Our Speakers
Amit Garg- Hospital for Hope & Norwest Venture Partners
Amit worked as a teacher in Jagriti Vihara (the NGO that Hospital for Hope serves) in the summer of his freshman year, in 2000. He has been connected to them since and helped raise funds to build a library and a high school lab, start a course in college to prepare students for volunteer work, and sent 30 peers to India over the course of 4 years. Amit believes in sustainable development and has co-founded a program to teach computer skills to disadvantaged high school students, volunteered for many years at hospitals, co-founded a social enterprise to promote literacy, and been honored with the James W Lyon Award for his commitment to leadership and service. Amit did his undergraduate and masters at Stanford focusing on technology and life sciences, was a product manager and business analyst at Google, did his MBA at Harvard Business School, and is currently working in venture capital at Norwest Ventures. He was born and raised in Vitória, a city on the southeastern coast of Brazil, and is a die-hard fan of Brazilian soccer.
Eugene Eric Kim- Blue Oxen Associates
Eugene is the cofounder and principal of Blue Oxen Associates, a do-tank focused on helping groups maximizing their collaborative potential. He has developed collaborative strategies and tackled collaborative challenges for groups from all sectors — startups, Fortune 100 companies, government agencies, nonprofits and philanthropic foundations. Past clients have included NASA, Institute for International Education, and the Wikimedia Foundation.
In addition to his work at Blue Oxen Associates, Eugene serves on the boards of the Leadership Learning Community and WiserEarth. Eugene received his A.B. in History and Science from Harvard University.
Jay Nath- City & County of San Francisco
Jay Nath joined the City & County of San Francisco in September 2006 as Director of CRM where he successfully deployed Customer Relationship Management (CRM) software enterprise-wide. The technology has played a critical role in managing over 8 million calls and nearly a 1 million requests for service through the SF 311 service. In 2007 he established the City’s first Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) deployment which serves as a real-time bi-directional communication hub managing millions of messages. In his more recent role as Director of Innovation he led an effort to make San Francisco the first large city in the nation to use Twitter as a new channel for taking public requests. This idea soon led to an effort to establish aninternational standard for 311 services allowing interoperability with third-party applications. As a result there are now five apps available and many more in the pipeline. He is now focused on growing adoption of Open311. His efforts have yielded two large players, Lagan and Microsoft partner ISC to adopt Open311.
Randy White- Bright Neighbor
Randy White is the founder of Bright Neighbor, an organization that creates and implements cohesive community systems that enhance hyper-local economies and reduce group impacts on the environment. Bright Neighbor helps build communities that thrive, and their successes include implementing group cultural behavior shifts to foster local trade, community asset pools, food production, fuel production, living soils, ride sharing, lending, and resource maximization among communities.
Ligaya Tichy- AirBnB
Ligaya has been building and managing startup communities since 2006. As one of the first Community Managers at Yelp, she crossed the country and back to lead the charge in two markets, and is now the Head of Community for Airbnb. She has handled boa constrictors, tracked a Sasquatch, and stuffed miracle fruit in a thousand gift bags, all in the name of community. Ligaya is ever fascinated by people, an interest which fueled her studies in Anthropology and International Relations at Tufts University. She credits her childhood experience as part of a meditation community in Iowa to be the most enlightening case study on how to create a movement.
Alex Hillman- IndyHall Coworking
Alex started as a web developer 10 years ago, first with an agency before he created his own web development consulting business WeKnowHTML.com. Inspired by the birth of the coworking movement, he co-founded IndyHall in 2007, the first coworking space in sunny Philadelphia. So needless to say he is all about technology, community, and how to bring people together. He is also running the blog Dangerously Awesome, and already spoke at various events like BarCamps, or SXSW Ineractive.
Hilary Austen- Artistry Unleashed
Dr. Hilary Austen is an adjunct professor and member of the dean’s advisory board of the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto. Cofounder of Catalyst Consulting Team in Santa Cruz, California, she has worked with such clients as Monitor Group, Oracle Corporation, Stanford University’s Intelligent Systems Lab, Shell Oil, Proctor & Gamble, Lockheed Martin, and Merck Pharmaceutical. Dr. Austen also cofounded the Brain Integration Center in San Diego, which offered programs in personal development, art, communication, and learning based on brain research. Austen’s research into personal artistry—the ability to harness originality and mastery to enhance performance and help solve today’s most demanding problems—is an interdisciplinary challenge she’s pursued all her life. 25 years of studying with advanced and developing practitioners in activities ranging from organizational strategy and watercolor painting to horsemanship and culinary mastery, has revealed a universal approach to learning artistry in any discipline. Austen received a doctorate at Stanford University with her dissertation called Artistry in Practice. In her book Artistry Unleashed: A Guide to Pursuing Great Performance in Work and Life, she shares what she discovered then, and since, about artistry.
