Heath Guinn is an entrepreneur and community leader based in Tennessee, and a leading voice for small business in the strategic visioning and planning taking place in the region. In early 2016, Guinn realized the potential and timing in the market was ripe to build a strong ecosystem for entrepreneurs as a leading component for economic development. With a vision of Northeast Tennessee becoming the “Epicenter of Rural Health Innovation” among other potential focuses, Guinn began connecting regional partners with mature communities and institutions in Tennessee and around the nation, leading to the development of recruitment pipelines for the best and brightest startups to participate in this regional vision.For regional startups, Guinn focuses his efforts in helping accelerate businesses through the creation of the regions only Startup Accelerator. It is Guinn’s goal to consistently encourage growing companies and local leadership as a method for recruitment and retention of bright young talent: “As a young entrepreneur, developing a strong network with regional leadership and connecting myself and our team into the community has always proved exponentially rewarding in both a business’s success and the personal development of the entrepreneur and their teams.” 2019 successes include helping startups with market access programs with regional employers, university and school systems, research agreements with ETSU, and more than $1,000,000 of investments for local startups.Additionally, Guinn is the President of the Inventor Center, a public-private partnership with the City of Kingsport to build a maker-space and community entrepreneur center. Through his leadership, the programming for the inventor center includes mentor-pairing the regions current and retired engineering experts with inspiring inventors in a facility designed for prototyping and product creation.Guinn is also a current member of the Kingsport Chamber Foundation Board, Educational Alignment Committee, Regionalism Committee of Northeast Tennessee, Two-county Action team for entrepreneurship in Sullivan and Washington counties and a TN achieves mentor.In between businesses and community involvement, Guinn enjoys international traveling, scuba diving, snowboarding and more. Heath Guinn can be reached at (423) 676-7228 or heathguinn@gmail.com.
Listed skills include Creative Direction, Social Media Marketing, Advertising, Web Design, and 30 others.
