published in several industry-leading journals. Before Maker’s Row, she  managed operations within Google, Goldman Sachs and a leather goods line, The Brooklyn Bakery. While at The Brooklyn Bakery, she came up with the idea to create a platform for entrepreneurs to be able to easily access American manufacturers.

Joining Menendez on the morning’s agenda will be Gov. Jack A. Markell, City of Wilmington Chief of Staff Gary Fullman and Dr. Evan Malone, CEO of NextFab Studio, a makerspace that will open later this year in Wilmington’s Creative District.