Steve Walker/Civis Capital
Civis Capital, based in Knoxville, is the small business lending division of Civis Bank, a 109-years old community bank headquartered in Rogersville, TN. The bank prides itself on taking its hometown, community bank attitude and approach beyond the TN borders and throughout the southeast. Civis’s business lending territory is the southeastern USA including all of Florida. Civis Capital treats its clients with the attitude reflected in its motto – “Small Business is our Only Business.” The bank began life as Citizens Bank of East Tennessee, and recently changed the name to use the Latin word for “citizen” and reflect a broader geographic reach.
Steve Walker is a native of Atlanta and 25-year Georgia banking veteran, with the vast majority of that time in commercial loans. He spent the bulk of it in the “big bank” world, logging 12 years with Wachovia/Wells Fargo and 9 years with Regions Bank before moving to the community bank world, which he considers a breath of fresh air. Steve is a subject matter expert on SBA lending and the benefits it offers today’s entrepreneurs, especially the 7(a) program.
Dr. Michael Sytsma & Monique Wells/Building Intimate Marriages
Building Intimate Marriages aims to help individuals grow using marriage as the main agent of change. They do so by providing counseling, psycho-education, and resources focusing on relationship, premarital, marriage, and sex therapy. They also provide consulting and training to other professionals who specialize in the same arena.
They provide about 100 hours of counseling per week with the specialty areas of sex therapy (i.e., sexual conflict, sexual desire conflict, sexless marriages, painful sex, erectile dysfunction), affair recovery, premarital, communication problems, highly conflicted marriages, general marital discord. They also see individuals and families for a variety of typical counseling needs. They provide this counseling for a range of fees depending on the training and experience of the counselor. Session fees for interns can be as low as $10 per session.
They also have a sexual enrichment workshop for married couples – the Passionate Intimacy Workshop. This Friday/Saturday workshop has been shown in follow-up research to be highly effective in helping couples, with 75% stating what they learned was still having a positive change in their overall sexual satisfaction in marriage 6 months after the workshop. They provide the workshop about 4 times a year.
