Elevate Small Business Summit

Jennifer Kassar is the founder of Nightfall Bookkeeping, a LA and Big Bear based bookkeeping firm dedicated to helping small business owners stop dreading their finances and start understanding them. As a Quickbooks Certified ProAdvisor and a small business owner herself for over a decade, Jennifer brings a rare combination of technical expertise and real-world entrepreneurial empathy to every client she works with.

Her previous professional background is in cybersecurity and incident response - a field that sharpened her instinct for precision, protecting sensitive information, and solving complex problems under pressure. Over the years, while running her own side-hustles alongside her full-time career, she kep finding the same pain point among fellow small business owners: the back-office admin that nobody was getting paid to do, and nobody had time to figure out.

Nightfall Bookkeeping offers fully virtual bookkeeping services and advisory for business owners who want to take charge of their finances. Their philosphy is simple: accurate books aren't the goal - they're the tool.

Ryan Rael is the founder of Tight Ship CX, a consulting firm that helps businesses better understand their customers and improve how their operation support the customer experience.

He works with small to midsize businesses to uncover what their customers truly value, their goals, motivations, and pain points, and then helps teams align their processes, communication, and systems around those insights. The result is smoother operations, stronger customer relationships, and more consistent growth.

Ryan has experience across a wide range of industries, from e-commerce and manufacturing to local service-based businesses. His approach focuses on practical, data-informed improvements that are realistic to implement and designed to create lasting impact for both the business and its customers.

Marine Corps veteran and Lean Six Sigma certified, I spent a decade building software for Fortune500 companies and federal agencies: automation frameworks, high-volume email engines that generated millions in sales, and the 2020 Census digital platform. Microsoft selected me for their first bootcamp for transitioning service members, which launched my tech career and led to the creation of High Altitude IT.

Melissa Delaney brings a rare combination of luxury event experience, marketing strategy expertise, and genuine Big Bear roots to everything she does. She is the founder of Dapper & Chic, a Big Bear Lake-based event and branding company, and the President of PI Presence, where she helps businesses sharpen their message and build lasting brand presence.

Melissa's career began over 21 years ago at the iconic Four Seasons Biltmore in Santa Barbara, where she developed a foundation in high-end event production while still in college. From there, she went on to work alongside some of the most respected event firms in Los Angeles, producing Grammy parties, celebrity events, major product launches, and large-scale corporate experiences — earning a reputation for seamless execution and exceptional attention to detail.

Her career evolved into marketing strategy, where she draws on her Master's degree in Organizational Psychology to develop cross-functional brand and communications strategies for businesses of all sizes. Whether she's building a digital presence, crafting a content strategy, or producing a marquee event, her philosophy stays consistent: strategy over noise, clarity over clichés, and always putting the audience first.

In 2021, Melissa and her husband made the intentional move to Big Bear Lake — choosing to truly live where they vacation. That decision reflects the same values she brings to her work: intentionality, a commitment to community, and a deep appreciation for what makes a place worth investing in.

Damien S. Navarro is an entrepreneur, executive, and public speaker known for building, scaling, and transforming businesses at the intersection of technology, media, culture, and community. Over the past two decades, he has operated as both a founder and fractional CEO, leading small- to mid-sized companies, startups, and global nonprofits through periods of rapid growth, reinvention, and market expansion.

Damien founded Brighter Collective (formerly Earthbound Media Group), an award-winning media and technology company he built from the ground up into a global content and marketing platform, ultimately exiting in 2013. Since then, he has been repeatedly brought in as a strategic operator to stabilize, scale, and evolve organizations across media, entertainment, healthcare, hospitality, nonprofits, and emerging technology.

As CEO of VIMBY, Damien doubled revenue, expanded the organization’s global footprint by launching a streaming platform, and increased artist funding by more than 10x.

Today, Damien is deeply invested in the future of Big Bear’s economy and business community. He is the founder of The Sports Office, an investor in local real estate and hospitality ventures, and recently acquired the High Altitude Training Center in Big Bear Lake. In the first two months of ownership, he helped double memberships and revenue during the slower season while securing major corporate partnerships, athlete programs, and new business opportunities tied to sports tourism, wellness, and hospitality. His work is focused on helping Big Bear evolve into a stronger year-round destination economy.

Damien holds a BA from California State University, Fullerton and an Executive MBA from Quantic School of Business and Technology. He has spoken at CES, SXSW, and NAB, appeared on ABC, NBC, and NPR, and been featured in Forbes, the LA Times, and USA Today.