Skip to content

Speaker Biographies

edited-Scott AndersonScott Anderson
Managing Editor, NextBillion
@ScotterAnderson
Scott Anderson is the managing editor of the NextBillion network, a leading online source for market-based strategies that create opportunities to improve the quality of life for the world’s four billion low-income producers and consumers. An editor and journalist by training, Anderson has covered a wide variety of business, industry and technology issues for various news publications, including Ward’s Automotive, Automotive Design and Production Magazine, The Ann Arbor News, and the Midland Daily News. More recently, Anderson was the director of Online Media at Ann Arbor-based ICON Interactive, where he managed blogs and other social media initiatives for Accenture, Audi, and Chrysler Group. He also edited and wrote for a trio of independent alternative energy and green technology websites.
Mr. Anderson is based at the William Davidson Institute at the University of Michigan, which manages the NextBillion network.

 

Donnel-Baird

Donnel Baird ’13
Founder, BlocPower
@DBaird13

Donnel Baird ’13 is the founder of BlocPower, a startup that markets and finances the installation of energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies in religious institutions, small businesses and nonprofits in underserved communities. Individual and institutional impact investors are connected to solar and energy efficiency project finance opportunities via BlocPower’s online platform.

Mr. Baird spent three years as a community organizer in Brooklyn and one year as a voter contact director for Obama For America. Mr. Baird managed a national Change to Win campaign to leverage Dept. of Energy energy efficiency stimulus financing to create green construction jobs for out of work populations. He partnered with the Washington Interfaith Network to generate a $100m government energy efficiency investment in underserved communities in the District of Columbia. Mr. Baird’s team negotiated similarly successful agreements in Portland, Milwaukee, and New York.

Mr. Baird is an Open Society Foundation/ Echoing Green Fellow and a recent graduate of Columbia Business School, where he was a Board of Overseers Fellow, a member of the Student Leadership Board and Ethics Board, and a recipient of investment from the Eugene F. Lang Fund for Entrepreneurial Initiative.

 

Jake beinecke photoJake Beinecke
Farm Viability Project, Analyst, Open Space Institute

Jake Beinecke is a New York City-based attorney and strategic consultant with experience in sustainable food & agriculture, environmental conservation, social enterprise and philanthropy. He is currently a Program Analyst with the Open Space Institute, a $200m regional land conservancy, and has previously worked on the Legal Team at Acumen, a $100m global social venture fund. Prior to launching a legal career, Mr. Beinecke was a professional cook, mostly in San Francisco. Mr. Beinecke serves as a Director of several nonprofit organizations, including the Global Greengrants Fund, Page 73 Productions, and the Prospect Hill Foundation. A born and bred New Yorker, Mr. Beinecke graduated from the Trinity School, Columbia University and New York University’s School of Law, where he chaired the Law and Social Entrepreneurship Association.

 

edited-Bielak_Debby-3Deborah Bialek
Partner, Bridgespan
@BridgespanGroup

Ms. Bialek is a partner in Bridgespan’s New York office. Since joining Bridgespan in February 2008, Ms. Bialek has focused on serving a wide range of Bridgespan’s philanthropy and education clients.

Ms. Bialek’s consulting engagements for foundations include program and organization-level strategy for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, the McKnight Foundation, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, and the UN Foundation.

As a former teacher, Ms. Bialek has applied her belief in the transformative power of education in work spanning early childhood education, secondary education, and postsecondary education. She has led an early childhood investment philanthropic approach, district-strategy for The College Board, strategic planning for the Public Education Network, and facilitation of six local education funds in developing their own strategic plans. Her work in postsecondary education began in 2007 with analysis of the US sector for the Aspen Institute’s Forum for the Future of Higher Education, and recently includes support for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s Postsecondary Success Team – on their broader strategy as well as for Completion by Design, a signature initiative supporting 16 community colleges in systemic change. She is interested in connections across P-16, and recently completed planning for the National College Access Network. She leads Bridgespan’s own working group on postsecondary education.

Prior to joining Bridgespan, Ms. Bialek worked at McKinsey & Company, where she had been an engagement manager in their Philadelphia office. As a community fellow in their Social Sector Office she developed advocacy organizations from scratch, interviewed global CEOs on the most pressing environmental, social and governance issues, and developed a road map for collaboration between two global health organizations. Her for-profit work spanned international brand strategy, acquisition strategy, stakeholder influence, and pre- and post-merger management in the pharmaceutical, retail, and consumer sectors in six countries.

Ms. Bialek has co-authored articles in the McKinsey Quarterly and the National Association of College and University Business Officers Magazine.

Ms. Bialek earned her BS in Mathematics with honors from Haverford College and her MBA from the Wharton School of Business, where she was a Joseph Wharton grant recipient and co-founder of the Social Impact Management Initiative.

bugglevineAntony Bugg-Levine
CEO
, Nonprofit Finance Fund
@ABLImpact

Antony Bugg-Levine is the CEO of Nonprofit Finance Fund, a national nonprofit and financial intermediary that unlocks the potential of mission-driven organizations through tailored investment, strategic advice, and accessible insights. In this role, he oversees more than $340 million of investment capital and a national consulting practice, and works with a range of philanthropic, private sector and government partners to develop and implement innovative approaches to financing social change.

Mr. Bugg-Levine writes and speaks on the evolution of the social sector and the emergence of the global impact investing industry. He is the co-author of Impact Investing: Transforming How We Make Money While Making a Difference (Wiley, 2011).

As a Managing Director at the Rockefeller Foundation, Mr. Bugg-Levine designed and led the initiative, Harnessing the Power of Impact Investing. He is the founding board chair of the Global Impact Investing Network and convened the 2007 meeting that coined the phrase “impact investing.” 

Previously, Mr. Bugg-Levine was the country director for Kenya and Uganda for TechnoServe, a nongovernmental organization that develops and implements business solutions to rural poverty. Earlier in his career, as a consultant with McKinsey, he advised Fortune 100 clients in the financial services and health care sectors, and helped develop new frameworks for incorporating social dynamics into corporate strategy.

 

edited-Kesha Cash PicKesha Cash ’10
Director of Investments, Jalia Ventures
@JaliaVentures

Kesha Cash ’10 is the Director of Investments at Jalia Ventures, a sub-fund that invests in scalable mission-driven businesses owned by minority entrepreneurs.

There are nine companies in the Jalia portfolio including: Pigeon.ly, an online platform that offers low cost photo sharing and telephone services to the 2.3 million inmates in the US and their support networks; Red Rabbit, a provider of healthy meals to 20,000 students in NYC and NJ; and ConnXus, a SaaS platform that makes it efficient for corporations to locate, evaluate and engage small, minority- or woman-owned businesses.

Prior to Jalia Ventures, Ms. Cash spent three years as a mergers and acquisitions analyst at Merrill Lynch and then six years as a consultant to early-stage businesses in Los Angeles and Puerto Rico. She also worked in London at Bridges Ventures, a $475M UK investment firm that delivers both financial and social returns.

