Pam Alexander is the Founder of the public relations firm, Alexander Communications, which was acquired in 1998 by Ogilvy Public Relations Worldwide, a WPP company.  She currently serves on the board of the Aspen Community Foundation, The Aspen Art Museum, The Atlanta High Museum of Art, and Emory University’s Board of Visitors.  Pam has also served on the board of Atlanta Task Force for the Homeless, the Atlanta Chamber of Commerce, Harvard’s Cyberposium, and the TED (Technology, Entertainment and Design) conference.

Mohd Noor Amin is Chairman of the International Multilateral Partnership Against Cyber Threats (IMPACT), the Malaysia-based cybersecurity executing arm of the United Nations’ specialized agency—the International Telecommunication Union (ITU).  As the world’s first comprehensive alliance against cyber threats, IMPACT brings together governments, academia and industry experts to enhance the global community’s capabilities in dealing with cyber threats.  As Chairman, Mr. Amin has been instrumental in converging key players onto IMPACT’s politically and commercially neutral platform, to escalate discussions and amplify measures of strengthening cybersecurity.  Mr. Amin is also Chairman of Ascendsys, Southeast Asia’s leading managed security services organization.  He is also founding member of the Malaysia-U.S. Friendship Council, which is headed in Washington D.C. and is a body established and sponsored by leading Malaysian companies to provide advice on matters relating to bilateral relationships between the two countries.  Mr. Amin is also appointed by the President of the Republic of Guatemala to serve as the nation’s honorary envoy to Malaysia.

Mr. Anderson is currently the CEO of Intentional Software, a company founded by Charles Simonyl.  International’s flagship product enables ordinary consumers and businesspeople to write software without having to know how to write codes.  The company’s technology is the basis for radically reducing the cost of automating and unlocking the power of human knowledge, putting the power to create, produce and excel in the hands of millions of individuals.  Mr. Anderson is also one of the leading entrepreneurs in the space industry.  An aerospace engineer by training, he has led the development of commercial human spaceflight and the space tourism industry since its inception over a decade ago.  Mr. Anderson co-founded Space Adventures, Ltd., in 1998 and serves as the company’s chairman.  In 1996, Mr. Anderson graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in aerospace engineering.  He was a recipient of the Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year award in Greater Washington.

Professor Salah Arafa teaches at the Physics Department, School of Sciences and Engineering of the American University in Cairo (AUC).  Before joining the University in 1968, he worked as a physics researcher at the Egyptian Atomic Energy Authority beginning in 1962.  Arafa was also the Chair of the Science Department twice and served as Senator at Large in the University Senate.  In 2004, Professor Arafa was selected as a Senior Ashoka Fellow and was awarded as the Man of the Year for Environment and Development in 2009.  Since 1974, he has been involved in many Civil Society activities and is currently the Chairman and Founder of several of the leading NGOs in Egypt.  He has also served as consultant to many international organizations, including USAID, UNICEF, GTZ, EU, and UNDP.  Arafa is a member of the National Committee on Climate Change and also a member of the Research Council on Environment and Development at the Egyptian Academy for Scientific Research and Technology.  His work in the fields of renewable energies, sustainable community development, and eco-communities is recognized worldwide.

Ashoka Fellow

Ana Luisa is a pharmaceutical chemist who, after 12 years in the Uruguayan pharmaceutical industry, “recycled” herself to become a waste manager due to her concern about the gap between the environmental safety of state-of-the-art toxic-waste management and the real practices in her country.  In 2001, she created MA&A (now TIREX), where she established the first efficient system for managing toxic waste in Uruguay, which provides transparency and reinvents the image of waste management as a more reputable vocation.  Ana also works closely with formerly underpaid garbage collectors to provide them with dignified job opportunities, as well as social coverage by promoting enterprises for waste management, which are supported through an integrated approach by the Organización San Vicente “Obra Padre Cacho.”  By creating premier practices in toxic-waste management, Ana raises awareness of environmental and public health issues among university students and government authorities through public relations activities, such as media campaigns and lectures for university students about responsible waste management.

Ashoka Fellow

Sanjeev Arora, is the Director of Project ECHO (Extension for Community Healthcare Outcomes).  He is a tenured Professor of Medicine in the Department of Internal Medicine at the University of New Mexico Health Sciences Center (UNMHSC).  He has been involved in the management of viral hepatitis for over 15 years, and led the development and implementation of the Hepatitis C Disease Management Program at UNMHSC.  Dr. Arora developed the Project ECHO model as a platform for service delivery, education and evaluation.  Using video-conferencing technology and case-based learning, primary care providers from rural and underserved areas and prisons are trained and mentored by ECHO’s medical specialists to deliver best-practice management of complex health conditions in their communities or correctional institutions.  A key component of the ECHO model is an innovation known as Knowledge Networks, in which the expertise of a single specialist is shared with numerous primary providers through telehealth clinics.  In 2007, Project ECHO came in first among more than 300 entries from 27 countries in winning the Changemakers award.

Mr. Wesley Barnett

NobleHour

Paula Batson is vice president, corporate communications, for Jesta Digital (formerly Fox Mobile Group). An accomplished communications strategist with years of experience in digital entertainment, she was instrumental in the launch of Bitbop, a new wireless subscription service delivering on demand mobile TV and movies directly to consumers’ smartphones in the U.S. and Germany. Previously, she was senior vice president, communications, for Direct Brands, the direct marketing company formerly owned by Bertelsmann, where she oversaw global communications for the company’s various subscription services.  She has also served as SVP of communications for Myplay, the first music locker company, and held the same role with N2K Inc., the early Internet music company. Prior to working in digital entertainment, Ms. Batson was head of communications for the MCA Universal Music Group.

Miles Beckett is the CEO and co-founder of EQAL, the media company that builds influencer networks around celebrities and brands such as Tori Spelling, Lauren Conrad, Randy Jackson, and Elle and Blair Fowler.  Beckett and EQAL co-creator Greg Goodfried are widely credited as being the first to create quality serial programming for the internet, for integrating products into online programming and for originating the first “online to on-air” programming with a network television show.  EQAL’s “hub and spoke” strategy focuses on building an integrated media property by increasing social media numbers, driving traffic and engagement to the celebrity’s official website, and providing new revenue opportunities.  EQAL generates close to 200 million impressions per month and reaches 15 million people.  Miles is also co-creator and producer of the online sensation lonelygirl15, the original online appointment serial programming and its International spin-off, Kate Modern, which was in partnership with Bebo.

Named an “Admaker to Watch” by The Wall Street Journal, Tom Bedecarré has been a pioneer of the advertising and communications business over the last three decades and is currently CEO of AKQA, the world’s largest independent advertising agency.  With 1,000 global employees, AKQA has offices in Amsterdam, Berlin, London, New York, San Francisco, San Salvador, Shanghai and Washington D.C. and serves clients including Audi, Coca-Cola, Diageo, Nike, Unilever, VW, Visa and Xbox.  Prior to AKQA, Tom was founder and CEO of Citron Haligman Bedecarré, San Francisco’s largest independent advertising agency and a leader in launching Internet brands.  Tom holds a BA from Stanford University and an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Brooks Bell co-founded a web development company while she was still in college at age 20.  Within a year of starting the company, she landed AOL as a client and led the design of several high-profile projects, including the redesign of AOL’s main web registration process.  In late 2003, Brooks founded an independent conversion optimization firm using her own cool-sounding name, Brooks Bell, Inc.  Her firm focuses on bringing the scientific disciplines of testing and optimization to the traditionally very subjective field of marketing.  Using analytics and the quantitative principles of testing, Brooks Bell has improved conversion rates for brands such as Adobe, Wall Street Journal, AARP, Chase, and Time Warner Cable.  Today, Brooks Bell employs a team of about 25 testing experts and is based in Raleigh, NC.  She has a BA in Psychology from Duke University.

Marc Benioff is the Chairman and CEO of Salesforce, which he co-founded in 1999.  Under Benioff’s direction, Salesforce, a software as a service (SaaS) company that distributes business software on a subscription basis, has grown from a groundbreaking idea into a publicly traded company that is the leader in enterprise cloud computing.  Benioff is the recipient of many awards for pioneering innovation, including the 2007 Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year.  In 2000, he launched the Salesforce.com Foundation—now a multimillion-dollar global organization.  Most recently, the San Francisco Business Times named Benioff “2009 Executive of the Year.”  Salesforce has received a Wall Street Journal Technology Innovation Award, has been lauded as one of BusinessWeek’s Top 100 Most Innovative Companies, was named number 7 on the Wired 40, and was selected for the past two years as a Top Ten Disrupter by Forbes.

Charles Best leads DonorsChoose.org, a nonprofit organization that provides a simple, personal, and accountable way for people to address educational inequity.  At DonorsChoose.org, public school teachers post classroom project requests so that donors can pick the projects they want to support.  Every donor then gets photographs and thank-you letters from the classroom he or she chose to help.  Recognition of DonorsChoose.org includes the Amazon.com Nonprofit Innovation Award, selection by Ashoka, and election by the TechCrunch community as the website “most likely to make the world a better place.”  FORTUNE has twice featured Charles in the “40 under 40” list of “business’ hottest rising stars.”  In 2010, Oprah Winfrey announced DonorsChoose.org as one of her “Ultimate Favorite Things.”  Also, in 2011, Fast Company listed DonorsChoose.org as one of the “50 Most Innovative Companies in the World,” the first time a charity has received this recognition.

Ashoka Fellow

Constantin Bisanz is currently Founder, Managing Director and Investor at CB Invest.  He recently sold his company, Brands4Friends, for $200M to eBay, which marks one of the largest sales in Germany.  Brands4Friends is a shopping club, which provides its customers a possibility to buy branded goods (both clothing and footwear) with great discounts.  After 3 years of continuous work, the service became number 1 in its field.  Constantin has been named “Entrepreneur of the year by Harvard Business School and was also named “Exit Champion” for founding Germany’s largest Internet exit transaction.  Constantin is passionate about kite-surfing and photography.  He plans on surfing 100km across the Bering Straight along with Geza Scholtz—an adventure that nobody has ever done before.  Constantin is also an active supporter of various charity projects.

As CEO of Ruder Finn, Kathy Bloomgarden has led the firm to become one of the largest privately owned global public relations agencies in the world, servicing clients across each of the agency’s four pillars—Technology & Innovation, Corporate Trust, Health & Wellness, and Consumer Lifestyles.  Ruder Finn has become a leading firm in several developing markets and was one of the first global PR firms to open an office in China.  Today, Ruder Finn has four offices in China, with a strong client base of more than 100 multinational and large Chinese corporations.  Bloomgarden also oversaw the growth of Ruder Finn’s Innovation studios practice, which has expanded to be one of the PR industry’s largest digital teams.  With more than 30 years of communications experience, Kathy Bloomgarden has also worked for companies including Novartis, BP, Citigroup, HP, Pfizer, Microsoft, and PepsiCo.

Mark Bonchek is Senior Vice President, Communities and Networks for Sears Holdings, responsible for reinventing the companies’ iconic brands through the power of social media and social business.  As an entrepreneur, innovator, and social architect, Mark has designed collaborative communities for McKinsey & Company, IBM, Manpower, The Economist, and the U.S. Department of Education.  Mark has a Ph.D. from Harvard University, an A.B. from Princeton University, and served as a Research Associate at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory.  Sears Holdings, the nation’s fourth largest broadline retailer, is the parent company of Sears, Roebuck and Co. and Kmart Corporation, with over 4,000 retail stores in the United States and Canada.  Sears Holdings is also a leading online retailer and the nation’s largest provider of home services, with more than 11 million service calls made annually.  Sears’ market-leading brands include Kenmore, Craftsman, DieHard, and Lands’ End.

Chris Borroni-Bird is GM’s Director of Advanced Technology Vehicle Concepts and EN-V Program (Electric-Networked Vehicle), which was promoted as a holistic personal urban mobility solution at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.  He was selected as one of Automotive News’ Electrifying 100 in 2011.  Prior to EN-V, Christopher led GM’s Autonomy, Hy-wire and Sequel fuel cell by wire “skateboard” concepts.  He received the Technology, Innovation and Achievement Award from Automation Alley and ConnecTech Detroit in 2008.  Before joining GM in 2000, he led Chrysler’s gasoline fuel cell vehicle development and was inducted into the Automotive Hall of Fame as a Young Leader in 2000.  He graduated from Cambridge University and began his Ph.D. in Surface Science at Liverpool University and completed it at Cambridge University.  He also studied at Tokyo University.  Christopher is co-author of the book “Reinventing the Automobile: Personal Urban Mobility for the 21^st Century,” with Larry Burns and the late Bill Mitchell.

Ranked as both Forbes’ top investor in 2011, and FORTUNE’s #1 smartest investor in technology, Jim Breyer has seen great success in over thirty consumer Internet, media, and technology companies that have completed public offerings or successful mergers.  Breyer is currently on the Board of Directors of Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., where he is the Lead/Presiding Independent Director, and Chairman of the Strategic Planning and Finance Committee.  He serves on the board of Dell Inc., where he is the Chair of the Leadership Development and Compensation Committee and serves on the Incubation Advisory Board.  Jim also previously served on the Board of Marvel Entertainment, where he was founding Chairman of Marvel’s Strategic Planning Committee.  He is currently the lead/co-lead investor/Director in several privately held companies such as Brightcove, Etsy, Facebook, and Legendary Pictures.  Breyer holds a BS degree from Stanford University and an MBA from Harvard University.  He was also appointed as Honorary Professor at Yuela Academy, Hunan University, China in 2005.

Gigi Brisson co-founded Attractor Investment Management, Inc., which is a hedge fund that focuses on long-term investments in private and public technology companies.  Gigi is a board member of Audubon California, an Executive Advisor to the Plastic Pollution Coalition, and recently founded OceanElders, a group focused on ocean protection and conservation.  She and her husband fly antique airplanes and have an animal rescue ranch.

At MIT, Erik Brynjolfsson serves as the Director of the Center for Digital Business, the Schussel Family Professor, and the Chairman of the MIT Sloan Management Review. His research examines the effects of information technologies on business strategy and performance, Internet commerce and intangible assets. He has also quantified the value of online product variety, known as the “Long Tail” and developed bundling models for information goods.  His recent work uses fine-grained nanodata to understand digital information flows and their relationships to information worker productivity.  Erik has received numerous awards and patents for his research and has been called one of five e-business visionaries by Business Week and was rated of the top two most influential IT researchers in a poll of business executives.  He has also authored or co-authored several books including Wired for Innovation: How IT is Reshaping the Economy and Race Against the Machine.

C. Sidney Burrus is the Maxfield-Oshman Professor Emeritus at Rice University in Houston, Texas.  Over the last 40 years, he has been Dean of Engineering and Chair of the ECE Department. He has authored 5 books and over 250 articles and has received teaching and research awards from the IEEE, Rice, and others. He is a Fellow of the IEEE and the AAAS, and received the IEEE Kilby Medal.  The Connexions Project started in 1999 at Rice University to apply modern technology and theory to education.  It has grown to be one of the most used Open Educational Resources (OER) in the world.  Burrus has been closely involved with the project since its founding and has lectured and published widely on it.  Professor Burrus has also been on founding committees for universities in Germany, Vietnam and Pakistan and has held visiting positions at MIT and the University of Erlangen in Germany.

Ángel Cabrera is president of the Thunderbird School of Management, which is widely recognized as the top school in the international business field.  For over 60 years, Thunderbird has been dedicated to developing leaders with the global mindset, business skills, entrepreneurial spirit and social responsibility necessary to create real, sustainable value for their organizations, communities and the world.  Dr. Cabrera is a global-leader and management educator whose work and expertise has been recognized and tapped by top international organizations.  In 2002 The World Economic Forum named Dr. Cabrera a “Global Leader for Tomorrow” and in 2008 the Aspen Institute named him a Crown Fellow.  A native of Spain, Dr. Cabrera earned his Ph.D. and MS from the Georgia Institute of Technology, which he attended as a Fulbright Scholar, and a BS and MS in Engineering from Madrid Polytechnical University.

S.J. Camarata, Jr. is a Director of Esri, Inc., and oversees corporate strategies, which encompasses current strategic directions as well as strategic investments, acquisitions and new emerging businesses.  S.J. also serves on a number of boards and served as co-founder and as an executive for several companies in the mapping and mobile medical technology services industries.  He holds a BS degree from the University of Utah and an MLA degree from Utah State University.  Esri is the world’s leading geospatial/GIS/location intelligence company with operations in over 120 countries.  Esri has millions of users using its mobile, desktop, server, enterprise and web/cloud based technology, products, applications and content in government, business, health, environmental, public safety, energy, logistics and supply chain, manufacturing, science, retail, defense/intelligence, insurance and other commercial sectors.

Steve Case co-founded America Online in 1985, and under his leadership, AOL became the world’s largest and most valuable Internet Company.  In 2005, Steve founded Revolution LLC, which focuses on investing and building disruptive, innovative, consumer-facing companies such as Zipcar and LivingSocial.  Steve also chairs the Startup America Partnership and is a member of President Obama’s Council on Jobs and Competitiveness, two efforts focused on celebrating and accelerating entrepreneurship.  In addition, Steve chairs the Case Foundation, which seeks to tap new technologies and entrepreneurial approaches to help strengthen the social sector.

Pravin Chandiramani has over nine years of experience in the media and technology business with a background in the behavioral sciences.  He began at AOL/Platform-A, where he led the Data Strategy group and developed the audience acquisition and valuation strategy for Platform-A’s behavioral targeting solutions.  From 1998 to 2004, Pravin was a technologist, focused on new media and leading projects in vertical publishing and advertising networks.  He currently serves as VP, Business Development and Strategy, of Simulmedia, a New York City-based media marketing company that delivers television viewership through data-driven program promotion.  Simulmedia’s solutions address the growing audience fragmentation problem for television networks and simultaneously help viewers discover the shows that they may enjoy.  Pravin holds a B.S. in Zoology from the University of Bombay and an M.S. in Biological Sciences from Fordham University.  For his Master’s thesis, Pravin spent nearly two years observing and analyzing social interaction in baboons.  He also has an M.B.A. from the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia.

Bertil Chappuis is a Director in the Silicon Valley office of McKinsey & Company.  He leads McKinsey’s North American Consumer Tech, Telecom and Media practice, as well as the Firm’s knowledge effort on iConsumer, which explores evolving digital consumer behaviors.  For the past 17 years, Bertil has served several of the leading high tech companies in the World.  Bertil’s client work has crossed the gamut of strategy, organization, and operations work, including major, multi-year corporate transformations.  Bertil is a counselor to several leading CEOs and CFOs in the high-tech industry, and has served some of his clients for over 12 years.  In addition, Bertil has a keen interest in education and has served the highly regarded Palo Alto school district.  Prior to McKinsey, Bertil was an entrepreneur in Silicon Valley and also worked in venture capital.  He holds an M.B.A. from Stanford and B.S. and M.S. degrees in engineering from MIT.

Anil Chitrakar is Founder of the Environmental Camps for Conservation Awareness (ECCA), which aims to mobilize Nepali youth to be the link between the supply and demand sides of solutions by enabling hands on learning outside of the classroom.  He received both an Ashoka Fellowship and The Rolex Award for his work.  Anil has served as a member of the City Planning Commission of Kathmandu, where he focused his efforts on reviving the urban heritage, environmental management and social development within the city.  He also launched the Kathmandu 2020 campaign aimed at envisioning and attaining a better future for the Kathmandu valley by mobilizing its residents.  Today, Anil continues to mobilize Nepali society through Nepal Unites, a social media based campaign.  He has also managed venture funds for environmental groups throughout Nepal and has campaigned to change the country’s investment strategy in hydropower by funding the development of a local energy source.  In 1993, Anil was recognized as one of the 100 “Global Leaders for Tomorrow” at the World Economic Forum in Davos.  He also received the Silicon Valley’s Tech Award.

