Stacey Abrams
Stacey Abrams is New York Times bestselling author, entrepreneur and political leader. She served as Minority Leader in the Georgia House of Representatives, and she was the first black woman to become gubernatorial nominee for a major party in United States history. Abrams has launched multiple nonprofit organizations devoted to democracy protection, voting rights, and effective public policy. She has also co-founded successful companies including a financial services firm, an energy and infrastructure consulting firm, and the media company, Sage Works Productions, Inc.
MADELEINE ALBRIGHT
Madeleine K. Albright is Chair of Albright Stonebridge Group, a global strategy firm, and Chair of Albright Capital Management LLC, an investment advisory firm focused on emerging markets. She was the 64th Secretary of State of the United States. Dr. Albright received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor, from President Obama on May 29, 2012.
HIROKI ASAI
Hiroki Asai serves as the Global Chief Marketing Officer for Airbnb. Previous to that, Hiroki led marketing and communications at Apple as VP of Global Marketing Communications and Executive Creative Director. He worked on launching the brand’s most iconic products and platforms, from the Bondi-blue iMac to the Apple Watch, from the iPhone and iOS to the Apple retail stores. During his 18 years at Apple, Hiroki grew the in-house graphic design practice from 35 people to more than 1,500 globally. Under his design leadership, teams created the exceptional advertising, consumer touch-points, and creative expressions which Apple is known for today. A native Californian, Hiroki grew up in Cupertino and used to bike in the apricot fields next to Apple’s first campus.
SARA BLAKELY
As the youngest ever self-made female billionaire, Spanx founder Sara Blakely was getting ready for a party when she realized she didn’t have the right undergarment to provide a smooth look under white pants. Armed with scissors and sheer genius, she cut the feet off her control top pantyhose and the Spanx revolution began! Spanx has secured its place in women’s hearts and in pop-culture with daily mentions from CNN to SNL. As the sole owner of ‘Spanx,’ Sara always knew she wanted to help women. Though in her wildest dreams, she never thought she would have started with their butts.
LESLIE BLODGETT
As a kid, Leslie Blodgett was known to cuddle up with the obituaries while dreaming of the future obliteration and ultimate death of heavy, chemical-based makeup. A short while later, Leslie was CEO of bareMinerals / Bare Escentuals, which she founded, grew into a global beauty brand, and sold to Shiseido in 2010 for $1.7B. A visionary recognized by WWD Beauty as one of The Big 10 Leaders in Beauty, Leslie credits her company’s success to her therapy-inducing obsession with making women happy.
Solina Chau
She co-founded Horizons Ventures in 2005 and is a passionate advocate of the role of technology in solving the planet’s biggest problems and reframing the future. Horizons is known for backing era-defining companies making a positive impact in the world and their being truly long-term investing approach. Amongst its string of notable early stage investments include Zoom, Impossible Foods , Perfect Day , Spotify, Siri and DeepMind . Since 1996, through her own independent H.S. Chau Foundation, more than HK$1.5 billion were put to work in support of education and women’s causes around the world.
Winning attitudes: #Be more seem less #Keep a Grateful heart #Be the positive difference #1 Corinthians 13
SARAH COOPER
Sarah Cooper is a comedian, speaker, and author of bestselling books How to Be Successful Without Hurting Men’s Feelings and 100 Tricks to Appear Smart in Meetings. She did not mean to make her book titles rhyme. Sarah hosts the weekly podcast Unprofessional, and co-hosts monthly standup comedy show You’re So Brave. She built her comedy career in between working for companies like Yahoo! and Google, where she was fed free lunches and lots of material.
DICK COSTOLO
Dick Costolo is a Mentor at Index and the Chief Executive and co-founder of Chorus, a startup that is reimagining the path to personal fitness. Costolo was most recently Chief Executive of Twitter from 2010 to 2015. Prior to joining Twitter, Dick co-founded and ran three startups, including FeedBurner, which sold to Google in 2007. The former improv comedian has been a consultant on HBO’s “Silicon Valley” and currently sits on the boards of Patreon and IfOnly.