Ms. Cash received her BA in Applied Mathematics from UC Berkeley and her MBA from Columbia Business School.

 

edited Chan-Lizardo SQUAREEdward Chan-Lizardo
Chief Development & Partnerships Officer, Kickstart International
@KickStart_Intl

Edward (Ed) is currently the Chief Development & Partnerships Officer for KickStart International, responsible for global fundraising and partnerships. In December 2011, Mr. Chan-Lizardo relocated back to the U.S. after five years as KickStart’s Chief Operating Officer in Nairobi, Kenya. During his tenure as COO, he increased impacts by over 140%. He was responsible for the day-to-day operations of KickStart’s programs, which included product/ innovations development, institutional partnerships, smallholder farmer outreach & education and sustainable supply chain development. Prior to KickStart, Mr. Chan-Lizardo worked in the private sector. He held various management positions in technology companies including Handspring, a Smartphone manufacturer acquired by Palm, where he was Director of Asia-Pacific & Latin America. Mr. Chan-Lizardo was also a management consultant at Coopers & Lybrand Consulting. He has an MBA from the University of Michigan, a MS from Stanford University and a BS from Virginia Tech both in Mechanical Engineering. He is a graduate of INSEAD’s Social Entrepreneurship Programme.

 

Mona Eldaief iMona Eldaief
Director & Cinematographer, Rafea: Solar Mama
@RafeaSolarMama

Egyptian American filmmaker, Mona Eldaief, is Director and Cinematographer of the award winning film, ‘Rafea: Solar Mama’. The film is the story of a Bedouin woman from the northeastern desert in Jordan who struggles against the patriarchal rules of her society to get a transformative education as a solar engineer at the Barefoot College in India and empower the women of her village.

 

edited Alberto EscarlateAlberto Escarlate
Venture Partner, Collaborative Fund
@cacheop

Alberto Escarlate is an investor, designer, professor, entrepreneur, all-around good guy and currently a Venture Partner at Collaborative Fund. Before becoming a VC he co-founded Sojo Studios, a company that provides joyful and accessible ways for people to join with others to do lasting social good. Before that he created TigerTag; the first free lost & found service for consumer electronics – an early precursor of the Internet of Things.

Throughout his career, he has served as CTO for startups such as Entertainment Media Works, and YellowPin. Previously he led projects for a long list of customers that include AT&T, Delta, General Motors, IBM and Kraft Foods, among others.

He holds a degree in Computer Science from The Pontificia Universidade Catolica in Rio de Janeiro, and a Masters in Computer Science from The Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. He enjoys passing on what he’s learned and does so by teaching Design at The New School of Design at New School University in New York.

 

edited-Natalie-FoleyNatalie Foley
Vice-president & COO, Peer Insight
@natalie_s_foley

Natalie Foley is Vice- president & Chief Operating Officer at Peer Insight, a consultancy that combines design & business problem-solving techniques to help organizations innovate around their services. Her expertise is in design thinking and customer-centered problem-solving in complex environments. With a background in strategy, technology implementation, and change management, Ms. Foley has led projects for IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers in various countries, functions, and industries.  The diversity of her experience is brought to bear throughout the innovation lifecycle; enabling strong exploratory and divergent thinking while understanding the ins and outs of execution. She has worked across sectors, with clients such as Allstate, the World Bank, Kimberly-Clark, the State Department, the U.S. Air Force, and the Good Samaritan Society.  She holds an MBA from UVA’s Darden School of Business and a BA in Psychology from The College of William and Mary.

garrison grantGrant Garrison
Co-Founder & Director, Good/Corps
@grantgarrison

Grant Garrison is a Co-Founder and Director at GOOD/Corps, GOOD’s social innovation consultancy. Drawing upon experience in philanthropy, community organizing, the nonprofit sector, movement-building, marketing and social innovation, Mr. Garrison helps client “intrapreneurs” across sectors identify opportunities for transformational leadership that leverage core competencies. Together with the multi-disciplinary team at GOOD/Corps, Mr. Garrison develops partnerships that involve research-driven program design, public engagement, collective impact, and just about whatever else is required to realize a compelling vision for accelerating social impact. Grant has led initiatives with Dick’s Sporting Goods, Pepsi, Starbucks, 100Kin10/The Carnegie Corporation of New York, Origins, The Nature Conservancy, Girl Scouts of the USA, Aquafina, and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Prior to joining GOOD/Corps, Mr. Garrison served as a Program Officer for the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and a consultant to diverse independent sector organizations.


edited MGold_photo
Mitchell Gold

Co-founder & Chairman, Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams
@MGBWOC

Mitchell Gold, co-founder and chairman of Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams, is a different kind of man running a very different kind of business. In addition to running a $100 million company, Mr. Gold is founder of Faith in America, a nonprofit organization dedicated to educating people about religion-based bigotry and how it is used to justify discrimination against LGBT Americans (www.faithinamerica.com). He also served on the Board of Directors of the Human Rights Campaign (HRC), an advocacy group for gay rights, for seven years. In addition, Mitchell was active in the 2004 Presidential campaign as a North Carolina delegate to the Democratic Convention and a fundraiser who raised over a million dollars for the Democratic Party.

The Mitchell Gold + Bob Williams company has enjoyed meteoric growth fueled largely by Mr. Gold’s energy and influence on everything from product and design to marketing, promotion, and, most emphatically, a truly unique approach to managing the enterprise. Above all else, Mr. Gold has been consistent in his defiance of conventional wisdom.

Twenty-four years ago, the company based its manufacturing in rural North Carolina and it remains there today. The company’s gutsy ad campaigns have frequently depicted same-sex couples, “alternative” families and sexy models. The company has been recognized for its innovative campaigns, including being honored with the Public Visibility Award at the first annual GLAAD Media Awards in Advertising in October 2009.

When other businesses were focused on driving down labor costs throughout the ‘90s, Mr. Gold and Mr. Williams were investing in people through an on-site not-for-profit, education-based day-care center (the first in the residential furniture industry), as well as a trained corporate chef managing a health-conscious gourmet cafe at the company’s headquarters, time-saving concierge services and annual health fairs for employees, an on-site nurse, and scholarships for children of employees. And the investments continue today.

Mr. Gold is also a published author, having published Let’s Get Comfortable: How to Furnish and Decorate a Welcoming Home, published by Meredith Books in March 2007 and The Comfortable Home, published by Clarkson Potter, a division of Random House. Mr. Gold is also editor of CRISIS: 40 Stories Revealing the Personal, Social and Religious Pain and Trauma of Growing Up Gay in America.

Mr. Gold grew up in a suburban Trenton, NJ home and attended Long Island University. A six- year stint with Bloomingdale’s, followed by managing The Lane Company’s national accounts and in-store gallery division, gave Mr. Gold the two things needed most to succeed: experience in the business and the vision to see what needed to be changed.