Ashoka Fellow

John Henry Clippinger is currently a research scientist at the MIT Media Lab’s Human Dynamics Group, where he is a co-principal investor on a research program working to develop legal and software methods for protecting and sharing personal information for mobile services applications in health, education, and finance. He is also co-founder and executive director of ID³ , a non profit organization formed to  develop and field-test legal and software trust frameworks for data-driven services, infrastructures and enterprises. Previously, Dr. Clippinger was founder and Co-director of The Law Lab at Harvard University, which was founded to undertake multidisciplinary research to explore new forms of digital law and institution building to facilitate cooperation and entrepreneurial innovation.  Clippinger is the author of A Crowd of One: The Future of Individual Identity in addition to several recent articles and chapters on topics related to identity, trust frameworks and governance.  He is a member of the eG8 Forum and the Global Leadership Telco Council and the Risk Analysis Network for the World Economic Forum.

Jared Cohen is the director of Google Ideas, a think/do tank that combines a new generation of thinkers with technology to seed initiatives around some of the critical challenges of contemporary life.  He is also a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations and a non-fiction author.  Previously, Cohen served as a member of the Secretary of State’s Policy Planning Staff and as a close advisor to both Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton.  Cohen is the author of Children of Jihad and One Hundred Days of Silence.  He received his BA from Stanford University and his M.Phil in International Relations from Oxford University.

Kendall Collins is Senior Vice President and GM of Salesforce Chatter, the enterprise social network and collaboration platform, and is responsible for the product and market strategy for the company.  In his previous role as global CMO for salesforce.com, Kendall led a transformation of corporate marketing by harnessing the power of the social graph through Chatter.  Now, as the GM of Chatter, Kendall is focused on helping other companies transform into social enterprises.  Kendall has been driving enterprise and cloud computing strategies for more than 15 years, having led teams at Siebel Systems, Oracle Corporation, A.T. Kearney, and Proctor & Gamble in various management positions.

Scott Cook co-founded Intuit Inc. in 1983 and now serves as Chairman of the Executive Committee.  Before founding Intuit, Cook managed consulting assignments in banking and technology for Bain & Company, a corporate strategy consulting firm.  He previously worked for Proctor & Gamble, the household products giant, in various marketing positions for four years, including brand manager.  Cook is a member of the board of directors of eBay; Proctor & Gamble; the Asia Foundation; the Harvard Business School Dean’s Advisory Board; the Center for Brand and Product Management at the University of Wisconsin; and the Intuit Scholarship Foundation.  Cook earned an M.B.A. from Harvard University and received a bachelor’s degree in economics and mathematics from the University of Southern California.

Mr. Alan Cooper

President
Cooper

Mac Cowell cofounded DIYbio and Cofactor Bio in 2011.  DIYbio is an open-ended community that promotes the democratization of biotechnology, comprised today of thousands of self-identified participants worldwide and about a dozen community labs.  Cofactor Bio is a small bay-area startup focused on building tools and services that simplify molecular biology and synthetic biology tool-chains, bringing the technologies to a wider and less-traditional community of users, including agile new businesses.  Cofactor’s first product, GENELASER, is an affordable kit that includes the entire reagent and equipment tool-chain needed to extract and amplify fragments of genomic DNA, with DNA sequencing included as a mail-order service.  GENELASER lets anyone read DNA for about the price of a t-shirt.

Tyler Cowen is Holbert C. Harris Professor of Economics at George Mason University.  He writes regularly for the popular press, including The New York Times and recently wrote a book called The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-Hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better, which has been described as the most influential non-fiction book of the year.  A recent Economist poll cited him as one of the most influential economists of the last decade and recently Bloomberg BusinessWeek dubbed him “America’s Hottest Economist.”  He also co-writes the blog “Marginal Revolution.”

Stacy Cowley is CNNMoney’s technology editor, coordinating the site’s daily coverage of the tech news and trends that shape the business landscape.  Before coming to CNNMoney, Cowley spent a decade reporting on the tech industry, most recently as a senior editor at CRN magazine.  She previously served as New York correspondent for IDG News, a global wire service, and as managing online editor of Silicon Alley Reporter, a chronicler of the dot-com boom and bust.  Her articles have appeared in a range of publications, including the Village Voice, Baltimore Sun and Edible Brooklyn.  She lives in Brooklyn with her husband, BrooklynBallparks.com historian, David Dyte.

Mathias developed a passion for renewable energy and clean water while studying civic engineering at Berkeley.  In October of 2002, he came up with the idea for blueEnergy during a class entitled “Entrepreneurship in the Developing World” in the Media Lab at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.  Mathias co-founded blueEnergy as a nonprofit organization and has been its Executive Director since then.  He is fluent in English, French and Spanish.

Ashoka Fellow

Lázaro Cunha is currently the Project Director at Steve Biko Cultural Institute (SBCI), an organization of the black movement that has been contributing greatly to the process of democratization of higher education in Brazil by organizing mobilizations, as well as by developing projects that seek to ensure the admission of Afro-Brazilian students at Brazilian universities.  He is also responsible for coordinating the program OGUNTEC, which is a pioneer program in Brazil that seeks to encourage young black men and women to develop an interest and a professional training in the sciences.  Lázaro Cunha was a Ford Fellow between the years of 2006 and 2008 and is currently an ASHOKA fellow of the social entrepreneurs network.  Lázaro Cunha earned both his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering and his Master’s degree in History and Philosophy from the Federal University of Bahia (UFBA).

Ashoka Fellow

Leslie Dach is Executive Vice President of Corporate Affairs for Wal-mart.  He is a member of the company’s executive council and is responsible for public policy, reputation management, corporate communications, philanthropy, government relations, and the company’s social responsibility and sustainability initiatives.  He also manages the company’s global security, aviation and travel departments.  Leslie has been responsible for the development of initiatives such as Walmart’s: partnership with First Lady Michelle Obama to make food healthier by dramatically reducing sugar and salt content and to make healthy food more affordable by reducing prices on fresh fruits and vegetables; pledge to remove 20 million metric tons of carbon from its global supply chain; overall corporate giving, which reached $800 million last year.  Leslie serves on the board of directors of the World Resources Institute and the United Negro College Fund.

Paul Daugherty is chief technology architect and managing director of the Advanced Systems and Technology group for Accenture, a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company.  In these roles, Paul oversees more than 17,000 technology professionals who work around the globe and across industries implementing technology solutions for Accenture’s clients.  His current focus areas include cloud computing, mobility, and digital services.

Mr. Alex de Leeuw

Project Manager
World Economic Forum

Daniel is co-founder and co-CEO of Rypple, where he drives marketing, engineering and product development initiatives.  Before Rypple, Daniel co-founded Workbrain, a workforce management software company that listed Wal-Mart, Target, Best Buy, Citigroup, and British Airways amongst its more than 250 global clients.  Daniel led Workbrain’s sale to Infor for $227 million in 2007.  Daniel has been a featured speaker at Worldblu, the G100 and Enterprise 2.0, and is also a regular contributor to FORTUNE.com and the Huffington Post, and has been quoted in the Financial Times, The Economist, and Bloomberg Businessweek.  He holds a JD/MBA from the University of Toronto and an LLM in Law, Science and Technology from Stanford University.

Francis deSouza is Group President of Enterprise Products and Services at Symantec.  In this role he leads product management, engineering, industry relations and operations for Symantec’s enterprise security, information management, storage and availability management and managed security services solutions.  Most recently, deSouza served as SVP of the Enterprise Security Group, where he led Symantec’s Endpoint Security, Messaging and Web Security, Data Loss Prevention, Compliance and Security Management, Endpoint Management, Encryption, Endpoint Virtualization, and Identity and Authentication businesses.  DeSouza joined Symantec through the company’s acquisition of IMlogic, where he served as Founder and CEO.  Prior to founding IMlogic, deSouza served as Product Unit Manager at Microsoft, directing a team in the development of the enterprise real-time collaboration offerings.  Previously, he was Founder and CEO of Flash Communications, which was acquired by Microsoft in 1998.  Prior to that, deSouza worked in management consulting and as a computer science researcher at IBM’s TJ Watson Research Labs.  DeSouza holds a number of patents in computer security and is the Chairman of the Board of Directors of MedHelp International, a global online health community.

Jack Dorsey is the CEO of Square, which he co-founded in 2009.  Square is a revolutionary service that enables anyone to accept credit cards anywhere.  The company offers a free credit card reader that plugs into a phone or iPad.  The New York Times called Square “beautiful, simple and a joy to use,” and it was named one of the “Best Inventions of 2010” by TIME Magazine. Dorsey is also the creator, cofounder, and Chairman of Twitter.  He was recognized as one of TIME’s 100 most influential people and was named an “outstanding innovator under the age of 35” by MIT’s Technology Review.

As Founder and CEO of Ashoka: Innovators for the Public, Bill Drayton has developed a global association of nearly 3,000 leading social entrepreneurs who work together to create an ‘Everyone a Changemaker’ world.  In 1970, Mr. Drayton began his career at McKinsey & Company in New York.  From 1977 to 1981, Mr. Drayton served as Assistant Administrator at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, where he launched emissions trading and other reforms.  In 1981, he founded both Ashoka and Save EPA.  After becoming a MacArthur Fellow in 1984, he was able to devote himself fully to Ashoka.  Mr. Drayton has been recognized for his leadership in public service and was selected as one of America’s Best Leaders by US News & World Report and Harvard’s Center for Public Leadership.  In 2006, he was recognized as being one of Harvard University’s 100 “Most Influential Alumni.”  He has been named Honorary Fellow and has received Honorary Doctorates from numerous Universities.  Mr. Drayton has also received the Prince of Asturias Award in International Cooperation, the Spanish equivalent of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Tim Driver has a successful track record starting and building Internet businesses that drive investor value while advancing a social cause.  He founded and currently runs RetirementJobs.com, the #1 career site for people over the age of 50.  The 5-year old for-profit leverages technology and harnesses talent from the private, public and academic sectors to make it easier for older citizens to overcome age bias and to find work.  The Boston-based firm has been endorsed by the U.S. Senate Aging Committee and AARP.  Because of his work, Tim has participated in a White House policy discussion on making it easier for older Americans to become engaged in their communities.  Prior to RetirementJobs.com, Driver headed and popularized Salary.com’s web business, which leveled the playing field and disrupted an industry by making compensation data available to individuals.  Earlier, Driver was an executive at AOL, where he ran a group of channels.  He has appeared in numerous national media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal and NBC Nightly News.

Esther Dyson is Chairman of EDventure Holdings, a quantified-selfer and an angel investor, recently focusing on health care and aerospace.  She recently trained as a backup cosmonaut in Star City, outside of Moscow.  While there, she had the pleasure of spending time with other cosmonauts and some of the U.S.’s finest astronauts.  Apart from this sabbatical, Esther is an active board member/investor with 23andMe, Airship Ventures, Eventful, Evernote, IBS Group, Meetup, NewspaperDirect, Voxiva, WPP Group, XCOR Aerospace and Yandex.  In addition, her current investments include Applied Proteomics, Genomera, Green Goose, Habit Labs, HealthEngage, HealthLoop, HealthRally, HealthTap, Keas, Medico, Medivo, MeQuilibrium, Medicalgorithmics, myBasis, Omada Health, Organized Wisdom, PatientsLikeMe, PatientsKnowBest, Resilient, Tocagen and Walkee in health; and Icon Aircraft, Nanoracks and Space Adventures, which organizes programs such as Esther’s for space tourists, in aerospace.

Doug Eberhard is Senior Director of Autodesk, a world leader in 3D design, engineering and entertainment software.  He has implemented innovative computer model-based solutions on over $120 billion of capital planning, design, engineering, and construction projects around the world.  He has pioneered numerous award-winning solutions to digitally manage and communicate proposed projects using intelligent 3D computer modeling, visualization, stimulation, and web collaboration and project information management systems.  Doug’s more notable projects include 4D modeling for the NYC World Trade Center Rebuilding Program and Public/Private websites for the NYC Lower Manhattan Rebuilding Plan.  He has also implemented Internet Program Management systems for General Motors, AT&T, FEMA, Network Rail, NYC MTA, Caltrans and the Singapore Ministry of Environment.  Doug was named to the Carnegie Mellon President’s Advisory Board in 2007 and is a founding member of the National Academy of Sciences Transportation Research Board-Geometric Visualization Committee.  He serves on Stanford University’s CIFE Technical Advisory Committee and is an advisor to global infrastructure agencies, companies and industry consortia.

Renée Edelman, Senior Vice President of Global Technology for Edelman, serves as a senior media specialist and handles thought leadership programs for clients, including EMC and RSA (the security division of EMC); Adobe; and Symantec’s Consumer Business Unit.  She also advises new ventures on business and media strategy.

Patrick is a Senior Investment Manager at Qualcomm Ventures.  He serves as the group leader for investment opportunities in the mobile software and services sector.  Patrick also oversees QCV’s Seed program where he focuses on very early stage opportunities.  Prior to joining Qualcomm, he worked for Salomon Smith Barney’s Investment Banking unit in their Chicago, London and Hong Kong offices.  He was a member of their Global Telecommunications team, involved in both M&A advisory roles and capital-raising transactions.  Patrick currently manages and /or actively serves as a Board Observer for Qualcom Ventures investments in Aicent, Avaak, Brain Corporation, Buzzd, ChaCha, Clicker, Obopay and Viewdie.  Patrick has an M.B.A. from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management and a B.A. from Northwestern University.

Teri Elniski

Director Marketing

Greenplum

Dan Elron is a Managing Partner of Accenture, a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company.  As a Fortune Global 500 company, Accenture has more than 181,000 people worldwide serving clients in over 120 countries to help them become high performance businesses and governments.  Mr. Elron is responsible for defining the firm’s strategy and offerings in a variety of domains, primarily in the technology space.  He currently spends his time focusing on the impact of cloud technologies on the firm’s businesses and has advised many of the largest companies in the telecommunications and technology industries in North America, Europe and Asia.  Mr. Elron is also a member of the IEEE and ACM and serves as the advisor for the information technology industries for the World Economic Forum.  He has degrees from both the University of Tel-Aviv and the University of Minnesota.

Guibert is a Co-founder of Globant, a leader in the creation of innovative software products.  In 2003, Guibert and three friends founded Globant after realizing that there were no Latin-American service-industry companies that were well focused on global exports.  Looking to import opportunities and export software, the four founders have created a company that will end up this year with 3,000 employees, an entirely fresh approach to what the industry offers, a blue chip customer list, and as a global role model for entrepreneurship.  As Globant’s CTO, Guibert is head of the Technology department and of the Premier League, an elite group of IT gurus whose main role is to think outside of the box for their customers.  He obtained a U.S. patent for “click to call,” which reduces the time it takes to get a new customer from four days to four seconds.  The founders of Globant were selected as Endeavor Entrepreneurs in 2005.  Guibert is currently VP of Endeavor Argentina and is a committee member of TedxRiodelaPlata.  In 2011, he was also included in Globalization Today’s Powerful 25 list.

Dani Essindi Behrendt is a tech entrepreneur with more than 15 years of experience in technology, consumer Internet and media.  He is currently the Technology Alliance Liaison at Honda, where he works on strategy, innovation and technology investments.  Before Honda, Mr. Essindi was at RII, the business incubation arm of RICOH, working as an EIR on new product creation and spin-outs for RICOH’s strategic expansion roadmap.  Prior to RICOH, Mr. Essindi was the co-founder & CEO of TripJane, an award winning online travel discovery service.  He also co-founded the re-birth of Red Herring, serving as its COO from 2003 to 2006.  Before his tenure at Red Herring, Mr. Essindi was the editorial director for ETRE, where he set strategic direction and built relationships among technology CEOs and investors.  He has also helped launch several technology startups and media companies and currently serves as an advisor to several Internet consumer startups.  Mr. Essindi is a trained economist and holds an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.

Paul Eynott is CEO of acudora and is responsible for partnering in the U.S. within R&D for the SANOFI group.  acudora creates revolutionary technology that enhances digital sound to match customers’ “Acoustic DNA,” or unique hearing signature, and it is set to transform listening on digital devices and to change communications on a global scale.  Paul holds faculty appointments at the University of Arizona’s College of Pharmacy, Department of Physiology and is on the Dean’s Advisory Boards for both the College of Engineering and College of Science.  He received a doctorate in pharmacology from Imperial College London, where he completed post-doctoral assignments.  Paul received his B.S. in pharmacology from the University of Manchester.  He is a published-scientist and is a regular panelist on discussions about innovation and commercialization of early stage assets.

Donald Farmer is the QlikView Product Advocate, working with customers and partners to establish QlikView as the leading solution for Business Discovery.  Donald has over twenty years experience in analytics and data management.  Throughout that time he has worked as a consultant, has been involved in startups, and has served as a leader of Microsoft’s BI product teams.  He is a speaker at many international events on business intelligence, data integration and data management.  He is also a blogger and author of several books.  In addition to his career in Business Intelligence, Donald has worked in fields as diverse as fish-farming and archaeology in Scotland.  He is also a guest professor at SouthWestern University in Chongqing, China, and advises on several academic boards.  Donald lives in an experimental woodland house with his wife, Allison.

Mike Federle is a co-founder of Techonomy Media Inc where he served as President and COO until joining Forbes Media as Chief Operating Officer in October, 2011.  At Forbes, Federle is responsible for business development including brand extensions, new business models, conferences and partnerships.  He also oversees circulation, manufacturing and distribution operations.   Prior to Forbes, he helped to launch Techonomy Media Inc with partners David Kirkpatrick and Simone Ross.  Before that, Federle was Group Publisher at Bonnier Mountain Group in Boulder, Colorado.  A 25 year veteran of the media industry, Federle spent much of his career at Time Inc, including roles as Publisher of Fortune magazine and Group Publisher of the Time Inc Business  & Finance Network.

Fay Feeney is CEO at Risk for Good, a company that delivers realistic and expert advice to board chairs.  The company encourages board chairs to think about how they can support CEOs in retooling their enterprises for a technological economy and helps them think through this business transformation and lead profitable, sustainable businesses.  At Risk for Good, the company provides an independent view of emerging risks before they become bad news, such as: technology, on-line communications, social media, sustainability, safety, talent diversity and more.  Ms. Feeney is a risk professional, helping board chairs listen and interpret what they hear from customers, investors and competitors.  She will be moderating a session on social media at the NACD annual conference in Washington, DC.

Casey Fenton is currently co-founder and CIO of CouchSurfing International, a network of welcoming people worldwide.  As a Host you can experience your city through new eyes by offering travelers a place to stay on their journey.  As a Surfer you can bypass the typical hotel experience by staying at the home of a local and learning about their culture.  The concept was born in 1999 after Casey traveled and had several experiences staying with locals.  After attending college for computer science in 1997, he worked as a technology and Internet consultant before starting several technology companies.  From 2003 to 2009, Casey worked on creating the original CouchSurfing website.  Casey was the company’s Executive Director prior to becoming CIO.

Ashoka Fellow

Michael Fertik is currently CEO of Reputation.com, a company that empowers individuals and businesses to control their privacy and reputation online.  Formerly ReputationDefender, Reputation.com was founded in 2006 and is recognized by World Economic Forum as a Technology Pioneer 2011 for its global technology leadership and innovation.  Credited with pioneering the field of Online Reputation Management (ORM), Fertik is lauded as the world’s leading cyber thinker in digital privacy and reputation.  He is a member of the World Economic Forum Agenda Council on Internet Security and recipient of the World Economic Forum Technology Pioneer 2011 Award.  He is an industry commentator with guest columns in Harvard Business Review, The Huffington Post, Reuters and Newsweek.  He is also co-author of the bestselling book, “Wild West 2.0.”  Fertik founded his first Internet company while at Harvard College.

Mr. Jon Fine

Author

Dan Finnigan is CEO of Jobvite, the leading recruiting platform for the social web.  He has spent his career launching and growing Internet businesses with a focus on the recruitment market.  Previously, Dan served as SVP of Yahoo! and General Manager of Yahoo! HotJobs, doubling revenue between 2002 and 2007.  At Yahoo!, Dan established its partnership with HotJobs with a consortium of over 700 newspapers.  Prior to Yahoo!, he led the creation of Knight Ridder Digital, the Internet company of the world’s second largest newspaper publisher, serving as President and CEO.  For Knight Ridder, Dan led its joint acquisition of CareerBuilder with Tribune, serving on CareerBuilder’s Board for three years.  Prior to Knight Ridder, Dan helped launch, and eventually led as CEO, Smartpages.com for SBC/ATT.  Dan holds an M.B.A. from The Wharton School and a B.A. in Communication Studies from UCLA.