TERRY CREWS
Action-movie hero, sitcom star, children’s book illustrator, advertising pitchman, playable video game character, talent show host, high-end furniture designer, and human rights activist all describe the man that is Terry Crews. The unstoppable Crews stars on the NBC Golden Globe Award-winning hit series “Brooklyn Nine-Nine”, hosts NBC’s top rated alternative series “America’s Got Talent,” and stars in the Netflix animated film The Willoughby’s, currently streaming. Crews is also the face (and muscles) of Old Spice.
Daryn Dodson
Daryn is the Founder and Managing Director of Illumen Capital, an impact fund of funds that seeks to increase gender and racial equity within the financial markets. Mr. Dodson is the co-author of published research that examines the influence of race in financial judgements of asset allocators, and currently serves on the Board of Directors for Ben and Jerry’s, and on the CFA Institute’s Future of Finance Advisory Council. He earned his M.B.A. from Stanford, where he serves on the Dean’s Management Board, and his A.B. from Duke University.
Maria Eitel
At the age of 8, Maria’s doomed quest to become an altar boy opened her eyes to the discrepancies of opportunity between boys and girls. It created for her a keen sense that all was not equal in the world. And it planted the seed of her mission in life, to balance opportunities for girls and women, and to encourage the potential in everyone to live their best life. Maria is the Founder of the Nike Foundation and The Girl Effect. The path that led Maria to the Nike Foundation included working as a journalist, a Commissioned Officer at the White House, and an executive at Microsoft. All before becoming the first Vice President for Corporate Responsibility at Nike Inc where she led the company from crisis to successful corporate citizenship. Maria believes that in order to change the world, you first need to change yourself – and her life has included some powerful experiences of self-transformation.
MIKE FARAH
Mike Farah is the CEO and former President of Production for Funny Or Die, the premiere comedy website founded by Will Ferrell and Adam McKay. Mike produced the award-winning “Prop 8: The Musical,” the Ron Howard directed “Presidential Reunion,” and the Emmy-nominated “Between Two Ferns with Zach Galifianakis.” He is also the executive producer of “Billy on the Street” airing on Fuse, “@midnight” airing on Comedy Central, and “American Muscle,” the upcoming sports-documentary series for Discovery.
Jennifer Garner
Jennifer Garner is an award-winning actress, philanthropist and entrepreneur best known for her roles in feature films like 13 Going on 30, Dallas Buyers Club, Love, Simon and YES DAY as well as the hit TV series Alias. Garner is a longtime member of Save the Children’s Board of Trustees and co-founder of organic kid food company Once Upon a Farm.
Wyman Howard
Wyman Howard is a transformational leader with extensive combat mission experience as a fourth-generation Naval Officer and former Commander of the U.S. Naval Special Warfare Command. During his 32 years in the SEAL Teams and joint special operations, Wyman commanded at all levels of Special Operations, including Special Operations Command Central, and Naval Special Warfare Development Group. He has distinctive leadership experience at the strategic, operational and tactical levels of joint, intelligence, interagency and foreign partner operations. He holds a Master of Business Administration from the TRIUM consortium of the London School of Economics, HEC Paris School of Management, and New York University’s Stern School of Business; a Master of Science in National Security and Resource Strategy from the Eisenhower School.
JEFF JORDAN
Jeff Jordan is a managing partner at the venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz and serves on the board of Accolade, Airbnb, Incredible Health, Instacart, Lime, Lookout, OfferUp, Pinterest, and Wonderschool. He was previously CEO and then executive chairman of OpenTable, where he led the company during a period of accelerated domestic and international growth and oversaw its initial public offering. Jeff an active mentor and leader in the Bay Area community; the DAPER Investment Fund, The GSB Trust, the Stanford School of Engineering Advisory Council, and he also runs a regular basketball game that connects young people and established tech industry vets.