Today, Mr. Gold heads a renowned company that operates out of 600,000-square-feet of state-of-the-art manufacturing and warehouse space. He and Bob are known locally and nationally for creating a corporate culture that respects diversity, supports education, provides daycare, and has been environmentally responsible since its inception.  The company is a Sustaining member of the Sustainable Furnishings Council, and Mr. Gold is on the Board.

 

Ron-GonenProfessor Ron Gonen ’04
Founder, Recyclebank
@Recyclebank

Professor Ron Gonen ’04 is the Co-Founder of RecycleBank. During his tenure as CEO from 2004-2010, RecycleBank grew from an idea to a company with contracts with over 100 cities and a service that rewards millions of people for their positive green actions across North America and the UK. Mr. Gonen and RecycleBank were recognized by a number of leading business and environmental organizations including: the World Economic Forum as a Young Global Leader in 2007, the World Economic Forum as a Technology Pioneer in 2009, the United Nations Environment Programme as a Champion of the Earth in 2009, The Pennsylvania Environment Council with the Philadelphia Sustainability Award in 2007, The Social Venture Network with their Innovation Award in 2007, O Magazine as one of their Eco Role Models of 2009, Time Magazine as Social Responsibility Pioneer in 2009, U.S. Conference of Mayors – Outstanding Excellence in Public/Private Partnerships in 2009, and the Wall Street Journal as one of their top 10 Venture Backed Clean Tech Companies of 2009 & 2010. Mr. Gonen is currently a member of RecycleBank’s Board of Directors.

Prior to RecycleBank, Mr. Gonen was a Senior Consultant at Deloitte Consulting. He was a co-recipient of Deloitte Consulting’s National Impact Award for the development of a consulting unit that provided pro bono service to NGO’s. Mr. Gonen is a frequent guest speaker on the role of business and the environment at universities, conferences and companies. He is a past member of the World Economic Forum’s Council on Sustainable Consumption and is currently a Research Associate at the Earth Engineering Center at Columbia University and a Henry Catto Fellow at the Aspen Institute. Mr. Gonen was a recipient of the 2010 University Medal of Excellence from Columbia University, which is awarded annually to an alumnus under the age of 45 for outstanding achievement in scholarship, public service and professional life. In 2011, Mr. Gonen joined the faculty at Columbia Business School as an Adjunct Professor. Mr. Gonen is a Founding Partner of Linhardt Design Studio, a jewelry company that designs and manufactures fine jewelry with a focus on high design merged with sustainable principles. The Linhardt Design store was recently chosen as the “Critic’s Pick” by New York Magazine. He serves on the Board of Directors of Fitango and JobRooster and is on the Board of Advisors of Source4Style and DailyFeats. Mr. Gonen received a BA in History from UMass-Amherst where he graduated with Departmental Honors and was a Massachusetts Commonwealth Scholar. He received an MBA from Columbia Business School where he was a Eugene M. Lang Center for Entrepreneurship award winner.

 

 

edited-Naomi-Bio-Photo-HIResNaomi Hirabayashi
Chief Marketing Officer, DoSomething.org
@dosomething

Naomi Hirabayashi is the Chief Marketing Officer at DoSomething.org where she oversees business development, marketing and PR for the organization. Prior to DoSomething.org, she was Associate Director at Attention, one of the first social media marketing agencies where she offered strategic counsel for campaigns such as International Women’s Day for Avon, Breast Cancer Awareness for Estée Lauder, and TOMS Shoes. A popular speaker, Ms. Hirabayashi has appeared on network TV news programs, at the United Nations discussing Media/Social Media and most recently at the 24 Hours of Reality event on a panel with former Vice President Al Gore.

 

edited-ray hortonProfessor Ray Horton
Frank R. Lautenberg Professor of Ethics and Corporate Governance and Faculty Director, Programs in Social Enterprise, Executive Education, Columbia Business School
@ColumbiaExecEd

A lawyer and political scientist, Prof. Horton teaches the course Modern Political Economy. A member of the Columbia Business School faculty since 1970, he served two years while on leave from the School as Executive Director of the Temporary Commission on City Finances during the New York City fiscal crisis, and later served 15 years as Director of Research and President of the Citizens Budget Commission. His publications on municipal finance and management include 14 books, numerous journal articles and policy studies. In 1983, he founded the Public and Nonprofit Management Program at the School. In 1998, that program morphed into the Social Enterprise Program, which Prof. Horton directed until 2009. In 2009, he was named Faculty Director of Social Enterprise programs in the School’s Executive Education division. As part of his executive education responsibilities, Prof. Horton directs custom programs for the Center for Curatorial Leadership and the King Khalid Foundation.

 

edited-ibanezbiophotoDiego Ibanez
Occupy Sandy Organizer and Episcopal Community Services Coordinator

Diego Ibanez is a social justice activist based in Brooklyn, who focuses on climate justice, as well as migrant and human rights. An early volunteer after Hurricane Sandy, he helped organize the network Occupy Sandy, and he’s currently working to help form worker-owned businesses in Far Rockaway post-storm. He recently helped launch Deep Roots United Front, a people of color climate justice network.

 

edited karpErika Karp ’91
Founder & CEO, Cornerstone Capital Inc.

Erika Karp ’91 is the Founder and CEO of Cornerstone Capital Inc. The mission of the firm is to apply the principles of sustainable finance and economics towards facilitating the flow of capital around the world.

Primary activities of Cornerstone include consulting to both corporations and financial institutions, promoting new research in the field of ESG analysis (Environmental, Social and Governance), and facilitating introductions leading to the financing of new enterprises engaged in sustainable business practices.

Prior to founding Cornerstone, Ms. Karp was Managing Director and Head of Global Sector Research at UBS Investment Bank. She chaired the UBS Global Investment Review Committee and managed a global team of analysts and strategists. Erika served on the UBS Securities Research Executive Committee and the Environmental and Human Rights Committee of the UBS Group Executive Board. While at UBS, Erika created and drove key branded global investment research products including the UBS Q-Series®, the Global I/O®, Global SignalsTM and the weekly “UBS Global Portfolio Manager’s Spotlight.”

Ms. Karp speaks and writes extensively on topics including: sustainable investing and finance, corporate strategy and business models, transparency and excellence in the areas of Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) performance, and employee engagement/diversity in the workplace. Her work has been featured by Euromoney, the Financial Times, Bloomberg Businessweek, Investor Relations Magazine, and Forbes. For driving collaboration across the capital markets, she has been named among the nation’s “Top 50 Women in Wealth” by AdvisorOne.

Erika is a founding Board member of the Sustainability Accounting Standards Board, a member of the World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on Financing and Capital, and sits on the Program Design Advisory Council for Harvard Business School’s Executive Education Program. Erika speaks at events including those of the OECD, the UN Global Compact and PRI, Deloitte, Oxford University, The Forum for Sustainable and Responsible Investing, Ceres, the Clinton Global Initiative, the EPA, and the White House.

