Tony Schwartz
Location: New York City Area
Tony Schwartz is founder and CEO of The Energy Project. Tony’s most recent book, Be Excellent at Anything: The Four Keys to Transforming the Way We Work and Live, was published in May, 2010 and became an instant New York Times bestseller. His last book, The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy Not Time, co-authored with Jim Loehr, was a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller and has been translated into 28 languages. Tony recently launched a weekly column for the New York Times titled “Life@Work.” For three years he wrote the most popular blog on the Harvard Business Review and is one of their most popular bloggers, he also blogs for Fast Company, the Huffington Post, the 99%, the Atlantic, and BNET. A frequent keynote speaker, Tony has also trained and coached dozens of CEOs and senior leaders at organizations including Sony, Google, Ernst & Young, the Los Angeles Police Department, the Cleveland Clinic, IBM, Ford, Gap and Blue Shield of California.
Pam Ross
Location: Toronto Area
After spending more than 15 years in corporate operations and human resources roles, PamRoss passionately believes that people spend too much working or connected to work for it not to be awesome, and that awesome workplaces are possible. She is a trainer, speaker and culture catalyst with a business mission to create unique workplace culture that unleashes employees to do their best work.
Pam is the Co-Producer of Canada’s Impact99 HR Summit, which brings 99 workplace change agents together to explore the future of work with actionable outcomes for their business. Connect with Pam on twitter @pamelamaeross.
Cristina Moon
Location: Providence, RI Area
Having intimate knowledge of activist burnout and the challenges/responsibilities of being a “model minority”, Cristina’s passionate about finding a radical path forward in the worlds of work, politics and culture. She writes infrequently about applying Buddhist meditation practices and yoga to life, technology and activism at www.little900.com. You can follow her on Twitter at @cmoon and @little900.
Julia Roy
Location: New York City Area
Entrepreneur and futurist exploring the intersection of productivity, science and technology.
Melissa Anzman
Location: Denver, CO Area
Melissa Anzman is a former human resources leader and founder of LoosenYourWhiteCollar.com, where she helps people get clarity, get ahead and fall in love with their jobs while understanding how Human Resources works. She is the author of two books, How to Land a Job: Secrets from an HR Insider and Stop Hating Your Job: How to Be Happy at Work Without Quitting, and can be found at @MellyMelAnz.
Dan Benoni
Location: Montreal Area
Dan Benoni is an entrepreneur with a Design and Engineering background. He has been involved in gamification and startups since 2008 and won several awards related to his ventures, including MassChallenge’s Gold Prize. In 2013, he cofounded Officevibe — a web platform that boosts employee engagement by focusing on company culture and employee motivation. As a Gamification Designer and Product Director for Officevibe, his passion is to make daily experiences fun through outstanding design.
Jeffrey Fermin
Lisa Schenk
Location: Los Angeles Area
Lisa Schenk is an executive coach with over 20 years experience helping people be successful in the world of work. A Ph.D. in organizational communication and 5 years with McKinsey & Co. honed Lisa’s interest in shaping organizations for optimal human outcomes. Currently she is the head of Talent at LRW, a Los Angeles-based market research firm, where she has daily opportunities to help employees find meaning in their work and to create a culture that enables people to build exceptional careers.
Clay Hebert
Location: New York City Area
Clay is the founder and CEO of Spindows, the world’s first enterprise discovery platform. Spindows helps organizations discover knowledge and skills, helps colleagues discover each other and helps the whole company discover new ideas and innovations.
One of the world’s leading crowdfunding experts, Clay has helped 26 entrepreneurs raise over $2.4 million on crowdfunding platforms like Kickstarter and Indiegogo.
A popular public speaker, Clay engages audiences around the globe on innovation, creativity, crowdfunding, marketing, entrepreneurship and the future. Clay has been a featured speaker at Mastermind Talks, MisfitConf, Influencer Con, ReINVENT, World Domination Summit, Blogworld, LessConf, Social Fresh, Digital Impact Conference, New York Brand Lab Radio, BlogTalkRadio, New York University and numerous corporate and higher education conferences and workshops.
Clay’s work and writing has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, Forbes, Lifehacker and Entrepreneur magazine.
Maria Seidman
Location: New York City Area
Maria Seidman is currently the CEO and Co-Founder of Yapp (http://yapp.us), the simplest way to create and publish a mobile app in minutes. Maria and Yapp have been featured on Good Morning America, in the New York Times, The WSJ, TechCrunch, Mashable, and many others.
Prior to Yapp, Maria led Business Development, New Business Incubation, and Mobile for Warner Bros. Maria has also held positions at MGM, ETF Group, and Goldman Sachs. Maria holds an MBA from Stanford and a BA from Yale. She serves on the NY Board of the Network For Teaching Entrepreneurship and currently resides in NYC.
B.J. Shannon
Eve Tahmincioglu
Location: New York City Area
Eve Tahmincioglu is the Director of Communications and Top Social Media Dog at Families and Work Institute. She is responsible for getting the word about about FWI and also does research and blogging for the Institute on the changing workforce and workplace. On the side, she remains a workplace and career contributor to NBCNews.com and Today.com, where she has served as an award-winning columnist covering labor issues since 2006. She’s also the voice behind the popular CareerDiva.net blog, and author of From the Sandbox to the Corner Office: Lessons Learned on the Journey to the Top.
