Title: Council Member
Company: Bettendorf
Email: cflaherty@bettendorf.org
Bio: Conor Flaherty is a dedicated husband & father, an entrepreneur, business mentor, city council member, & volunteer, whose work centers on helping small businesses and his community grow.

He is the owner of Defy The Competition, where he applies a fractional C-suite toolkit— specializing in edge & emerging technology, project management, customer discovery, and growth strategies—to help organizations sharpen their competitive edge. In parallel, he serves as a part-time coach with the Iowa Small Business Development Center (SBDC), providing entrepreneurs with one-on-one guidance on new business planning, cash flow projections, market research, value propositions, and succession strategy. He is a regular mentor and instructor with the University of Iowa's Venture School, drawing on his own experience as a Venture School alum and startup co-founder.

In November 2025, Conor was elected to represent the 2nd Ward on the Bettendorf City Council. His candidacy grew out of a deep-rooted commitment to the place he calls home; Bettendorf, IA.

As an Eagle Scout, Conor brings the same values of leadership, service, and follow-through to his professional and civic life, holding many official and unofficial volunteer roles.

Above all, he is a proud husband to Betsy & dad to Konnor & Niko—the role that anchors everything else.

Title: Council Member
Company: Bettendorf
Email: npalczynski@bettendorf.org
Bio: Nick Palczynski is a proud Bettendorf native and dedicated leader. A graduate of Bettendorf High School and St. Ambrose University with a degree in Marketing & Management, Nick met his wife, Jessica, during college. Together, they have three children each born in a different region of the county before moving back to Bettendorf in the fall of 2021.

Nick’s career began at Jumer's Casino before transitioning to a decade-long role with HON Office Furniture, where he excelled in turning around struggling sales markets. In 2019, he formally entered the field of Computer Vision and AI with Farmwave, using advanced technology to improve agricultural processes. Building on this experience, Nick joined OneTrack in 2021 as an early team member. At OneTrack, he plays a key role in enhancing warehouse operations through Computer Vision technology and Agentic AI, helping the company grow rapidly in the logistics sector.

Deeply committed to his community, Nick serves in multiple roles for St. Joan of Arc parish. Nick and Jessica both served as campaign Co-Chairs for the new St. Joan of Arc School Catholic school. As an Eagle Scout, Nick is active in his son's troop where he has served in various leadership positions.

Nick was appointed to the Bettendorf City Council on January 24, 2023, and was formally elected in November 2023. ln 2025, Nick joined the board of the Scott County Regional Authority, bringing his business expertise and passion for community development to support the city’s growth.

Nick’s diverse experience and commitment to his faith, family, and community make him a valued leader in Bettendorf.

Title: GTM and Oracle Cloud Alliance Manager
Company: NVIDIA
Email: abutterfield@nvidia.com
Bio: Andrew Butterfield leads NVIDIA’s Oracle Cloud alliance and go-to-market efforts, helping organizations turn accelerated computing and artificial intelligence into practical business value. His career began in large-scale manufacturing at Boeing, where he supported the 787 and 767 programs through industrial engineering and production planning. He also co-founded Seattle’s SoDo MakerSpace, a community workshop for digital fabrication and electronics prototyping. He later moved into high-performance computing and cloud technology, serving as Principal GPU Product Manager at Oracle Cloud before joining NVIDIA.

Drawing on experience spanning aircraft production and AI infrastructure, Andrew brings a grounded perspective to emerging technology. He focuses on what is ready today, what remains hype, and what organizations must get right to create lasting value. A Bettendorf native, Andrew returned home with his wife, Nicole, in 2021 to raise their four children. He is an Eagle Scout and a graduate of Bettendorf High School, Scott Community College, and Black Hills State University. He remains involved with BHSU as a member of its School of Business Advisory Board.

Title: Director
Company: LeClaire Manufacturing Company
Email: steve.zimmerman@leclairemfg.com
Bio: Steve Zimmerman oversees operations at LeClaire Manufacturing Company, a family-owned aluminum foundry and machine shop in Le Claire, Iowa, employing more than 200 people. He is responsible for the foundry and machine shop floors — permanent mold and sand casting, the core room, machining, and finishing — along with sales estimating and new program launch.

He also oversees operations for the launch of G4 Advanced Manufacturing, an aerospace venture the family has spun up alongside the foundry to bring 3D sand printing, advanced casting, and five-axis machining to the Quad Cities. The machining piece answers a real bottleneck in the aerospace supply chain: most machine shops would rather run billet than take on castings, which leaves cast components waiting on capacity that nobody wants to give them. G4 is built to do both under one roof.

Steve is the third generation of his family in the business and the fifth generation in the foundry trade — his family once owned a steel foundry right here in Bettendorf. He grew up in Bettendorf and never went far. He and his wife, Lacey, live in Pleasant Valley Township with their four boys, Rush (13), Urban (11), Yates (9), and Crosby (7) — all four of them left-handed, a fact Steve has stopped trying to explain. He coaches fifth- and sixth-grade basketball at Coram Deo Academy and rec flag football, serves on the board of directors of the Quad Cities Chamber of Commerce, and attends Bridge Cities Church. Working a few miles from where he was raised shapes how he approaches the job: the people on his floor are neighbors, and decisions made in the office get discussed at the ball field and the grocery store.

Over the past couple of years, LeClaire Manufacturing has been putting artificial intelligence to work inside the daily operation of a mid-sized shop — not as a pilot project or a showpiece, but wired into the systems the plant actually runs on.
The company's job costing, labor records, machine monitoring, and program tracking now feed AI tools directly. On that foundation sits a scrap-tracking application that pulls machine data and pairs it with photographs of every piece of scrap the plant produces, tying defects back to the job, the operation, and the cost. LeClaire is early in all of this, and the gains so far have come from the least exciting part of the work: connecting the plant's data and getting it reliable enough to trust.