About Acquire Local

Acquire Local is an event series and community platform built around a growing challenge: thousands of small business owners are nearing retirement with no successor, while experienced professionals are looking for a meaningful next chapter. We bring these two groups together through education, conversation, and connection; we cover entrepreneurship through acquisition and employee ownership as paths to keeping local businesses alive.

Acquire Local was co-founded by Dana K. Michel and Lori Ann Pope.

Dana has built her career at the intersection of strategy, technology, and transformation, including a decade at Salesforce. Through her work with the Harlem Entrepreneurial Fund and NYC Business Solutions, she saw up close the challenges facing small businesses and the communities that rely on them. She now advises executives on turning their career capital into income, ownership, and options.

Lori Ann brings 20 years of experience in event architecture, from the Direct Marketing Association's 15,000-person annual conference to summits for Fortune 500 executives. Over eight years at Meta, she led global experiential strategy for the Boost portfolio, which helped more than 2 million small business owners grow in the digital economy.

Acquire a business. Preserve a legacy. Strengthen a community.