Keynote Speakers
Keynote I
Speakers
- Charles Best, Founder & CEO, DonorsChoose.org
- Jeremy Heimans, Co-founder and CEO, Purpose
Moderator: Rachel Sklar, Co-founder, Change the Ratio and TheLi.st
Biographies
Charles Best
Founder & CEO, DonorsChoose.org
@CharlesBest
Charles Best leads DonorsChoose.org, a nonprofit organization which provides a simple way to address educational inequity. At DonorsChoose.org, public school teachers create classroom project requests and donors can pick the projects they want to support. Mr. Best launched the organization in 2000 out of a Bronx public high school where he taught history. DonorsChoose.org is one of Oprah Winfrey’s “ultimate favorite things” and was named by Fast Company as one of the “50 Most Innovative Companies in the World,” the first time a charity has received this recognition. For three years, Fortune Magazine has named Charles to its “40 under 40 hottest rising stars in business.”
Jeremy Heimans
Co-Founder and CEO, Purpose
@jeremyheimans
Jeremy Heimans is co-founder and CEO of Purpose, a home for building 21st century movements and ventures that use the power of participation to change the world. Since its launch in 2009, Purpose has launched several major new organizations including All Out, a 1.5 million-strong LGBT rights group, built the world’s first open-source global activism platform, and advised institutions like the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the ACLU and Google.
Mr. Heimans has been building movements since the age of 8 when, as a child activist in his native Australia, he ran media campaigns and lobbied leaders on issues like children’s rights and nuclear non-proliferation. In 2004, Mr. Heimans dropped out of Oxford to co-found a campaign group in the U.S. presidential elections that used crowd-funding to help a group of women whose loved ones were in Iraq hire a private jet to follow Vice-President Dick Cheney on his campaign stops, in what became known as the “Chasing Cheney” tour. The following year he co-founded GetUp, an Australian political organization and internationally recognized social movement phenomenon that today has more members than all of Australia’s political parties combined. In 2007, Jeremy co-founded Avaaz, the world’s largest online citizens’ movement, now with more than 20 million members.
In 2011, Mr. Heimans received the Ford Foundation’s 75th Anniversary Visionary Award for his work as a movement pioneer and the World Economic Forum named him a Young Global Leader. In 2012, Fast Company ranked him 11th on their annual list of the 100 Most Creative People in Business. The World e-Government Forum has named him as one of the top ten people who is changing the world of politics and the internet. His work has been profiled in publications like The Economist and The New York Times.
Mr. Heimans began his career with the strategy consultants McKinsey & Company and he has degrees from Harvard University and the University of Sydney. He lives in New York.
Mr. Heimans been a keynote speaker at venues such as the World Economic Forum at Davos, the RSA, Chatham House, the United Nations, Blair House, TEDx, The Economist Big Rethink, The Guardian Activate, Social Media Week and the Business Innovation Factory
Rachel Sklar
Co-founder, Change the Ratio and TheLi.st
@rachelsklar
Rachel Sklar is a writer and social entrepreneur based in New York. She is the co-founder of Change The Ratio, which increases visibility and opportunity for women in tech & new media, and TheLi.st (supported by theKnight Foundation). A former lawyer who writes about media, politics, culture & technology, she was a founding editor at Mediaite and the Huffington Post. She has written things on trees (e.g. New York Times, Chicago Tribune, Financial Times, National Post, Glamour, Elle) and online (e.g. The Daily Beast, Mother Jones, Politico, Mashable) and she speaks widely at conferences, events and on TV. She is also the co-host of “The Salon” on The Jewish Channel (check local listings!). Occasionally, she sings.
Ms. Sklar is a TechStars mentor and an advisor to several startups, including Vox Media, The Daily Muse, Lover.ly, Votizen &TeachAIDS.org, and is a proud Board member at She’s The First. She is also a proud member of the Reboot, TED & Summit communities and of the Lean In Foundation launch team. Rachel’s other initiatives include founding Charitini, a social enterprise to facilitate group giving around events, and CTRComedy – an all-women comedy initiative which quadrupled the number of women performing comedy at SXSW in 2011 and 2012.
Ms. Sklar was named to the Silicon Alley 100 in 2009, 2010 and 2011, FastCompany’s “League of Extraordinary Women,” Forbes’ “Women Changing The World,” JWA’s “Making Trouble, Making History” award and has earned numerous honors and awards for her writing and her activism. In 2013 she & TheLi.st were profiled by the New York Times.
Keynote II
Speaker
- Deborah Dugan, CEO, (RED).org
Moderator: Joe Sibilia, CEO, CSRWire
Biographies
Deborah Dugan
CEO, (RED)
@debdugan
Deborah Dugan is the Chief Executive Officer of (RED). (RED) was founded in 2006 by Bono and Bobby Shriver to engage businesses and consumers to help fight AIDS in Africa.
(RED) partners with the world’s most iconic brands, such as Apple, Starbucks, Converse and The Coca Cola Company who contribute up to 50% of profits from the sale of (RED)-branded products and services to the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria. To date (RED) has raised close to $210 million with 100% of that money going to AIDS programs that have helped impact more than 14 million lives.
Ms. Dugan joined (RED) in 2011, and under her leadership (RED) has welcomed global partners such as The Coca-Cola Company, SAP, and Latin America’s major mobile carriers Claro and Telcel. With Ms. Dugan at the helm, (RED) has continuously pushed the boundaries for how social media is used for social good. In 2011 (RED) was recognized as the first cause to have reached over 1 million on both Facebook and Twitter, and (RED) recently set a new record with the largest non-profit check-in campaign on foursquare to date, in partnership with Starbucks, raising $250,000 in 8 days. In June 2013, (RED) partnered with Mashable and set a new awareness-raising world record using the emerging video app, Vine.