She holds an MBA Columbia University and a BSE from the Wharton School.

 

edited-manmeetManmeet Kaur ’12
Founder & Executive Director, City Health Works
@CityHealthWorks

Manmeet Kaur ’12 (pronounced “mun-meeth kawr”), founder and executive director of City Health Works, has been a champion for healthier communities and equitable livelihoods for the past 10 years. She has worked in New York City to improve the working conditions of “unregulated” workers, in India to stabilize the chaotic lives of construction day laborers at a social enterprise called LabourNet, and in South Africa to help HIV- postive individuals build their own health food business with Mamelani Projects.

Before launching City Health Works, Ms. Kaur was an advisor to the Earth Institute’s strategy on the retention and financing of community health workers in the Millennium Villages Project, which has contributed to the One Million Community Health Worker Campaign across Sub-Saharan Africa.  In launching City Health Works, Ms. Kaur saw the potential for reverse innovation from lower cost community health systems across the world applied to domestic health.

Ms. Kaur incubated City Health Works while completing an MBA at Columbia with the goal of creating an organization that harnesses the power of community members to create jobs and improve health in New York City.  She also has BA in History/Anthropology from Barnard College, where she was selected as a Third Millennium Human Rights fellow.  She was born and raised in New York City and lives in Harlem with her husband and son.

 

Alina Kogan photoAlina Kogan ’12
Investment Offier, Accion Venture Lab
@Accion_Global

Alina Kogan  ’12 is an Investment Officer at Accion Venture Lab, leading their work in Latin America. Venture Lab is an investment initiative of Accion International that provides patient seed capital and support to innovative financial inclusion start-ups, fostering experimentation and promoting business models that improve financial access for people living in poverty worldwide.

Ms. Kogan began her career as a social entrepreneur, founding a school in Afghanistan and leading grassroots development projects in Mexico and Brazil. As a strategy consultant at Dalberg, she helped the IFC launch SME Ventures funds in frontier markets and advised the IDB on facilitating investments in renewable energy in Central America. Her recent experience includes managing finance for a clean tech start-up in emerging markets, venture investing at Pershing Square Foundation and Fanisi VC Fund in East Africa, and Latin American investment banking at Citigroup. Ms. Kogan is fluent in Spanish, Portuguese and Russian.

Ms. Kogan holds an MBA from Columbia Business School and a bachelor’s degree in public policy and international affairs from Princeton University.

 

edited-LachmanM. Leanne Lachman
President, Lachman Associates; Executive-in-Residence, Columbia Business School

M. Leanne Lachman is president of Lachman Associates, an independent real estate consulting company. Previously, Ms. Lachman spent 13 years as a partner at Schroder Real Estate Associates, a boutique real estate manager that was acquired by Lend Lease, a global institutional investment manager, where she spent four years. Her early career was with Real Estate Research Corporation, where she served as chief executive officer. A highly sought after speaker and widely published author of books and articles on the real estate industry, Ms. Lachman is also a Trustee of the Urban Land Institute and a Governor of the Urban Land Foundation, a director of Lincoln National Corporation and a member of Liberty Property Trust. She received her BA from the University of Southern California and her MA from Claremont Graduate University. Her areas of interest include real estate, demographics (U.S. and global trends), corporate governance, and offshoring.

 

 

edited Lehner headshot

Peter Lehner
Executive Director, Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC)
@peterlehner20

Peter Lehner is the Executive Director of NRDC and NRDC Action Fund. NRDC is one of the nation’s leading environmental advocacy organizations with over 1.3 million members and activists and 430 staff in seven offices. It works to protect people’s health and families, communities, jobs, and wild spaces by accelerating clean and efficient energy, transportation and protecting our oceans, waters and homes from pollution. Mr. Lehner is responsible for guiding NRDC’s policy positions, advocacy strategies, communications plans, development and administration, and managing NRDC’s seven offices while also leading the Action Fund’s political activities.  Since Mr. Lehner’s return to NRDC in 2006, NRDC has opened new offices in Beijing and Chicago, started the Center for Market Innovation, and expanded both its policy and communications capacity.  Previously, Mr. Lehner served as chief of the Environmental Protection Bureau of the New York State Attorney General’s office for eight years.  He supervised all environmental litigation by the state, prosecuting a wide variety of polluters and developing innovative multi-state strategies targeting global warming, acid rain and smog causing emissions.  He previously served at NRDC as a senior attorney in charge of the water program.  Before that, he created and led the environmental prosecution unit for New York City.  Mr. Lehner holds an AB in philosophy and mathematics from Harvard College and is a graduate of Columbia University Law School, where he continues to teach environmental law.  He also has extensive experience in sustainable farming and green business.

 

edited ConnieLewinConnie Lewin
Strategic Partnerships & Marketing Director, Global, Sustainable Health Enterprises (SHE)
@SHEnterprises

Connie Lewin is the Strategic Partnerships and Marketing Director, Global for Sustainable Health Enterprises, or SHE. SHE is a social venture that invests in people and ideas that are typically overlooked (and often taboo) as vehicles of socio-economic change. Their first initiative, SHE28, addresses girls’ and women’s lack of access to affordable menstrual pads resulting in significant costs to their reproductive health, educational achievements, work productivity, and dignity.

Ms. Lewin leads consumer marketing, business development, and global communications. Prior to joining SHE, Connie was at L’Occitane USA, where she executed on e-commerce and digital strategy for the U.S. market entrance of the Melvita brand, and managed all marketing operations for fragrance and limited edition product launches for L’Occitane.

Ms. Lewin earned her MBA in 2010 from the Simon School of Business at the University of Rochester.  She graduated from Princeton University in 2005 with a B.A. in Politics.

 

edited- dan lewis

Daniel N. Lewis
Director of New Media Communication, Sesame Workshop
@SesameWorkshop

Daniel N. Lewis is the Director of New Media Communication for Sesame Workshop, the nonprofit organization behind Sesame Street. He is responsible for creating and implementing a comprehensive strategy to leverage social media to extend the Workshop’s reach and influence. Prior to joining Sesame Workshop, Mr. Lewis was at Wikia, Inc., where he negotiated and executed on partnerships with the Washington Post, Twitter, Reuters, AccuWeather, and Digg. Prior to that, he was Co-Founder and General Manager at ArmchairGM.com, a user-generated media entity using wiki-based and custom community blogging software. Mr. Lewis earned his J.D. from Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law, where he served as an Editor of the Cardozo Law Review. He graduated from Tufts University in 2000 with a B.A. in Economics.

 

lornChris Lorn
Co-founder, Table for Two USA

Chris Lorn is the co-founder of Table For Two Usa, food-based non-profit addressing issues of nutrition imbalance in developing nations and the U.S. Internationally founded in 2007 in Japan, Table For Two International focuses transferring excess calories from nations suffering from obesity to those suffering from malnutrition. His experience currently includes marketing data strategy and research impacting brands within industries such as healthcare IT, restaurants, and hotels. He holds a degree in Anthropology from Columbia University, where he co-founded the organization with several colleagues.