Brian Quinn
Brian Quinn is Director of Programming for Social Media Week NY, a conference welcoming 10K attendees from the Internet, tech, and media communities each year.
Prior to joining SMW in 2012, Brian produced concerts around the world while managing lauded jazz artists for 10 years. Brian also made his mark in the food and beverage industry after co-founding The Noble Rot in 2009, an underground supperclub dubbed “a new form of clandestine drinking” by publications. He also learned the art of craft cocktails and regularly works with some of the world’s best bartenders.
He lives and works in New York City.
David Moldawer
Location: New York City Area
David Moldawer is Director of Business for creativeLIVE, an online education start-up that broadcasts high-quality courses live and for free over the internet to creative pros (and aspiring creatives) around the world. Prior to his current role, David spent a decade editing nonfiction books at major publishers. Some of his bestselling titles include Making Ideas Happen by Scott Belsky, The Personal MBA by Josh Kaufman, Brotherhood by Deepak and Sanjiv Chopra, and The Secret Knowledge by David Mamet. David lives in Manhattan with his wife and son.
KELLY SAKAI-O’NEILL
Location: New York City Area
Kelly Sakai-O’Neill is Director of Marketing and Senior Manager of Applied Research at Families and Work Institute. She has over a decade of experience in work life research and program communications and marketing. Kelly has been working on When Work Works, a nationwide initiative to bring research on workplace effectiveness and flexibility into community and business practice, since it launched in 2005. She has also managed the Institute’s marketing efforts and websites, as well as co-authored a number reports and journal articles using FWI’s data.
Molly Alexander
Location: New York City Area
As Head of Talent Development Molly focuses on the culture, leadership and skill development of Acumen’s global team. She seeks creative ways to enhance employee experience including identifying ways that allow each the team to connect with Acumen’s work and community, and live out the organization’s values to the fullest. Partnering closely with her colleagues in Leadership and across the regional offices, Molly’s role is to unleash the potential of the internal team enabling them to excel in their demanding roles.
In 2004 Molly started at Acumen working closely with Acumen’s Founder, Jacqueline Novogratz in the CEO’s Office before moving to the Business Development Team. During her time in New York she was responsible for building and engaging the philanthropic partner community across the globe through a variety of fundraising and events. In May 2010 Molly moved to India to lead each of Acumen’s fundraising, talent development, media and community building efforts there. Molly has recently returned to New York from a 6 month sabbatical where she traveled to remote parts of Nagaland, Burma and Indonesia to better understand the development needs of communities there. With a Bachelor of Asian Studies from the University of New South Wales, Sydney; Molly has lived and worked across Asia, India, the US and Australia (her other motherland). Most comfortable in sandals, Molly is at her most energetic when getting her hands dirty to solve challenging problems within the team or broader community.
Natalia Oberti Noguera
Location:
Natalia (aka Ms. Oberti Noguera) is Founder and CEO of the Pipeline Fellowship, an angel investing bootcamp for women. The Pipeline Fellowship works to increase diversity in the U.S. angel investing community and creates capital for women social entrepreneurs. Natalia holds a BA in Comparative Literature & Economics from Yale. She has been featured in Bloomberg Businessweek, Mashable, Reuters Money, TechCrunch, The New York Times, and Fast Company’s Co.Exist Change Generation series. Natalia was named to the Forbes list “Top 20 Women for Entrepreneurs to Follow on Twitter,” as well as Latina.com’s “25 Latinas Who Shine in Tech,” and she was selected as a Readers’ Pick for HuffPost Tech’s “27 Women in Tech You Need to Follow on Twitter.” Women’s eNews recognized her as one of 21 Leaders for the 21st Century for 2012 and Business Insider included her on its 2013 list “The 30 Most Important Women in Tech under 30.” You can find Natalia on Twitter (@nakisnakis).
Molly Fitch
Location: Seattle Area
Molly brings more than twenty five years of experience in the Human Resources and Organizational Development arena. She is the owner of AlignMeant, Inc., providing human resource strategy, leadership coaching and team development to early stage, start-up organizations. She has held Sr. leadership HR positions at Seattle based startup companies, and currently balances her time between AlignMeant, Inc. and Swift HR Solutions, where she is a Sr. Consultant specializing in start-up organizations.
Molly’s passion and expertise is in inspiring individuals and teams to be the very best they can be. She has extensive experience in aligning talent with organizational goals and strategy. She is instrumental in coaching executive leadership to ensure that the corporate values and organizational objectives are aligned with the structure and processes they adopt.
Molly holds a B.A. in Psychology, from the University of Washington, and has achieved certification as a Senior Professional in Human Resources (SPHR). She is a Certified Professional Coach from the Hudson Institute.
