Meet The College HUNKS Team

Omar Soliman is the Co-Founder and Visionary of College HUNKS Hauling Junk & Moving®. As a business management major, Omar attended the University of Miami in Coral Gables, FL. During his senior year, he enrolled in the school’s entrepreneurship class and submitted his business plan for College H.U.N.K.S. to the Leigh Rothschild Entrepreneurship Competition. Omar won first place and $10,000 in the competition for his business concept, which included junk removal, moving labor services, and an online junk exchange. Omar has been named Top 30 Entrepreneurs in America Under 30 by INC Magazine, Top 35 Entrepreneurs Under 35 by Bisnow.com, and was an Ernst and Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award Finalist as well as a finalist for Tampa Bay CEO of the Year. He has appeared as a guest on FOX Business News, MSNBC, ABC’s Shark Tank, and Bravo’s Millionaire Matchmaker. Omar has been a guest speaker at numerous high schools, colleges, and business organizations across the country. His goal is to motivate and excite the younger generation about entrepreneurship so that they too can carve their own fun and exciting path through life, just as he continues to do each and every day with College HUNKS. Omar also plans to continue serving as a board member for a number of tech and service-based companies, including RoofRX.

Nick Friedman is the Co-Founder and Visionary of College HUNKS Hauling Junk & Moving®, the largest and fastest growing junk removal and moving franchise opportunity in North America. Nick started the business in college with his childhood best friend, and now business partner, Omar Soliman, in a beat up cargo van and has grown to over 130 franchises nationwide. He has since been named among the Top 30 Entrepreneurs in America Under 30 by INC Magazine and was named on the same list as Mark Zuckerberg, founder of Facebook, as one of the 30 most influential CEOs Under 30 by Under30CEO.com. Nick is also a two-time Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award Finalist. In addition, Nick has been featured in numerous business books and textbooks, as well as Forbes, Fortune, and many other national publications. He was also featured in a Newsweek story entitled “College Kid to Millionaire,” along with the founders of FedEx, Dell Computers, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. Nick also was a guest at the White House appearing with MTV on a panel about youth entrepreneurship. Nick’s company has appeared every year on the INC 5000 list of Fastest Growing US Companies, has been profiled numerous times on CNN, MSNBC, CBS, NBC, FOX News, and has appeared twice on the Oprah Winfrey Show. Nick has appeared as a guest on National Television Reality shows, including ABC’s Shark Tank, Bravo’s Millionaire Matchmaker, and CNBC’s Blue Collar Millionaires. As an author, Nick co-wrote a bestselling book along with his business partner, Omar Soliman, entitled “Effortless Entrepreneur: Work Smart, Play Hard, Make Millions” (Random House, 2010), which aims to motivate aspiring entrepreneurs with his fun and entertaining approach to business. Nick is a member of Young Presidents’ Organization (YPO), which is a global peer network with more than 22,000 members in more than 125 countries, all dedicated to becoming better leaders through education and idea exchange. The YPO companies employ more than 15 million people around the world and generate $6 trillion in annual revenues. Nick is also an active board member of the Entrepreneur’s Organization, is a founding member of the Young Entrepreneurship Council, and is a founding investor in the Gen-Y Capital Partners, which seeks to invest in young start-ups. In college, Nick received his Bachelor's Degree in economics from Pomona College in California where he competed for four years on the Men’s Varsity Basketball Team and won the Pomona College Coach’s Award, was named to the National Association of Basketball Coaches Academic Honor Roll, and was designated a Pomona College Scholar. Since graduating from Pomona College, he has also completed a 3-year Entrepreneurial Master's Program at MIT. Nick has been a guest speaker at numerous high schools, universities, businesses, and entrepreneurship groups, including INC Magazine’s Leadership and GrowCo Conferences, the United States Association for Small Business and Entrepreneurship Conference, the Business Innovation and Growth Conference, and the Network for Teaching Entrepreneurship. Nick is also fluent in Spanish and spent a college semester studying economics in Madrid, Spain. He continues to be active in the community, volunteering his time as a basketball coach and mentor to aspiring entrepreneurs. Nick Friedman is available for select keynote and lecture speaking engagements. • Check out Effortless Entrepreneur at www.EffortlessEntrepreneur.com • Learn more about College Hunks Franchises at https://CollegeHunksFranchise.com

Roman started his career with College H.U.N.K.S. Hauling Junk and Moving® as the corporate Financial Controller. He experienced tremendous success transforming our finance team into the force it is today, through driving greater focus on understandability and transparency of our financials and metrics. He has taken on other roles in the company during his tenure, heading up several departments along the way while being instrumental in holding the leadership team accountable to our business plan, Franchisee needs, and our overall financial health. Roman was promoted to Chief Operating Officer, where he is tasked with continued execution of the business plan and expanding financial accountability to the entire corporate team. His accountabilities include ensuring the health of the corporate team (financial, operational, emotional), and executing on our core focus, which is franchisee satisfaction.