Bo Fishback is the Founder and CEO of Zaarly, a two-way community-powered process that provides convenience and flexibility to buyers while allowing sellers to make money fulfilling requests from the people around them.  Zaarly is for anyone who has ever thought, “I’d pay this much for that.”  Previously, Fishback was the President of Kauffman Labs and the Vice President of Entrepreneurship at the Kauffman Foundation.  He has worked with hundreds of startups and founding teams but discovered his true passion in founding Zaarly.

Richard Fishman joined Ashoka as a Senior Executive in 2010.  He began his career in the 1970s as a civil rights/legal services lawyer and created the first housing and economic development law program for the poor in the southern U.S.  He subsequently headed the American Bar Association’s National Housing Law Program and its National Advisory Commission on Housing and Urban Growth.  In private practice, Richard built one of the nation’s largest housing finance practices.  At Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy, he headed the firm’s Structured Finance practice, representing major Wall Street investment banks in structuring complex financial instruments, public offerings and bank M&A deals, while also serving as Managing Partner of the firm’s Washington, D.C. office.  In 1993, he became President of Thinking Machines Corporation, which used massively parallel processing to build the world’s fastest supercomputers.  Upon the reorganization of TMC, he began investing in early-stage companies, initially through boutique VC firms and then heading venture investing for MacAndrews & Forbes Group.  Mr. Fishman has served and currently serves on the boards of numerous publicly traded and privately held companies and non-profit organizations.

Steve Forbes is Chairman and Editor in Chief of Forbes Media and has been responsible for the company’s launch of a variety of new publications and businesses, including ForbesLife, Forbes Asia, and Forbes licensee editions published in numerous countries.  Mr. Forbes writes editorials for each issue of Forbes under the heading of “Fact and Comment.”  He is the only writer to have won the highly prestigious Crystal Owl Award four times.  In both 1996 and 2000, Mr. Forbes campaigned for the Republican nomination for the Presidency and still energetically promotes his agenda. He is author of: How Capitalism Will Save Us…co-authored by Elizabeth Ames, Power Ambition Glory…, co-authored by John Prevas, and Flat Tax Revolution:  Using a Postcard to Abolish the IRS, A New Birth of Freedom. In 1985, President Reagan named Mr. Forbes Chairman of the bi-partisan Board for International Broadcasting (BIB), where he oversaw the operation of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty.  Mr. Forbes was reappointed to his post by President George H. W. Bush and served until 1993.  Mr. Forbes also currently serves on numerous boards.

Moira Forbes is the President and Publisher of ForbesWoman, a multi-media platform dedicated to successful women in business and leadership.  She is also the host of Success with Moira Forbes, a video series on the Forbes Video Network featuring candid, one-on-one interviews with today’s top women leaders.  ForbesWoman was launched by Forbes Media in 2008 and examines the unique experiences of professionally successful women, affirms their ambitions and achievements, and sets the agenda for purposeful discourse on the topics that matter most to them.  Moira joined Forbes Media in 2001 in its London office, overseeing research and marketing for Forbes’ European edition, in addition to developing business opportunities on behalf of all the company divisions.  She came to the New York office and was named Associate Publisher of Forbes’ dedicated lifestyle magazine, ForbesLife, in February of 2004, and President and Publisher, ForbesWoman, in 2008.  In 2010, Moira founded the Forbes Executive Women’s Board, which aims to advance some of the most relevant issues for women in business and leadership today.  She serves on the board of Key4Women and is a member of several organizations.

Scott Fore beings an extensive background of 35 years in converting, manufacturing, and distribution services.  He has worked in a broad range of management fields where he has developed new product lines from the design stages through manufacturing and distribution.  He has also established a broad range of business relationships with numerous Fortune 500 companies, including Shell Oil Co., Weyerhaeuser Paper Co., and Reynolds Food Packaging.  During 2007, Mr. Fore partnered with his son and a number of motivated students to co-develop a website dedicated to community involvement and connectivity.  Through many iterations and with over five years of development, NobleHour® was born.  NobleHour® is an online community platform that lets you connect, contribute, communicate, and track and measure impact within your “offline” community.  Tailored for education, non-profits, businesses, and municipalities, NobleHour® offers membership management, event management, job tracking, and impact measurement solutions that help promote civic engagement.  Students, volunteers and workers can track hours and submit for verification and approval with one click, while educators and managers can instantly generate reports that show involvement and impact.

Andras Forgacs is Managing Director of Richmond Global, where he is responsible for the day-to-day management of Richmond’s portfolio of venture investments as well as sourcing new investment opportunities.  He is also the co-founder of Organovo, a highly recognized tissue engineering company that has pioneered the use of 3D bio-printing to create human tissue for medical applications.  Andras is also the Founder of Modern Meadow, which applies this 3D bio-printing approach to produce in-vitro meat and animal products without killing animals and without the environmental, health and resource burden of the livestock industry.  Previously, Andras was a consultant in the New York office of McKinsey & Company.  He also helped found the client-facing E-commerce Group of Citigroup.  Andras serves on the boards of Organavo and Modern Meadow and is a board observer of AdChina, LearnVest and Fiksu Mobile.  He is also co-founder and Chairman Emeritus of the international non-profit Resolution Project.  Andras is a Kauffman Fellow with the Center for Venture Education and a Term Member with the Council on Foreign Relations.

Justin Fox is Editorial Director of the Harvard Business Review Group and the author of The Myth of the Rational Market: A History of Risk, Reward, and Delusion on Wall Street, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller and New York Times Notable Book of 2009.  Before joining HBR Group in 2010, he wrote a weekly column for Time and created the Curious Capitalist blog for Time.com.  Previously, Fox spent more than a decade working as a writer and editor at Fortune magazine, where he covered economics, finance, and international business.

Ping Fu co-founded Geomagic, a software company that pioneers 3D technologies that fundamentally change the way products are designed and manufactured around the world.  From repairing vintage cars at Jay Leno’s garage to preserving U.S. treasures and digitally recreating the Statue of Liberty, Geomagic enables design and production of one-of-the-kind products and services.  Before Geomagic, Ping was director of visualization at the National Center for Supercomputing Applications (NCSA), where she initiated and managed the NCSA Mosaic browser that led to Netscape and Internet Explorer.  While at Bell Labs, she led the development of data mining and digital telephony.  Ping is actively involved in promoting entrepreneurship and women in mathematics and sciences and serves on the board of multiple programs and foundations.  She is also the author of two books and an inventor of five U.S. and international patents.  Ping has received numerous awards for her leadership as an entrepreneur, including Entrepreneur of the Year by Inc. magazine, Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year for the Carolinas, Woman’s Compass award and Life Time Achievements award by Business Leader magazine.

Lukasz Gadowski is an Internet entrepreneur and investor.  He is the founder of Spreadshirt.com, Europe’s leading customized apparel platform, as well as co-founder of StudiVZ.net, a German social network and one of the top three German websites, and Brands4friends.com, Germany’s leading private sales club.  Today Lukasz is a partner at Team Europe, one of Europe’s leading incubator groups.  Team Europe establishes new Internet companies, and has an active portfolio consisting of companies including Lieferheld.de, Sponsorpay.com, Madvertise, Kaeuferportal, Misterspex, and The European magazine.  Lukasz has received numerous awards for his entrepreneurial work.

Ms. Liz Gannes

Senior Editor
WSJ AllThingsD

Maelle Gavet currently serves as CEO of OZON.ru, a Russian Internet shop that sells a wide variety of Russian language goods including books, music, movies, software, toys, cosmetics, home and decoration products, and electronics, which accounts for 30% of the company’s turnover.  Ozon has been operating from Russia since 1998 and delivers to any part of the globe, with a main focus on providing their compatriots in CIS with the opportunity to keep in touch with their Russian culture.  Gavet began her career at Ozon in 2009 as head of its marketing department.  She was also the Founder and Managing Director of Predstavitelskij Dom and spent six years working at the Boston Consulting Group.  From 1999 to 2001, Gavet also served as project manager of the nonprofit Preobrazhenie Foundation.  Gavet was born in France and received her education from Sorbonne University (Paris, France), Ecole Normale Supérieure, Fontenay-St-Cloud (France), and the Institut D’Etudes Politiques (France, Paris).

Greg Gianforte is Founder and CEO of RightNow Technologies, which he founded in 1997 in Bozeman, Montana.  He took it public in 2004 and the company’s stock rose 130% that year.  RightNow powers nearly 2,000 consumer-centric organizations to deliver superior customer experiences across the web, social networks and contact centers.  The company helps global clients including Overstock.com, Nikon and SiriusXM improve efficiencies, reduce costs, and increase revenue.  Greg is also author of Bootstrapping Your Business: Start and Grow a Successful Company With Almost No Money, as well as founding Bootstrap Montana, a program to help entrepreneurs learn the principles of bootstrapping and provide micro-loans to rural Montana entrepreneurs.

Ryan Gilbert is CEO of BillFloat, a small dollar loan and payments solution founded in 2009 that gives consumers more time to pay bills.  It is the U.S.’s first bill payment network offering alternative credit options to help consumers responsibly avoid late fees, overdraft charges, service termination, and high interest loans.  Ryan has launched a succession of products and services within the financial services industry.  He is also an investor and advisor to early stage payments companies including Eventbrite and Square.

Don Goeman, Executive Vice President of Research, Design & Development is responsible for the commercialization of new and innovative product programs, which extend Herman Miller’s well-recognized leadership in product design and innovation.  Don joined Herman Miller’s New Product Development arena in 1980, and during his 30 years with the company had held a variety of new product design and development leadership positions.  Most noteworthy innovations from Don’s development teams, in collaboration with industrial designers from around the globe, include the development of the Aeron and Mirra Chairs; the Resolve, My Studio and Vivo Office Systems, and the Leaf Light.  In 1997, the Product Development Management Association (PDMA) recognized Herman Miller for its product design and development practices as Corporate Innovator of the Year.  Don is a graduate of Hope College with a BA in Business Administration, and the University of Michigan with a BSE in Mechanical Engineering.

Amol Goje currently serves as a Director in the Vidya Pratishthan’s Institute of Information Technology, Baramati and Pune, India, where he focuses on delivering education, health, information and agricultural services through the use of ICTs to the underserved.  Dr. Amol has designed several economically sustainable computer labs in schools and colleges throughout rural areas of India.  His premier innovation is the Mobile Computer Vans, which have benefitted 25,000 elementary school children in 70+ villages for the past 12 years.  Dr. Amol has also set an initiative toward the development of 100 Self Help and group women computer skill centers, which are run by women entrepreneurs that provide skills to over 10,000 village women throughout the state of Maharashtra.  He has implemented over 13 telehealth diagnostics in rural health centers, which provide specialized cardiac care access based on IT.  He also developed mobile-based agriculture information services for farmers.  Dr. Amol received the Ashoka Fellow award in 2002, Government of Maharashtra Award for IT entrepreneurship, and the Manthan Award for Technology content for schools and community radio.

Ashoka Fellow

Jeff Goodell

Writer

Rolling Stone Magazine

Mr. Mark Gorenberg

Managing Director
Hummer Winblad Venture Partners

Matt Grob is executive vice president and CTO for Qualcomm Incorporated, where he is responsible for the oversight of Qualcomm’s technical path, the coordination of R&D activities across the company, and the development of next-generation wireless technologies.  Matt also leads Qualcomm’s Corporate R&D and provides oversight to Qualcomm Corporate Engineering Services.  Matt’s focus on cellular data services led to his assignment as co-project engineer for the High Data Rate (HDR) program, which started in 1997.  This new high-speed Internet access technology became standardized as 1xEV-DO, and commercialized throughout the world.  In 1998, Matt became the head of Corporate R&D’s system engineering department.  In 2006, Matt took the role of leading the Corporate R&D division.  While maintaining a very strong focus on core cellular WAN technology, Corporate R&D has broadened its mission to include new areas such as Augmented Reality, Wireless Charging, processor and applications enhancements, peer-to-peer technologies, position location, and Wireless LAN.  Matt holds a number of patents in the area of wireless data services and technology.  He also holds a BSEE from Bradley University, Peoria, Illinois as well as an MSEE from Stanford University.

Bill Gross is the Founder and CEO of Idealab.  He started Idealab in 1996 and within the last 15 years it has created and built more than 75 technology companies including Overture, Internet Brands, eSolar and Picasa.  In 2010, Idealab created UberMedia, the leading independent developer of applications and web-based services that make it easier for users to find, follow and communicate with others on Twitter and other social media platforms.  Mr. Gross currently serves on the boards of numerous companies in the areas of robotics, automation, software, and renewable energy.  He also serves as a Trustee on the Board of Directors at the Art Center College of Design and his alma mater, the California Institute of Technology.

Guo Xiao serves as the Managing Director of the China branch of ThoughtWorks Inc., a transnational professional service provider with offices in the United States, Canada, Europe, Australia, China, India and Brazil.  The company provides advisory and delivery services to Global 1000 companies.  Mr. Guo helps these companies achieve unique competitive advantage by leveraging innovative technological solutions to solve tough business problems.  Mr. Guo joined ThoughtWorks in 1999.  He has spent most of his career helping customers create engaging software products that set them apart form their competitors.  Since 2004, Mr. Guo has helped to create and build the China branch by providing custom software product advisory and delivery services for both local and global customers.

Yogesh Gupta is the President and CEO of FatWire, the largest private Web Experience Management Company.  FatWire products are the foundation of the online presence of world-leading brands, including Apple, Barclays, Boeing, Ford, Grupo Santander, Hartford Insurance, News Corp, Redbull, 3M, and Wal-Mart.  The company was recently acquired by Oracle.  Yogesh has over 25 years of experience in the enterprise software industry.  Prior to FatWire he held several roles at CA, including CTO.  In 2004, InfoWorld selected him as one of the 25 most influential CTOs worldwide.  He also led the acquisition of three public and 15 private companies over a two-and-a-half year period.  Yogesh is a published author and speaker who regularly presents to audiences ranging from CIOs to CTOs, industry analysts, financial investors and the media.  He also serves on the boards of Rev2, Touro Law School, and the Long Island High Tech Incubator.  Previously, he served on the boards of DimDim, UCLA WINMEC, and the Center of Excellence in Wireless and Information Technology.  Yogesh holds a patent in the field of neural networks.

Saar is a General partner with Charles River Ventures and focuses on consumer investments for the firm.  At CRV, Saar led investments in Progress Financial, Altius and Blippy, and was involved with CRV’s investments in Twitter, LilGreenPatch (acquired by Playdom), and Viki.  Prior to joining CRV, Saar was an angel investor in a number of other companies including Admob (acquired by Google), Flixster, Rockyou, and Xobni.  Saar was also a co-founder of BrightRoll, the world’s leading Internet video advertising network, and a co-founder of Carebadges.com, acquired by Facebook Causes, where he remains an active advisor.  Previously, Saar was VP of Customer Acquisition at Adteractive, a performance-based marketing company.  Most recently, Saar launched FounderDating, an endeavor aimed at helping talented entrepreneurs find cofounders and compelling business ideas.

Ms. Michelle Guthrie

APAC Director, Strategic Business Development
Google Asia Pacific

John Hagel III is Co-Chairman of the Deloitte Center for the Edge, which conducts original research and develops substantive points of view for new corporate growth.  He is responsible for overseeing the development of the Center’s research agenda and also represents Deloitte with top-tier clients and media.  Hagel has nearly 30 years of experience as a management consultant, author, speaker, and entrepreneur and has helped companies improve their performance by effectively applying information technology to reshape business strategies.  Before joining Deloitte, John was an independent consultant and writer.  Prior to that, he held significant positions at leading consulting firms and public and private companies, including McKinsey & Co., 12 Entrepreneuring, and Atari.  John is the author of a series of best-selling business books and has won awards and recognition from Harvard Business Review and a variety of publications and professional service firms.  His most recent book is The Power of Pull, co-authored with John Seely Brown.  John holds a B.A. from Wesleyan University, a B.Phil. from Oxford University, and a J.D. and M.B.A. from Harvard University.

Rosanne Haggerty is the President of Community Solutions (CS), a national nonprofit organization that grows the capacity of communities to prevent and end homelessness.  The organization is a spinoff of New York-based Common Ground, which Haggerty founded in 1990 and built into a leader in the development of supportive housing and other research-based practices that end homelessness.  Its network of well designed, affordable apartments—linked to supportive services that people need to maintain their housing, restore their health, and regain their economic independence—has enabled more than 4,000 individuals to overcome homelessness.  The organization is also credited with ending chronic homelessness in Times Square.  CS brings tested innovations in reducing homelessness to a national scale and advances new models of homelessness prevention and community development.  The 100,000 Homes Campaign is a cornerstone initiative that coordinates the efforts of national organizations and local communities to collectively house 100,000 homeless individuals and families by July 2013.  Haggerty is a 2001 MacArthur Foundation Fellow, an Ashoka Senior Fellow, and a Hunt Alternative Fund Prime Mover.

Ashoka Fellow

Jay Hallberg co-founded Spiceworks in 2006 with the goal to simplify “everything IT” for the world’s small and medium-sized businesses.  The company adopted a crazy idea for business software: give it away for free and monetize with ads and e-commerce.  The strategy worked and Spiceworks has grown into the world’s social business network for IT and is often called “the Facebook of IT.”  By combining IT management apps, a Facebook-like community, and IT purchasing, Spiceworks helps over 1.6 million IT professionals discover, buy, and manage $275 billion worth of technology products and services each year.  Jay frequently speaks on monetizing social networks, B2B social marketing, and SMB IT trends at top industry events, including the IAB, Cloud Computing Expo and Web 2.0 Summit, among others.  His commentary has also appeared in top publications, such as The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and Investor’s Business Daily.

Mr. Hamel is co-founder and GP at Cue Ball Capital, a Boston-based venture and early growth equity firm focused on information services, Internet commerce, digital media, and specialty consumer businesses.  The partnership consists of leaders previously behind transformations in those spaces, including the CEO that transformed Thomson into the world’s largest information media company, Thomson Reuters, and the lead investors behind Chipotle and Redbox.  Mr. Hamel is active across all deals and sits on the boards of a number of portfolio companies.  He previously worked for eight years as Director of Business Intelligence for the technology-consulting firm, Answerthink.  In that role he became an advisor on performance management to many firms including Verizon, General Electric, Alliance Capital, Citizen’s Bank, Exelon Energy and Hard Rock Café.  Mr. Hamel is also co-founder of Hamel Group, a Boston based real estate development and management firm.  He holds an A.B. degree from Harvard University.

Professor Gary Hamel

Director
Management Lab

Darell Hammond is the founder and CEO of KaBOOM!, a not-for-profit based in Washington, DC dedicated to saving play by making sure there is a great place to play within walking distance of every child in America.  KaBOOM! works with communities and corporations to build playgrounds in all 50 states where there are none.  The organization was founded out of Hammond’s apartment in 1996 and has raised $200 million, rallied a million volunteers, led the hands-on construction of 2,000 playgrounds, and inspired a movement for the child’s right to play.  To help start the conversation and educate Americans about the importance of play in children’s lives, Hammond wrote The New York Times Bestseller KaBOOM!: How One Man Built a Movement to Save Play.

Ashoka Fellow

As CTO at RSA, the Security Division of EMC, Bret Hartman is responsible for defining the corporate security technology strategy for EMC, as implemented by the RSA division.  Prior to RSA, Mr. Hartman was CTO, Information Security, at EMC Corporation.  Prior to EMC, Mr. Hartman was Director of Technical Services for SOA Appliances at IBM Corporation, and was also VP of Technology Solutions at DataPower Technology Inc. (acquired by IBM).  Mr. Hartman’s previous roles include CTO at Quadrasis Security (Hitachi Computer Products); VP, e-Security Services and Chief Security Architect at Concept Five Technology; President and Co-founder of BlackWatch Technology Inc; and Director of Information Security at Odyssey Research Associates.  Mr. Hartman began his distinguished career as a U.S. Air Force officer assigned to the U.S. National Security Agency, where he helped to create the “DoD Trusted Computer System Evaluation Criteria” (Orange Book).  He is a co-author of Object Management Group’s CORBA Security specification, and co-edited the Security Scenarios document produced by the WS-I basic Security Profile Working Group.