Prior to (RED), Ms. Dugan was President of Disney Publishing Worldwide, generating $1.8 billion in global retail sales. During her eight years at Disney, she oversaw 275 magazines and published more than 4,000 new book titles. In particular, she developed The Cheetah Girls, Artemis Fowl, acquired Baby Einstein, and launched Disney English language learning programs throughout Asia. She also served as Senior Advisor to the Tribeca Enterprises Board. Ms. Dugan’s roots are in the music industry – she spent many years as Executive Vice President at EMI/Capitol Records. Deborah began her career as an attorney on Wall Street.
Ms. Dugan has written on the AIDS issue number times for the Huffington Post, and has recently given speeches at the IEG Sponsorship Conference in Chicago, and the University of Utah Law School Commencement address. Ms. Dugan is included in Forbes’ “100 Most Powerful Women” issue (June, 2013) for Social Entrepreneurism.
Joe Sibilia
CEO, CSRwire
@CSRWire
Joe Sibilia is the CEO of CSRwire, a digital media platform for the latest corporate social responsibility and sustainability news for journalists, analysts, investors, activists, academics, public relations and investor relations professionals worldwide. A trusted brand since 1999 for the latest news, views and reports on business sustainability as well as its members’ most trusted CSR advisor, the CSRwire team works on a wide range of traditional and social media services and solutions to support its members’ marketing and communications strategies.
As a visionary of the socially responsible business movement, Mr. Sibilia was the founder and former CEO of Meadowbrook Lane Capital (MBLC), described by the Wall Street Journal as a “socially responsible investment bank” specializing in turning values into valuation. Through MBLC, he worked with a number of socially responsible companies and has been widely recognized for his work in attempting to take Ben & Jerry’s Homemade Ice Cream private, while creating a private stock exchange for responsible companies.
Throughout his career, Mr. Sibilia has purchased and sold 19 companies and served on the Boards of a number of enterprises – public and private. Presently, he is a Board member of the Office Depot Foundation and is one of the longest serving Board member of the Social Venture Network (www.svn.org).
A graduate of Providence College, Joe matriculated at the Universite’ de Fribourg in Switzerland and studied privately under a Dominican monk. He is an avid reader, enjoys the outdoors and has three daughters with Claire Sullivan – Kristen, Kendra and Kayla – and a loyal dog named Finally.
Keynote III
Speakers
- Naif Al-Mutawa ’03, Founder and CEO of Teshkeel Media Group
- Issac Solotaroff, Filmmaker, WHAM! BAM! ISLAM!
Moderator: Sheena S. Iyengar, S. T. Lee Professor of Business, Columbia Business School
Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa ’03
Founder & CEO, Teshkeel Media Group
@DrNaif
Dr. Naif Al-Mutawa ’03 is the Founder and CEO of Teshkeel Media Group, for whom he created THE 99, the first group of comic superheroes born of an Islamic archetype. THE 99 have received positive attention from the world’s media. Recently, Forbes named THE 99 as one of the top 20 trends sweeping the globe and most recently, President Barack Obama praised Dr. Naif and THE 99 as perhaps the most innovative of the thousands of new entrepreneurs viewed by his PresidentialSummit on Entrepreneurship. Dr. Al-Mutawa has a PhD in Clinical Psychology from Long Island University where he also earned a Masters Degree in Clinical Psychology. He holds a Masters in Organizational Psychology from Teacher’s College, Columbia University and an MBA, also from Columbia University. He earned his undergraduate degree from Tufts University, where he triple majored in clinical psychology, English literature and history. Dr. Al-Mutawa has extensive clinical experience working with former prisoners of war in Kuwait and the Survivors of Political Torture unit of Bellevue Hospital in New York. His direct contact with the horrors of people tortured because of their religious and political beliefs, led to his writing a timeless children’s tale that won a UNESCO prize for literature in the service of tolerance. He received the Eliot-Pearson Award for Excellence in Children’s Media from Tufts University, the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations “Marketplace of Ideas” Award, The Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneurship Award presented at the 2009 World Economic Forum and has been named as one of WEF’s Young Global Leaders for 2011.
Sheena S. Iyengar
S. T. Lee Professor of Business, Columbia Business School
@Sheena_Iyengar
Professor Iyengar has taught courses in leadership and entrepreneurial creativity. Her research addresses the implications of offering people, whether they be employees or consumers, choices. She has examined choice in a multitude of contexts ranging from employee motivation and performance in a global organization, Citigroup, to chocolate displays at Godiva, to the magazine aisles of supermarkets, and to mutual fund options in retirement benefit plans. Professor Iyengar received the Presidential Early Career Award for her ongoing work in examining cultural, individual, and situational factors that influence people’s choice-making preferences and behaviors.
Isaac Solotaroff
Filmmaker, WHAM! BAM! ISLAM!
@WhamBamIslam
Isaac Solotaroff has been producing, editing and directing documentaries since 1999. His last film Ballplayer: Pelotero about two major-league baseball prospects from the Dominican Republic was released in theatrically across the country last summer and acquired by HBO Latino. His previous film WHAM! BAM! ISLAM! opened the 2011-2012 season of PBS’s documentary series Independent Lens. His other films include Los Romeros for PBS’ American Masters and was nominated for an Emmy in 2002 and his first documentary Belief Amended, Faith Revealed was short-listed for an Academy Award for Best Documentary Short in 1999. He is currently producing a documentary series for GQ.com called Casualties of the Gridiron about a clinic in New Jersey that is providing free surgical, psychological and drug rehabilitation services for former NFL players.