George is a senior business professional with over 25 years of experience.  He has a demonstrated track record of growing revenue and brand value.  

His experience includes working at a startup, Red Rover Moving & Storage, started by the founder of PODS. He also worked at PODS for 11 years (including 5 as CMO) and consistently delivered double-digit top and bottom line growth. His innovative multichannel approach redefined PODS’ go-to-market strategy and dramatically improved media efficiencies. This was primarily achieved through his initiative to migrate PODS from traditional marketing channels to digital tactics. George has also served as the CMO for a fitness company and a direct-to-consumer SaaS company.  

George started his career in Boston working with 2 of the area's leading advertising agencies where he led interdisciplinary teams for both B2C and B2B clients such as Ben Hogan Golf, IKON, Comcast, Houghton Mifflin, Cybex, and the Boston Celtics. George has a BA in Communications and English from the University of Michigan.  

Marc brings over a decade of experience in driving franchise business growth to his role as Chief Operating Officer at College HUNKS. Marc previously served as Vice President of Franchise Operations for Smoothie King and before that, he held several leadership roles in operations at Domino’s. His emphasis on building and maintaining long-standing relationships, paired with his strong business acumen allows him to create opportunities for growth and success throughout organizations. He's also very passionate about our Brand’s Core Values and is committed to making the junk removal and moving process as stress-free as possible for our clients as we deliver on our brand purpose of ‘Move the World!’ Marc is a proud Michigan State Spartan, where he earned his Bachelor of Arts in Finance. Go Green, Go White! And, Go Green, Go Orange!

Kelsie Ackman is the Chief Legal Counsel & Development Officer for College HUNKS®. She began her career at College HUNKS as a Franchise Legal Specialist in the fall of 2015 after retiring from stuffy law firms. She grew within the brand and became the Franchise Legal Manager in 2017, where she built out an entire Legal and Compliance Team. She was then promoted to Vice President of Franchise Development and Legal Affairs in January 2019. Kelsie then built out the Franchise Development team, and now leads a team of 10 individuals in growing the brand efficiently and uniformly. Her hard work has been recognized as a Women of Influence by the Tampa Bay Business and Wealth Magazine and a Top Corporate Counsel Finalist by Tampa Bay Business Journal.

Kelsie is a true Hoosier, as she was born and raised in Indiana and moved to Florida. Ackman holds a Juris Doctor, Law from Indiana University Maurer School of Law. She graduated magna cum laude from Indiana University, where she obtained her Bachelor of Arts, Criminal Justice.

Eric Olinger is the Vice President of Technology for College HUNKS Hauling Junk & Moving. Eric is a seasoned tech executive who leads the high-performance IT teams to deliver impactful results to support to our 200+ Franchise Partners. Prior to College HUNKS in 2023, Eric's recent executive roles include Vice President of Software Engineering at PODS Enterprises;  a moving and storage company, and Chief Information Officer at Hunter Warfield. He also served as Principle for Rapid Strategy, Founder and CEO of Akiva Corporation, and President of Tenet Networks.
 

Mary Mills brings a wide range of Marketing expertise and entrepreneur understanding to her role as Vice President of Marketing at College Hunks Hauling Junk & Moving. In her role as Vice President of Marketing at College Hunks Hauling Junk & Moving, she is responsible for developing comprehensive impactful programs that drive growth & revenues. Her focus is on driving leads to each franchise location while providing training, ongoing strategy and improved implementation across all channels. Previously, at United Franchise Group, she was responsible for the marketing programs of existing brands such as Signarama, Transworld & Fully Promoted and was responsible for launching new brands such as VentureX & Jon Smith Subs. Before that, Mary experienced life as an entrepreneur herself, owning her own Marketing Company. Prior to that, she was a Broadcast Journalist serving as a reporter, producer, anchor and news executive. Mary's expertise has been recognized in the franchise industry and in the broader business community where she received awards, accolades, and invitations to speak and share her knowledge

Laura Butcaris is an energetic leader who has been with College Hunks Hauling Junk & Moving since 2016. Laura joined our team as a Franchise Business Consultant, responsible for enhancing the level and type of support provided to new franchise partners in the first six months to one year of operation. Under her direct support, our new franchise locations’ “ramp-up” revenue increased by an average of 300% over previous years. Laura was promoted to Director of Franchise Performance in 2017, leading a team of coaches, learning specialists and support team who work directly to increase franchise partner revenue, profits, and satisfaction.  In late 2020 Laura was chosen to lead the creation and launch of the National Accounts program for College Hunks to bolster the sales of National & Regional Commercial Accounts.  Prior to College Hunks Laura held various senior leadership positions within the Sports, Fitness & Spa industries in the New York metropolitan-area.