Alexandra Fiorillo
Location: New York City Area
Alex is passionate about applying human centered design principles to achieve social impact and has spent her career in the international financial services and social enterprise sectors. At ideas42, a non-profit that uses the insights of behavioral economics to design innovative solutions to social problems at scale, she leads behavior change projects in financial inclusion, global health, environment and social programs in Sub-Saharan Africa, South Asia and Latin America. Alex has a MIA from Columbia University, a BA from Connecticut College and was a Fulbright Scholar in Ecuador.
Chana Ginelle Ewing
Tim McDonald
Location: New York City Area
Tim is the ultimate in connecting and creating a conversation. With 20 years experience in networking and building communities, Tim is passionate in his pursuit of connecting people. He pulls together his experiences and turns that into teaching people how to effectively connect and build their own networks.
As Director of Community at Huffington Post he’s responsible for growing and cultivating a strong community. Tim founded My Community Manager, a space where he brings his knowledge and those in the community to share knowledge and experience. He instigates the engagement and conversation, turning students into teachers and teachers into students.
Arthur Rogers
Location: Boston Area
Arthur Rogers is an intrapreneur and business development guru with over 20 years experience helping friends, colleagues and clients design, develop and deliver products to market expeditiously which is increasingly important in today’s fast-moving business world. He has masters degrees from Baylor, Cornell, Harvard and MIT all with a focus on collaboration, management and innovation. He is currently involved with military special operations units and he brings some of that unconventional perspective to problem solving in the business arena. He has worked with Samsung, Ginger.io and Humana to name but a few. Currently he is the Head of Strategy and Innovation U.S. for Newnagy.com , a Palm Beach-based nanotechnology company with global headquarters in Beijing, China. Arthur partners with colleagues in the US and abroad to identify new applications for Newnagy’s cutting-edge energy harvesting technology platform which delivers power and sensor capabilities autonomously.
Kathryn Finney
Location: New York City Area
Kathryn Finney is the founder and Managing Director of digitalundivided (DID), a social enterprise that develops programs that increase the participation of urban communities, especially women, in the digital space. DID’s programs have reached over 4 million people. In 2013, Kathryn received the Champions of Change Award from The White House for her working in increasing inclusiveness in tech.
An honors graduate of Yale and Rutgers Universities, Kathryn is an expert in building women-centered online properties and is a frequent speaker at venues as diverse as The White House and South by Southwest (SXSW) and was named one of AOL’s Top Women in Money and Black Enterprise’s “40 Stars Under 40″.
Imal Wagner
Location: New York City Area
Imal Wagner has spent the last ten years as an agent of communications in the field of Public Relations- launching events, entrepreneurs, authors, web sites, musicians, charities and dreams into the news so they can grow their tribe, share positive information, products, events and create change.
Imal is the founder of Phoenix Rising, PR.
CV Harquail
Location: New York City Area
CV Harquail, PhD, works at the confluence of organizational change, leadership, social issues, and digital technology. She brings together academic research expertise, change agent experience, an intersectional feminist point of view, and new media fluency to help leaders think differently about the relationships between organizations, individuals, technology, social change, and systems. CV’s academic research emphasizes organizational identity and authenticity, systems of engagement, positive organizing, collective meaning, and change advocacy. At Stevens Institute of Technology, CV teaches students how to use ‘Lean’ logic to create new businesses and to help organizations adopt new technologies. On her blog AuthenticOrganizations.com, CV analyzes current business, social and political issues using management science to offer a feminist, not-entirely-capitalist perspective. She’s currently investigating how organizations can practice generosity, internally and within their networks, to build their business while boosting others. Follow her at @cvharquail and at AuthenticOrganizations.com.
Albert Wegner
Location: New York City Area
Albert combines over 10 years of entrepreneurial experience with an in-depth technology background. As an entrepreneur, he has founded or co-founded five companies, including a management consulting firm (in Germany), a hosted data analytics company, a technology subsidiary for Telebanc (now E*Tradebank), an early stage investment firm, and most recently (with his wife), DailyLit, a service for reading books by email or RSS. Albert also served as the president of del.icio.us through the company’s sale to Yahoo. His technology background goes back to winning the German national computer science competition at age 18. Albert graduated summa cum laude from Harvard College in economics and computer science and holds a Ph.D. in Information Technology from MIT. He has managed technology projects for organizations as diverse as Tacoda (startup) and Telebanc (leading Internet bank).
Colette Alexander
Location: New York City Area
Colette Alexander began playing the cello at the age of four, and has studied classical, contemporary classical, North Indian and Persian Music at Interlochen, Meadowmount, Sarah Lawrence College and the California Institute of the Arts. She has recorded and performed with Jens Lekman, Josh Groban, Sara Bareilles, Angelique Kidjo, Rilo Kiley, Rachael Yamagata, Greg Laswell, Girls in Trouble, Au Revoir Borealis, and Drafted by Minotaurs. With a primary focus on writing/arranging for and performing with pop/rock bands, she has toured extensively in Europe, the U.S. and Asia, and appeared on many recordings. She currently resides in New York City.
