Kerry and Ashlee are changing the way people see women innovators and entrepreneurs. They are thought leaders in our community (Nashville) and it's an honor to have them speak and mentor young girls every year at our Girls To The Moon events.
Kerry Schrader & Ashlee Ammons
Founders of Mixtroz and Award Winning Entrepreneurs
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Birmingham , AL
Kerry Schrader & Ashlee Ammons
Biography
Named to Entrepreneur Magazine's inaugural list of "100 Powerful Women" in 2019; Kerry Schrader and Ashlee Ammons are a dynamic Mother/Daughter duo in the new wave of entrepreneurs creating services to make work and play simpler and more satisfying. Without formal tech backgrounds, they've blazed trails in the male-dominated tech startup space with their company Mixtroz, which increases engagement and collects data at gatherings.
Following remarkable progress in 2017, Team Mixtroz kicked off 2018 by joining Alabama's prestigious Velocity Accelerator and starring on an episode of A+E 's series "Rooster & Butch." In May 2018, the duo was selected to pitch to AOL Co-Founder Steve Case during the Rise of the Rest tour stop in Birmingham, AL and secured a $100,000 investment from Cases' Revolution Fund. The team went on to close a $1M round of funding, making them the 37th and 38th black females to ever close a $1M+ round of funding.
Kerry Schrader BBA, MBA, is the Cofounder/CEO of Mixtroz. She is the 37th Black Female to ever raise over $1M in pre-seed funding. Kerry has more than 25 years' experience positively impacting the human assets of large companies including Ford, Alcoa, and Sears Holdings Corporation. Mrs. Schrader has vast experience developing programs that engage work-forces with results that increased productivity and bottom-line profitability. Mrs. Schrader is a board member of Creative Startups, Birmingham's inaugural Mayor's Small Business Council, and UAB's O'Neal Comprehensive Cancer Center's Advisory Board. In addition, Mrs. Schrader is a proud member of Delta Sigma Theta Sorority. Most importantly, however, K E R R Y is a breast cancer survivor!
Ashlee Ammons holds a BA in Mass Communications and Public Relations from Baldwin Wallace University. She is the 38th Black Female to raise over $1M in pre-seed funding. Prior to Cofounding Mixtroz with her mother, Kerry Schrader, Ashlee established a career as an Events Producer working with an impressive list of A-listers including Oprah Winfrey, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Jay-Z, as well as legacy brands like Moet Hennessy and Coca-Cola. Ashlee serves on the boards of the Nashville Entrepreneur Center and Tech Birmingham, is a 2019 Birmingham Business Journal 40 Under 40 recipient as well as Birmingham 40 Under 40 of the decade and Business Journals National Rising Star. In addition, Ashlee is a proud member of Delta Zeta Sorority where she was named to their first-ever 35 Under 35 in 2018.
Kerry Schrader & Ashlee Ammons
Featured Videos
Current: Mixtroz Founder Reel
Time 05:55
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Kerry Schrader & Ashlee Ammons
Featured Keynote Programs
How We Built Mixtroz
With NPR’s award winning podcast in mind, Mixtroz founders Kerry Schrader and Ashlee Ammons take the audience through their unconventional startup journey step-by-step. Hearing the backstory, in detail, the good, the bad and the ugly is the spark to ignit the innovator in us all.
Kerry Schrader - The Unlikely Tech CEO
From Senior HR Leader to Tech Startup CEO
In this talk, Kerry speaks about the ebbs and flows of her career. From managing a McDonalds, to landing the dream job at Ford Motor Company as a single mother. She then digs into her experience working toward a Master's degree while working full-time and building a new family. In the second part of her talk, Kerry talks IPO and subsequent sabbatical and how that led her to take a deep dive into Entrepreneurship with her daughter leaving a 6-figure corporate salary behind while remaining primary breadwinner. Not long after beginning the entrepreneurial journey, Kerry was diagnosed with Breast Cancer, fought back and defeated it through a combination of Faith, Family and Focus on Mixtroz. Mrs. Schrader finishes with her experience as a Black, Female, Tech founder and the steps taken to successfully raise capital while growing a tech startup.
Ashlee Ammons - Approach Anything Like It’s Everything
A single conversation with a student peer while in Undergrad led Ashlee to the internship of a lifetime with NBA star, LeBron James. Her connection to "King James" opened doors in New York City rising from Executive Assistant to Director of Events, producing for A-Listers like Oprah Winfrey, Leonardo DiCaprio and Jay-Z all by age 26. When Ashlee's time in NYC began to expire and her new life as a tech entrepreneur began to take shape she talks risking it all, the life she built, while hustling to keep her venture afloat while also battling depression. This is a story of unrelenting hustle while breaking barriers and starting the path toward her life's greatest work - Mixtroz. When Ashlee started in tech, she was known as a "Quad Outsider" (Black, Female, Non-Technical, Tech Founder) today, She is Ashlee Ammons, 38th Black Female Tech Founder to Raise $1M in funding (the 37th is her Mom and Co-Founder), President at Mixtroz, Inclusion Activist and Nasty Woman.
This extraordinary story engages the audience to realize the power of physical connection in a digital world and inspires attendees to "use the skills that they have today to build the life that they want tomorrow".
This 45-min keynote pairs well with a Mixtroz 'mix' where your attendees will use the technology that Ashlee outlines in the talk, move from their phone to face-to-face in real time increasing their engagement, kicking off the connection and collecting valuable data for you.
Kerry Schrader & Ashlee Ammons
Featured Reviews
Kerry Schrader & Ashlee Ammons
Featured Articles & Resources
Mixtroz raises $1M in funding round
Mixtroz LLC has just picked up another big win.
The tech startup, which came to Birmingham for the Velocity Accelerator and won the Birmingham Rise of the Rest competition,...
Mother-Daughter Tech Founders Share Keys To Balancing Family And Business
BRITTNEY OLIVER Sep, 04, 2018
It was the end of a long four months for Ashlee Ammons and Kerry Schrader, who just wrapped up their participation in the 2018...
Mixtroz Hopes To Make Networking Events Valuable Again With 'LinkedIn, But Live' Mobile App
Powderkeg Pitch Night at Downtown Speak EasyPOWDERKEG.COM
The ugly truth about a lot of networking events is they just don’t deliver the results they promise.
“These...
How These Black Women With A Startup Became 'Unhidden Figures'
Within moments of arriving at the Collision tech conference, I met two women with t-shirts that read,
Black
Female
Founder
Fund Me
The duo in question is a...
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