November 2026 Online Chapter Meeting
"Ideas Don’t Execute Themselves: Turning Innovation into Results"
Speaker:Tony Jeff, President & CEO, Innovate Mississippi
Date: November 17, 2026
Time: 12:00PM – 1:00PM
Duration: 1 Hour
Credits: 1 PDU
Speaker Bio:
Tony Jeff serves as the president and CEO for Innovate Mississippi. He’s a technology evangelist who speaks regularly on emerging trends and strategies in technology and innovation commercialization.
Tony has overseen the coaching of more than 2,000 entrepreneurial ventures and he’s consulted with companies that have successfully raised more than $200 million in private-equity financing. He led efforts to organize private investors into the Mississippi Angel Investor Network and has recently led efforts to help organize investors into regional investor funds, such as the North Mississippi Angel Fund, Central Mississippi Angel Fund & Mississippi Angel Fund.
Prior to joining Innovate Mississippi, Tony lead corporate teams in finance, sales, engineering and operations. While working for Florida Power & Light, General Motors and Delphi Automotive Systems, Tony successfully led a variety of cross-disciplinary teams in finance and sales for multi-billion dollar product lines. He also successfully negotiated new business contracts in excess of $1 billion. Formerly the finance manager for a $4.3 billion, 140,000 employee division, Tony left that position in 2002 to return to his home state of Mississippi and accept a position with Innovate Mississippi.
In addition to his corporate experience, Tony has started two businesses; one of those companies was based on a patent he co-invented and successfully brought to market. He was, at one time, a student of the Japanese language and a member of the Foreign Teaching Staff of AEON Corporation in Tokyo, Japan.
Tony holds a bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering from Mississippi State University. He also holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management and a masters of engineering from the McCormick School of Engineering at Northwestern University.
What You Will Learn
After this one-hour session, learners will be able to:
- Distinguish between a promising idea and a validated opportunity.
- Identify technical, market, and financial assumptions that create project risk.
- Use stage-based validation and decision points before committing additional resources.
- Recognize common execution problems, including premature scaling, inadequate customer validation, and stakeholder misalignment.
- Apply project-management discipline while preserving the flexibility needed for innovation.