 

edited -kathryn mathenyKathryn A. Matheny
Chief of Staff & Deputy Commissioner for Strategy and Operations at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development
@NYCHousing

Kaye Matheny is the Chief of Staff and Deputy Commissioner for Strategy and Operations at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD).  In this capacity, she works closely with the Commissioner to define and implement key housing policies and priorities for the Bloomberg Administration. Most recently, Ms. Matheny took the lead in coordinating HPD’s response to Hurricane Sandy and over the past few years, she served as a key leader of the Mayor’s adAPT team, which conceived of and launched the initiative to build New York City’s first microunit building and continues to explore other housing models to better serve the City’s evolving demographics.  In addition, Ms. Matheny oversees the agency’s divisions of strategic planning, IT, and administration; helping to lead HPD’s bold agenda by steering policy, people, and technology. Ms. Matheny has been at HPD since September 2007, and previously served as the Assistant Commissioner for Strategic Planning, during which time she helped to re-write the 10-year New Housing Marketplace Plan to ensure HPD could continue to meet its 165,000 unit target and maintain stability of families and neighborhoods during the housing market downturn.  Prior to joining HPD, Ms. Matheny was a management consultant for ten years, helping companies shape large-scale business and technology strategies. She received a B.A. with honors in international relations and political science from the Ohio State University, and a Masters of Urban Planning from the Robert F. Wagner Graduate School of Public Service at New York University.

 

edited-Jessica MartinJessica Martin
Innovation Associate, Acumen
@jessmart9

Jessica is an Innovation Associate at Acumen working to scale Acumen’s leadership curriculum through +acumen chapters and online channels. Prior to joining Acumen, Ms. Martin was an iCats Fellow at Driptech, a for-profit social venture that makes affordable drip irrigation for smallholder farmers, where she worked on building out the company’s international business operations in California and Pune, India. Ms. Martin’s jump into the world of social enterprise was heavily influenced by the people she met while serving on the leadership committee of the NY+acumen volunteer chapter. Previously, Ms. Martin was a market strategy analyst at U.S. Trust, Bank of America Private Wealth Management in New York where she focused on in-depth macroeconomic and investment strategy research. Ms. Martin holds a BA in International Studies and Economics from Fairfield University and spent a year in Beijing, China on a Fulbright Scholarship researching the development of China’s environmental NGOs.

 

Monika-for-ccMonika Mitchell
Founder & CEO, Good-B
@monika_mitchell

As a serial entrepreneur and award-winning writer & media personality, Ms. Mitchell founded Good-B with a small group of equally passionate social changemakers to support the emerging new economy of social entrepreneurship growing in the wake of the financial crisis. After a brief stint on Wall Street as a recruiter for the ill-fated mortgage-backed securities markets, she founded Good-B as an anecdote to the 20th century model of “profit at any cost.” Her experience in the center of the investment banking collapse of 2008-2010 is documented in the ground-breaking book: “Conversations with Wall Street: The Inside Story of the Financial Armageddon and How to Prevent the Next One,” winner of a 2012 Axiom Award for Business Ethics. Ms. Mitchell regularly writes a blog called: “Making Business Cool Again.”, as well as articles for Good Business NY and the Huffington Post among other publications. She is an outspoken advocate for the economic empowerment for women in developing and developed nations through her work with the NGO Working Group “Values & Business.” She was named one of the, “Top 100 Thought Leaders in Trustworthy Business” for 2012 and 2013 by Trust Across America.

 

edited -Tommy Mitchell

Tommy Mitchell
Founder & CEO, Green Barrel Energy
@Green_Barrel

Tommy Mitchell is the founder and CEO of Green Barrel Energy, a NYC-based start-up that aims to make clean technology products that seamlessly integrate with urban life. Mr. Mitchell created one of the first solar charge stations for mobile devices in October 2011, and is now working to install them throughout public spaces in New York City. He studied Neuropsychology at Florida Institute of Technology, and moved to New York in the summer of 2012 to work in the renewable energy sector.

 

edited-AbranMaldonadoAbran Maldonado
CEO & Founder, NuSkool
@NuSkoolOfficial

Abran Maldonado is the CEO and Founder of NuSkool and is a student-engagement expert. He is a Gates Millennium Scholar, an honor awarded to America’s future leaders by the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. This award has afforded him the opportunity to earn an M.A. in Adolescent Culture in Education from Teachers College—Columbia University, and presently pursue a Ph.D on 21st Century Teaching and Learning at New York University.  Prior to his academic pursuits, Mr. Maldonado spent a decade working in the music and entertainment industry developing content and working in product and artist management, radio marketing, songwriting and music publishing.

 

edited -Keith NalepkaKeith Nalepka
Vice-president of Global & Marketing, PharmaSecure

What do you get when you mix professional baseball, Big Pharma, and Big Data? Keith Nalepka, PharmaSecure’s new Vice-president of Global Sales & Marketing, based in the USA.

Mr. Nalepka has just joined PharmaSecure’s team to help customers measure and understand patient behavior as they secure the distribution of their pharmaceutical products. “We have some incredible opportunities to put our mobile platform in the pockets of patients, utilize the data they generate to improve health outcomes, and change the way the world manages and delivers healthcare,” said Mr. Nalepka. “Our goal is to become the leader in emerging market healthcare data by working with multinational companies.”

After spending several years playing professional baseball for the Texas Rangers, Mr. Nalepka joined the Biotech-Pharmaceutical industry, working for 12 years in sales and marketing with billion-dollar cardiovascular, respiratory and pain management brands. After getting the itch to work for himself, he was selected to participate in a Johns Hopkins-based technology transfer program called Innovate, sponsored by a grant from the National Science Foundation and REDI. Using the contacts in the program, he joined distribution security company, Hi G Tek, and grew its sales by expanding its business into the pharmaceutical space.

 

nissenbaumDaniel Nissenbaum ’88
Director, CRA Programs for the Urban Investment Group (UIG), Goldman Sachs

Daniel Nissenbaum is the director of CRA Programs for the Urban Investment Group (UIG), overseeing compliance functions and special initiatives, including the capital component of the GS 10,000 Small Businesses program. UIG, a division of Goldman Sachs Bank USA, provides financing for community development projects and manages the Bank’s Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) program. Mr. Nissenbaum joined Goldman Sachs in 2009 in this role, and was named managing director in 2010. Prior to joining the firm, Mr. Nissenbaum was a senior vice president overseeing an affordable housing finance team in HSBC Bank’s real estate division. His career has focused on real estate and community development finance, in roles that included leading transaction teams, directing bank CRA regulatory and compliance groups, and overseeing philanthropy and community outreach programs. Mr. Nissenbaum serves as a board member for the Center for Housing Policy, and its affiliate, the National Housing Conference, and for the Community Restoration Corporation, a de novo national nonprofit which is developing solutions to address the home foreclosure crisis. Mr. Nissenbaum previously served as board chair for both the National Housing Conference, and for the Low Income Investment Fund, one of the nation’s leading community development finance institutions.

