Advisory Board 

Sharon Aby 

Sharon Aby is a member of the e-Conversation Advisory Board. Sharon has held leadership positions with some of America's most innovative companies; Apple Computer and Microsoft. Sharon worked in Silicon Valley for Apple and also for a biotechnology company during their start-up years. The formative years of her career were spent helping to launch products that the market had never experienced, creating new markets where none had been before, building partners and channels, selling new ideas and promises, building high performance teams, and forging industry-best practices. Her years spent with Microsoft further developed her thinking about organizations, systems, and the discipline of marketing. After leaving Microsoft, Sharon founded Beyond Ideas, a firm which specializes in helping companies and professional practitioners to move their businesses forward with the pace of change and help them compete and thrive as 21st century companies. Sharon holds an MA from the University of Chicago. 

Mike Clough 

Mike is a member of the e-Conversation Advisory Board and a serial entrepreneur, who launched his first company, Southern Specialty Company, when he was only 12 years old. Since starting his first business, Mike has founded dozens of companies in various fields: Regal Distributors – wholesale distribution of music media (records & tapes); Fisherman’s International Supply House (FISH) – a mail order catalog business specializing in “do-it-yourself” lures and baits; Alternatives In Motivation (AIM) – motivational rallies and sales training; Creative Ideas – retail sales of motivational tapes and materials; Quantum Communications Group – retail cellular service (where he launched, incubated and sold dozens of rural cellular companies nationwide for its clients); Alliance Solutions – wholesale internet access, hosting and VoIP services through branded resellers; just to name a few. In addition to his entrepreneurial ventures, Mike has also held executive positions in several Fortune 500 companies such as Pitney Bowes, McCaw Cellular (now AT&T) – once the largest cellular company in America, Western Wireless (now Verizon) from which T-Mobile (formally VoiceStream) was founded, and was a member of the initial advisory board for the Cellular One Group.