Anne Kauffman
ANNE KAUFFMAN is a director specializing in new work for theater and music. Her recent and upcoming credits include unEARTH and FIRE IN MY MOUTH by Bang on a Can’s Julia Wolfe, both of which premiered at the New York Philharmonic, Sarah Silverman’s THE BEDWETTER at the Atlantic Theater Company, Tony-nominated SIGN IN SIDNEY BRUSTEIN’S WINDOW with Oscar Isaac and Rachel Brosnahan for which she won a Drama League Award, Amy Herzog’s MARY JANE this coming spring at the Samuel Friedman with Rachel McAdams and this coming summer will be reviving Maury Yeston and Peter Stone’s TITANIC for Encores! She is a Resident Director at Roundabout Theater, Artistic Associate and Founding Member of The Civilians, an Artistic Associate and Board Member of Clubbed Thumb where she co-created the CT Directors Fellowship, a New Georges Associate Artist, an SDC Executive Board Member, Vice President and Trustee of SDCF 2020-2023 and Artistic Director of City Center’s Encores! Off-Center 2017-2020. Kauffman’s awards include three Obies, the Joan and Joseph Cullman Award for Exceptional Creativity from Lincoln Center, the Alan Schneider Director Award, a Lucille Lortel Award, and the Joe A. Callaway. She is a co-creator of the Cast Album Project with Jeanine Tesori.
Photo credit: Tess Mayer
MICHAEL KIVES
Michael Kives is the founder and CEO of K5 Global, a media and financial services advisory firm. He previously worked as a Motion Picture Agent with Creative Artists Agency, where he represented actors, singers and world leaders including Arnold Schwarzenegger, Katy Perry, and Warren Buffett. As a high school student, Michael became the first and only person ever to win the World Debate Championships twice, thus earning the title “World’s Most Persuasive Teenager,” which eventually allowed him to lose his virginity. He now lives in LA alone with no pets or even a plant.
KELLY LEONARD
Kelly has hired and produced tens of thousands of shows with a lot of funny people, like Tina Fey, Stephen Colbert, Amy Poehler, Seth Meyers, Steve Carell, Keegan Michael Key, Amy Sedaris and more. He wrote a semi-funny book “Yes, And” for Harpercollins and he has achieved the low bar status of funniest person on campus at The University of Chicago in his position as co-director of a new initiative with the Center for Decision Research that looks at behavioral science through the lens of improvisation.
Michael Lewis
Michael Lewis was born October 15, 1960 in New Orleans, LA. He graduated from Princeton with a BA in Art History, and in 1985 received his master’s degree from the London School of Economics. Salomon Brothers hired him as a bond salesman shortly after. He moved to New York for training and witnessed firsthand the cutthroat, scruple-free culture that was Wall Street in the 1980s. Several months later, armed only with what he’d learned in training, Lewis returned to London and spent the next three years dispensing investment advice to Salomon’s well-heeled clientele. He earned hundreds of thousands of dollars and survived a 1987 hostile takeover attempt at the firm. Nonetheless, he grew disillusioned with his job and left Salomon to write an account of his experiences in the industry. Published in 1989, Liar’s Poker remains one of the best written and most perceptive chronicles of investment banking and the appalling excesses of an era.
Since then, Lewis has found great success as a financial journalist and bestselling author. His nonfiction ranges over a variety of topics, including U.S./Japanese business relations (Pacific Rift), the 1996 presidential campaign (Trail Fever), Silicon Valley (The New New Thing), and the Internet boom (Next: The Future Just Happened). He investigated the economics of professional sports in Moneyball (2003) and The Blind Side (2006); and, in 2008, he edited Panic, an anthology of essays about the major financial crises of 1990s and early “oughts.” His most recent book is The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed Our Minds.
Lewis and his wife Tabitha Soren currently live in Berkeley, CA. Together they have three children, Quinn, Dixie and Walker.
