Utah Business is proud to present the inaugural cohort of our Utah Business Leaders of the Year award. These 12 honorees represent the greatest accomplishments of Utah’s business community in 2023 and were selected by the Utah Business editorial team.

he initial spark was lit in August 2022. Trent Mano, an attendee of Los Angeles Tech Week, was traveling between events in the back seat of his Uber. As the enthusiastic founder of several successful startups, including Convoi Ventures and the Sego Awards, Mano recognized a genius idea when he saw it. By the time his ride was over, he’d purchased UtahTechWeek.com.

Soon after, he discussed the prospect of a Utah Tech Week with his friend and colleague Kat Kennedy over lunch. “I was like, ‘Let’s do this. Let’s start this,’” Mano says. “And she’s like, ‘Yeah, of course we’re going to do this.’”

Kennedy is no stranger to scaling massive developments herself. She took a firsthand role in building the training platform Degreed into a multi-billion dollar company in San Francisco. More recently, she has led Utah venture capital firm Kickstart Fund into its role as one of the most prominent investment teams in the Wasatch Front.

But even Kennedy was surprised by how quickly Utah Tech Week took off in January 2023. It attracted over 90 host companies, which offered hundreds of hours of community-driven events. “It was within weeks. Six weeks, from idea to execution,” she says. “It’s a testament to the community’s desire to continue to build community and an ecosystem.”

That ecosystem is big for both Mano and Kennedy. Mano has a background in building community organizations in the Silicon Slopes scene, having participated in the Utah Valley Chamber of Commerce from 2013 to 2015. According to Mano, the chamber approached him during that time and said, “We know you know a bunch of people. We have no insight into what’s happening in tech and startups, but we know it’s blowing up. Come start a program for us.” Mano’s efforts, which would lead to the creation of Convoi, were among the first to build a community in the Utah tech sector.

Meanwhile, Kennedy was building up Degreed in Silicon Valley. “You could reach out to anyone, no matter their seniority, and I guarantee they would grab coffee with you at the Rosewood,” she says. “It’s a very collaborative ecosystem. ‘How can we make this a better place to be?’ That’s also what makes Utah such a special place.”

Kennedy describes 2014 to 2016 as a period of transformation for Utah, claiming that was when the community started to come together. “That’s what I appreciate so much about Utah at large,” she says. “It’s an ecosystem that cares for each other, where individuals want to create something grander than themselves. That’s what breeds a lot of the magic.”

The magic is certainly at work. Utah Tech Week adopts a strictly hands-off approach; other than an introductory session, programming is entirely in the hands of the community—and that community is running with it.

“Ninety hosts [in 2023],” Mano repeats. “A real barn-raising experience. It’s insane that our community was able to do that, and I think it’s going to be a decent amount more this year as well.”