Sehreen Noor Ali
Location: New York City Area
Sehreen NoorAli is a community builder who works in customer development as the Director of Partnerships for Noodle.org, a for-profit, mission-driven search engine for education. She launched her career at the U.S. Department of State where she focused on people-to-people diplomacy. She led the creation of the first digital tool to reach out to Iranian citizens and helped The White House design flagship global engagement programs. She was personally recognized by President Obama for her work and is on the Diplomatic Courier’s list of The Top 99 under 33 in Foreign Policy. Outside of the office, she remains active in her communities, most recently as chairperson of a youth development organization; as founder of EdTechWomen, a professional development network for women in edtech; and as a member of the Tech Council for the Brooklyn Children’s Museum.
Blake Eastman
Location: New York City Area
Blake Eastman is the founder of The Nonverbal Group. Where he conducts independent research and teaches individuals to become more effective communicators through the identification and modification of nonverbal behaviors. In addition to his work at The Nonverbal Group, he teaches psychology at the City University of New York.
Johnson Wang
Location: New York City Area
Corey Brill
Charlene DeCesare
With more than 20 years as a sales leader for companies ranging from startup to 18,000 employees, Charlene is now VP Strategy & Development for Boardroom Events Inc. She is also a peak performance coach with a special goal of making sure that high-potential employees (aka “HI-PO’s”) don’t become passed over & pissed off (“POPO’s”). Previously, she was Northeast Director at the Institute for Corporate Productivity & Global Director at Gartner, Inc and co-founded a division of Bright Horizons, Inc. that has completely transformed tuition assistance programs at high-performance organizations. Charlene has a new book in the works, If You Meet More Than Two Jerks in One Day, You’re Probably One of Them.
Rachael Ellison
Location: New York City Area
Rachael Ellison is an organizational development practitioner and work-life advocate. In 2009, she founded Reworking Parents, an advisory firm that has helped hundreds parents find satisfaction at work while integrating the personal and professional. Rachael’s work has been featured in many publications including Forbes, Smartbrief workforce, and Monster Thinking. She has been repeatedly cited as one of the top work-life balance experts on twitter, where she tweets as @reworkingparent. She keeps current business trends and best practices as a consultant with the international strategy execution firm, KRStrategy (KRS).
Scott Francisco
Location: New York City Area
Scott Francisco is the founder of Pilot Projects Design Collective in New York City. He is a hands-on designer, strategist and educator whose work seeks out humane antidotes to today’s over-reliance on data and quantification. Pilot Projects is founded on the belief that small infrastructural interventions can catalyze big changes in our streets, cities and culture. Current projects include the Brooklyn Bridge Forest and 100 Fountains NYC.
Scott teaches at Parsons the New School for Design and speaks regularly on the collaborative workplace, organizational culture and sustainability. He holds degrees in Architecture from the University of Toronto and MIT.
Christian De Neef
Location: Brussels Area, Belgium
Seasoned business consultant, project director, working at the crossroads of innovation management, knowledge management & learning organizations. Also involved with peer-to-peer development projects and strong believer that social media can drive social change (sm4sc).
Founder and owner of Fast Track, a Brussels-based consultancy that facilitates the people side of knowledge and innovation management: we focus on change, collaboration, culture, and how these are key ingredients in lasting organizational transformations.
James Pratt
Location: Seattle Area
After a 15 years working in technology companies across the globe from 2 person startups to corporate behemoths, a series of personal revelations helped me rethink my attitude and approach in the workplace. Having undergone a personal transformation that lead to healthier working relationships and a better leadership approach, I’m on a quest to help others in technology transform their organizations into positive, collaborative, supportive, customer focused work places that deliver technology that makes the world a better place. Employee by employee, team by team, company by company the Work Revolution is coming.
Marianne Cooper
Marianne Cooper is a sociologist at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University. She was the lead researcher for Sheryl Sandberg’s book, Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead. She is an expert on gender, family life, work, and social inequality. She writes, speaks, and consults about these issues for media outlets, companies, and professional groups. Her forthcoming book, Cut Adrift: Families in Insecure Times, examines what keeps Americans up at night. Set against the backdrop of rising economic insecurity and rolled up safety nets, Cut Adrift explores how families forge security in an uncertain age.
Rachel Oyeleye
Location: New York City Area
Daniel Mezick
Location: New York City Area
DANIEL MEZICK is a management consultant, author and community organizer. He is the founder of the Agile Boston community of practice. He is the formulator of Open Agile Adoption, a technique for creating rapid and lasting enterprise agility. Daniel is the author of THE CULTURE GAME, a book describing sixteen patterns of group behavior that help make any team smarter. The book is based on five years of experience coaching 119 Agile teams across 25 different organizations. Daniel’s list of clients includes Zappos Insights, CIGNA, SEIMENS Healthcare, Harvard University and many smaller enterprises. Learn more and contact Daniel at www.DanielMezick.com.
Blessing Oyeleye
Location: New York City Area
Blessing Oyeleye is part of a group of emerging tech founders in “Silicon Africa”. She is the CEO/Co-Founder of Makers Crew, a startup poised to be the leading commerce platform in Nigeria by bringing the latest trend and modern shopping experience to brand-conscious urban African women. With a background in Engineering/Project Management and extensive industrial experiences with DuPont, PepsiCo, HP & Cargill. When asked ‘why Africa’, her response has always been why not? The African consumer has been underestimated, underserved and underserviced. With six of the fastest growing economies in the world located in the continent, it is time to focus on the opportunities that exist there. Born and raised in Nigeria, she is pushing past the media’s depiction of Africa to expose the rise of the African consumer.