*Photo by Tabitha Soren
ANNE LIBERA
Anne Libera oversees the only BA in Comedy Writing and Performance in the country at Columbia College Chicago and The Second City. Her book The Second City Almanac of Improvisation (NU Press) appeared in Tina Fey’s first American Express print ad. Anne has directed and taught many astonishingly funny people including Aidy Bryant, Adam McKay, Jordan Peele, Ashley Nicole Black, Kristen Schaal, and Steve Yeun (yes Glen from The Walking Dead ) but is not known to be funny herself. When Anne was Second City box office manager and Jeff Garlin and Stephen Colbert were on her staff.
JULIA LOUIS-DREYFUS
Julia Scarlett Elizabeth Louis-Dreyfus is an American actress, voice artist, comedian and producer. In television comedy, she is known for her work in Saturday Night Live, Seinfeld, The New Adventures of Old Christine, and Veep. She is one of the most awarded actresses in American television history, winning more Emmy Awards and more Screen Actors Guild Awards than any other performer.
Photo courtesy of Mary Ellen Matthews
Kyle MacLachlan
A native of Yakima, Washington, Kyle MacLachlan M is best known for his performance in Lynch’s ground-breaking series TWIN PEAKS, for which he received two Emmy nominations and a Golden Globe Award. MacLachlan reprised that role with the revival of TWIN PEAKS, where the story continues 25 years later. Beyond acting, MacLachlan is also an accomplished vintner with his own wine company called Pursued by Bear, a brilliant homage to perhaps the most famous of all stage directions, “exit, pursued by a bear,” from Act III, scene III of Shakespeare’s THE WINTER’S TALE. He sees a connection between acting and winemaking in terms of the combination and balance of process, patience, and creativity. He resides in New York City and Los Angeles with his wife, Full Picture Founder & CEO Desiree Gruber, and their son, Callum and their two dogs, Bailey and Elvis.
Jeff Maggioncalda
Jeff Maggioncalda joined Coursera as CEO in June 2017 and since then helped the company grow to over 142 million learners and 7,000+ institutions, served by high-quality learning content from 325+ of the world’s top universities and industry educators. He previously served for 18 years as the founding CEO at Financial Engines Inc, a company co-founded by economist and Nobel Prize winner William Sharpe. Financial Engines grew rapidly under Jeff’s leadership, providing high-quality online investment advice that has helped millions of people save and prepare for retirement. Jeff has also worked as a consultant at McKinsey & Company and Cornerstone Research, and serves as a director of SVB Financial Group. He holds an M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business and a Bachelor’s degree in Economics and English from Stanford University. In his free time, Jeff is a lifelong learner and proud dad, and enjoys studying music theory and spending time with his wife and three daughters.
Divesh Makan
Divesh Makan is a founding partner of ICONIQ Capital, a global firm that advises and invests on behalf of some of the world’s most influential families and organizations while driving transformation at the intersection of technology and traditional industries. Founded in 2011, ICONIQ seeks to build resilient investment portfolios, partner with inspired entrepreneurs, and create uncommon opportunities across sectors and society. Previously, Divesh was an executive director at Morgan Stanley, vice president at Goldman Sachs, and a senior manager at Accenture specializing in private equity investments. A trusted advisor for multiple companies and other organizations, Divesh serves on the UCSF Foundation Board and on the board of SFJazz, an internationally respected nonprofit supporting music creation, presentation, and education. He holds an MBA from the Wharton School and BS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Natal, South Africa. Divesh lives in the San Francisco Bay Area with his wife and three daughters.
SETH MEYERS
Seth Meyers hosts Late Night with Seth Meyers, where he helps us breathe (and laugh) each day as he brings us A Closer Look at the new American political reality. Seth is an Emmy and Golden Globe Award winning comedian, writer, producer, political commentator, actor, media critic, and television host. He was previously a cast member and the head writer for Saturday Night Live, where he also hosted the show’s news parody segment, Weekend Update. In 2011, Seth was the keynote speaker at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner, and in 2014 Seth hosted the Emmy Awards.