Mr. Nissenbaum earned a BA in Urban Studies from Grinnell College in 1983 and an MBA from Columbia Business School in 1988.

 

edited-LOlin_headshotLaura Olin
Social Media Director, Obama for America
@lauraolin

Laura Olin ran national social media strategy for the Obama 2012 campaign (@BarackObama, @MichelleObama, @JoeBiden, their Facebook pages, Spotify, Pinterest, Google+, Instagram, etc) and was the author of the Barack Obama Tumblr. Her team grew the campaign’s social media followings by 40 million, raised millions of dollars over social media, and created the most-retweeted and most-liked Twitter and Facebook posts to date.

 

OrlandoBrian Orlando ’99
Sr. Marketing Director, Dressings US, Unilever
@Unilever

Brian Orlando ’99 is the Senior Marketing Director of Dressings, US for Unilever’s Hellmann’s, Best Foods and Wish-Bone brands. He has held this position since June 2011, but has been with Unilever for a total of 15 years. Mr. Orlando has had many years of experience domestically and internationally. He spent 7 years working in Tea (Lipton Leaf & RTD US), 3 years in Paris as the Director of Lipton Western Europe, and 6 years in spreads and dressings – 2 of those years were spent in the US as the Director of Dressings.

He has received multiple industry awards including the Effie, David Ogilvy, Unilever Marketing Excellence and Unilever Global Chili.

Mr. Orlando has his MBA from Columbia Business School.

 

Leah Pedersen Thomas_071612_v.2Leah Pedersen Thomas ’10
Founder & CEO, mGood

Leah Pederson Thomas ’10 founded mGood as a mobile platform for nonprofits to put their story in the hands of millions, launch innovative crowdfunding campaigns, and effectively reach today’s modern participant via the mobile channel. She is passionate about disruptive product innovations and business models to advance social causes. Examples include launching micro-insurance for rural subsistence farmers and NetGuarantee (subsidiary of Malaria No More), a structured finance mechanism to enable faster delivery of life-saving mosquito bed-nets to Africa (funded by The Gates Foundation, the program raised $1.5M+ and saved 2K+ lives). Formerly the Senior Director of Global Product Development for AIG, Leah led the emerging market product strategy and structured critical Public-Private Sector Partnerships to develop the company’s BOP entry channels. Ms. Pedersen Thomas started her career in Management Consulting working for prestigious firms such as Accenture and Dalberg Global Development Advisors. She holds a dual MBA from Columbia Business School and London Business School. She is an appointed member of The Council on Foreign Relations and the Board Chair of Healing Hands of Joy (an Ethiopian maternal health non-profit).

 

matt_pelakMatt Pelak
Director of Strategic Partnerships, Team Rubicon
@TeamRubicon

Matt Pelak currently serves as the Director of Strategic Partnerships at Team Rubicon, a veteran service organization that engages military veterans and first responders to respond to natural disasters in the US and around the world.  As a career civil servant, Mr. Pelak has spent over 15 years in the Army on active duty and in the National Guard as an infantryman and has spent over 36 months deployed to Iraq with the Army as well as with the State Department’s Diplomatic Security Service.  Mr. Pelak has also been working as a paramedic for over 12 years and is currently working in Poughkeepsie, NY as a firefighter/paramedic. He’s been a member of Team Rubicon since 2010 and has deployed several times domestically and internationally as a team leader and medic.

 

edited-better JPPJacques-Philippe Piverger 
CEO & Co-founder, MPOWERD
@MPOWERDInc

Jacques-Philippe Piverger is the CEO & Co-founder of MPOWERD. He previously founded Soleil Global and was a Director at PineBridge Investments. Mr. Piverger serves as a Team Member on the Council on Foreign Relations and as a Young Global Leader in the World Economic Forum. He obtained his BS from Georgetown University and his MBA at Dartmouth’s Tuck School of Business.

 

stephen ritzStephen Ritz
Founder,  Green Bronx Machine
@greenBXmachine

Stephen Ritz is a South Bronx teacher and administrator who believes that students shouldn’t have to leave their community to live, learn and earn in a better one. Moving generations of students into spheres of personal and academic successes they have never imagined, while reclaiming and rebuilding the Bronx, Mr. Ritz’s extended student and community family have grown more than 30,000 pounds of vegetables in the Bronx while generating extraordinary academic performance.

His Bronx classroom features the first indoor edible wall in NYC DOE, which routinely generates enough produce to feed healthy meals to 450 students and trains the youngest nationally certified workforce in America. His students, traveling from Boston to Rockefeller Center to the Hamptons, earn living wages en route to graduation. Mr. Ritz has consistently moved attendance from 40 percent to 93 percent daily, helped fund and create 2,200 youth jobs, captured the US EPA Award for transforming mindsets and landscapes in NYC, recently won the ABC Above and Beyond Award and the 2012 Chevrolet National Green Educator Award, and helped earn his school the first ever Citywide Award of Excellence from the NYC Strategic Alliance for Health­—and Mr. Ritz attributes these results directly to growing vegetables in school. The National Association of Secondary School Principals cited Mr. Ritz’s work and the Green Bronx Machine as one of five national exemplars of service learning.

His speech at Columbia University, entitled “From Crack to Cucumbers,” along with the release of a YouTube Video, “Urban Farming NYC,” resulted in a national following, including an invite to the White House Garden. Recently dubbed the Pied Piper of Peas by Lorna Sass, Mr. Ritz has launched the Green Bronx Machine to a national audience and has signed on more than 6,000 local followers in several months. Mr. Ritz was just announced as a national Green Apple Education Ambassador for the US Green Building Council. He is currently working on embedding the concepts of sustainability and environmental justice into K-12 programming and beyond.

Mr. Ritz has electrified and inspired audiences of all types with his “Si se puede” message of hope, urgency and Amer-I-Can innovation. In February 2013, he received the first standing ovation in the thirteen year history of Green Biz and went on to standing ovations at the United Nations Social Innovation Summit and City Resilient. He was just named a Poptech Fellow. His work has been featured in ForbesWall Street Journal, and Fast Track, as well as on CNN, NBC, ABC, NPR, TED and regionally across the country.

Dedicated to harvesting hope and cultivating minds, Mr. Ritz dreams of opening a nationally replicable Career Technical Education public school in the poorest Congressional District in America rooted in urban agriculture, green, and sustainable initiatives. Mr. Ritz recently lost more than 100 pounds by modeling positive behavior and eating what he and his students grow in school.