Jason Wisdom
Location: New York City Area
Jason Wisdom is co-founder of The Design Gym. An educational company that has grown a community of over 1,500 people who come together to learn through tackling complex problems for some of the most forward thinking companies in the world. The Design Gym has been able to help companies like Acumen, Etsy, Applegate Farms and Mozilla find unexpected opportunities for growth and internal development.
In his spare time Jason hosts Wok + Wine, an event series throughout NYC. Wok + Wine begins by gathering 50 brilliant minds around a long, rectangular table, then dumping out 50 pounds of cooked shrimp on said table and providing enough wine to keep the conversation flowing for the night all while devouring the shrimp.
Wendy Friedlander
Wendy Friedlander is an expert in software development with years of experience championing Agile practices. She set aside development to become a mother and shortly after, spent a year in treatment for a rare cancer. When she was done she spent over 500 hours studying human behavior and communication. Fusing together her understanding of humans and technology, she created Just Add Wendy to help teams maximize potential and empower leaders. Candid and upfront with a mix of humor, optimism and vigor, Wendy yields greater collaboration, creativity and accountability with every client. Learn more and contact Wendy at http://justaddwendy.com.
Paloma Medina
Location: New York City Area
Paloma Medina is the Manager of Learning and Development at Etsy. Before this, Paloma worked in community health care as a performance improvement consultant and leadership coach. She holds an MPA in Organizational Coaching and is on a life path to receive a Masters in Asking the Right Questions. She is excited to meet others who are building innovative, home grown, lean leadership development models.
Kelsey Conophy
Location: New York City Area
Kelsey Conophy is the founder & CEO of workZeit, a tool designed to bring Culture Intelligence to recruiting and talent management. Her goal is to humanize recruitment by bringing the focus back to the individual while cutting out waste. She comes to HR by way of design, after studying at Parsons School for Design and working as an Experience Strategist on the Fifth Season team at Vivaldi Partners Group, a brand consulting agency. She brings her branding experience to workZeit to help companies increase their employer brand value and provide candidates with an opportunity to display their potential to employers. You can follow along @KRConophy & @workZeit.
Rasanath Dasa
Rasanath Dasa graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in 2000 and holds an MBA from Cornell University’s Johnson School of Management. He has worked for Deloitte Consulting as a strategy consultant and most recently as an Investment Banker for Bank of America. Currently, Rasanath serves as the CEO and President of The Bhakti Center, a not-for-profit education and cultural center that provides services in yoga, meditation, vegetarian cooking, art, dance, music, and philosophy centered around Bhakti Yoga, one of India’s oldest schools of yoga. He has taught the Bhagavad Gita, the classic text on yoga, at universities (Cornell University and the University of Albany) as well as in various yoga schools, including the Kripalu Yoga Center and Jivamukti. His dissection of the Gita relies upon his erudition in a wide range of topics, from economics, life sciences, history, current events, and yoga traditions. He has also been a featured TEDx speaker in New York City.
Junie François Pswarayi
Location: New York City Area
Brooklyn-born and raised, Junie recently returned to the great borough after residing for many years in Maryland and Washington, DC. She brings ten years of experience from the private sector and non-profits, including employers as diverse as Language etc, The Africa Society, and a renowned Democratic polling firm in Washington, DC. Her most recent endeavors before joining TurboVote have been centered on devising marketing strategies, client cultivation, and implementing an accounting online system for a startup and consulting with a New York based interior design firm. Outside of work, you can find her trying something new with her husband, watching a scary movie, and encouraging voter participation, canvassing, and volunteering in her community. An alumni of the University of Maryland, College Park and she has a certificate in non-profit management from Montgomery College.
Danielle Jones
Location: New York City Area
Danielle Jones is a founder of the Lineapple Application, a mobile based information company. The Lineapple technology helps businesses get data to increase operational
Brandon Klein
Location: Minneapolis Area
Brandon Klein is currently the Vice President of Collaboration at Optum (United HealthGroup – Fortune 25). Co-authoring and inspiring, “a better way to work,” Brandon merges tactics, innovation and People Science(TM) to unite his 130,000 fellow colleagues toward improving our health care system. He has led the way/field in redefining the work equation (network engagement + data + environment + process) to yield Profitable Collaboration.
