About our Team

 

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Karen A.D. Burton, 
Co-founder, CEO + Community Manager
karenb@spacelabdetroit.com
A marketer, designer, entrepreneur, and urban explorer, Karen has worked on large-scale architectural projects in Detroit and Las Vegas. Along her career journey, she found her passion for the business side of the building industry, and now works to help grow her client’s businesses. Her dream of a shared work environment for the design, construction and real estate industry has now come to life.

Bobby Burton
Co-founder + COO
bobbyb@spacelabdetroit.com
Bobby is an experienced accountant and auditor and was most recently a Vice President and IT Manager at Comerica Bank.  He is IT Advisory Board Chairman at Detroit’s Golightly Academy leading a group of representatives from major Detroit-area companies who promote funding for the program and provide mentoring, internships and scholarships for IT students.

Doreen Hunter-logo

Doreen Hunter
Resource Librarian + Administrative Assistant
doreenh@spacelabdetroit.com
Doreen supports our membership as administrative assistant and by maintaining the materials resource library. She has a degree in Interior Design (with a minor in Business Management) from Central Michigan University and has residential and commercial experience in her portfolio. She continues to work as an independent designer with great enthusiasm.

 

Meet our Advisors

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David Tarver, Founder, Urban Entrepreneur Initiative

David Tarver currently serves as founder and President of the Urban Entrepreneurship Initiative. David is a highly successful technology business executive with an incredible entrepreneurial journey and amazing success in corporate R&D, technology business startup, and social entrepreneurship. He began his professional career as a Member of Technical Staff and Group Supervisor at the legendary AT&T Bell Laboratories. In 1983, David launched Telecom Analysis Systems, Inc., a high-tech telecommunications instrumentation business. He sold that company twelve years later for $30 million and then, working as Group President for the buyer, built a telecommunications business with a market value in excess of $2 billion.

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Michelle Lewis, Owner, Painting with a Twist

After working 13 years as an architect in Detroit and then working with FEMA
to help to rebuild New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, Michelle opened
Painting With A Twist, an art studio offering easy-to-follow painting classes for
groups and individuals. She now owns three locations in Detroit, Ferndale and
Farmington, Michigan.