Tim Leberecht

Author of The Business Romantic, CMO of NBBJ

Tim Leberecht is the author of the book The Business Romantic (HarperCollins, 2015) and the Chief Marketing Officer of NBBJ, a global design and architecture firm that helps organizations such as Amazon, the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Boeing, Google, Samsung, Starbucks, and Tencent create meaningful experiences. Previously, he was the Chief Marketing Officer of product design and strategy firm Frog Design, acclaimed for its work with Apple and many other Fortune 500 brands. He is a renowned expert in marketing and workplace innovation, and his writing has appeared in publications such as Harvard Business Review, Entrepreneur, Fast Company, Forbes, Fortune, Psychology Today, and Wired. He has spoken at venues including TED, The Economist Big Rethink, DLD, the Silicon Valley CEO Summit, New Cities Summit, Commonwealth Club, Carnegie Mellon University, Remix, and the World Economic Forum. His TED Talk “3 Ways to (Usefully) Lose Control of Your Brand” has been viewed by almost a million people to date. Leberecht is the co-founder of the 15 Toasts dinner series and an advisor to The Human Agency, a collective of social change-makers. He serves on the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Values, the NationSwell Council, and on the board of Jump Associates, a strategy and innovation consultancy. He was born and raised in Germany and lives in San Francisco with his wife and daughter.

Tina Wells

CEO, Buzz Marketing Group

Tina Wells is the CEO and founder of Buzz Marketing Group, which creates marketing strategies for clients within the beauty, entertainment, fashion, financial, and lifestyle sectors. She has authored the youth marketing handbook Chasing Youth Culture And Getting It Right and the best-selling tween series Mackenzie Blue. In addition to serving on the Young Entrepreneur Council, the United Nations Foundation's Global Entrepreneurs Council, and The Franklin Institute's board of directors, Tina is also the current Academic Director of Wharton's Leadership in the Business World program. Tina's long list of honors include Essence’s 40 Under 40, Billboard’s 30 Under 30, Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in Business, and Inc’s 30 Under 30.

Jessica Jackley

Co-founder, Kiva

Jessica is an entrepreneur focused on financial inclusion, the sharing economy, and social justice. She is best known as a cofounder of Kiva, the world's first p2p microlending website that has facilitated over $740M in loans since its founding. Most recently, Jessica served as Walt Disney Imagineering’s first Entrepreneur in Residence. Prior to this, Jessica served as a Venture Partner with the Collaborative Fund, and was a Cofounder and CEO of ProFounder, a pioneering crowdfunding platform for U.S. entrepreneurs. She is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations, a 2011 World Economic Forum’s Young Global Leader, and serves as an active board member or advisor for several nonprofit organizations. Jessica holds an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business, a certificate in Global Leadership and Public Policy from the Harvard Kenney School, and a BA from Bucknell University. She is the author of Clay Water Brick: Finding Inspiration from Entrepreneurs Who Do the Most with the Leas

Sarah Stillman

Writer, The New Yorker

Sarah Stillman is a staff writer at The New Yorker and a visiting scholar at the N.Y.U. Arthur L. Carter Journalism Institute. She has written on topics ranging from civil forfeiture to debtors prisons, and from Mexico’s drug cartels to Bangladesh’s garment-factory workers. She won the 2012 National Magazine Award for Public Interest for her reporting from Iraq and Afghanistan on labor abuses and human trafficking on United States military bases, and also received the Michael Kelly Award, the Overseas Press Club’s Joe and Laurie Dine Award for international human-rights reporting, and the Hillman Prize for Magazine Journalism. Much of Stillman's work focuses on the criminal justice system. Her reporting on the high-risk use of young people as confidential informants in the war on drugs received a George Polk Award; she has also covered the rise of the private probation industry, for-profit immigrant detention, and abuses in the halfway house business. Before joining The New Yorker, Stillman wrote about America’s wars overseas and the challenges facing soldiers at home for the Washington Post, The Nation, newrepublic.com, Slate, and TheAtlantic.com. She co-taught a seminar at Yale on the Iraq War, and also ran a creative-writing workshop for four years at the Cheshire Correctional Institution, a maximum-security men’s prison in Connecticut. Her work is included in “The Best American Magazine Writing 2012.”