 

edited-Sackler_headshotMadeleine Sackler
Director & Producer
@madsackler

Madeleine Sackler is the director and producer of Dangerous Acts Starring the Unstable Elements of Belarus (coming to HBO in 2014). Her first documentary, The Lottery, sparked a renewed debate on the future of public education and was shortlisted for the 2011 Academy Awards. Duke 91 & 92: Back to Back, her second film, was co-produced by Turner Sports and gave viewers an inside look at one of the most storied basketball programs in history. Madeleine is the co-founder of M&J Creative, a new media company dedicated to producing interactive, long form content, as well as Great Curve Films. A Duke ’05 alum, she also has a degree in biopyschology and has previously worked as a freelance editor for television, commercials and documentaries.

 

edited-better johnJohn Salzinger
Senior Director of Business Development & Co-founder, MPOWERD
@MPOWERDInc

John Salzinger is the Senior Director of Business Development & Co-founder of MPOWERD. Prior to his role with MPOWERD, Mr. Salzinger was an Executive Producer at AP Digital, founded EVO Platinum Processing, and was a Director of Sales at Gopogo. He is alum of Ithaca College and Hofstra University.

 

edited- Sanna headshotRobert P. Sanna
Executive Vice President and Director of Construction & Design Development, Forest City Ratner Companies

Robert Sanna has nearly thirty years of leadership experience within the New York City construction industry. An accomplished project and administrative leader, his expertise has driven notable growth in the retail, commercial and mixed use sectors for Forest City Ratner Companies (FCRC).

Mr. Sanna began his career as a field project manager for HRH Construction, working on such notable projects as the Jacob Javitts Convention Center and World Wide Plaza. He joined FCRC in 1989 as a project manager, providing project administrative leadership for the construction of One MetroTech Center, one of the first projects at the downtown Brooklyn campus.

Later, as the Executive Vice President and Director of Construction & Design Development, he organized FCRC’s construction department with specific emphasis on quality build-out experiences for its tenants and proactive cost and schedule management. This dynamic technical group provided construction administration for over 40 retail, office, residential, hotel and sports & entertainment projects totaling more than 15 million square feet.

Some of Mr. Sanna‘s most high profile projects include New York by Gehry, the 76 story residential building in downtown Manhattan built by world renowned architect Frank Gehry, The New York Times Building, designed by Pritzker Prize winning architect Renzo Piano, and Barclays Center, the new, world class, state of the art sports and entertainment venue at Atlantic Yards, which is home to the Brooklyn Nets.

 

edited-CaseySantiagoCasey Santiago ’07
Founder, Kangu
@KanguOrg

In 2012, after becoming a mother, Casey Santiago founded Kangu to leverage crowdfunding technology to reduce preventable maternal and neonatal deaths and disability. Before founding Kangu, Ms. Santiago worked for fifteen years in global health, innovative finance and technology. As an early staff member at Kiva.org, Ms. Santiago managed a multi-million dollar investment portfolio in West Africa, and led engineers to develop software for 100+ local institutions. She has advised for-profit, nonprofit and social enterprises on strategic planning, new product development and financial sustainability, including Doctors without Borders, Institute for OneWorld Health, Bristol Myers-Squibb, GAVI and USAID, both independently and as a Senior Consultant at Deloitte. She also blogs for Forbes.com, Women 2.0, and the Huffington Post and was recently selected by 85 Broads as a “CEO to watch.” She has worked in Bangladesh, the Dominican Republic, Ghana, Kenya, Mali, Morocco, Palestine, South Africa, Senegal, Tanzania, Togo and Zambia. Ms. Santiago holds a BA from Wellesley College, an MBA from Columbia Business School and an MA in International Affairs from Columbia University.

edited Jeff Seabright PhotoJeff Seabright
Chief Environmental Officer, Coca-Cola Company
@CocaColaCo

Jeff Seabright is the chief environmental officer at the Coca-Cola Company, where he is responsible for environmental governance and leadership across global operations of the Coca-Cola system including water stewardship, sustainable packaging, climate protection practices, and sustainable agriculture.  Mr. Seabright has held several positions in government and business, including as Foreign Service Officer in the State Department, legislative assistant in the U.S. Senate, director of environment and energy at the U.S. Agency for International Development, and head of the White House Task Force on Climate Change under President Clinton. Before joining the Coca-Cola Co., he served as vice president for policy planning at Texaco. Mr. Seabright is vice-chair of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Water Security, and he serves on the Boards of The Global Water Challenge, Pace Academy, Erb Institute Strategic Advisory Council for the University of Michigan, and the National Council for Science and the Environment.

 

edited-shuklaKavita Shukla
Inventor & Founder/CEO, Fenugren

Kavita M. Shukla is the Inventor and Founder/CEO of Fenugreen, a pioneer in the movement towards sustainable, active, natural food packaging. Fenugreen is addressing the massive, yet often overlooked global challenge of food spoilage (25% of the world’s
harvest is lost to spoilage each year) with its simple and all-natural FreshPaper innovation. By keeping food fresher from “farm to fork” in a sustainable way, while reducing transportation, inventory and energy costs, Fenugreen’s FreshPaper holds the potential to revolutionize the food economy. Ms. Shukla holds two patents, with four pending and has received several international honors for her potential as an inventor-entrepreneur, including recognition from the Lemelson-MIT Foundation, the Cartier Women’s Initiative, the Davidson Institute, the Swiss Consulate, and the French Ministry for Foreign Affairs. She has also been inducted into the National Gallery for America’s Young Inventors. In 2011, Fenugreen was recognized as one of the most innovative young companies in the world as Grand Prize winner of the Kauffman Foundation’s Startup Open
competition. Ms. Shukla holds a BA from Harvard University.

 

edited Shivani Siroya PhotoShivani Siroya
CEO & Founder, InVenture
@shivsiroya

Shivani Siroya is currently the CEO and Founder of InVenture. InVenture is a mobile technology company providing simple credit scoring and accounting tools to the >4 billion people across the globe currently lacking a formal financial identity.  InVenture’s work has been recognized by USAID, TED, Economist Vodafone, Bloomberg, and Forbes.

Ms. Siroya has a wide array of professional experiences in global health, microfinance, and investment banking. Prior to InVenture she worked in health costing at the United Nations Population Fund and Mergers & Acquisitions at Health Net and Citigroup.

She is a 2013 Ashoka Fellow, 2013 TED Fellow, 2011 Echoing Green Fellow and 2011 Unreasonable Institute Fellow. She is also a blogger for the Huffington Post, and on the board the LA Chapter of Young Women Social Entrepreneurs. Shivani holds a M.P.H from Columbia University and a B.A. from Wesleyan University.

 

edited Jimmy-Soni - PhotoJimmy Soni
Managing Editor, Huffington Post
@HuffingtonPost

Jimmy Soni rose the ranks at the Huffington Post after being handpicked by Arianna Huffington to manage a 400-person staff at the age of 26. One year later, Mr. Soni is now a Managing Editor at the Huffington Post and a published author.

