Our Authors

Lauren Maillian is a serial entrepreneur, named by Essence magazine to the Class of 2013 African-American Shot Callers. She is the Founder and CEO of Luxury Market Branding, a strategic marketing company, and is a Founding Partner at Gen Y Capital Partners, an early stage venture firm focused on investments in mobile and consumer facing technology-enabled companies. At 19, Lauren founded a boutique winery that quickly became an internationally recognized award-winning wine brand, making her the youngest self-made winery owner in the country. She served as the Chief Operating Officer of the company from inception through the brand’s acquisition in 2011.

Lauren often speaks about entrepreneurship, female leadership, marketing, branding, business development, and early stage venture at various conferences and institutions including Harvard, Columbia University, Cornell, and the University of Virginia. She judges the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship’s (NFTE) business plan competition and the incoming classes of Start-Up Chile, an incubator program in support of entrepreneurship sponsored by the Chilean Government. Lauren is an active adviser to several startups and is a mentor to the Pipeline Fellowship and the Women Innovate Mobile Accelerator. Lauren’s work has been featured in national media outlets including Forbes, American Express OPEN Forum, Fast Company, and Black Enterprise. In 2011, she was recognized at The White House by the Kauffman Foundation as an Empact100 Award honoree, the top 100 entrepreneurs under 30.

Simon Mainwaring is founder and CEO of We First, the award-winning strategic consultancy that has built many of today’s most iconic purpose-driven brands from TOMs to Virgin to Timberland. He regularly contributes to Forbes, The Guardian, Fast Company, and HuffPost on corporate purpose, culture building, and impact branding. Mainwaring is a member of the Advisory Council of Conscious Capitalism LA, the Steering Committee of the Business Alliance for the Future, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts in London.

Alex Malchow is 16 and a student at the prestigious St. John’s College High School in Washington D.C. where he is an honor roll student and a starter on the school’s nationally recognized football team.

At the time he and his father started the book, Alex was eight and struggled with dyslexia. So when he began work on the book, he still could not read. He later enrolled in the Lab School in Washington D.C., which teaches children with learning differences. After 12 months of intensive work there, he was reading at his grade level.

Hal Malchow is a nationally recognized political consultant who has worked for candidates at the presidential level all the way down to local offices. His work has won numerous creative awards and he helped pioneer the use of statistical modeling and data mining techniques in the political arena. After becoming discouraged by the negative character of political campaigns, he closed his firm in 2010. He continues to do some consulting and is looking forward to a writing career.

Malina Malkani, MS, RDN, CDN, is the pediatric registered dietitian, bestselling author, sought-after speaker, and single mom of three behind the Instagram and TikTok handle @healthy.mom.healthy.kids. A top nutrition influencer dedicated to educating her audience of over 140,000 followers about infant and childhood nutrition, Malina is a trusted expert in local and national media outlets and owns a nutrition consulting company, blog, and private practice at MalinaMalkani.com that helps caregivers feed their babies, families, and selves with confidence. Her overarching mission is to reshape the nutritional habits and behaviors of our next generation, optimize their long-term health, and reduce the likelihood of the development of food allergies, obesity, cancer, and chronic disease. Malina is the author of Simple and Safe Baby-Led Weaning and the creator of two online courses for parents: Safe & Simple Baby-Led Feeding and Solve Picky Eating. When she’s not working, Malina can usually be found running around with her kids, cooking, hanging out on Instagram, or making music.

Steven G. Mandis is an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. He also teaches at Columbia’s Masters of Sports Management Program. His previous award-winning book, What Happened to Goldman Sachs: An Insider’s Story of Organizational Drift and its Unintended Consequences, is a rigorous analysis of if, why, and how the culture of Goldman Sachs changed. After leaving Goldman Sachs, Mandis cofounded a multibillion-dollar global alternative asset management firm that was a trading and investment banking client of Goldman’s. Mandis holds an AB from The University of Chicago and an MA, MPhil, and PhD from Columbia University. Mandis was a two sport varsity athlete in college and currently competes in triathlons. He’s completed the Ironman World Championships in Kailua-Kona, Hawaii, Ironman 70.3 World Championships in Zell Am See-Kaprun, Austria, and Escape from Alcatraz in San Francisco, California. He was awarded the Ellis Island Medal of Honor, given to children of immigrants who exemplify a life dedicated to community service.