Mr. Thomas Hayes

Vice President, Corporate Marketing
Marvell Technology Group, Inc.

Dan Hesse is the CEO of the Sprint Nextel Corporation.  The company is recognized for developing, engineering and deploying technologies including the first wireless 4G service from a national carrier in the U.S., mobile data services, instant national and international push-to-talk capabilities, and a global Tier 1 Internet backbone.  Newsweek ranked Sprint #6 in its 2010 Green Rankings, listing it as one of the nation’s greenest companies, the highest of any telecommunications company.  Prior to Sprint Nextel, Mr. Hesse spent 23 years at AT&T, where he last served as President and CEO of AT&T Wireless Services.  He currently serves as Chairman of the CTIA, the U.S. wireless industry’s trade association, and has been appointed by President Obama to the NSTAC.  Hesse has been named the “Most Influential Person in Mobile Technology” by LAPTOP magazine, Wireless Industry “Person of the Year” by RCR magazine, “Executive of the Year” by Wireless Business and Technology magazine.  He also received Wireless Week’s Leadership Award.

Andrew Hessel helps industry and research groups better understand and apply fast-moving genetic technologies to key challenges including health, the environment, and energy.  He views cells as living computers that can be programmed easily with synthetic biology, genetic engineering done with computer-aided design, and DNA synthesis.  He co-chairs the Bioinformatics and Biotechnology track at Singularity University and is Founder of the Pink Army Cooperative, a revolutionary biotechnology company that works to develop open-source personalized cancer therapies.

Ned Hooper is SVP and CSO at Cisco.  He is responsible for driving the development of Cisco’s business vision and strategy to identify the next key market transitions across customer segments and to develop integrated strategies that leverage all Cisco assets.  He also leads Corporate Development and is responsible for business development activities.  Prior to his current role, Hooper was VP of Corporate Business Development, where he led the company’s acquisition strategy.  Through acquisitions including IronPort, Airespace, Scientific Atlanta, WebEx, Tandberg and Starent, Cisco has expanded into new markets, resulting in several billion dollars of additional annual revenue since 2002.  Hooper also led Cisco’s consumer business, managing the company’s consumer strategy and vision to focus on delivering consumer products and solutions that leveraged networking and video applications.  Previously, Hooper carried out Cisco’s strategy for entering the packet telephony local services market with a solution for carriers and cable operators to deliver voice-over-IP services for consumers.  Hooper joined Cisco through the acquisition of Lightspeed International, where he was Director of Business Development responsible for implementing a global distribution strategy.

Stephen Hoover is CEO of PARC, a Xerox company that works with Fortune Global 500 and medium-sized companies, startups, and government agencies and partners to invent, co-develop, and deliver new business opportunities.  Hoover oversees PARC’s work in diverse areas from networking and novel electronics, to ethnography services, cleantech, and intelligent mobile computing.  With a track record that combines business leadership, research, and engineering—from fundamental R&D to commercial scale-up—Hoover specializes in bridging functional silos and establishing strong cultures of innovation.  Previously, Hoover was VP of a Xerox organization that supported multi-million dollar investments in core and next-generation R&D.  He holds a Ph.D. and M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and a B.S. from Cornell University.  He also has seven patents.

Ms. Hopkins has served as Citi’s Chief Innovation Officer since 2008, where she focuses on building partnerships with venture capitalists, start-ups, corporations, universities and thought leaders to support the incubation of emerging technologies in the design, development, and implementation of disruptive customer-centric business models.  She also serves as Chairman of Citi Venture Capital Initiatives.  Previously, from 2003 to 2005, she was Chief Operations & Technology Officer of Citi.  Prior to that, she was Head of Corporate Strategy, Mergers & Acquisitions.  She has also served as Co-Chair of Citi’s Women’s Initiative and as CFO for the Boeing Company and for Lucent Technologies.  She was also VP of Finance for General Motors Europe.  Ms. Hopkins is currently a board member at QlikTech Inc. and also serves on the advisory board of Riverwood Partners.  She was a member of the board of directors for DuPont between 2000 and 2005.  FORTUNE magazine has twice named her one of the most powerful women in American business and in 2011 she was named to Institutional Investor’s top Tech 50 list. Citi, the leading global financial services company, has approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions. Citi provides consumers, corporations, and governments with a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, global transaction and wealth management services.

Philipp Humm has been with T-Mobile USA since July 2010, and currently serves as CEO.  Previously, Humm served as chief regional officer, as a member of the executive committee of T-Mobile International, and as CEO and chief sales officer of T-Mobile Germany.  He also served as a member of the management board of Deutsche Telekom’s wireline division.  After studying business in Germany and at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Humm began his career in 1982 at Procter & Gamble in Switzerland and Saudi Arabia.  In 1985 he received his MBA from IMD in Switzerland.  From 1986-1992, Humm was with the consulting firm McKinsey in Germany and in Los Angeles, CA.  From 1992-1999, Humm was an executive with the grocery retailer Tengelmann in Germany, where he became a member of the executive board and then CEO of their food discounter Plus.  Humm has also served as an executive of Amazon, the online retailer, where he held roles as managing director in Germany and France and VP Europe.

Todd Irwin

Executive Vice President and General Manager

Edelman

Sandy Jen, along with friends Seth Sternberg and Elaine Wherry, started Meebo in 2005 with one goal in mind: to connect people to their friends across the Web.  Meebo integrates all social networks and communications channels into a single, simple-to-use solution and enables users to easily share content and communicate in real time with their friends.  As co-founder and VP of Engineering, Jen has ultimately been responsible for ensuring that Meebo’s engineering efforts are well equipped to handle all the people and the 8,000+ websites that use Meebo today.  The company recently launched its Meebo MiniBar browser extension, which enables people to take Meebo across the entire Internet, check-in and stay connected while browsing the Web.  Jen began her engineering career at San Jose-based Xilinx—the first semiconductor company—as an enterprise software developer.  Originally an aspiring art student, Jen switched gears and decided to help start Meebo.

As ManpowerGroup’s resident futurist, Tammy Johns leads the company in both anticipating and navigating the trends in the changing world of work and in creating innovative services and solutions that help their clients and candidates excel.  Tammy’s key areas of focus include developing strategic partnerships that accelerate the execution of the company’s business strategy, including leading research based knowledge collaborations with key thought leaders and experts on the most important issues impacting global talent markets.  These initiatives focus on the impact that globalization, technology and demographics will have on emerging business models and the way we work in the future.  Tammy has collaborated on research and thought leadership activities with Harvard Business School, McKinsey Global Institute, MIT Center for Collective Intelligence, the Future of Work Institute, Aspen Institute and Moxie Insight.  She also co-authored the Harvard Business Review Big Idea article, “The Age of Hyperspecialization” (July 2011).

Kevin Johnson joined Juniper Networks as CEO and a member of the Board of Directors in 2008 after several years at IBM and more than 16 years at Microsoft.  Johnson and his team are focused on fundamentally changing the experience and economics of networking through an ecosystem of innovation built on powerful, integrated software platforms.  Under his leadership, Juniper’s revenue has steadily increased, growing market share in both enterprise and service provider sectors.  While at Microsoft, Johnson served as group VP of Worldwide Sales, Marketing and Services and then became President of the Platforms and Services Division, the company’s largest division responsible for the Windows and online services businesses.  Johnson has also served on the board of non-profits focusing on technology and women’s career advancement, and is currently a board member of Starbucks Coffee Company.  He was also appointed by President George W. Bush to serve on the National Security Telecommunications Advisory Committee (NSTAC).

David is Chairman and Managing Director of Chrysalis Ventures, where he works closely with some of the most exciting and innovative new companies transforming U.S. healthcare.  He currently serves on the boards of My Health Direct, Connecture, HCCA International, Sanovia, and several other Chrysalis portfolio companies.  From 2005-2010, David chaired the board of Humana Inc., a leading health care company that offers a wide range of insurance products and health and wellness services.  He currently serves as a director of that company and member of its board’s executive committee.  David also previously served on the investment committee of Humana Ventures, which made strategic investments in young healthcare IT and disease management companies including Trizetto (IPO later taken private by Apax Partners), Abaton.com (sold to McKesson) and CorSolutions (sold to Matria).  He is a member of the invitation-only Healthcare Executive Network, which collectively examines strategies necessary to create and sustain a world-class healthcare delivery system.  David also recently completed a term as chair of the Greater Louisville Health Enterprises Network, whose mission is to champion and foster the growth of the region’s health-related economy.

Wayne Kabak is CEO and Founder of WSK Management, a literary and talent management firm, which represents broadcast journalists, authors and public figures, with clients including Maria Bartiromo, Lou Dobbs, Condoleezza Rice, Robert Gates, Wynton Marsalis, Larry Kudlow, Dennis Kneale, Charlie Gasparino, Jane Pauley, Scott Simon and David Kirkpatrick.  Previously, Kabak served as Co-COO of William Morris Agency, as General Counsel, International Creative Management, and as an attorney for the entertainment department of Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison.  Kabak has also worked for Film Comment, Rolling Stone, Village Voice and The Boston Phoenix. He is also currently Board Member of Film Forum, Tufts University Communications and Media Studies Program.  He previously served as Board Member and President of New York Theatre Workshop.  Kabak received an education from Columbia School of Law, Columbia University School of Journalism, and Tufts University.

Mr. Erik Kain

Editor in Chief, The League of Ordinary Gentlemen and Blogger/Freelance Writer
Forbes Magazine

John Kao is chair of the Institute for Large Scale Innovation, whose i20 group is an association of 33 national ‘chief innovation officers.’  He is an advisor to the Clinton Global Initiative and a White House commission on US-China innovation policy.  John is a director of the Bay Area Science and Innovation Consortium.  He has served as a founding member of the transformation Advisory Group of the US Department of Defense.  John has also started and invested in a series of technology companies and is also a Tony nominated and Palme d’Or winning producer of film (sex, lies and videotape, Mr. baseball) and theater (Golden Child, Flower Drum Song, Jitney).  He was a key advisor to both Singapore and Abu Dhabi in the development of their national media strategies.  John has also worked with some of the world’s leading designers and has chaired the Aspen Design Conference around the topic of “reinventing the relationship of design and business.”  John was a Harvard Business School professor from 1982-96, where he taught innovation and entrepreneurship.  He authored Jamming: The Art and Discipline of Business Creativity and Innovation Nation.

Chet Kapoor

Chief Executive Officer

Apigee

Jeffrey Katzenberg is the CEO, co-founder and director of DreamWorks Animation SKG—the largest animation studio in the world—which creates high-quality entertainment for audiences around the world, including CG animated feature films, television specials and series, live entertainment properties and online virtual worlds.  He co-founded the company with Steven Spielberg and David Geffen in October 1994.  Under Katzenberg’s leadership, DreamWorks Animation became the first studio to produce all of its feature films in 3D and in 2010 became the first company to release three CG feature films in 3D in a single year.  DreamWorks Animation has been named one of the “100 best Companies to Work For” by FORTUNE magazine for three consecutive years and ranks #10 on the 2011 list.  Prior to co-founding DreamWorks, Katzenberg served as chairman of The Walt Disney Studios and previously served as president of Paramount Studios.  In addition to serving as chairman of the board for the Motion Picture & Television Fund Foundation, Katzenberg sits on the boards or serves as a trustee for multiple other organizations.

Chris leads the venturing arm of Citi Ventures.  His team identifies emerging new market growth areas, develops new venture concepts in and across these areas, and launches disruptive new corporate ventures in pilot markets globally.  Through partnerships with VCs, the team invests in start-ups that are at the leading edge of new business models and technologies.  Prior to joining Citi in 2007, Chris held several senior leadership positions at Target over a 12-year period, with results ranging from delivering substantial operations savings to heading some of the largest merchandising departments.  Chris started his professional career as a corporate lawyer representing Fortune 100 companies across a variety of areas with a specialty in debt and equity based transactions.  Chris has a BA in French and Economics from the University of Wisconsin, Madison and a JD from the University of Minnesota.  Chris is an avid sailor and enjoys singing as well. Citi, the leading global financial services company, has approximately 200 million customer accounts and does business in more than 160 countries and jurisdictions. Citi provides consumers, corporations, and governments with a broad range of financial products and services, including consumer, corporate and investment banking, securities brokerage, global transaction and wealth management services.

Andrew Keen is an Anglo-American entrepreneur, writer, broadcaster and public speaker.  He is the author of the international hit CULT OF THE AMATEUR: How the Internet is Killing our Culture, which has been published in 17 different languages and was short-listed for the Higham’s Business Technology Book of the Year award.  As a pioneering Silicon Valley-based Internet entrepreneur, Andrew founded Audiocafe.com in 1995 and built it into a popular first generation Internet music company.  He is currently the host of the “Keen On” show, the popular Techcrunch chat show.  Andrew is an acclaimed speaker on the international circuit, speaking regularly on the impact of new technology on 21^st century business, education and society.  Andrew’s new book about the social media revolution, Digital Vertigo: An Anti-Social Manifesto, will be published by St. Martin’s Press in 2012.

Harry W. Kellogg is Vice Chairman of the board of Silicon Valley Bank and is Head of Strategic Relationships for SVB Financial Group, a financial holding company that serves emerging growth and mature companies in the technology, life science, private equity and premium wine industries.  The Group offers diversified services through Silicon Valley Bank, SVB Analytics, SVB Capital, SVB Global and SVB Private Client Services to provide clients with commercial, investment, international and private banking services.  Prior to joining the company, Kellogg was the group manager of Corporate Banking at Bank of the West for five years and started that bank’s technology lending group.  He was also with Wells Fargo Bank for 13 years, including four years in the Wells Fargo Special Industries Group, a high-tech lending unit within Wells Fargo Bank.  Kellogg is also actively involved in many civic and industry organizations and serves on many of their boards and advisory boards.  He was also named one of Upside Magazine’s “100 People Who Changed Our World.”

Rik Kirkland is Senior Managing Editor at McKinsey & Company, a management consulting firm that helps many of the world’s leading corporations and organizations address their strategic challenges, from reorganizing for long-term growth to improving business performance and maximizing revenue.  In this role, Kirkland has global responsibility for McKinsey’s high priority, external print and digital content creation, which includes McKinsey Quarterly and eQuarterly, McKinsey on Finance and a new publication and website, What Matters.  Before joining McKinsey in 2008, Kirkland spent nearly three decades at Time Inc, where he served FORTUNE magazine as Washington Editor, Europe Editor, International Editor and eventually as Deputy Managing Editor and Managing Editor.  Besides his print role, Kirkland helped develop two TV specials for PBS and supervised FORTUNE’s online activities.  He has been a frequent guest on CNN and CNBC and moderates discussions with top CEOs and political figures at numerous forums and events.  Mr. Kirkland is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, serves on the board of the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation and plays guitar in a rock band, The Prowlers.

Maria Klawe began her tenure as Harvey Mudd College’s first female president in 2006.  HMC is a premier engineering, science and mathematics college that emphasizes hands-on experience, high-level undergraduate research, and interdisciplinary learning.  Located in Claremont, California, Harvey Mudd College is a member of The Claremont Colleges Consortorium.  Prior to joining HMC, she served as Dean of Engineering and as a Professor of Computer Science at Princeton University.  Klawe joined Princeton from the University of British Columbia where she served in various roles from 1988 to 2002.  Prior to UBC, Klawe spent eight years with IBM Research in California and two years at the University of Toronto.  She received her Ph.D. (1977) and B.S. (1973) in mathematics from the University of Alberta.  Klawe is a member of the board of Microsoft Corporation, Broadcom Corporation and the nonprofit, Math for America.  She is also a trustee for the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute in Berkeley and a member of the Advisory Council for the Computer Science Teachers Association.

The company has developed a web and social media platform that enables public companies to sell their stock directly to customers on their Facebook page or website in just 3 clicks, creating more loyal consumers.  According to Bain & Company – customers that are owners spend 54% more, refer 2x the people and increase frequency of visit 68% over ordinary customers.  This innovative branding and loyalty platform is called a Customer Stock Ownership Plan™, or CSOP™.   LOYAL3’s newest technology is an IPO CSOP™ where customers purchase IPO shares at the same price as large institutions.  Issuers benefit by rewarding customers with coveted access to initially priced IPO shares – enhancing loyalty and retention.  LOYAL3 is committed to democratizing the market, making stock ownership easy and affordable for tens of millions of everyday Americans.

Klein.  In addition to his current position at LOYAL3, has built, launched and managed technologies and brands at Hill Holiday Advertising (US and Europe), Dun & Bradstreet, Harley-Davidson, Internet Profiles Corp., Liquid Audio, StockPower and Line 6. Working closely with Chris Brahm, Director of LOYAL3, Stephen was instrumental in the development of using stock ownership as a powerful consumer loyalty currency. Stephen received a BA degree from UMass at Amherst and an MBA from Harvard.

Captain John Kohut is a former Navy Test Pilot with a long-standing interest in space, robotic, and terrestrial advanced technologies.  He graduated in 1976 with a BS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Connecticut, and later completed an MS in Computer Science at the Florida Institute of Technology.  John has served as a major Program Manager for many DoD and NASA projects, and more recently has held C-level assignments for technology development and deployment companies in space and energy fields.  In both government and the aerospace industry, he brought large projects from the drawing board into production by focusing on innovation, customer satisfaction and teamwork.  As the COO for Planetary Power, Inc. John’s principal responsibility is developing and fielding SUNsparqÔ, the next generation of solar power with much greater efficiency, robustness and cost-effectiveness than “conventional” solar.  The modular SUNsparqÔ products are scalable with a back-up hybrid mode to smooth the normally intermittent output, thereby ensuring power is delivered at all times.

Gary Kovacs is the CEO of Mozilla Corporation, a nonprofit organization that works with a worldwide community to create open source products like Mozilla Firefox.  Kovacs is responsible for leading the overall direction of the organization, the Firefox Web browser and other Mozilla products.  Prior to joining Mozilla, Gary served as Senior VP of Markets, Solutions & Products at Sybase, as general Manager and VP of Mobile & Devices at Adobe and as VP of Product Marketing at Macromedia.  He also previously led the successful creation and growth of Zi Corporation, a company specializing in embedded software and services for mobile and consumer devices.  Prior to Zi Corporation, Gary spent 10 years at IBM in leadership positions in product management, sales, marketing and operations within the global software division.  He holds a Bachelor of Commerce and an MBA from the University of Calgary.

Fred Krupp has overseen the growth of Environmental Defense Fund (EDF) from a small nonprofit into a worldwide leader in the environmental movements.  Mr. Krupp is widely recognized as the champion of harnessing market forces for environmental ends.  He has broken new ground with strategic corporate partnerships, and helped launch the U.S. Climate Action partnership, whose Fortune 500 members have called for strict limits on global warming pollution.  EDF accepts no payments or contributions from its partners.  The New York Times has written, “Krupp has made a career of successfully pushing companies to make tough environmental changes.”  Mr. Krupp is co-author, with Miriam Horn, of the New York Times bestseller, Earth: The Sequel—The Race to Reinvent Energy and Stop Global Warming.  Educated at Yale and the University of Michigan Law School, Mr. Krupp was among 16 people named as America’s Best Leaders by U.S. News and World Report in 2007.

David Kuria is the CEO of Ecotact Limited and the Regional Social Entrepreneur of the Year for Africa, 2009.  Ecotact is a social enterprise that invests in innovations to solve the sanitation crisis in Africa and beyond.  The company’s award winning flagship project, Ikotoilet (founded by Kuria), is revolutionizing the sanitation industry and transforming it into a dignified and decent service to the public.  In addition, Kuria is the Urban Advisor for the Civil Society Urban Development Programme of the Embassy of Sweden and the Cluster Leader of Investment Partnerships of the Further Advancing the Blue Revolution Initiative (FABRI), a USAID funded program.  He is a member of the Rotary Club of Langata Nairobi, as well as the current editor of Eco Digest, a regional newsletter on current trends and opportunities in environmental management.  Kuria is also a member of the Advisory Team for Ashoka Sanitation in Africa, working to develop sustainable sanitation options and technologies.  He holds an M.B.A. and a degree in Architecture from Jomo Kenyatta University of Agriculture and Technology.