 

HARTMANN -Ricki Stern _Deauville_201Ricki Stern
Filmmaker, The Devil Came on Horseback
@BreakThruNYC

Ricki Stern is a Emmy-nominated documentary film director, producer and writer. Her films have been shown on PBS, National Geographic, Showtime, History Channel, IFC, HBO and ESPN. Presently, she is co-directing a 6-part series for the Ovation Network on the Vogue Fashion Fund and a feature documentary in Chicago about a homeless father’s reunion with his Grammy-winning rapper son. She is the director of the Emmy-nominated Joan Rivers A Piece Of Work, (Sundance Film Festival award winner 2010, IFC FILMS, Showtime). She co-directed and co-produced with her film partner Annie Sundberg Knuckleball! (2012), featuring knuckleball pitchers RA Dickey, Tim Wakefield and Phil Neikro; Burma Soldier (HBO 2011) about a former Burmese soldier who turned pro-democracy activist; Emmy-nominated The Devil Came on Horseback (Sundance Film Festival, HBO 2007, Gotham Award nominee, Best Int. Film Brit Docs), which looks at the Darfur genocide through the eyes of a former marine who became an African Union monitor in Darfur. Ms. Stern co-directed and co-produced the Emmy-nominated The Trials of Darryl Hunt, (Sundance, HBO 2006, winner of over 30 film awards including Independent Spirit nominee) about a man who spent 20 years in prison for a brutal rape/murder he did not commit; Her first film was the Emmy-nominated Neglect Not The Children (PBS 1992) and she directed and co-produced In My Corner (PBS 1998) about a Jr. Olympic boxers in the South Bronx. Ricki is a producer of five films for HBO including Murder 9 to 5 and the Autopsy series (1992-1996).  Ms. Stern and her filmmaking partner Annie have received a Sundance/Skoll “Stories of Change” production grant to support a feature film about the innovative education and anti-poverty program YouthBuild. Their new short for the Sundance Institute / Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (BMGF) was recently released as part of the BMGF focus on the United Nations’ Millennium Goals.  They have been recognized with A Lifetime Achievement Award from Full Frame Documentary Film Festival, the Best Female Filmmakers Award-San Diego Film Festival, The Best Female Filmmakers Award- St. Louis FF, Adrienne Shelly Excellence in Filmmaking Award and Lena Sharpe/Women in Cinema Persistence of Vision Award–Seattle International Film Festival. Ms. Stern is also the co-author of the book series Beryl E. Bean, Mighty Adventurer of the Planet (Harper Collins Publishing).

shane4aShane Snipes
Chief Digital Officer, good-B
@shaneSnipes

Shane Snipes is Chief Digital Officer at Good Business Network. Mr. Snipes presents to small and large groups alike and specializes in translating technology trends to business, impact, and social change. He serves as advisor and strategist for Good-B, Microsoft, Best Buy, HP, Shared Value Media, and several municipalities.

Prior to his strategist role, he was a chief internet officer at Environmental Defense Fund, Citizen Schools- an after-school program, and the Fund for Public Interest Research. He has taught technology at the College of Charleston and enterprise sustainability at City University of Seattle.

Mr. Snipes is a Fulbright Scholar, holds a MBA from Vytautas Magnus University, and is pursuing a doctorate in Social innovation Leadership from Prescott College. A native of North Carolina, he resides in Harlem and frequents photography exhibits. His personal media projects include the EcoRoadTrip– 1000 interviews about sustainability across 48 states covering 28,000 miles in 8 months.

 

Camilo Tellez-MerchanCamilo Tellez-Merchan
Brazilian Technology & Business Model Innovation Team, CGAP

Camilo Tellez-Merchan leads the work in Brazil for the Technology and Business Model Innovation Team. His research area focuses on the use of the digital payments infrastructure in sectors such as energy, water and health. Prior to joining CGAP, he was an analyst for the Mobile Money for the Unbanked (MMU) Programme at the GSM Association in London where he supported mobile network operators in the LAC region as they developed mobile financial services. He has also worked at the UN Economic Commission for Asia and the Pacific in Bangkok, and at Microsoft Labs in Bangalore where he conducted ICT4D research in the technology for emerging markets team. He completed a prior appointment at the World Bank’s aid effectiveness unit as a Junior Professional Associate. He holds an MA in international relations and Latin American studies from the Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), an MSc in information systems and economic development from the London School of Economics and Political Science, and a Diplome International from the Institut d’etudes politiques de Paris (Sciences Po).

 

director-usherBruce Usher
The Lise Strickler ’86 and Mark Gallogly ’86 Faculty Director, Columbia Business School Social Enterprise Program
@SEProgram

Bruce Usher is The Lise Strickler ’86 and Mark Gallogly ’86 Faculty Director of the Social Enterprise Program at Columbia Business School where he teaches MBA students on the intersection of finance, social and environmental issues. He is also Chairman of Persistent Energy Partners, an impact investment firm dedicated to financing clean energy businesses in Africa, with offices in the US, Ghana and Tanzania. From 2002 to 2009, Usher was CEO of EcoSecurities Group plc, during which time he built it into the world’s largest carbon credit company. Usher led EcoSecurities through an IPO, a secondary public placement and strategic investment, and the sale of the entire company to JP Morgan in December 2009. EcoSecurities developed more than 400 projects in 36 countries, representing approximately 10% of all projects approved by the United Nations under the Kyoto Protocol. Prior to EcoSecurities, Usher was co-founder and CEO of TreasuryConnect LLC, which provided electronic trading solutions to banks and was acquired in 2001. Prior to that, he worked in financial services for fifteen years in New York and Tokyo. He is on the Board of Community Energy, a US solar project development company, and the United Nations Fund for International Partnerships. He earned an MBA with distinction from Harvard Business School. Areas of Interest: social enterprise, climate change, renewable energy, international development and impact investing.

edited AW headshot1 smallAdam Weinstein
President & CEO, The Phipps Houses Group
Chair, Phipps Community Development Corporation
@phippsny

Mr. Weinstein joined Phipps Houses in 1989 and became its President and CEO in 2001.  The Phipps Houses Group is the nation’s oldest and one of its largest not-for-profit organizations committed to developing, acquiring, owning and managing affordable housing.  The Phipps Houses Group has developed nearly 8,000 apartments, maintaining a continuing interest in over 6,800 of these occupied or currently in construction.  Another 2,200 units of affordable and mixed-income housing are currently in its development pipeline as of June 2013.  Phipps’ property management affiliate oversees more than 10,000 affordable and mixed-income apartments throughout New York City, along with appurtenant retail and professional space.  Its affiliate, Phipps Community Development Corporation, serves over 8,000 lower-income New Yorkers annually through extensive educational, vocational, child care, and support programs for households of all ages targeting neighborhoods where Phipps has a substantial housing presence.

During his career at Phipps, he has at various times headed each of its operating entities: real estate development and asset management, property management, and community development.

Mr. Weinstein is also on the boards of Citizens Housing and Planning Council, the New York Housing Conference, and the Advisory Board of the Furman Center Affordable Housing Institute.

Mr. Weinstein holds a BA from Yale and an MBA from Harvard Business School.