Kathryn Minshew
Location: New York City Area
Kathryn Minshew is the CEO & Founder of TheMuse.com, a career platform and job discovery tool helping 1 million people every month answer the question, “What do I want to do with my life (and how do I get there)?”. Kathryn has spoken at MIT and Harvard, appeared on The +TODAY Show and Fox, and contributes on career and entrepreneurship topics to the Wall Street Journal and Harvard Business Review. Before founding The Muse, Kathryn worked on vaccine introduction in Rwanda and Malawi with the Clinton Health Access Initiative and was previously at the management consultancy McKinsey & Company. Follow her on Twitter @KMin
Kelly Kingman
Location: New York City Area
As a graphic recorder, Kelly Kingman uses drawing in the service of understanding. She maps presentations and conversations in real-time to help audiences understand, retain and engage with information. She has a diverse background that includes journalism, creative writing, design, and marketing. Kelly also runs a hyperlocal online social network for the citizens of Beacon, the small city in the Hudson Valley where she lives. You can find out more about graphic recording and her work at KingmanInk.com
Niamh Hughes
Location: New York Area
Irish. Curious. Instigator. Developer Advocacy @Shutterstock@Shuttertech @Sandbox_Network. Formerly @GA. Love people, design, bikes, tech, travel & pineapple
Whitney Johnson
Whitney Johnson is a leading thinker on driving innovation via personal disruption and is the co-founder of Clay Christensen’s investment firm. Ms. Johnson is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, and an influencer on Linkedin. In 2013, Johnson was shortlisted for the Thinkers 50 Future Thinker Award. In 2012, she was listed on Inc Magazine’s 12 People to Follow on Twitter. She is the co-founder of Forty Women Over 40, and author of Dare, Dream, Do: Remarkable Things Happen When You Dare to Dream (Bibliomotion, 2012).
Doug Kirkpatrick
Doug Kirkpatrick is a Northern California-based executive coach, organizational consultant, speaker, author and educator. He is the author of Beyond Empowerment: The Age of the Self-Managed Organization, based on his experiences as one of the first colleagues to join The Morning Star Company, a pioneer of organizational self-management. An ongoing contributor to the Morning Star Self-Management Institute, he enjoys travel in rough parts of the world and appreciates the perspective that he gains from it.
Jeff Namnum
Bill Gordon
Location: New York City Area
Bill Gordon is the Founder of Lean Launch Ventures LLC, a firm focused on helping
entrepreneurs launch innovative startups with less risk. In recent years Bill helped
catalyze the creation of an Innovation Ecosystem in Connecticut, CTNext, through his
work starting in 2009 to turn the Old Town Hall in Stamford into the Stamford Innovation
Center. CTNext is a statewide $25 million 5 year effort to create programs to spur
jobs through entrepreneurship. Lean Launch Ventures (LLV) was formed to manage
a private startup accelerator in CT to invest State funds in promising startups. LLV
graduated its first class in June 2013 as a flagship program of CTNext.
Bill has been involved with a wide range of startups. His largest startup (1996-2001)
was Callahan Associates International (CAI) which ended up serving 20 million homes
across Germany, Spain, France and Belgium with triple play broadband services.
After CAI Bill focused on biotech and helped launch and run Tetragenetics serving
as President and CEO. In 2009 Bill won a Gates Grand Challenge grant to fund
Tetragenetics’ work on making a novel malaria vaccine.
Bill is currently teaching entrepreneurship and collaborative leadership at the School
of Visual Arts in NYC to graduate students in the MFA in Design for Social Innovation
program. Bill served on the board of PopTech (2008-11) and played a key role in the
launch of a series of exciting initiatives from the PopTech Accelerator for social change,
to the PopTech Social Innovation and Science Fellows programs where he served on
the selection committees that chose over 100 PopTech fellows over 4+ years.
Bill has a B.S. in Biology from Wayne State University, an MBA from the Wharton
School at the University of Pennsylvania and a Ph.D. from UC Berkeley which he
earned working in the lab of Nobel Laureate James Watson at Cold Spring Harbor Labs
on Long Island.
Jocelyn Ling
Location: New York City Area
Axelle Tessandier
Location: San Francisco Area
Axelle Tessandier is a content strategist, writer, curator, bold thinker and founder of Axl Agency.
Shawn Murphy
Location: Sacramento Area
Shawn is the rebel heretic at heart when it comes to rethinking the way we work. He gets to help clients rethink their workplace as Managing Director of OD at KAI Partners in Sacramento, CA. He’s also the co-founder of the popular leadership blog SwitchandShift.com. He’s the author of Creating Joy at Work and launching a new podcast in the fall, “Work that Matters.
Justin McMurray
Location: Berlin Area
Justin McMurray is the co-founder of Somewhere, a platform for people to share their work methods, insights and inspiration. Working with a wonderful small team based in Berlin, Justin believes in radically opening up the world of work in order to connect the people who should be working together.
Christine Kovich
Location: New York City Area
Christine Kovich is co-founder of Harlem Biospace, a community of biotech innovators and scientifically-minded citizens who will build a frictionless model for turning revolutionary biotech ideas into products that solve real health problems. Christine has spent the last 14 years in the payments industry at MasterCard, most recently creating partnerships with start-ups that are disrupting the financial services industry. Prior to that, she worked on the development and deployment of an industry leading contactless payment solution from pilot to commercial roll-out. She has an International MBA from the Schulich School of Business at York University which eventually brought her to NYC as Russia specialist. She looks forward to creating an environment where biotech start-ups can thrive in the city she loves. Perched on her fold-up bike, Christine can be seen biking to meetings on one of NYC’s many bike paths.
