Ivy Walker

Ivy Walker is a serial entrepreneur, a business coach, an award-winning director and Executive Producer, a writer, and an instructor.

She is currently Co-Founder and CEO of Helios Digital Learning -a company that uses digital storytelling to help business professionals and students improve their ethical decision-making, Founding CEO of Purpose Workforce Solutions -a company that specializes in connecting the aspirations of disconnected youth to job opportunities, and Founder of AskCoda-a prelaunch, stealth mode tech startup.

As an entrepreneur, Ivy has successfully launched boot-strapped, angel-funded and venture-backed businesses in multiple industries.

She has launched and run businesses that had as few as two employees and businesses that had more than 150 employees. She has both successes and failures and has learned equally from both.

In addition to her entrepreneurial pursuits, Ivy's background includes successful stints at global companies in the consulting and investment banking sectors as well as experience running not-for-profits and social ventures. This wide range of experience makes her uniquely qualified to help entrepreneurs achieve the success they are looking for in their own businesses.

As a business coach, Ivy has coached worked with more than 200 hundred business owners through both a non-profit accelerator where she served as Executive Director and through her own coaching practice. She has worked with entrepreneurs at every stage of the entrepreneurial journey including pre-launch start-ups and entrepreneurs exiting mature businesses.

As an instructor, Ivy currently teaches an ethics and leadership course at Northwestern University where she holds an adjunct faculty appointment. She also teaches risk management to entrepreneurs as a seminar through an adjunct faculty appointment at the Kellogg School of Business at Northwestern University. Ivy has at taught entrepreneurial finance courses at both Northwestern University and the University of Illinois at Chicago.

Ivy has produced and directed two award-winning documentaries. She served as an Executive Producer on the documentary All the Queen's Horses which created by Helios Digital as a tool to teach business owners and government officials about the perils of fraud and willful blindness. All the Queen's Horses was the number one documentary in the country when it was released in April 2018. Ivy directed Blind Spots, a documentary short, which won two Telly Awards in 2018.

Ivy is actively involved in the community through her board service at Gateway Foundation, a substance use disorder treatment organization, Bottom Line which helps first generation college students successfully get into and through college, and the Chicago Public Library system.