Joshua Kushner is the Managing Partner of New York-based media private equity firm, Thrive Capital.  As a junior in college, Joshua co-founded Vostu, which has grown to be the largest social company in Latin America.  Joshua started his career in the Merchant Banking Division of the Private Equity at Goldman Sachs.  Joshua currently serves as a Principal of Kushner Companies.  Its holdings include the Observer Media Group, of which Joshua is a board member.  He is also Vice Chairman and board member of Art.sy, a company he helped conceptualize and finance.  Joshua received his B.A. in Government from Harvard College, and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Randall Lane is the Editor of Forbes magazine and is responsible for the editorial content that differentiates it in print.  Mr. Lane rejoined the company in September 2011; he had worked at Forbes in a variety of positions—reporter, staff writer, and Washington Bureau Chief from 1991-1997—and was the author of five cover stories.  Most recently, Mr. Lane was Editor-at-Large at Newsweek and The Daily Beast.  Previously, he co-founded and served as editor-in-chief of six magazines, including P.O.V. (Adweek’s “Startup of the Year”), Trader Monthly, and Dealmaker.  As a hobby, Mr. Lane, a certified sommelier, served as Chief Restaurant Critic for Time Out New York, where he was a National Magazine Award Finalist.  He is a frequent television commentator and the author of The Zeroes: My Misadventures in the Decade Wall Street Went Insane.

Jack is currently CMO of Forbes Media.  He rejoined the company in September 2011 from serving as Senior Managing Director of Venture Capital at DPEC Partners. He originally joined Forbes in July 2004.  At Forbes, he served as VP and Group Publisher, overseeing ForbesLife and custom publishing.  Prior to joining Forbes, Jack was President of the Miller Sports Group, publishers of Tennis, Cruising World, and Sailing World. He was Co-Founder and Partner of Cornerdrugstore.com, the leading provider of web-based solutions for community and regional pharmacies.  Jack also held several positions at American Express Publishing, including Associate Publisher of Travel & Leisure and Publisher of Departures.  He also served as Publisher of GQ.  A graduate of Harvard, Jack lives in Rye, New York with his wife and two children.

Bessie is the CEO of GroupM China and is responsible for the strategic development, operations and continued growth of GroupM and its media agencies throughout the country.  Since her appointment in 2005, the group’s digital and integrated media communication capabilities have expanded and GroupM is now the digital market leader in China in terms of billings.  She previously worked at JWT Taiwan, Mindshare Taiwan and Mindshare Shanghai.  Prior to joining GroupM, she was CEO of Mindshare China.  Bessie has received numerous media awards in China for her contributions to the industry, including Media Person of the Year (2010) by the Communication University of China, Media Person with Major Contribution to the Industry (2010) by China Advertising magazine, China’s Top 10 Most Creative Media Professionals (2007) by the China Economic Newspaper Association, and China’s Top Business Women Leaders (2006) by the All-China Women’s Federation.  As a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Women’s Empowerment 2010, Bessie is an active participant and moderator at the Davos meetings.  She graduated with a Masters in communications at Illinois State University.

Yoav Leitersdorf has been a successful tech entrepreneur and investor for the past two decades.  YL Ventures, which he founded, invests early in core-technology software companies in and around the Internet, and accelerates their evolution via value-added involvement and Silicon Valley-based business development.  Yoav currently serves on the boards of two YL Ventures portfolio companies: ClickTale and Upstream Commerce, and is the lead investor of Seculert.  Previously, Yoav served on the board of AcceloWeb, until it was acquired by Limelight Networks.  Yoav was also the CEO and co-founder of Movota acquired by Bertelsmann, the CTO and co-founder of ExchangePath acquired by CMGI, and the CEO and co-founder of PcEntertainer Magazine.  Yoav was also an associate at DFJ Gotham Ventures, studied at IMD, and holds an MBA from Columbia University.

Tara Lemmey is the CEO of Net Power & Light, a San Francisco-based technology startup developing immersive experiences for the Internet.  In addition to Net Power & Light, Lemmey is chairperson of LENS Ventures, a strategic innovation company that works with leading institutions in creating next markets.  She has advised senior executives of nonprofits and Fortune 500 companies, including Intel, American Express, and the Lumina Foundation on innovation, next-generation strategies, new markets, and investments and acquisitions.  Lemmey also serves as technology co-chair of the Markle Task Force on National Security in the Information Age and is on the faculty of the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona where she collaborates each year with Dr. Andrew Weil on the Center’s annual public forum.  Lemmey has also co-authored more than 10 patents and is an invited delegate of FORTUNE’s Most Powerful Women Summit.

Jacqueline Leo is Editor in Chief of The Fiscal Times, a digital news, opinion and media service devoted to comprehensive quality reporting on fiscal, budgetary, health care and international economic issues.  In 2011, the site was named Best New Website by MIN, which noted its timeliness and balanced view “of one of the most hotly debated areas of government—fiscal policy.”  Ms. Leo has worked previously in a variety of media, including various editorial and marketing positions at iAmplify.com, Better Homes and Gardens magazine, The New York Times, and Good Morning America.  Ms. Leo has also served as VP and Editor-in-Chief of Reader’s Digest.  She is a former President of the American Society of Magazine Editors and served on the Board of Governors of the New York Academy of Sciences for ten years.  Most recently, she was named to Media Industry Newsletter’s Editorial Hall of Fame in November 2009.  Her new book, SEVEN The Number for Happiness, Love and Success, was published by Twelve Books in December 2009. 

Richard Levandov started his venture capital career when he served as an early VP at America Online, Inc. and when he co-founded Phoenix Technologies (PTEC).  Currently, Rich leads Avalon’s investments in Ad Summos, Backupify, Cloudant, Inc., Cloudkick (acquired by Rackspace), Kaltura, NABBR, Pictela (acquired by AOL), ReThinkDB, Simulmedia, Standing Cloud, Twinstrata, Chumby Industries, and Zynga.  Prior to joining Avalon as a Partner in 2007, Rich co-founded Masthead Venture Partners and previously was an affiliate partner with Softbank Technology Ventures.  Rich has invested in and/or sat on the board of several notable companies, including Art Technology Group (ARTG), BitPipe, Bright Mail, Mobilee, NewsGator, OLiVER, PersonaLogic, Sombasa Media, TACODA, Tremor Media, and Valent Software Corporation.  As a past judge on the MIT 100k business plan competition, Rich remains very active in various organizations on both coasts promoting the creation of new disruptive enterprises.  He believes that we are in the exciting era of “mobile meets social meets local meets global” company creation.  Rich holds a B.S. from Binghamton University.

Ken Levitan is Founder and Co-President of Vector Management.  He is a combination of artist manager, career consultant, entertainment lawyer, producer, publisher, and booking agent and has received the well-earned reputation as a modern day renaissance man within the industry and respect as a major linchpin in the successful careers of many of the top names in the industry.  Ken’s artist roster reads like a “who’s-who” of a broad cross-genre.  His fingerprints can be found in the successful DNA of the careers of artists such as Lyle Lovett, Kings of Leon, The Fray, Emmylou Harris and Ke$ha, among others.

As a Technology Reporter at Bloomberg, Ari Levy has covered networking, Internet and mobility while following deals and dealmakers in private equity and venture capital.  He joined Bloomberg in 2003 as a stock market reporter in New York and moved to San Francisco in 2006 to write about Silicon Valley.  Ari is also a regular contributor to Bloomberg Businessweek magazine.  He has a Master’s degree in Business Journalism from Baruch College in New York.

Chris Lewicki is President and Chief Engineer of Arkyd Astronautics, a company developing novel technologies to enable the commercial robotic exploration of the solar system.  Arkyd’s mission is to incorporate commercial innovation into space exploration by enabling a rapid-cycle design approach that will revolutionize space exploration and dramatically lower cost.  Previously at JPL, he served on the assembly, test, and launch operations teams for Spirit, Opportunity and Phoenix Mars missions.  He was also Flight Director for Spirit and Opportunity, and the Surface Misison Manager for Phoenix.  Mr. Lewicki is a two-time recipient of NASA’s Exceptional Achievement Medal and has an asteroid named in his honor, 13609Lewicki.

A self-taught software programmer, Jesse Lipson has been involved in Internet technologies since 1999.  He built and sold a pharmaceutical market research company and a web development company before launching ShareFile, a business file transfer company, in 2005.  In less than six years, ShareFile has grown to over 17,000 paying corporate customers, 85 full-time employees, and almost 3 million total users.  ShareFile has been ranked in the Inc 500 for the past two years (#104 in 2010 and #241 in 2011).  The company has been successful in the file transfer and storage market with no funding.  Jesse graduated form Duke University with a degree in philosophy in 2000.

For nearly three decades, Lyle Lovett has defined the modern Texas singer-songwriter.  Fusing elements of the blues, country, folk, gospel and jazz, four-time Grammy winner Lovett has created his own style of Americana, defying convention and breaking down barriers along the way.  He has released 14 albums and has sold more than four million records.  Lovett has toured and recorded albums with his legendary Large Band, a formidable musical collective.  For the last few years Lovett has been alternating Large Band tours with acoustic duo shows with John Hiatt. In addition to his music, Lovett has appeared in 12 feature films including several directed by the acclaimed director, Robert Altman.  He was recently featured in the documentary For the Sake of the Song: The Story of Anderson Fair, a film that explores the significant role the legendary Houston music venue continues to play in preserving American music traditions.  Lovett’s last album, Natural Force, stands as a testament to both his versatile songwriting and peerless ability to interpret those by his favorite fellow Texas songwriters who inspired him.  His new album will be released in the first quarter of 2012.

Greg Lucier is Chairman and CEO of Life Technologies.  The company is a leading global innovator that has made strategic investments in growing markets like synthetic biology and molecular medicine, which have set the stage for Life Technologies to remain a frontrunner in scientific innovation that will have an impact on human health and the environment.  Mr. Lucier’s leadership has been pivotal in forging Life Technologies’ path of success into new areas of applied biology.  Mr Lucier serves on the Board of Directors at Synthetic Genomics, Inc. and CareFusion Corporation, and serves as Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Sanford Burnham Medical Research Institute.  He received his B.S. in Engineering from Pennsylvania State University and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

Mike Lynch is the Founder and CEO of Autonomy Corporation, the UK’s largest software company that was acquired by HP in October 2011.  Autonomy is the pioneer and leader in analyzing unstructured, or human-friendly, information tanks to which companies can extract meaning from all data in whatever format it is in, whether that’s email, voicemail, social media, text messages or web pages.  Autonomy was created by Dr. Lynch’s research at Cambridge University, where he studied Information Sciences, received a Ph.D. and held a research fellowship in adaptive pattern recognition.  Dr. Lynch is regarded as Britain’s most successful technology entrepreneur and has won numerous awards, including the European Business Leaders Awards’ Innovator of the Year in 2008 and Management Today’s Entrepreneur of the Year in 2009.   He was also awarded an OBE for Services to Enterprise in 2009.  Mike is a fellow of the Royal Academy of Engineering, an honorary fellow of Christ’s College, Cambridge, and a non-executive Director of the BBC, the National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA), and the British Library.

James Manyika is a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company and is one of the leaders of McKinsey’s High Tech, Media and Telecom Practice.  He is also Director of the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI).  sAt MGI, James has led research on areas including growth, productivity, competitiveness, and technology and its impact. James serves on the Firm’s global committee, which reviews and elects directors of McKinsey & Company.  He was on the Engineering Faculty at Oxford University and a Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford University. He was a Visiting Scientist at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Faculty Exchange Fellow at MIT.  James was also appointed by the U.S. Secretary of Commerce to serve on the Innovation Advisory Board.  Mr. Manyika is a Senior Fellow of the Brookings Institution, a trustee of the Aspen Institute, the World Affairs Council of California, and SFJazz. He is on the advisory boards of the Oxford Internet Institute and UC Berkeley’s School of Information, an advisor to the Global Philanthropy Forum, and has served on the Rhodes Scholarship Selection Committee for California.

David Mark, Chief Strategy Officer, joined Flextronics in February 2011 and is responsible for the corporate strategy, including guiding the development of the company’s overall portfolio of businesses, advanced technology and the development of new business opportunities.  Prior to joining Flextronics, David was a Senior Partner at McKinsey & Company, Inc., advising high-tech, healthcare and financial services companies for more than two decades.  He was a founding partner of McKinsey’s Business Technology Office, McKinsey’s most successful internal start-up.  David also led corporate development and services for Taligent Inc., a joint venture between Apple, IBM and HP, and was responsible for developing an advanced object-oriented operating system and application development environment.  David holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, as well as Bachelor degrees in Engineering and Economics from MIT.

As Vice President of Consumer Products, Marissa Mayer leads the product management and engineering efforts of Google’s local, mobile, and contextual discovery products including Google Maps, Google Maps for Mobile, Local Search, Google Earth, Street View, Latitude and more.  During her nearly 12 years at Google, Marissa has led product management and design efforts for Google web search, images, news, books, products, toolbar, and iGoogle.  Marissa has also managed the design team behind Google’s homepage “doodles,” which artistically honor inventions, birth dates, and global events seen by hundreds of millions of people worldwide.  She started at Google in 1999 as the company’s 20^th employee and first woman engineer.  Marissa received her B.S. in Symbolic Systems and her M.S. in Computer Science from Stanford University.  She specialized in artificial intelligence for both degrees.

Andrew McAfee, a Principal Research Scientist at MIT, studies the ways that information technology affects business.  His research investigates how IT changes the way companies perform, organize themselves, and compete.  He coined the phrase “Enterprise 2.0” and his best-selling book on the topic was published in 2009 by Harvard Business School Press.  McAfee is the co-author with Erik Brynjolfsson of the eBook Race Against the Machine: How the Digital Revolution is Accelerating Innovation, Driving Productivity, and Irreversibly Transforming Employment and the Economy, published Fall 2011.  He has been named one of the “100 Most Influential People in IT.”  McAfee received his Doctorate from Harvard Business School and completed two M.S. and two B.S. degrees at MIT.

Brin McCagg is co-founder, president and COO of OneWire, a career and talent management solution that connects candidates and employers by allowing employers to manage their entire recruiting process on a single, cloud-based platform.  McCagg has over 20 years of entrepreneurial executive management experience.  From 2005-2007, he served on an executive team managing the turnaround of two private-equity-owned companies.  Prior to that, McCagg founded and served as CEO and Chairman of TradeOut Inc., which was ultimately sold.  He was also previously president and co-founder of Full Circle, Inc., which merged with a NASDAQ listed company in 1995.  McCagg received an MBA from The Wharton School.

In 2004, Roger McNamee co-founded Elevation Partners, an investment partnership focused on the intersection of media and entertainment content and consumer technology.  He began his career in 1982 at T. Rowe Price Associates, where he managed the Science & Technology Fund and co-managed the New Horizons Fund.  In 1991, he launched Integral Capital Partners, the first crossover fund (combining later stage venture capital with public market investments), in partnership with Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers.  In 1999, Roger co-founded Silver Lake Partners, the first private equity fund focused on technology businesses.  Today, Roger plays bass and guitar in the band Moonalice, which performs 100 shows a year.  Moonalice pioneered the use of social media in music, inventing such applications as Twittercast concerts, Moonalice radio on Twitter, live Moonbeam (video) concerts, and the Couch Tour.  Roger is the author of The New Normal and The Moonalice Legend: Posters and Words, Volumes 1 & 2. Roger serves on the board of directors of Wordnik and Move.  He also serves on the boards of several foundations and organizations.

Kym McNicholas is a Forbes Reporter for the Forbes Video Network and is based out of the West Coast.  She has covered business and technology news for much of her 12-year broadcasting career, including at ON24 Business News, where she was one of the first web-centric reporters.  She was also an anchor/reporter for Rob Black & Your Money on KRON 4 in San Francisco and for Energy News Live.  Kym has interviewed top company executives, analysts and other experts on technology and the markets.  She has also covered the tech boom/bust/re-emergence in the Valley as well as the energy crisis and recovery.  She was recently named “Star Reporter of the Year” by an industry insider who released a list of “15 Members of the Press You Need to Know.”  Kym has also just received her first Emmy nomination for outstanding achievement in the ‘Interactivity’ category, by the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, San Francisco Chapter.

Valeria Merino has been leading social systemic change efforts for almost two decades.  She has led the design and implementation of public policies at national and global levels in areas related to strengthening democracy, Rule of Law, transparency and civil society participation.  Valeria is VP at Ashoka and the lead person responsible for several programs, including AshokaHub, an online-curated platform for Ashoka’s community of innovators and entrepreneurs working across the globe to resolve the most intractable social problems.  Previously, Valeria headed Ashoka’s Venture and Fellowship program, where she was responsible for overseeing the selection process of Leading Social Entrepreneurs to the Ashoka fellowship.  Before coming to Ashoka she worked for the Pan American Development Foundation as Senior Civil Society Adviser.  Valeria was a member of Transparency International for almost 20 years and served on its International Board.  She also founded and directed a number of citizen society organizations in her native country of Ecuador.

Jeff Merkel is Director of Mobile Advertising at Google and is responsible for the global business development teams that provide mobile services and solutions to developers and publishers.  He joined Google in May 2010 as part of the company’s acquisition of AdMob, where he served as Vice President and General Manager of Asia Pacific, responsible for strategy and operations.  Prior to joining AdMob, Jeff was Director of Market Development for Motorola where he was responsible for sell-in, commercialization, and marketing of media solutions and services (including SCREEN3), to operators and retail markets globally.  Previously, Jeff was a Marketing Manager at Apple Computer, a Development Manager for a wireless payment startup in Singapore, and a Management Consultant for Price Waterhouse in the U.S. and Europe.  Jeff holds a B.A. from Taylor University and an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.

With 25 years of software industry experience, Doug Merritt is taking Baynote through a period of significant investment and rapid growth with the goal of gaining market share in the sector.  Before joining the company, Doug held multiple executive titles at SAP, most recently as executive vice president of Global On Demand Applications, where he was also a corporate officer and member of the executive council for SAP AG.  His enterprise software leadership experience is in product, sales, development, support, marketing, and strategy functions.  Earlier positions include general manager of PeopleSoft’s Human Capital Management division and founder, president and CEO of Icarian, Inc., a pioneer in online human capital talent management (acquired by Workstream Corp.).  Earlier, Merritt held executive positions at Patrol Software (acquired by BMC Software), Powersoft (acquired by Sybase), Oracle Corporation, and Accenture/Andersen Consulting.

Heidi Messer is the co-founder and CEO of World Evolved, a platform for global investment and expansion.  Ms. Messer also serves as chairman of Cross Commerce Media, a leading provider of unified analytics for online and offline marketing channels.  Prior to these ventures, Ms. Messer—along with her brother, Stephen Messer—founded, built and managed LinkShare Corporation until its sale in 2005 for $425 million.  Ms. Messer is recognized as an authority on entrepreneurship and online marketing and distribution.  She is often referenced in written trade publications and has appeared on numerous national television, conference and radio programs around the world.  Ms. Messer received a B.A. from Brown University and a J.D. from Harvard Law School.

Michael Miller is senior vice president for technology strategy at Ziff Brothers Investments.  Previously, from 1991 to 2005, Miller was editor-in-chief of PC magazine.  Under his supervision, PC grew to have the largest readership of any technology publication in the world.  Until late 2006, Miller was also the chief content officer for Ziff Davis Media.  Since 1997, he served as editorial director for Ziff Davis Publishing, where he took an active role in helping to identify new editorial needs in the marketplace and in shaping the editorial positioning of every Ziff Davis title.  Prior to joining PC magazine, Miller was editor-in-chief of InfoWorld, which he joined as executive editor in 1985.  Previously, he was the West Coast bureau chief for Popular Computing, and senior editor for Building Design & Construction. He has participated as a speaker and panelist in industry conferences, has appeared on numerous business television and radio programs discussing technology issues, and is frequently quoted in major newspapers.  Miller has received several awards for his writing and editing, including being named to Medill’s Alumni Hall of Achievement.

