Cole Waybright 

Vice President of Sales Optimization 

Homesteaders Life Company

Cole Waybright is the Vice President of Sales Optimization for Homesteaders Life Company. He is responsible for working with Homesteaders’ funeral home customers and marketing organizations to implement preneed growth strategies that connect them with more consumers. He also serves as the Interim President of eFuneral. Prior to joining Homesteaders in 2024, Waybright held various leadership positions in operations and sales with independent funeral homes and corporate organizations. Most recently, he served as Vice President of Sales Operations with Foundation Partners Group, LLC. He is a graduate of Cincinnati College of Mortuary Science and Alderson Broaddus University. In addition, Waybright is a licensed funeral director and embalmer, a former chair of the West Virginia Funeral Directors Association PAC, was on the West Virginia Cemetery and Funeral Home Association Board, and the Advisory Panel for the University of South Florida Muma School of Business – Customer Experience Program. Throughout his career Cole has been known for building strategies and connections within tools to create better customer, and user experiences in everyday funeral industry processes.

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⚐  ADDRESS: 5700 Westown Pkwy West, West Des Moines, Iowa, 50266

✉ EMAIL:  cwaybright@Homesteaderslife.com

✆  PHONE: 304-532-0304

⎚  WEBSITE:  homesteaderslife.com

Jon Lefrandt

CEO & Founder

Elevia

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Brent Thorson

Client Success & Growth Manager

LifeArt by Terrybear

Brent Thorson has been a leading innovator in families choosing cremation memorialization for 12 years. He has been a part of introducing cutting edge, new ideas in cremation products that have led to multi-million-dollar revenue generation in “new” cremation product categories. He is a strong believer that cremation means choice and options that families and funeral professionals don’t always know are available to them. One of his favorite quotes is “Showing is Knowing.” This continues to be a strong part of Brent’s belief that families need to be shown exactly what happens when they choose cremation. This continues to drive Brent’s passion to push our industry forward to innovate in the cremation memorialization category as the Client Success & Growth Manager for Terrybear Urns and Memorials, and recently with the company's newest innovation; LifeArt by Terrybear.

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Barcley Cadet

Director of Talent Acquisition

Carriage Services



My Recruitment/Talent Acquisition journey began almost ten years ago. I started my professional career as a teacher, where I was in the classroom for four years before transitioning to the Staffing world as a recruiter in Lower Manhattan. My recruitment career started in the Banking and Financial services sector. I partnered with Hiring Managers from Investment Banks and Hedge Funds to fill challenging roles across all business areas, including IT, Marketing, Operations, compliance, and much more. 

I moved to Houston in 2017, where I transitioned to Internal Recruitment, which required a different recruitment style. The change allowed me to focus on establishing relationships with internal stakeholders regarding hiring needs versus the transactional nature of being a staffing recruiter. After four years, a booming start-up IT Talent Acquisition consultancy approached me to build their US team from scratch. Here, I spent a year and a half building out the consultancy bench for the team in the US while also spearheading special recruitment projects such as DE&I hiring and Campus recruitment for some of our clients, which were Spotify, Apply, Ikea, etc, to name a few. 

Currently, I am the Talent Acquisition Manager at Carriage Services, and I’ve architected all aspects of foundational strategic sourcing and Talent Acquisition reporting. I specialize in optimizing recruitment efforts to work in unison with Internal Stakeholders and business needs while providing an enjoyable/unforgettable overall candidate experience.

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Contintental Computers

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