Photo courtesy of Mary Ellen Matthews
Jacqueline Novogratz
Jacqueline Novogratz, MBA ’91, is the Founder and CEO of Acumen, and a recognized leader and innovator in the social impact sector. Her work began in 1986 when she quit her job on Wall Street to co-found Rwanda’s first microfinance institution, Duterimbere; the experience inspired her to write the bestselling book The Blue Sweater: Bridging the Gap Between Rich and Poor, and, in 2001, launch Acumen. A pioneer of impact investing, Acumen has invested more than $145 million of patient capital into 180 companies affecting the lives of nearly 443 million people across Africa, Latin America, South Asia and the United States in the areas of clean energy, agriculture, healthcare, and education. Acumen also is responsible for $243 million in assets under management via its for-profit funds, including KawiSafi, a nearly $70 million impact fund focused on off-grid solar energy in East Africa and the Acumen Resilient Agriculture Fund (ARAF), a first-of-its-kind $58 million fund focused on helping smallholder farmers mitigate the effects of climate change.
Jacqueline is also the author of two award-winning books: the best-selling The Blue Sweater (2010), and Manifesto for a Moral Revolution: Practices to Build a Better World (2020). She is a member of the B-Team and serves on numerous boards and advisory boards and has been named, among other things, one of the Top 100 Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy, one of Insider’s Climate Action 30 leaders, one of the 25 Smartest People of the Decade by the Daily Beast.
JEAN OELWANG
Jean Oelwang is the President and a Trustee of Virgin Unite, a senior partner at the B Team and now the co-founder of Plus Wonder, a multi-year project to explore the power of partnerships. Over the past thirty years, she has partnered with and learned from: homeless teenagers in the US; the natural wonders of the Australian National Parks and teams helping to set up mobile phone companies in South Africa, Colombia, Bulgaria, Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and the US. She has also helped lead the incubation of; the Elders, The B Team, The Carbon War Room, the Caribbean Accelerator and Ocean Unite.
Richelle Parham
Richelle Parham is a seasoned senior-level executive, who possess more than 25 years of global strategy and marketing experience for prolific corporations such as eBay, Visa, Digitas and Citibank. She has a proven track record of leading high-performing business and marketing teams, utilizing strategic and analytical decision-making expertise to successfully drive key business performance. In 2019, Ms. Parham joined WestRiver Group, as a Managing Director. WestRiver Group provides integrated capital solutions to the global innovation economy with investments focused on technology, life sciences, energy and experiential sectors. Throughout her career, Ms. Parham has received many awards and honors, which include being named to Savoy “Most Influential Women in Corporate America”, Forbes “50 Most Influential CMOs in the World”, and Fast Company “Most Creative People in Business 1000”. She has also served on the board of directors for Best Buy (NYSE: BBY) since 2018, e.l.f. Beauty (NYSE: ELF) since 2018, LabCorp (NYSE: LH) since 2016, and Scripps Network Interactive (NYSE: SNI) from 2012 to 2018.
DJ Patil
DJ Patil is an entrepreneur, investor, scientist, and leader in public policy. He has held senior roles in industry, academia, and government and his work has been featured in two Michael Lewis books (The Fifth Risk and Premonition). As a General Partner at GreatPoint Ventures he focuses on building companies in healthcare, enterprise technologies, and national security.
Notable early stage investments include Figma, Confluent, Ola in India, Monte Carlo, Chronosphere, Sumologic, RelateIQ, Peoplehood, and Rebellion Defense.
He is a board member for Devoted Health where he was an executive on the founding team and CTO with the mission to build a health care system that takes care of every member like they were family. Previously he led the product teams at RelateIQ which was acquired by Salesforce, and was founding board member for Crisis Text Line which works to use new technologies to provide on demand mental and crisis support. At LinkedIn he was Chief Scientist, Chief Security Officer and led the data efforts which included recommendation systems like People You May Know, Who Viewed My Profile, and Jobs You May Like; new technologies like Kafka; co-coining the term Data Scientist. He has also held a number of roles at Skype, PayPal, and eBay.