Albert Wenger

Partner, Union Square Ventures

Albert Wenger is a partner at Union Square Ventures. Before joining USV, Albert was the president of del.icio.us through the company’s sale to Yahoo and an angel investor (Etsy, Tumblr). He previously founded or co-founded several companies, including a management consulting firm and an early hosted data analytics company. Albert graduated from Harvard College in economics and computer science and holds a Ph.D. in Information Technology from MIT.

Christopher Fabian

Senior Advisor on Innovation to the Executive Director, UNICEF

Christopher Fabian has co-created and has co-lead UNICEF’s Innovation Unit in New York since 2007.  Working with UNICEF’s 135 country offices, the Innovation Unit’s research and development priorities focus on near-term challenges in the world’s most difficult operating environments. The Unit also crafts strategic options for innovation on a three-to-five year horizon. The Unit’s accomplishments have garnered global recognition, notably: Top 50 Innovations of 2011 from Time Magazine, 2012 Gold and Silver IDSA awards, and a Redhat prize for being one of the three top open source projects. 

Loretta Whitesides

Co-founder of Yuri's Night, Virgin Galactic Astronaut

Loretta Whitesides has been on over 85 "weightless" flights, has visited some of the deepest undersea realms, and has done plant biology research for NASA. She is also one of the founders of Yuri's Night, a global celebration of humanity’s past, present, and future in space.

Rameet Chawla

CEO, Fueled

Rameet is the founder of Fueled, a design and development company based in New York, London, and Chicago that produces award-winning apps and websites for startups like QuizUp to big brands like Barneys. Since the company’s launch in 2011, over half a billion dollars worth of ecommerce transactions have taken place on Fueled apps. In 2013, Rameet opened The Fueled Collective, a shared workspace in downtown Manhattan that is home to 35 of New York’s fastest growing startups. He is also a founding member of The Summit Mountain Project and General Assembly. Rameet was selected as a member of the 2013 venture fellows class by the NYCEDC and has participated in delegations with Bloomberg to foster collaboration between New York and Israel’s technology ecosystems. In 2013, The Next Web named Rameet one of the “50 NYC Tech Entrepreneurs You Need to Know About”. Rameet has spoken at schools such as London Business School and conferences like Catalyst Week and Northside Festival about psychology and technology, digital business models, futurism, mobile evolutions and entrepreneurship. In 2014, Rameet launched Lovematically, a mobile app and social experiment into the psychology of the “Like”. After a big splash in the press, Lovematically, as predicted, was quickly shut down by both Facebook and Instagram. Rameet is a contributor to Forbes, Inc., The Next Web, VentureBeat and UX Magazine. He graduated second in his class from NYU Stern with a degree in information systems, finance and international business. Specialities: mobile design, startups, product strategy, e-commerce, user experience, and dancing.

Elena Brower

Yoga Master & Teacher

Mama, teacher, speaker, and co-author of "Art of Attention", Elena has been teaching yoga and meditation since 1999. After graduating from Cornell University in 1992 with a design degree, she worked as a textile and apparel designer for 6 years, and has been studying with master yoga teachers since 1997. Influenced by several traditions, Elena offers yoga and meditation as a way to approach our world with realistic reverence and gratitude. Her classes are a masterful, candid blend of artful alignment and attention cues for your body, mind and heart. From the Museum of Modern Art to the Great Lawn at Central Park, from the Old Port of Montreal to the Eiffel Tower, Elena is honored to offer larger-scale experiences of yoga and meditation, but her true service is in shifting awareness within the smallest interactions; one family, one household at a time. Elena’s online meditation coursework, intended for beginners and meditators seeking consistent practice, is gaining global recognition for its creativity and accessibility. She’s now offering The Path, a weekly full-spectrum meditation class in NYC, bringing meditation to a broader audience of professionals and creatives.