Jake is Co-founder of Bump Technologies, a company that has pioneered an innovative application for the iPhone and Android operating systems.  Jake and CEO/Co-Founder David Lieb developed the idea for Bump while attending the University of Chicago’s MBA program, dropping out to start the company with third Co-Founder, Andy Huibers, in 2008.  Bump allows users to share a huge array of content, including photos, messages, applications, calendar appointments, music, money, location, and social networks by simply bumping phones together.  Bump has had over 50 million downloads with 10 million active users, making it the 7^th most downloaded app. in the U.S.  Bump Technologies is backed by Y Combinator, Ron Conway, Sequoia Capital, and Andreessen Horowitz.

Dave is the CEO and founder of New York City-based Simulmedia, Inc., a media marketing company serving the television industry that uses data-driven technology to help network marketers build audiences for their programs.  Previously, Morgan founded and ran both TACODA, Inc., an online advertising company that pioneered behavioral online marketing and was acquired by AOL in 2007, and Real Media, Inc., one of the world’s first ad serving and online ad network companies and a predecessor to 24/7 Real Media (TFSM), which was later sold to WPP.  After the sale of TACODA, Dave served as executive VP, Global Advertising Strategy, at AOL.  A lawyer by training, Morgan served as general counsel and director of New Media Ventures at the Pennsylvania Newspaper Association in the early 1990’s and also spent several years as an associate with the Philadelphia law firm Duane Morris.  He currently serves on the executive committee and board of directors of the Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) and on the boards of directors of the American Press Institute (API) and Chumby Industries.

Mr. Dave Morin

CEO and Co-founder

Path, Inc.

Keith is a Senior Manager, Marketing at Qualcomm Ventures and has over 10 years of experience in the wireless telecommunications industry.  Prior to his current role, he managed research and competitive intelligence at Kyocera Wireless and was a research analyst at Wingcast, a Qualcomm JV.  Currently, Keith manages all research and marketing activities for Qualcomm Ventures and participates in the due-diligence process for all prospective investments.  Keith has an M.B.A. from Thunderbird, School of Global Management and a B.A. from George Mason University.

Dr. Janice Nickel PhD

Founder

Tech-Nickel Enterprises

Georges Nahon is CEO of France Telecom’s Orange Labs and president of the Orange Institute, a new global research initiative created and led by Orange.  Orange Institute provides an independent platform where researchers from universities, innovation centers, and companies can freely exchange ideas about a future permeated by networks.  Prior to that, he worked at France Telecom where he was responsible for defining and implementing e-transformation of the company’s intranet, directory, collaboration tools, nomadism and e-processes.  He has served as senior director of Microsoft’s Network Service Providers Department (NSP) in the Europe, Middle East, and Africa region and as a consultant for France Telecom, The New York Times, QWEST, and the European Commission in their online services and interactive TV.  Nahon has also been chairman of the French Association of “Online Services et Ecommerce” (ACSEL) and a director of online information services for “Le Nouvel Observateur,” a French magazine publishing company in Paris and New York.  He is also the co-author of the book The Second Life of Networks with Didier Lombard and Elle Girard.

Nawee Nakwatchara is the Founder of Green Innovation Networks, which enables farmers to become their own agents of change by giving farmers a small, “learning plot” of land to experiment on.  Working with small landowners in the Northeast of Thailand, Nawee is empowering farmers to break the cycle of debt and dependency on unviable farming practices by placing an emphasis on increasing productivity and cutting production costs through integrated farming, low-cost technology, and drawing on local wisdom.  Farmers decide what to experiment with in their plot of land, while Nawee provides the farmers with technical assistance in transforming their best ideas into widely replicable agricultural practices.  He has formed a microcredit cooperative to provide financing and established a business firm to undertake larger-scale production and marketing tasks on behalf of a 300-member-households group called the Grassroots Innovation Network.  Nawee received his degree in biotechnology at Thammasat University in Bangkok.  His involvement in a volunteer project aimed at introducing ICT into rural communities in the Northeast of Thailand led him to become Founder of the Grassroots Innovation Project.

Ashoka Fellow

Janice Nickel is a Research Manager at Hewlett-Packard Laboratories.  She is presently leading the Memristor productization effort at HP Labs, managing the Joint Development Program with Hynix Semiconductor, as well as developing proprietary CMOS BEOL technology.  Previously, she invented a unique programmable drug delivery platform—“Smart Drug Delivery”—which repurposes HP’s mature ink jet technology to address new markets.  She catalyzed multiple business units in disparate geographic locations to develop component modules, which she integrated into a proof-of-concept demonstrator.  Dr. Nickel created a business plan, attracted investors, and transferred the technology and business plan to the startup Janisys, Ltd.  Janisys is currently developing the technology in partnership with a major pharmaceutical company and has demonstrated first in animal data.  She also founded Tech-Nickel for consulting services and independent projects.  Dr. Nickel has 44 U.S. Patents awarded, over 40 scientific papers published, and numerous invited presentations.  Her hobbies include traveling, photography, gourmet cooking, and making fine wine.

Preetish Nijhawan is Managing Director of Cervin Ventures.  Most recently, Preetish was CFO for Neon Enterprise Software.  Before that, he was Vice President of Strategic Alliances at NeoEdge Networks, a video game advertising company.  Preetish was also Vice President, Portfolio and Program Management for BMC Software.  Prior to BMC, he was Vice President, Operations of iVita Corporation, an asset management software startup that he helped found.  Preetish has advised senior executives in hardware, software and telecom industries for McKinsey & Company.  He co-founded Akamai Technologies in 1998 and also worked for nearly six years in the Electronic Design Automation (EDA) division at Intel in various engineering and program management roles.  Preetish earned a Bachelor’s degree in Electrical and Electronics Engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani, India, a Master’s degree in Computer Engineering from the University of Southern California, and an MBA from MIT Sloan School of Management.

Alison O’Brien is Executive Vice President of Waggener Edstrom Worldwide, a strategic communications agency.  She is also the Senior Communications Counselor for Craig J. Mundie (Microsoft Chief Research and Strategy Officer), and the agency’s Communications Strategist on Microsoft Research and the Technology Policy Group.  O’Brien has been working with advanced technology groups at Microsoft for nearly 20 years.  She worked with Microsoft’s previous Technology Officer, Nathan Myhrvold, when he founded Microsoft Research in 1991.  In the early 90’s she worked with Mundie in Microsoft’s Advanced Technology Group.  In the mid-90’s and early 2000’s, O’Brien worked on high profile corporate stories and led product launches for Windows and Office before returning to the advanced technology and policy space.  Prior to her work with Microsoft, O’Brien was the Account Supervisor on the agency’s Dell Computer and Advanced Microsoft Devices accounts.  Before joining Waggener Edstrom in 1989, O’Brien worked on consumer accounts, including DeBeers Consolidated Mines for NW Ayer, a New York advertising and public relations firm.

Derek O’Halloran

Global Leadership Fellow

World Economic Forum

Since August 2011, Paul Olesh has served as Global Innovation Leader of Haworth, Inc., a global leader in the design and manufacture of office furniture and organic workspaces, including raised floors, moveable walls, systems furniture, seating, storage and wood case goods.  He has had over 25 years of global strategy and business development experience.  In his current position, Paul is responsible for driving a spirit of innovation throughout the company and for leading the company’s research and advanced development efforts to envision, design and create new products, applications and business solutions for the company’s clients worldwide.  Since joining Haworth in 1997, Paul has held a number of leadership positions, including Director, Global Seating and Vice President, Product Development, Marketing and Strategic Supply Chain-Europe.  Paul holds a B.A. in Business Administration from Indiana University and a M.Ed. in Human Resource and Organizational Development from Xavier University.  He speaks English, Spanish and German, and is also a Certified Public Accountant (CPA).

Adam Oliveri is the Managing Director of the Private Company Market at SecondMarket.  Adam joined SecondMarket directly out of university as the company’s third employee and has spent his entire professional career developing and growing SecondMarket’s marketplace for trading illiquid assets.  Currently, his primary responsibility is to lead the firm’s efforts around creating a platform to enable capital formation and shareholder liquidity for promising private companies.  Previously, Adam was Co-Head of the SecondMarket trading desk, and responsible for managing transaction execution across all of SecondMarket’s asset class coverage areas.  Adam graduated from the University of Rhode Island with a B.S. in Applied Economics and holds his Series 7, 24, and 63 licenses.

Alexei Oreskovic

Technology Correspondent

Reuters News

Mr. Eli Pariser

President and Founding Board Member

Moveon.org and Accessnow.org

Sean Parker co-founded Napster, the music sharing service, by the time he was 19 years old.  From there he went on to found online address service Plaxo, and then served as founding president of Facebook alongside Mark Zuckerberg.  Mr. Parker’s products have created new ways for people to interact and have helped develop social media into a major communications channel.  He has recently focused on enhancements to social networking, including location-based services and social philanthropy.  Founded in 2007, his latest venture, Causes, has become the largest platform for online grassroots activism.  Sean is also a managing partner of Founders Fund, a venture firm that has backed companies including Facebook, SpaceX, Quantcast, Gowalla, and Mint.  The firm’s partners are all entrepreneurs who have founded, operated and scaled companies with a mission to lend their experience to the next generation of founders.

Jari Pasanen serves as vice president, Business Development of the Finnish Innovation Fund, SITRA.  Through SITRA, he is responsible for promoting stable and balanced development in Finland with an eye toward their goal of sustainable wellbeing for all of Finnish Society.  Prior to SITRA, Mr. Pasanen spent almost 16 years with Nokia and held a variety of roles, including research & development, technology management, quality, strategy and business development in Nokia’s former Mobile Phones and Multimedia business groups.  He has also been responsible for driving the innovation process for Nokia, based on consumer and business needs and overseeing Nokia’s research strategy and portfolio.  Before joining Nokia in 1993, Mr. Pasanen was with Tampere University of Technology (TUT), where he was a research scientist in the Signal Processing Laboratory.  In addition to his responsibilities at SITRA, Mr. Pasnanen acts as a business angel and makes investments to help several start-ups to prosper and develop their business.

Pamela Passman is the founding president/CEO of the Center for Responsible Enterprise and Trade (CREATe.org), a non-profit association that develops policies and practices to drive greater compliance and responsibility along global supply chains as a predicate for creating sustainable jobs, growth and innovation.  Until October 2011, Passman was corporate vice president and deputy general counsel, Global Corporate and Regulatory Affairs, Microsoft, and led the company’s regulatory compliance work in 100+ countries, addressing a range of privacy, security, law enforcement, national security, telecommunications and issues related to cloud computing.  She also led Microsoft’s public policy work on these issues as well as international trade, immigration, and education.  Pamela worked closely with business leaders to advance Microsoft’s software and Internet businesses in China and other emerging markets.  She joined Microsoft in 1996 and until 2002 led the Legal and Corporate Affairs organization in Asia, based in Tokyo, with a focus on Japan, Korea and the PRC.

Mike Perlis is president and CEO at Forbes Media.  Mr. Perlis joined Forbes from SoftBank Capital, where he served as a General Partner.  Before joining SoftBank, he served as President and CEO of Ziff-Davis Publishing until its sale in 2000.  Earlier in his career, Mr. Perlis served as President at TVSM, president of the Playboy Publishing Group and Chairman and CEO of IDG Peterborough.  He began his career in media as the co-founder of New England Publications in Camden, Maine.  Mr. Perlis currently serves on the board of BuzzFeed.  He served on the board and was chairman of Associated Content before its sale to Yahoo!.  His previous board positions include GSI Commerce (sold to eBay) and previous board observer positions include The Huffington Post (sold to AOL) and KickApps (sold to KIT digital).  He is currently on the board of advisors of the Newhouse School of Public Communications at Syracuse University and is a trustee of Outward Bound.

Mike Perrone is Co-founder and COO of SocialFlow, a real-time content scoring and delivery optimization company based in New York City.  Mike’s professional passion is using technology to achieve higher operational ROI.  He has extensive experience in building businesses and practically implementing technology in enterprises. Prior to SocialFlow he was VP, Integration for Bertelsmann’s U.S. Direct Marketing businesses and was responsible for leading the integrations of several high profile acquisitions.  He has also worked in advertising (JWT), management consulting (KPMG), entertainment technology and direct marketing.  Mike received his MBA from Penn State and his BS and BA from Boston University’s School of Management.

Steve Pinetti is SVP of Inspiration and Creativity for Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants.  He is charged with inspiring Kimpton’s unique culture and expanding its brand attributes through the development and management of brand wide programs and standards, identifying and solidifying key partnerships and overseeing the company’s ecommerce strategies and activities, while also leading the strategies around Kimpton’s loyalty program, Kimpton InTouch.  Prior to joining Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants in 1982, Pinetti began his hospitality career with Hilton and Hyatt where he held a number of positions in hotel sales and marketing.  He was recognized as a “Top Producer” for both organizations.  Kimpton helped develop corporate incentive travel programs as well as breakthrough industry software that provided the foundation for PMS systems today.  Throughout his career, Pinetti has been responsible for the strategic planning and opening of more than 50 hotels and 50 restaurants throughout the country and has worked as an independent consultant in hotel management and marketing.  Pinetti has taught various classes in sales, marketing, operations and management in the hospitality programs at schools throughout San Francisco.

Eric Pooley is Senior Vice President for Strategy & Communications at Environmental Defense Fund (EDF), an organization that designs and transforms markets to bring lasting solutions to the most serious environmental problems.  He is the author of The Climate War: True Believers, Power Brokers, and the Fight to Save the Earth, which Bill Clinton hailed as “a riveting tale” and “the very first account of the epic American campaign to get serious about global warming.”  Eric has served as Deputy Editor of Bloomberg Bussinessweek, Managing Editor of Fortune, Editor of Time Europe, and National Editor, Chief Political Correspondent, and White House Correspondent for Time. Eric’s journalism has been recognized with many honors, including a National Magazine Award and the Gerald R. Ford Prize for distinguished Reporting on the Presidency.  He has written for Time, Slate, Bloomberg Businessweek, among other publications.  In 2008 he studied press coverage of environmental issues at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, where he was a fellow at the Shorenstein Center on the Press, Politics and Public Policy.  Eric lectures frequently and has appeared on numerous programs.

K. V. Prasad, known as Ford Motor Company’s “What’s Next Guy,” is group and senior technical leader, Vehicle Design and Infotronics, Ford Research and Innovation.  He is responsible for the research, architecture, standards, applications development and vehicle system integration of electrical, electronics and embedded software technologies.  Previously, Prasad worked as a senior scientist at RICOH Innovations, developing automatic “lip reading” as a novel human-machine interface.  He also worked at Caltech and the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory where he contributed to the development of the world’s first telerobotic visual surface inspection system to help design the International Space Station.  Prasad also lead the development of Ford SYNC, a software-based, voice-activated system that allows Ford and Lincoln vehicle owners to seamlessly connect to their cellphone, MP3 players, and other features and services in and through their vehicles—hands-free.  Prasad received engineering degrees from IIT-Madras and NIT-Trichy, his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from Rutgers University, and his Master’s degree from Washington State University, Pullman.

Hilmi Quraishi is Co-founder and Director, Social Initiative of ZMQ Software Systems.  He specializes in developing system-changing solutions for sustainable development through the ‘Mobile for Development’ initiative, which aims to connect the people that are normally unreached.  Hilmi has demonstrated how these solutions can run successfully in rural areas by using many of his innovative solutions, from life saving cell phone games to mobile health care, support and treatment systems, and mobile-based rural finance solutions.  Under another initiative, ‘Mobile for All,’ Hilmi advocates the “Universal Right to Connectivity” as a right to life by influencing policymakers to dedicate a part of the bandwidth free for delivering lifeline services to all people, especially the poor, rural and marginalized.

Ashoka Fellow

Yatish Rajawat is the group managing editor of Dainik Bhaskar, India’s largest newspaper group, reaching 13 states with 63 large editions and 191 smaller editions read by 18.9 million readers everyday.  He launched the first Hindi Business daily newspaper in India—Business Bhaskar.  Rajawat currently manages the editorial function for Dainik Bhaskar group, which includes four newspapers and several magazines.  Prior to this, he was at Businessworld, the largest business magazine in India and has worked with Economic Times and the Hindu Business Line newspaper.  Rajawat was the first technology editor at Economic Times and led the coverage of the outsourcing industry in the 90’s and the manufacturing shop floor changes in early 2000.  He is sought out for his views on India and his ability to connect diverse subjects and issues related to technology and economy.  Dainik Bhaskar also owns MYFM-94.3 Jiyo Dil Se, the 4^th largest radio network in India.

Known in technology circles as “Mr. Real Time,” Vivek Ranadivé has led the advancement and use of real-time technology in business operations and decision-making.  He is dedicated to the vision that if you get the right information to the right place at the right time, you can make the world a better place.  In 1986 Mr. Ranadivé founded Teknekron Software Systems, which focused on creating the stock-trading floor of the future.  Teknekron went on to automate Wall Street, and its technology became the engine for most of the world’s capital markets.  In 1997 he founded his present company, TIBCO Software Inc., with the mission of bringing real-time computing into the mainstream.  Today TIBCO technology helps more than 4,000 customers thrive by powering everything from the web to airlines, utilities, communications providers, manufacturers, and governments.  Mr. Ranadivé has authored two books that are The New York Times and global best sellers—The Power of Now and The Power to Predict.

Jeff Richards is a partner at GGV Capital, a venture capital firm focused on the United States and China and investing across a range of sectors in IT, services and healthcare, as well as the consumer growth sector in China.  Representative investments include Alibaba Group, AAC Acoustic, AthenaHealth, HiSoft, Pandora, QuinStreet, Qunar, SuccessFactors, Tudou, 21ViaNet and YY.  Richards focuses on the Internet, software and mobile sectors.  Prior to joining GGV, Jeff spent 13 years as an entrepreneur and operating executive, founding two venture-backed companies in the software and telecommunications sectors.  His last company, R4, was acquired by VeriSign in 2005.  Jeff received his BA from Dartmouth College and currently sits on the boards of several Bay Area nonprofits.

Gary Rieschel has had a successful career as a senior executive, entrepreneur, investor, and global business strategist in high technology.  As a senior operating executive, Mr. Rieschel created or helped structure several of the most successful joint ventures in the history of the technology industry, including Yahoo Japan and ETrade Japan.  Mr. Rieschel has been recognized by Forbes magazine consistently over the past 10 years among their “Midas List” of venture capitalists.  A mentor to entrepreneurs and other venture capitalists, he helped find both JUCCCE, and the China Greentech Initiative, and actively supports the U.S. China Clean Energy Forum, among many other philanthropic institutions.  Rieschel founded Qiming Venture Partners in 2006 when he noticed the lack of early stage venture capital firms in China.  QVP is an early-to-growth-stage venture capital firm with offices in Shanghai, Hong Kong, Beijing and Seattle.  It has 18 investment professionals, over $520 million under management and has a focus on healthcare, clean-tech and information technology.

John Riggs is managing director, Growth and Innovation, for the Services, Electronics and Software sector of PwC’s PRTM Management Consulting.  Focused on open innovation, commercial acceleration, and strategic investment, John leads innovation transformation services for the firm’s technology and communications clients.  With more than 20 years experience within the communications and electronics industries, John has held both operational and executive positions at Alcatel-Lucent, Bell Labs, ASML, Goodrich ISR Systems, and a previous role with PRTM.  Most recently, John served as VP and head of Alcatel-Lucent Ventures, a corporate venture capital group with Bell Labs, where he managed joint ventures and a portfolio of internal ventures that enabled the company to enter and grow new markets.  As co-chair of Alcatel-Lucent’s Venture Investment Committee, John had oversight for the company’s strategic external investment portfolio.  He is currently co-authoring the book, Nothing Ventured, Nothing Gained—The Art of Corporate Venturing. John received his MBA from the Harvard Business School and a Bachelor of Science in Optical Engineering from the University of Rochester.