Travis Mellish is the Vice President of Franchise Development & Legal Affairs for College HUNKS Hauling Junk & Moving. Prior to joining College HUNKS in December 2018 as a Legal and Human Resources Manager, Travis worked for the State of Florida for over four years as an Assistant State Attorney. Travis was born and raised in St. Pete, Florida, where he currently lives. He received his undergraduate degree from Florida State University and his law degree from the Indiana University Maurer School of Law. In his free time, he enjoys boating, hiking, playing soccer, and paddle boarding on Tampa Bay with his 3 dogs.

As Vice President of Technical Product & Client Experience Matt provides strategic guidance for the organization and the advancement of all IT systems for the organization and the advancement of all IT systems. Matt vehemently studies the customer journey and looks for out of the box ways to improve our customer experience. As a senior leader of the organization he meets regularly with the leadership team to provide context and insight into IT-related projects. Additionally, he lead our 2 IT teams, support and development. The support team helps our franchise partners and users when they have questions about our software. They also handle the networking, infrastructure and hosting for all of our platforms and building systems. Our development team handles customization of our platforms including API's, our web-based scheduling platform and our proprietary mobile app.

Starting out as an intern at College HUNKS, Matt quickly noticed that the off-the-shelf scheduling platform had lots of opportunity for advancement. As the first IT hire at College HUNKS, he knew that he had the ability to make a huge impact by bringing our IT systems into the 21st century. Matt began working nights and weekends on a complete replacement of our off-the-shelf platform and in September of 2015, College HUNKS launched the application that HE designed and developed. This overhaul gave the team mobile-friendly platforms and brought the control of our scheduling in house. Since then, our IT team has grown 8x from 2015 and Matt has had the opportunity to come up with ideas to advance our systems even further.

In 2019, Matt was fortunate enough to be recognized as a 2019 CIO of the Year honoree by the Tampa Bay Business Journal. 

Dan Whalen is the Vice President of Operations for College HUNKS Hauling Junk & Moving. Responsible for both Franchise Operations & Corporate Operations, Dan leads the team of Franchise Business Consultants that provide day-to-day operational support to our 200+ Franchise Partners, as well as our 4 Corporate-owned locations that span across the East Coast. Joining the Brand in 2016, Dan’s prior roles include Director of Operations, Director of Franchise Operations, Franchise Business Consultant, & General Manager, where he led the Tampa location to Top 5 in company performance. Before joining College Hunks, Dan gained nearly a decade of experience in operations management, sales & business ownership in the health & fitness industry. He currently resides in St. Petersburg, Florida.

Onix’s journey with College Hunks started on June 2015 as a Bookkeeper. With the growth that the company experienced, the opportunity presented itself to Onix where he was advanced to Staff Accountant, later on to Senior Accountant, then promoted to Accounting Manager, and then promoted to Controller where he has the pleasure to lead the Corporate Accounting Team. In 2023, Onix was promoted to Vice President of Finance. Onix came to the United States from Puerto Rico in 2015. Prior to College Hunks, he worked in the Restaurant and Hospital Industry as an Accountant and was also working as a full time High School Math and Science Teacher. Luckily, he was able to find a company with values that are beyond imaginable and being an employee here you can live them from the first day of work. Outside of his College Hunks life, he loves to spend time with his family and playing guitar for his Church.

Adam Verrill is the director of our Sales and Loyalty Center for College Hunks Hauling Junk and Moving.  Before joining College HUNKS in October 2016, Adam served as Asurion's workforce management manager.  Adam started as the workforce management manager when coming over to College HUNKS until the opportunity became available for him to take over as director in early 2020.  His job is running our internal call center that fields sales and customer service calls for our franchisees across the country.  When Adam is not working, he enjoys coaching his son's baseball teams and watching anything sports related.

Heather Soldinger is our Franchise Development Manager. Heather started her journey with College HUNKS in January of 2019 as our Recruiting Specialist. She came to College HUNKS with a background in Call Center recruiting/management and Customer Service. Since joining the team, she has helped out in multiple areas such as helping to run our company’s culture committee (Hunk Hype Squad) and also helped out as our Office Manager. At the end of 2020, she joined our Franchise Development team, and saw it as an opportunity to grow with the company and expand her skills and knowledge. In her free time, Heather enjoys hanging out with her family, traveling, doing anything outdoors and staying active.