Dr. Patil public policy work includes being appointed by President Obama to be the first U.S. Chief Data Scientist where his efforts led to the establishment of nearly 40 Chief Data Officer roles across the Federal government. Establishing new health care programs including the Precision Medicine Initiative (now the NIH All of Us program) and the Cancer Moonshot, new criminal justice reforms including the Data-Driven Justice and Police Data Initiatives that cover more than 94 million Americans, as well as leading the national data efforts. He also has been active in national security and for his efforts was awarded by Secretary Carter the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service which is the highest honor the department bestows on a civilian.
He is a member of the Defense Science Board and a member of the Board of Visitors for National Defense University. He has been a Senior Fellow at the Belfer Center at the Harvard Kennedy School and CTO for the Biden-Harris Transition where he led development of technology related policy policies.
As a member of the faculty at the University of Maryland, his research focused on nonlinear dynamics and chaos theory and he helped start a major research initiative on numerical weather prediction. As an AAAS Science & Technology Policy Fellow for the Department of Defense, Dr. Patil directed new efforts to leverage social network analysis and the melding of computational and social sciences to anticipate emerging threats to the US. He has also co-chaired a major review of US efforts to prevent bioweapons proliferation in Central Asia and co-founded the Iraqi Virtual Science Library (IVSL). And if you’ve read this far, he barely graduated from high school because of his math grades.
More details can be found on his LinkedIn profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/dpatil and can be followed on twitter @dpatil
David Risher
David Risher is the chief executive officer of Lyft, Inc., and leads the business in improving the lives of millions of riders and drivers. He was named CEO in March 2023, after serving as a member of the Lyft board of directors since 2021. Mr. Risher has more than three decades of technology and leadership experience across public companies and non-profit organizations. In 2009, Mr. Risher co-founded Worldreader, a non-profit organization that has helped 21 million people read, and served as its chief executive officer until 2023. He still serves on the Worldreader board as Founding Chair. Prior to Worldreader, Mr. Risher served as senior vice president, US Retail at Amazon.com, Inc. where he helped build the company to $4 billion in sales. Prior to joining Amazon, he was a general manager at Microsoft Corporation. Mr. Risher currently serves on the boards of directors of a number of privately-held and non-profit organizations. Mr. Risher holds a B.A. in Comparative Literature from Princeton University, an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, and an honorary doctorate from Wilson College.
Rainn Wilson
Rainn is an Emmy nominated and SAG award-winning actor best known for playing the inimitable “Dwight Schrute” for nine seasons on NBC’s, THE OFFICE. Recent projects include LESSONS IN CHEMISTRY with Brie Larson for Apple TV and the unscripted travel series GEOGRAPHY OF BLISS, which aired on Peacock in May of 2023.
He stars in JERRY AND MARGE GO LARGE, with Bryan Cranston and Annette Bening; UTOPIA for Amazon; Roger Michell’s BLACKBIRD, opposite Kate Winslet; MEG alongside Jason Statham; STAR TREK DISCOVERY; HESHER, opposite Natalie Portman and Joseph Gordon-Levitt; James Gunn’s SUPER, with Kevin Bacon and Elliot Page; COOTIES opposite Elijah Wood; JUNO; GALAXY QUEST; and ALMOST FAMOUS.
He has an MFA from NYU’s Graduate Acting Program at the Tisch School of the Arts and spent 10 years doing theatre in NYC before moving to LA. He was on Broadway in THE TEMPEST with Patrick Stewart, and the Tony nominated LONDON ASSURANCE. Rainn performed the critically acclaimed one-person monologue THOM PAIN (BASED ON NOTHING) at The Geffen; and was the lead role in the political farce, THE DOPPELGANGER, at Steppenwolf Theater.
Rainn founded the digital media company, Soul Pancake (3.5 mil subscribers on YouTube). He is the author of “The Bassoon King” and the NYT Bestselling “SoulPancake: Chew on Life’s Big Questions.” His newest book, NYT Bestselling “Soul Boom: Why We Need a Spiritual Revolution” was released April 25, 2023.