Justin Rockefeller is a principal of Richmond Global, a venture capital firm that focuses on technology-enabled services and mobile technologies.  On behalf of Richmond Global, Mr. Rockefeller serves on the board of Voxiva, Inc., where he focuses on deal sourcing and portfolio management and is also responsible for examining investments in sustainable enterprise development.  He is also the director of the Richmond Sustainability Foundation, which makes grants as equity to such endeavors.  Previously, Mr. Rockefeller was VP of Uhuru Capital Management and was also co-founder and national program director of GenerationEngage, a nonprofit organization that empowered young adults with resources and access to become leaders in their communities and active participants in U.S. democracy.  Mr. Rockefeller currently serves on the investment committee and board of Rockefeller Brothers Fund, and on the boards of Richmond Sustainability Foundation, and Mobilize.org.  He is a member of the executive committee of the International Council of The Museum of Modern Art, and participates annually in two selective gatherings: TED, and the Americas Business Council Foundation Fellows.  Mr. Rockefeller formerly served on a number of other boards.

Andy Rosen is Chairman and CEO of Kaplan, Inc., a subsidiary of The Washington Post Company and one of the world’s leading providers of educational services.  As CEO of the company’s largest business, Kaplan Higher Education (KHE), Rosen redefined the higher education landscape, bringing online and campus-based learning opportunities to working adults.  Under his leadership, KHE has grown to account for more than half of Kaplan’s revenue.  As President of Kaplan University (http://online.kaplanuniversity.edu/Pages/Homepage.aspx or kaplanuniversity.edu), Rosen led the school’s growth from 34 students in 2001 to more than 53,000 online students today.  He also oversaw Concord Law School (http://info.concordlawschool.edu/Pages/Homepage.aspx), the first fully online law school in the U.S.  Prior to Kaplan, Rosen held positions at both The Washington Post newspaper and then Newsweek. Rosen also served as law clerk to the Honorary Levin H. Campbell, Chief Judge for the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit, in Boston.  He currently serves on the boards of several organizations and is also a member of the CEO Council for the Broward Alliance.  Rosen’s first book, Change.edu: Rebooting for the New Talent Economy, was published in October 2011.

Ms. Sabrina Ross

Lawyer

Sidley Austin

Ned Russell is the Managing Director of Saatchi & Saatchi Wellness, an advertising agency that represents three of the top five selling Rx brands and is one of the most awarded agencies in the world.  Ned has helped grow iconic brands including Johnson & Johnson, Coke, Hershey’s and McDonald’s.  He also has significant international experience, having lived in Tokyo with Asia Pacific responsibilities as well as doing global work while based in New York.  In 2008 he became a client, heading marketing for the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, before returning a year later to run Wellness.  Saatchi Wellness is a very different kind of agency: over half of its revenue is pure play digital, with the remainder split between RM and traditional advertising.  Wellness has consistently won top honors in awards shows for its digital, direct mail and advertising, including the first-ever Healthcare Grand Clio.

Camile Saba is Senior Vice President for Investments at Olayan America, the U.S. office of the Olayan Group.  He previously served as Head of Alternative Investments (2009) and Head of U.S. Private Equity Portfolio (1986-2009).  Prior to joining the Olayan Group nearly 25 years ago, Mr. Saba was Vice President and Head of Europe, Middle East and Africa at the Mercantile Bank in Dallas, Texas.  Mr. Saba holds an M.B.A. from the University of Texas at Denton and a B.B.A. from the University of La Verne in Athens, Greece.  He has served on the boards of the Arab Bankers Association of North America, Windmill Holdings and Savia Holdings, and has served on the advisory boards of a number of private equity funds.

Hugo Sarrazin leads McKinsey’s Business Technology practice on the West Coast.  He had previously led the Tech-Media-Telecom (TMT) practice for the Southern U.S. for 3 years while based in Dallas.  He initially joined the Canadian office 17 years ago, where he successfully grew the Canadian TMT and business technology practices.  Hugo was also a software engineer for the aerospace and robotic industries with GasTops and Hickling before attending graduate school.  At McKinsey, Mr. Sarrazin has served many leading technology providers mainly on go-to-market, operational, and product development topics.  He has also served CIOs and CTOs of Fortune 500 companies across many industries (Finance, Insurance, Healthcare, and Utilities) working to improve the performance of their IT functions and apply new enabling technologies to transform their businesses.  Mr. Sarrazin received a B.S. from the University of Ottawa and holds an M.S. and a Ph.D. from Stanford University, all in Engineering.  He played water polo for the University of Ottawa and the Canadian Junior National Team.  He has also contributed to a number of nonprofit organizations, including the Montreal Symphony Orchestra and the U.S. Water Polo Association.

Eric Savitz is the San Francisco Bureau Chief of Forbes, with the responsibility of leading editorial operations for the San Francisco office, while writing regularly for the Forbes web site and magazine.  Savitz joined Forbes from Barron’s, where he covered technology form the Palo Alto bureau since 2001.  He previously worked at Barron’s and Dow Jones from 1988-1998.  Eric also wrote the monthly Tech File column for Smart Money magazine form 2004-2006.  At Barron’s, he launched Tech Trader Daily, a popular blog providing news, analysis and insights on technology investing, in 2005.  He also took over the weekly Technology Trader column in 2006, while continuing to write his own blog.  Savitz has served as a copy editor at Dow Jones News Service, as well as a reporter for Dow Jones Professional Investor Report.  From 1998-2001, between stints at Dow Jones, Savitz served as Executive Editor of The Industry Standard, a San Francisco-based magazine covering the Internet economy.  Savitz is a frequent television and radio commentator on technology-related issues.  He holds a B.A. in Economics form the University of Pennsylvania.

The company has developed a web and social media platform that enables public companies to sell their stock directly to customers on their Facebook page or website in just 3 clicks, creating more loyal consumers.  According to Bain & Company – customers that are owners spend 54% more, refer 2x the people and increase frequency of visit 68% over ordinary customers.  This innovative branding and loyalty platform is called a Customer Stock Ownership Plan™, or CSOP™.   LOYAL3’s newest technology is an IPO CSOP™ where customers purchase IPO shares at the same price as large institutions.  Issuers benefit by rewarding customers with coveted access to initially priced IPO shares – enhancing loyalty and retention.  LOYAL3 is committed to democratizing the market, making stock ownership easy and affordable for tens of millions of everyday Americans.

Schneider was previously Chairman & CEO of MSA Industries, where he led the company’s growth from 200 to 2,000 employees, and a 63% CAGR during the 3-year period prior to its sale to DuPont.  Barry then served nine years as Chairman and CEO, MacGregor Golf Company.  Most recently, he was Managing Partner of The Parkside Group LLC.  Barry has a history of creating shareholder value and leading global teams in strategy, marketing, finance and mergers and acquisitions.   Barry received a BA degree from U.C.L.A.

Mr. Erick Schonfeld

Editor

TechCrunch

Beverly Schwartz is an entrepreneurial behavioral scientist and has made her career in the field of social marketing and social change marketing.  With the exception of a few non-social sector jobs in advertising and communications, she has devoted her career to working on some of the world’s most challenging social issues, including drug prevention, children’s health, gender equality, girls’ education in developing countries, environmental reform, HIV/AIDS, and smoking prevention.  She also managed the 1980’s “America Responds to AIDS” campaign for the U.S. Center for Disease Control (CDC), the Youth Anti-Drug Media Campaign for the Executive Office of the White House, and helped to write and pass the first statewide no-smoking-in-public-places law in the U.S. during the mid-1970s.  Beverly currently works at Ashoka, the world’s largest community of social entrepreneurs.  She has also been VP of Global Marketing for the past 7 years and is currently on half-sabbatical, writing Rippling, How Social Innovation Spreads Throughout the World,” to be published by Wiley Jossey-Bass in March 2012.

Sameh Seif is an Ashoka Fellow and Founder of the Together Association, which has created a community-based model to improve water quality, sanitation and public health in rural areas through low-cost sewage systems.  TA has improved the traditional one chamber, stand-alone septic tank that serves one household by offering a more cost-effective dual chamber septic tank that can be constructed with locally available materials.  These mini-sewage plants are significantly cheaper than government-proposed sewage systems and serve rural areas that have been kept off the radar.  TA actively engages the community in the design and installation of the system.  Consultation is made among women in households, unemployed youth and other members of the community that are trained to construct and maintain the systems.  Together Association has created a network of grassroots organizations to advocate and lobby for wider adoption of this approach in other villages.

Ashoka Fellow

Kevin Sellers was recently named VP of Advertising and Digital Marketing for Intel Corporation.  Prior to that, he served as VP of Investor Relations.  Before being named director of Investor Relations in 2007, Kevin was Director of Corporate Brand Strategy and was responsible for developing the global Intel brand strategy and corporate design elements.  In this role he also managed the Corporate Market Research function and the Global Technology Marketing team.  Kevin also served as Director of Marketing for Intel in Japan for several years, including managing advertising, PR, market research, brand strategy, and retail marketing functions.  Prior to his roles in Japan, Kevin was a senior manager in the worldwide pricing and business planning organization that managed the P&L for the company.  Outside of marketing, he has held a number of other operations and finance-related posts during his career at Intel

Lara Shackelford is an accomplished senior marketing executive with over eighteen years experience leading marketing teams across all key marketing functions.  As Vice President of Marketing at QlikTech, Ms. Shackelford is responsible for marketing programs that impact the U.S., Canada and Latin American markets for Business Discovery/Business Intelligence solutions.  Prior to QlikTech, Ms. Shackelford was Head of Worldwide Demand Marketing for IBM’s Business Analytics division, where she helped establish IBM as the market leader in Predictive Analytics.  Before IBM, Ms. Shackelford held senior roles leading marketing divisions for: BearingPoint, Microsoft, and Oracle.

As group president for the Americas, Bill Sheedy oversees the global payments technology company’s business and client relationships in North America, Central America, South America and the Caribbean.  More recently, Sheedy served as president of North America and global head of corporate strategy and business development.  Prior to his leadership role in Visa’s corporate restructure and successful initial public offering in 2007, he has been responsible for expanding merchant acceptance and consumer usage of Visa, while providing oversight of areas responsible for industry cost and revenue studies, merchant incentive programs and improving the point-of-sale operating performance of Visa products.  Sheedy has also been key in supporting Visa product and brand strategies as well as other initiatives that are critical to realizing Visa’s long-term growth potential.  Sheedy joined Visa USA in May 1993.  Prior to joining, he spent three years with Ford Motor Company’s First Nationwide Bank, where he was responsible for asset and liability planning and profit/expense forecasting.  Sheedy holds a B.S. from West Virginia University and an M.B.A. from the University of Notre Dame.

Throughout his life, Stratford Sherman has played the role of partner, advisor, change agent, and coach.  As Co-Founder and Partner of the advisory boutique, Accompli, Sherman helps his clients deliver their best.  Prior to Accompli, from 1977-1997, Stratford wrote for Fortune magazine.  While there, he developed an interest in large-scale change, which became necessary with the emergence of globalization, technology and fierce competition.  While at Fortune, Stratford co-authored the book Control Your Destiny or Someone Else Will, with Noel Tichy.  It has been listed among the 100 best business books of all time and had influence at a critical moment in history; many of the book’s “radical” ideas are accepted today as commonplace.  He also wrote the Harvard Business Review article ‘The Wild West of Executive Coaching.’ Later, Stratford spent time as a “change guru,” delivering keynotes and seminars on six continents and appearing on “Charlie Rose.”  He left this to pursue leadership coaching and then went on to become co-founder of Accompli.  Stratford’s education includes a B.A. from Harvard College, where he wrote for the Lampoon, and 30 years of meditation practice.

Dan Shine is currently senior director, Platform Innovation at Welch Allyn, the world leader in Frontline Medical Care.  Previously, he was senior innovation advisor within the United States Agency for International Development (USAID).  He also served as president of the 50×15 Foundation, and Vice President of Corporate Initiatives at AMD.   He has held additional leadership roles at HP, 3COM, Motorola and Disney.  In 2007, Shine was selected as a “Young Global Leader” (YGL) at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. This accolade is bestowed by the YGL forum to recognize and acknowledge the top 250 young leaders from around the world for their professional accomplishments, their commitment to society and their potential to contribute to shaping the future of the world. He is a frequent speaker and moderator on Innovation, Corporate Global Citizenship, and Bridging the Digital Divide in forums around the world.

Monique Shivanandan is CTO of Capital One Financial Corporation, responsible for establishing and leading the company’s technical vision and development.  She also plays an integral role in the company’s strategic direction, development, and future growth.  Ms. Shivanandan provides oversight for Capital One’s enterprise architecture strategy, data and analytics strategies and technologies, technology innovation agenda, digital technology strategy, and infrastructural and corporate systems development.  She also leads the company’s information security and IT risk, process and compliance activities.  Before joining Capital One in 2010, Ms. Shivanandan was Managing Director and CIO for British Telecommunications’ retail division.  She led efforts to transform the company’s systems to achieve shared platforms and services using the latest technologies, while leveraging managed services from the world’s leading suppliers.  Prior to British Telecommunications in 2006, Ms. Shivanandan was an executive at Bellsouth Corporation, with roles including CSO and VP for IT Strategy, CIO for the Consumer Organization, and Assistant VP for Sales and Ordering Systems.  Ms. Shivanandan started her career at American Management Systems (AMS).

Bright Simons is currently the President of mPedigree, a mobile phone anti-counterfeiting system, which is already contributing to the fight against counterfeit medicines (a cause of death for an estimated 2000 people around the world daily).  Bright is an Ashoka Fellow, TED Fellow, Archbishop Tutu Fellow, Tech Museum Laureate, and a member of the Crans Montana Forum, and the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council’s, Risk Response Network and Technology Pioneers Communities.  Bright is regularly consulted as a resource person by organizations including the World Bank, the West African Health Organization, the African Union and the Commonwealth.  Throughout the course of these activities he has addressed many of the Fortune 100 CEOs and has been cited in The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Fast Company, The New York Times, Guardian, Financial Times, Asian Times, and the BBC, where he is a frequent commentator on the intersection between business trends and social affairs.  Simons has channeled his interest in technology, political economy, and how these phenomena intersect to create large-scale change through the mPedigree Network and the public interest organization, IMANI.

Ashoka Fellow

Heidi Sinclair, a 30-year communications and marketing veteran, recently joined Weber Shandwick as president of its Global Technology Practice.  She is responsible for overseeing the firm’s work with clients including Samsung, Motorola, Juniper, Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft.  Previously, Heidi was CEO for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where she served as the personal advisor to Bill and Melinda Gates on all communications matters.  Prior to that, she was CEO for Burson-Marsteller EMEA with oversight for over 60 operations across the region.   Heidi was also global chairman of technology for Burson-Marsteller and the client leader for several of the company’s largest clients including SAP, HP, Sun and Apple.  Heidi also founded two companies, the first at age 23.  She is on the board of several venture-backed consumer companies and is a regular commentator on CNBC and CNN and authors a blog for the Huffington Post.

A serial entrepreneur, Harjiv believes in harnessing the confluence of media, technology and education to empower individuals.  He brings a kaleidoscopic experience spanning two decades with roles in business, entrepreneurship, politics, teaching and non-profits. Harjiv co-founded several companies including Gutenberg Communications and www.gutenbergpr.com and www.salwanmedia.com. His stints at GE Capital, a New York City hedge fund and Priceline provided grist for his insatiable curiosity on what makes organizations tick. An avid political junkie, he worked as a campaign advisor to an Indian parliamentarian and also volunteered on Michael Bloomberg’s first mayoral campaign in New York City. As a trustee of The Loomba Foundation, Harjiv supports the cause of widows in South Asia and Africa. He also serves on the advisory board of India Knowledge@Wharton and has been a guest faculty at DukeCE.

Harjiv earned his master’s degree in International Affairs from Columbia University and an MBA from the New York Institute of Technology.  He is fluent in English, Hindi, Punjabi, Urdu and has basic fluency in German.

As Founder and Chairman of ThoughtWorks Inc., Roy Singham is recognized globally as a software development innovator of change.  Throughout his 20-year career, Mr. Singham has inspired the industry as an influential supporter of emerging technologies, open source programming languages, and agile methods of software development.  He is regularly featured as a keynote speaker and panel presenter to global conferences and organizations, including the prestigious Fortune Brainstorm Technology conferences, the Council on Foreign Relations, Techonomy, India’s The National Association of Software and Services Companies (NASSCOM), as well as for Agile conferences in China, Brazil and Australia.  Roy represents ThoughtWorks as one of the Global Growth Companies at the World Economic Forum.  He is a graduate of Howard University in Washington, DC.

Bob Smith is Chief Technology Officer for Honeywell Aerospace and VP of Engineering & Technology, where he is responsible for all engineering development efforts, technology development and strategy.  Previously, Smith was VP of Advanced Technology for Honeywell Aerospace and briefly held the position of VP of Electronic Systems Engineering & Applications.  Prior to joining Honeywell, Smith served as Executive Director of the Space Shuttle Upgrades Development Program at United Space Alliance.  Smith also worked at The Aerospace Corporation, where he served as a guidance, navigation and control analyst, a chief engineer, and program manager for a number of Department of Defense and national security programs.  Smith eventually became the systems director of the NASA Programs Office and the site manager for Aerospace’s Houston operations.  Smith is a fellow of the Royal Aeronautical Society, associate fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and current President of the International Society of Air-breathing Engines (ISABE).  He received the SAE Aerospace Engineering Leadership Award in 2007 and has been recognized with NASA’s Silver Snoopy and Spaceflight Awareness Awards.

Frank Speiser is the CEO and Co-founder of SocialFlow, a startup company that scores customers’ content flow in real time against segments of the social graph.  Frank has been a leader and an advocate of the science-based approach to marketing and publishing since the early days of the emergence of social networks.  He originally developed the idea of algorithmically measuring appetite and receptivity for messages to a social graph with Co-founder, Mike Perrone in early 2009, founding SocialFlow shortly thereafter.  Prior to SocialFlow, Frank was CTO of Takkle, Inc, which was acquired by Alloy Media+Marketing.  Prior to that he was CTO of the video and social site HEAVY.  Frank’s technical career stretches back to the age of 8, when he made his first program to translate sheet music into sound via BASIC.  He regularly speaks on the importance of timing and topicality with regards to the value of an audience.

Jerrold B. Spiegel is a Partner at Frankfurt Kurnit Klein & Selz where he chairs the firm’s Technology, eCommerce & Privacy Practice Group and co-chairs the Corporate and Finance Group.  Recently, Mr. Spiegel advised clients on how to structure and raise $1.5 million to build and establish Rocket 21, a social networking platform that connects ambitious young people to professionals.  He advised SweetRiot, a specialty confection company, in raising and structuring angel financing and also helped HealthiNation, a health-oriented web video company, close a venture round with Intel Ventures.  Mr. Spiegel regularly lectures on electronic media, Internet law, and entrepreneurship at universities and at professional associations and is author of the book Do We Have A Deal or Not? The Enforceability of Virtual Contracts.  Mr. Spiegel is also a founding member of Cleantech Corridor, a nonprofit dedicated to establishing and growing the Cleantech Industry in the New York Metropolitan area.  He has been selected as a New York-area “Super Lawyer” for Business/Corporate work by Law and Politics magazine.

Steven Sprague is the President and CEO of Wave Systems Corporation, a provider of client and server software for hardware-based security, enabling organizations to know who is connecting to their IT infrastructure, protect corporate data and strengthen the boundaries of their networks.  Since becoming CEO, Sprague has played an integral role driving the industry transition to embed stronger, hardware-based security into the PC.  He has guided Wave to a position of market leadership in enterprise management of self-encrypting hard drives and Trusted Platform Module security chips.  As a popular speaker and IT security thought leader, Sprague speaks at dozens of conferences and events each year—educating global audiences about the latest PC hardware security advancements and industry standards (both on behalf of Wave, and in his leadership role with the Trusted Computing Group).  His expertise lies in leveraging advancements in hardware security for strong authentication, data protection, advanced password management, enterprise-wide trust management services and more.

Stan Stalnaker is the Founding Director of Hub Culture and the Ven digital currency.  Hub Culture is a global collaboration network founded in 2002 aimed toward building a brighter future.  The community is driven by a blend of online tools for knowledge sharing with offline pavilions for meeting and connecting.  Hub Culture is powered by a digital currency called Ven, which is the first of its kind to be priced from a basket of currencies, commodities and carbon futures, making it green, grounded and stable.  Ven is growing as a new tool for individuals, companies and institutions worldwide.  Since 2007, over 8 million units of Ven have exchanged hands.  Stalnaker is also a commentator on the social impact of globalization, P2P finance and emerging digital economies.