Radha Agrawal

CEO of Super Sprowtz, Co-Founder of Thinxx and Daybreaker

Craig Hatkoff

Co-founder,
Tribeca Film Festival

Craig M. Hatkoff is an American real estate investor and philanthropist from New York City. Along with Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro, he co-founded the Tribeca Film Festival and the Tribeca Film Institute in 2002.

Vikram Gandhi

Filmmaker and Vice Journalist

VIKRAM GANDHI Is the award-winning journalist and filmmaker. In 2011, Vikram impersonated a religious leader and made the film Kumaré, which won the Audience Award for Best Documentary at South By Southwest 2011 and Roger Ebert’s Golden Thumb Award, and was released in over 20 countries. Vikram is a Producer/Correspondent on the Emmy-winning series VICE on HBO reporting on stories about melting glaciers in Antarctica, tribal uprising in Papua New Guinea, government secrecy in Japan, and anti-semitism in France. He has appeared on the Colbert Report, Nightline, Al Jazeera's The Stream, and numerous NPR programs, and has been a featured speaker at conferences including Wired UK, TEDIndia, Founders Forum, and colleges all over the US. Vikram also directs and produces commercials, branded content, and films through his production company PROPHETS. Vikram is currently shooting Season 4 of VICE on HBO, starring and executive producing a new documentary series for VICE's television platform, and is directing his second feature film in late 2015.

Miki Agrahawl

Author of Do Cool Shit

TBC

Rosalind Wiseman

Author of Queen Bees and Wannabes and Educator

Rosalind Wiseman has had only one job since graduating from college—helping communities shift the way we think about children and teens’ emotional and physical wellbeing. As a teacher, thought leader, author, and media spokesperson on bullying, ethical leadership, the use of social media, and media literacy, she is in constant dialogue and collaboration with educators, parents, children, and teens. She is the author of "Queen Bees and Wannabes: Helping Your Daughter Survive Cliques, Gossip, Boyfriends, and the New Realities of Girl World"—the groundbreaking, best-selling book that was the basis for the movie Mean Girls. Her latest books, "Masterminds &amp Wingmen: Helping Our Boys Cope with Schoolyard Power, Locker-Room Tests, Girlfriends, and the New Rules of Boy World" was published in September 2013. In addition, she wrote a free companion e-book for high school boys, entitled "The Guide: Managing Douchebags, Recruiting Wingmen, and Attracting Who You Want" and a school edition entitled, "The Guide: Managing Jerks, Recruiting Wingmen, and Attracting Who You Want." Wiseman’s other publications include "Queen Bee Moms and Kingpin Dads", that address the social hierarchies and conflicts among parents, and the young adult novel "Boys, Girls & Other Hazardous Materials". She is the author of "Owning Up Curriculum", a comprehensive social justice program for grades 6-12. She also writes the monthly “Ask Rosalind” column in Family Circle magazine, and is a regular contributor to several blogs and websites.

Ayse Birsel

Co-founder and Designer,
Birsel + Seck

Ayse Birsel has been designing award-winning products for over twenty years. She is the co-founder of Birsel + Seck, an innovative design studio in New York that partners with leading brands and Fortune 500 companies, including Target, Herman Miller, Hewlett Packard, Johnson & Johnson, Toyota and TOTO. Ayse brings new solutions to old problems by thinking differently, using her user-centered, humanistic design approach and her unique process, Deconstruction:Reconstruction™. Ayse is also known for her acclaimed workshops, Design the Life You Love for individuals and Design the Work You Love for corporations, applying her design process to help people design their life and work respectively. She is the recipient of the 2001 Young Designer Award from the Brooklyn Museum of Art, the Athena Award for Excellence in Furniture Design from Rhode Island School of Design, and numerous design awards including the IDEA Gold Award and ID Magazine Award.