Jenny Blake
Location: New York City Area
Jenny Blake is a bestselling author, micro-business coach and international speaker who helps people move beyond burnout to build sustainable, dynamic careers they love. With two years at a technology start-up as the first employee, over five years at Google on the Training and Career Development teams, and two years of running her own business, Jenny combines her love of technology with her superpower of organizing information to help clients through big transitions — often to launch or elevate a book, blog or business. Today you can find her at JennyBlake.me, where she explores the intersection of mind, body and business. For fun, Jenny teaches a Geek Yoga class in New York City for entrepreneurs. Follow her on Twitter @jenny_blake.
Stowe Boyd
Location: New York City Area
Stowe’s focus is the future of work, and the tectonic forces pushing business, media, and society into an unclear and accelerating postnormal era. He is a web anthropologist and futurist, and the lead researcher for the future of work and social business at GigaOM Research. He is best known for his writing at stoweboyd.com, and coined the terms ‘social tools’ and ‘hashtag’. He is writing a book about the future of work.
John Maeda
Location: Providence, RI Area
John Maeda became president of RISD in 2008, after serving as head of research at MIT Media Lab. He bridges design, technology, and business with backgrounds in computer science, art, and organizational leadership. He is author of The Laws of Simplicity and Redesigning Leadership — the latter expands on his Twitter account @johnmaeda, one of TIME’s “best Twitter feeds”. He serves on the boards of Sonos, Wieden+Kennedy, Quirky, and on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on New Models of Leadership. He has received a variety of awards for his creative work, including induction into the Art Director’s Club Hall of Fame and the National Design Award.
Wiley Cerrilli
Location: New York City Area
Wiley Cerilli is the Vice President and General Manager of SinglePlatform at Constant Contact. He oversees all activities related to SinglePlatform, which he founded in 2010 and which was acquired by Constant Contact in 2012. SinglePlatform gives small business a single place to update their critical business information and delivers that information across a publishing network that reaches more than 200 million consumers per month. This network includes sites like Foursquare, New York Times, YP, and Urbanspoon, as well as the business’ social media profiles, website, and mobile site. Wiley has received considerable industry recognition, including being named to BusinessInsider’s Top 25 Tech CEOs in New York and Top 100 Most Influential People lists.
Gretchen Gavett
Location: Boston Area
Gretchen Gavett is an associate editor at the Harvard Business Review.
Mark Babbitt
Location: Reno Area/ Lake Tahoe Area
Mark Babbitt is CEO and Founder of YouTern, a community that enables young talent to successfully enter the workforce. A serial mentor, Mark has been quoted in the Wall Street Journal, Mashable and Forbes regarding the 21st Century workplace, career development, millennial leadership, and higher education’s role in preparing emerging talent for the workplace. An author, keynote speaker and blogger, Mark’s contributions include Huffington Post, Switch and Shift, The Daily Muse and Under30CEO. Mark is currently working with Ted Coine on their new book, “A World Gone Social: How Business Must Adapt to Survive” (AMACOM, June 2014).
Candice Reimers
Location: San Francisco Area
Candice leads the Education Team in Google’s research organization. She has worked in organizational learning and development in Switzerland, Mexico and the U.S. She moonlights as a doctoral student at the University of Pennsylvania and her research interests include startup culture, learning and organizational design. Candice is fascinated about the future of work and the role that new educational paradigms can play.
Seth Godin
Location: New York City Area
Seth Godin is the author of 17 books that have been bestsellers around the world and have been translated into more than 35 languages. You might be familiar with his books Linchpin, Tribes, The Dip and Purple Cow. In addition to his writing and speaking, Seth is founder of squidoo.com, a fast growing, easy to use website. His blog (which you can find by typing “seth” into Google) is one of the most popular in the world. Recently, Godin once again set the book publishing on its ear by launching a series of four books via Kickstarter. The campaign reached its goal after three hours and ended up becoming the most successful book project ever done this way. His latest, The Icarus Deception, argues that we’ve been brainwashed by industrial propaganda, and pushes us to stand out, not to fit in. Find out why American Way Magazine called Seth Godin, “America’s Greatest Marketer.”
Dina Kaplan
Location: New York City Area
Dina Kaplan is co-founder of Blip, the place for the best original series of the web. At Blip, Dina ran company operations, including finance, accounting, business development, PR, marketing and HR. Before Blip, Dina was an Emmy-award winning television news reporter for local NBC stations, an associate producer at MTV News and Director of Research at the Office of the White House Counsel. Dina was named one of Fortune Magazine’s Most Powerful Women Entrepreneurs and Fast Company’s Most Influential Women of Web 2.0. She has spoken at SXSW, the World Economic Forum, CeBit, DLD, Cannes Lions and the Fortune Most Powerful Women Summit. Dina is an advisor to a number of start-ups and has written articles for a number of publications, including Town & Country.
Cali Yost
Location: New York City Area
As the CEO and founder of Flex+Strategy Group/Work+Life Fit, Cali Williams Yost has help hundreds of businesses and thousands of individuals partner to create award-winning flexible workplaces. An honors graduate of Columbia Business School, Yost offers pioneering work+life “fit” advice in the recently released, Tweak It: Make What Matters to You Happen Every Day, (Center Street/Hachette, 2013), and in the critically-acclaimed, Work+Life: Finding the Fit That’s Right for You (Riverhead/Penguin Group, 2004). She has appeared on the TODAY Show, NPR, and in The New York Times, USAToday, and the Wall Street Journal, was named one of Mashable’s Top 14 Career Experts on Twitter, and her Work+Life Fit blog has been recognized as “Best of the Web” by Forbes.com and WorkingMother.com.