Jeffrey Stein currently serves as President of the Cosanti Foundation in Arizona.  A longtime Soleri collaborator, Stein is former dean of the Boston Architectural College.  He has taught at architecture schools in the U.S. and at Technicum Winterthur, Zurich and Ecole de Architecture Langeudoc-Rousillon, in Montpellier, France.  Mr. Stein writes for Architecture Boston magazine and was an architecture critic for the New England newspaper, Banker & Tradesman.  He lectures globally about urban design, including at the recent Tel Aviv-Yafo Centennial Conference on Urban Sustainability and this past fall in Montreal at the 9^th World EcoCities Congress.  Mr. Stein recently translated an American edition of the Swiss text, Ecological Aspects of Building, with his wife, art historian Emilie Altemose.

Shai Stern currently serves as the CEO and Co-Chairman of CheckAlt Payment Solutions, a leading provider in Check 21 technology/Remote Deposit Capture services.  Mr. Stern also serves as the Co-Chairman of Vcorp Services, which provides corporate services including entity formations, business filings and compliance services.  In 2002, Mr. Stern co-founded Vintage Filings, a New York based EDGAR filing and financial print firm, which was acquired by PR Newswire in 2007.  Mr. Stern began his career at American Stock Transfer Company where he initiated business relationships and was responsible for outstanding share balances of over 2,000 publicly held companies.  He was instrumental in the growth of AST Stock Plan, which administered stock options and stock benefit plans to 500 publicly traded companies prior to its purchase by Citibank.

Seth Sternberg, CEO and one of the co-founders of Meebo, is in charge of overseeing all of the company’s product and business operations.  Sternberg, along with college friends Elaine Wherry and Sandy Jen, started Meebo in 2005 with a goal of connecting people to their friends across the web.  In its fifth year, Meebo now enables almost 170 million people to instantly share with their friends across any communication network on the Web, and is used by more than 8,000 websites including Entertainment Weekly, TV Guide, TMZ, Adweek, AllThingsD, Yes Network and more.  Prior to starting Meebo, Sternberg worked in IBM’s Corporate Development group as a lead in mergers and acquisitions.  After transferring assets at IBM for a few years, he discovered that he would rather build assets and began work on Meebo.  In his spare time, Sternberg mentors aspiring entrepreneurs and students and is an avid pilot.  He has spoken at several industry events and has been featured on CNBC, in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and WIRED, among others.

Mr. Marc Sternberg

Chief Executive Officer

Rising Tide Media LLC

Yancey Strickler is the Co-founder of Kickstarter, the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world.  To date, more than one million people have pledged more than $100M to projects on Kickstarter.  Before Kickstarter, Yancey worked as a journalist, covering music and culture for New York magazine, Pitchfork, Spin, and the Village Voice, among other publications.  He lives in New York City and has personally backed more than 500 Kickstarter projects.

Ms. Laurel Touby

Founder and Cyberhostess

Mediabistro.com

Hamadoun Touré has been Secretary-General of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) since January 2007.  A native of Mali, Dr. Touré has wide experience in both the public and private sectors, and is committed to harnessing the power of technology to meet the challenges of today’s rapidly changing world.  ITU is the United Nations’ specialized agency for information and communication technologies (ICTs).  The agency allocates global radio spectrum and satellite orbits, develops technical standards that ensure networks and technologies seamlessly interconnect, and strives to improve access to ICTs to understand communities worldwide.  The ITU has both public and private sector membership, with 192 Member States, ICT regulators, leading academic institutions and some 700 private companies.

Bob Tuttle is currently Manager, Advanced Development Engineering of Haworth, Inc., a global leader in the design and manufacture of office furniture and organic workspaces, including raised access floors, moveable walls, systems furniture, seating, storage and wood case goods.  Throughout his career, he has held various positions leading new product and portfolio development teams, leading new departments to explore new market opportunities and developing next generation business strategies.  Bob holds degrees in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science.  He currently holds 11 patents, is a member of the US Green Building Council and is engaged in innovation for business activities within Michigan.  Bob is an active volunteer for local educational institutions and the Boy Scouts.

Bruce Upbin is a Managing Editor of Forbes Media, responsible for its technology and wealth coverage.  Mr. Upbin joined Forbes as a Reporter in April 1995.  He became its Midwest Bureau Chief in 1997 and returned to New York in 2000 to manage the teams covering technology and health care.  In 2006, Mr. Upbin became one of the youngest Forbes editors to be named Assistant Managing Editor.  He has written and edited dozens of cover stories and regularly provides business commentary on CNN, NPR, CNBC and the BBC.  Prior to joining Forbes, Mr. Upbin worked as a speechwriter and freelance journalist.  He holds a B.A. from Northwestern University and an M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Arizona.  He serves on the board of the Reading Odyssey.

Peter Vander Auwera is currently SWIFT’s Innovation Leader.  SWIFT is a member-owned cooperative that provides the communications platform, products and services to connect over 8,500 banking organizations, securities institutions and corporate customers in more than 200 countries.  The cooperative enables its users to exchange automated, standardized financial information securely and reliably and brings the financial community together to work collaboratively to shape market practice, define standards and debate issues of mutual interest.  Innotribe, a SWIFT initiative, is a set of events, tools and initiatives that enables collaborative innovation in financial services.  It provides the infrastructure to find, create and invest in new ideas and projects.

Richard Vermillion currently serves as Fulcrum’s CEO, having previously served as the company’s CTO from 1996 through 2011.  In his former role, he was the chief architect of Fulcrum’s technology products, including PivETL™, eXclaim™, Fulcrum Analytical Server, and the company’s state machine technology.  Richard is an expert in developing standards-based, object-oriented software for customer management applications.  As CEO, Richard leads the executive team in setting and executing the company’s strategy.  Before joining Fulcrum, Richard worked as a technical specialist in information security for McKinsey & Co.  He holds a B.S.E. in mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University.

Eric Vishria is CEO of RockMelt, which he co-founded with Tim Howes in November of 2008.  RockMelt is re-inventing the browser for how people use the Web today.  Vishria graduated from Stanford at age 19 with a B.S. in Mathematical & Computational Science and a minor in Human Biology.  He began his career in investment banking at Broadview International and got his first entrepreneurial experience as an early employee at Loudcloud and later Opsware, where he served various product and marketing roles.  Vishria was serving as VP of Marketing when Opsware was acquired by HP in 2007 for $1.65 billion.  Once at HP, Eric returned to his passion for product development and assumed leadership of a half-billion dollar product line in HP software.

Narcis Vives is President of the Itinerarium Foundation (Fundació Itinerarium), which is currently working with Fundación Telefónica to create a network of 17,000 teachers of 13 different Latin American countries that will work collectively to eradicate child labor and to improve the quality of education.  Narcis is very interested in ‘location-based learning’ and is in the middle of launching a platform called “edoluc” for teachers and students to create location-based content to gain experience using mobile phones and tablets with GPS.  He is also co-founder of several educational networks, including the International Educational and Resource Network (iEARN) and Atlas de la Diversidad, both of which are international networks of primary and secondary schools that participate in telecommunication projects that contribute to the welfare of the planet and its people using ICT.  Narcis is also an Ashoka Fellow.

Ashoka Fellow

Sophie Vlessing is the SVP of Strategic Marketing and Student Experience of Kaplan University (

.  Her expertise focuses on innovation, customer insights, customer experience management, and brand building.  She is also responsible for overseeing Kaplan University’s efforts with new channels, new programs, strategic alliances, and prospect, student, and alumni communications.  Prior to joining Kaplan University in 2008, Ms. Vlessing was the VP of Marketing and Guest Strategy at Regent Seven Seas Cruises.  She was instrumental in developing innovative enrichment programs and loyalty experiences.  These initiatives were at the core of Regent’s rebranding and repositioning from Radisson Seven Seas Cruises and led to Regent’s Conde Nast Reader’s Choice Award for World’s Best Large Ship Cruise Line in 2006.  Vlessing started working with the Regent executive team in 2003, as a Senior Partner at Peppers and Rogers Group, and joined Regent in 2005.  She also has experience in marketing and customer strategy consulting with Peppers and Rogers Group, Marketing Corporation of America, and Mercer Management Consulting, working on a variety of well-known brands.  She also has brand management and new product development experience from Nabisco and Ameritech.

After extensive research in Kenya’s rural areas, Haron Wachira founded Akili Holdings, a highly automated and distributed company, deliberately structured to be primarily owned by subsistence farmers of Kenya’s rural areas.  Wachira was elected an Ashoka Fellow in 2010 for his ‘entire value chain’ intervention model for rural wealth creation. Previously, in 2005, he was awarded a ‘Head of State Commendation’ by President Mwai Kibaki for his innovative contributions in the water sector while he served as Chairman of the Tana Water Services Board. Two of those contributions involved the introduction of a Rapid Results Initiative as a way of fast-tracking implementation of projects and the design and introduction of the eWater Initiative, a pilot implementation of an integrated ICT system for the water sector.  Wachira has worked as a writer and editor for Step magazine, an IT/ Technical Services Manager and, later, associate consultant at Price Waterhouse / PricewaterhouseCoopers, management/ICT consultant, and systems implementer. He speaks in entrepreneurship workshops, mentors young people and also serves as an elder in a church that promotes holistic development.

Larry Weber is chairman of W2 Group, a digital ecosystem of marketing services companies that build brands, deepen customer and partner relationships and drive demand for products and services.  W2 Group companies, including Digital Influence Group and Racepoint Group, are leaders in social media marketing and communications in both paid and unpaid media.  In 1987 Weber founded The Weber Group, which within a decade became the world’s largest technology public relations firm.  The Interpublic Group of Companies purchased the Weber Group in late 1996, and in early 2000, Weber was named chairman and CEO of Interpublic’s Advanced Marketing Services Group.  Weber is the co-founder and chairman of the Massachusetts Innovation and Technology Exchange (MITX), the world’s largest interactive advocacy organization, and a member of the Executive Committee of the U.S. Council on Competitiveness.  Weber’s fourth book, Everywhere: Comprehensive Digital Business Strategy for the Social Media Era, was published in March 2011.

Mr. Peter Weijmarshausen

Chief Executive Officer

Shapeways

Margit is a partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where she has created a top brand in venture capital and has been responsible for marketing strategy and advising portfolio entrepreneurs on their communications strategies.  She also participates in the firm’s deal flow, evaluating entrepreneurs and potential investments.  Prior to Andreessen Horowitz, Margit co-founded and ran The OutCast Agency, an award-winning communications firm with offices in New York City and San Francisco.  Under her leadership over 14 years, the firm grew from two employees to a multi-million dollar business.  At OutCast, Margit oversaw client work as well as the firm’s business operations.  OutCast’s most notable clients include Amazon, EMC, Facebook, Netflix, Salesforce.com, Yahoo!, and a host of venture-backed start-ups and venture capital firms.  A Germany native, Margit has lived and worked in Germany, Spain and the U.S.  She is fluent in English, German, Spanish and French.  She is also a trustee at the World Affairs Council.

Geoffrey West is a theoretical physicist whose primary interests include elementary particles and their cosmological implications; the theory of companies, cities and global sustainability; and biology, including metabolism, aging and sleep.  From 2005 to 2009 he was president of the Santa Fe Institute (SFI), an independent, trans-disciplinary institution dedicated to research across the physical, computational, biological and social sciences.  Prior to joining SFI as a distinguished professor in 2003, he received a Senior Fellowship at Los Alamos National Laboratory and taught Physics at Stanford University.  Among his most recent honors are the Weldon Prize for Mathematics from Oxford University and the Glenn Award for research on Aging.  In 2006, Time Magazine named him one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World” and the Harvard Business Review selected his work as one of the breakthrough ideas of 2007.  West received his BA from Cambridge University and his Ph.D. from Stanford University.

Jody Westby founded Global Cyber Risk (GCR) to provide consulting and legal services in the areas of privacy, security, cybercrime, breach management, forensic investigations, and e-discovery.  GCR is a boutique firm that has developed an international reputation in providing targeted, senior-level compliance, forensic, and technical services to multinational corporations, non-profits, and governments.  In her twenty years of professional experience, Ms. Westby has launched an IT venture capital/solutions company for the CIA, practiced law, and spent ten years in the computer industry specializing in database management systems.  She holds several memberships and chairmanships with organizations concerning cyber security, such as the American Bar Association’s Privacy and Computer Crime Committee and the United Nation’s High Level Experts Group on Cyber Security.  Ms. Westby is co-author and editor of four books on privacy, security and cybercrime.  She earned her B.A. from the University of Tulsa and her J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center.

Mr. George Whitesides

CEO and President

Virgin Galactic, LLC

Mr. David Wilcox

Principal

ReachScale

Jerry Wind is The Lauder Professor and Professor of Marketing at The Wharton School, Director of the SEI Center for Advanced Studies in Management and Academic Director of the Wharton Fellows Program.  He led the development of the Wharton globalization strategy, the reinvention of the Wharton MBA curriculum, and the creation of the Wharton Executive MBA Program.  He was founding director of the Joseph H. Lauder Institute and the Wharton International Forum.  Jerry has served in editorial positions for top marketing journals, and published over 250 articles and over 20 books.  He consults with more than 100 companies and provides expert testimony in intellectual property and antitrust cases.  Dr. Wind’s numerous major awards include the four major Marketing awards.  He was recently selected as one of the 10 Legends of Marketing, with eight volumes of his writing to be anthologized by Sage.  His current research focuses on the Network Challenge; reinventing advertising; creativity and innovation; and challenging our mental models.

Mike is the President and CEO of Picarro, Inc., the world’s leading provider of scientific instruments for carbon, water and nitrogen cycle research.  After joining Picarro as CEO in 2007, Mike refocused the company on emerging environmental markets.  Under his leadership, Picarro has emerged as one of the world’s fastest growing scientific instrument companies, serving thousands of customers on all seven continents.  The company has been recognized with multiple awards, most recently including ‘Technology Pioneer 2012’ by the World Economic Forum.  Prior to joining Picarro, Mike was VP, Worldwide Marketing, for Varian Inc. and ran product strategy and marketing, business development and communications.  Prior to that, he was VP of Sales and Marketing for Ansys, a supplier of devices for life science and diagnostic markets.  Mike was also a co-founder of MetaChem Technologies, a provider of analytical chemistry products, which was acquired by Ansys in 2000.  Mike has a B.S. in Microbiology from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona.

Marcus Wohlsen is a longtime reporter for the Associated Press in the San Francisco bureau, where he’s covered science, technology, the environment and California’s marijuana industry.  His first book, Biopunk: DIY Scientists Hack and The Software of Life, was published in April and has been featured on NPR, CNN, Boing Boing and elsewhere.  Marcus is a graduate of Harvard and UC Berkeley.  He lives in Berkeley with his wife and son.

Alex Yoder is CEO of Webtrends, a web analytics company that helps marketers create, measure and improve campaigns for more than 7,000 brands including: The New York Times, Microsoft, BMW, RIM, China Telecom, China Mobile, CCTV, Tencent QQ, Hitachi, The Associated Press, HSBC, Barclays, Vivo Cellular and Petrobas.  Yoder is responsible for worldwide operations and the overall strategic vision.  Prior to his appointment as CEO, Yoder spent the past seven years serving in management positions at Webtrends, with his last role being VP of sales, North America.  His time at Webtrends tops off more than 20 years of global business experience, spanning leadership roles across sales, marketing and operations.  Yoder has also served as VP of sales for Touch Clarity, a behavioral targeting company.  He holds a B.A. from Whitman College.

Connie Yowell is the Director of Education for U.S. Programs, where she oversees an $85 million program on Digital Media and Learning.  This program is one of the first philanthropic efforts in the country to systematically explore the impact of digital media on young people and implications for the future of learning.  Prior to joining the Foundation, Yowell was an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois.  While there, her research integrated the fields of adolescent psychological development and organization change to address the problem of high school dropout among immigrant students in the United States.  Yowell briefly served as Policy Analyst in the U.S. Department of Education during the Clinton Administration, and has worked closely with teachers and administrators to develop and implement literacy curricula for Latino youth, and as an evaluator and program coordinator for youth development programs in NYC.  Yowell received the Distinguished Fellows Award from the William T. Grant Foundation, under which she worked with the National Writing Project to develop approaches that integrate web 2.0 technologies into the social practices of teachers.

Zia Yusuf is president and CEO of Streetline, a company that “is making smart cities a reality” through sensor-enabled mobile and web applications.  With Parker, a real-time parking guidance app for smartphones and in-car navigation systems, Streetline enables drivers to find parking quickly and was recently named one of Fast Company’s 10 Most Innovative Companies in Transportation and IBM Global Entrepreneur of the Year.  Prior to joining Streetline, Zia spent 10 years at SAP as executive VP and a member of the Executive Leadership Team.  Previously, he held roles with the Investment Banking Division at Goldman Sachs, and worked on health sector issues in Southern Africa, and finance in South Asia and Indochina, at the World Bank.  As an associate consulting professor at Stanford Design School, Zia co-teaches “Experiences in Software Design.”  He is also on the board of several non-profits focused on education in South Asia and social entrepreneurship in East Africa.

David Zanca is responsible for the market leadership of FedEx customer-facing domains, including global shipping solutions on fedex.com, customer service solutions, revenue systems, and digital-to-print solutions.  A passionate advocate of “Connectedness,” Zanca is committed to driving IT strategy that brings bottom-line value to the business.  Under his leadership, FedEx has successfully launched award-winning innovations, including Senseaware, the FedEx iPhone application and MyFedEx.com.  Zanca earned his bachelor’s degree from Duke University and master’s degree from Emory University.  Industry recognitions include CIO Magazine’s One to Watch in 2009 and Computerworld’s Premier 100 IT Leaders in 2008.

Jin Zidell is Founder and Chairman of Blue Planet Network (BPN), a combination of people, process and technology, which seeks to provide safe drinking water to 200 million people in rural communities in developing nations.  It allows donors (companies, philanthropies, individuals) to identify and manage the best possible projects at the lowest cost while encouraging a level of collaboration, information sharing and transparency that is uncommon in the NGO space.  Jin has also been a successful principal in the steel forging and fabrication sector, real estate and technology.  He has served on the board of numerous non-profits over the past 35 years and since 1979 has been affiliated with the Dai Bosatsu Zendo Kongo-Ji Zen Buddhist Monastery.

Shoshana Zuboff’s book, The Support Economy: Why Corporations Are Failing Individuals and the Next Episode of Capitalism (Penguin, 2003), co-authored with Jim Maxmin , prefigured the societal challenges that have by now become manifest for nearly everyone on the planet.  Her premise: “People have changed more than the organizations upon which they must depend. In the chasm that now separates individuals and organizations lie the keys to a new economic order with vast potential for wealth and well being.” Shoshana Zuboff is the Charles Edward Wilson Professor of Business Administration at the Harvard Business School (retired).  One of the first tenured women at the Harvard Business School and the youngest woman to receive an endowed chair, she earned her Ph.D. in social psychology from Harvard University and her B.A. in philosophy from the University of Chicago. Zuboff’s most recent publication is “Creating Value in the Age of Distributed Capitalism” (McKinsey Quarterly, September 2010). She is the author of the celebrated classic In the Age of the Smart Machine: The Future of Work and Power (1988) and founder of the renowned Harvard executive program “ODYSSEY: School for the Second Half of Life.”

Gretchen Zucker is the Executive Director of Ashoka’s Youth Venture® , a global organization that cultivates the entrepreneurial, “changemaker” talent needed for the success of all parts of society—corporate, civil and government.  She began her career focusing on development in Africa, first at USAID, then in the Ethiopian embassy in Washington, and later in the Ethiopian Investment Authority in Addis Ababa.  Gretchen helped launch the U.S. arm of Tigray Development Association, headquartered in Tigray, Ethiopia.  She was co-founder of Her House, which designed, financed and built houses by women for single mothers and raised awareness of issues involving women and housing.  Gretchen was also a management consultant with McKinsey & Co. and led the Innovative Learning initiative at Ashoka.  Gretchen received a BA from Ohio State University, a Masters of Public Policy from the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, and an MBA from the Sloan School of Management at MIT.