Eri Gentry- Genomera / Biocurious
Eri is Community Manger of Genomera, a Health 2.0 startup enabling open-source health discovery, and Founder of BioCurious, the Bay Area’s first hackerspace for biotech. Her mission is to make positive change in the world by enabling innovation in science through collaboration and education. Eri serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of SynBERC, is a Citizen Science blogger for MAKE Magazine, and is an organizer of the Bay Area Quantified Self meetup. She is often found sailing at OCSC, creating open health studies, or attempting to swing kettlebells. Eri was previously CEO of Livly, a nonprofit biotech on a mission to cure cancer, and received a bachelor’s in Economics at Yale.
Leah Busque- TaskRabbit
A true visionary, Leah originated the phrase, “service networking,” a now industry-wide term describing the productive and service power of a web-based social networked community. In the fall of 2008, while trying to figure out how to juggle dinner out with her husband, Kevin, and buying dog food for her 100-pound yellow labrador retriever, Kobe, Leah’s flash of inspiration resulted in her registering the RunMyErrand.com domain name from her iPhone, and mapping the entire business model in her head prior to their meal. Eighteen months later, the company is flourishing, and has expanded and evolved into TaskRabbit.com.
In 2001, Leah graduated magna cum laude from Sweet Briar College, earning a Bachelors of Science in Mathematics and Computer Science. At Sweet Briar, Leah served as the Student Government Association president, and after graduating, was honored to serve as a Young Alumna Trustee on the Board of Directors of the College for a three-year term.
Immediately after graduation, Leah started a career at IBM, Westford, MA, as a Software Engineer, working in the Messaging and Collaboration Software Development group. There she focused on engineering software that millions of people around the globe use daily, securing patent applications for software algorithms, speaking at annual conferences, and publishing in technical journals.
A Boston native, Leah is a volunteer math tutor for the Boys and Girls Club of Boston, and returns often to Sweet Briar College as a guest lecturer for women and entrepreneurship. Leah enjoys theater, dance, and spending time with her husband, Kevin, and 100lb yellow lab Kobe.
Mike Dahn- Security B-Sides
Mike Dahn is founder of Securty B-Sides, a community-driven framework for building events for and by information security members. The goal is to expand the spectrum of conversation beyond the traditional confines of space and time. This global organization with locally organized independent teams, examines and presents on the Next Big Thing in information security.
Dahn starting his career in molecular biology and computer security, and spent years climbing the corporate ladder. Through all this he found the greatest impact on the world around him by stepping out of the limelight and creating “chaordic” frameworks that lower the barrier to entry for others to participate
Raissa Nebie- Spoondate
Born in Paris of West African parents, Raissa Nebie is the founder and CEO of Spoondate, a social community helping food lovers meet over unique dining experiences. A lifelong foodie, Raissa left a 6-year career on Wall Street to attend the French Culinary Institute and pursue her passion for food. After training at a high-end restaurant in Paris in the summer of 2010, she packed a suitcase and daringly moved to San Francisco to take her love for food to the web.
Having lived in several countries across three continents, Raissa is passionate about exploring the many ways in which food can be used to encourage social interaction and cultural exchange between people from different backgrounds.
Raissa is an avid traveler and bread-baking enthusiast. When she’s not sending hungry urbanites on spoondates or keeping up with the latest in food culture, she’s usually checking out live music, cycling around town or watching foreign films.
Steven Walling- Wikimedia Foundation
Steven is a Fellow at the Wikimedia Foundation, the donor-supported nonprofit behind Wikipedia and other free culture projects. He has been a part of Wikipedia since 2006, where he is a volunteer editor and administrator. In his capacity as the first fellowship recipient at the Foundation, he works on research and community organizing initiatives that help everyone understand and improve the way the global volunteer movement fulfills Wikimedia’s mission.