Jessica Lawrence
Organizer, Work Revolution Summit
Location: New York City Area
Jessica Lawrence is the Executive Director of NY Tech Meetup (NYTM), the largest Meetup in the world and a 33,000-member non-profit organization helping to build a sustainable and diverse technology industry in New York. Prior to her work with NYTM, Jessica was the CEO of Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio Council in Southern California, where she supported a community of 75 staff, 5,000 volunteers, and 15,000 girls. Under her leadership, Girl Scouts of San Gorgonio Council was selected by The Non-Profit Times as one of the fifty best non-profits in the country to work for, ranking number eight on the list. Jessica’s writing has been featured on the Harvard Business Review blog, Forbes.com, The Next Web, The Daily Muse and in a weekly column in The Press-Enterprise.
Julie Clow
Organizer, Work Revolution Summit
Location: New York City Area
Julie Clow is Head of Organizational & People Development at Two Sigma Investments and author of The Work Revolution: Freedom and Excellence for All. Julie started her career working in a traditional company with the typical stiff corporate culture. When Julie joined Google in 2006, she discovered the power of freedom and autonomy for creating a thriving workplace. She moved to New York in 2011 to join an equally inspired investment management company. Julie has been featured on CNBC, USA Today, and other business publications to share ideas about changing the world of work.
Rich Pearson
Brian Sweeting
Location: New York City Area
Brian Sweeting is a writer and editor at EdLab, a “do tank” uniquely positioned within Teachers College Columbia University focused on designing, developing, and supporting thinking around new learning technologies. His experience as an international ESL Teacher and Trainer fuel his interest in mobile applications for language learning and research surrounding best practices. His articles on the latest innovations in education can be found on the daily publication www.newlearningtimes.com.
Josh Allan Dykstra
Organizer, Work Revolution Summit
Location: Los Angeles Area
Josh Allan Dykstra is a recognized thought leader on the future of work and company culture design. His articles and ideas have been featured by Fast Company and Forbes and he’s worked with organizations like Apple, Sony, Genentech, HTC, Starbucks, UCLA and Viacom/CBS as well as startups, nonprofits, and universities. His new book, Igniting the Invisible Tribe: Designing An Organization That Doesn’t Suck, is available now.
Tony Bacigalupo
Location: New York City Area
Tony Bacigalupo has been a champion of the coworking movement since 2007. His work is mainly focused on New Work City, a coworking space and community center in Manhattan which he co-founded and manages. He is also a board member of the NY Tech Meetup and regularly speaks about the importance of the growing independent workforce.
Nate Cooper
Location: New York City Area
Nate Cooper is an Adjunct Faculty member at the School for Visual Arts. He is founder of Simple Labs, a boutique web and social consultancy with a focus on client education. Through his company he has provided corporate training seminars to TIME Inc, NBC Universal and GAP Inc. He’s a regular writer on the topic of entrepreneurship for Contently.com and his writing has appeared in Mashable. He has been blogging on natecooper.net since 2005. He regularly teaches WordPress, social media and blogging both online and offline for Mediabistro, General Assembly, 3rdWard & Noble Desktop. Nate cofounded the Reboot Workshop in 2011.
Dany DeGrave
Location: Bethlehem, PA Area
Making people’s lives better is what Dany does: through his contributions to the development of various vaccines which are commercialized world-wide and, in the same large multinational corporations, through the creation of entrepreneurial and future-ready environments where it is pleasant and energizing to work.
With a startup spirit he’s done this either as a team leader growing his own team from 0 to 100+ people or, through influence without direct reports, by developing a cross-Atlantic community in a 500+ people strong department.
Adam Quinton
Location: New York City Area
Adam Quinton is Founder/CEO of Lucas point Ventures and an active investor in and advisor to early stage companies. He is a member of the Global Advisory Board for Astia and a Managing Director at Golden Seeds.
He is a Board member at Thrive Metrics. He serves on the Advisory Boards of leading Board and executive search firm RSR Partners as well as New York based Nopsec, Philadelphia based Cloudamize and San Francisco based SwoopTalent.
He is an Adjunct Associate Professor at Columbia University, School of International and Public Affairs and holds a MA in Natural Sciences from Cambridge University as well as an MBA from Cass Business School, London.
Chris Heuer
Location: San Francisco Area
Chris Heuer has been a leading force in the digital revolution for the last 20 years as a serial entrepreneur, keynote speaker, facilitator, teacher and consultant. Before founding the Social Business SaaS startup Alynd, Chris spent 2+ years as a “game-changer” with Deloitte Consulting focused on Social Media and Social Business. In addition to building several internet, software and consulting companies over the years, Chris was the founder of Social Media Club, a non-profit community organization that helped spread the professional and ethical use of social media to all corners of the world. He considers himself a “Work Hacker”, fixing broken corporate systems and empowering others to create change.
