Aaron Dignan - Founder, The Ready
Aaron Dignan is the founder of The Ready, an organization design and coaching practice based in New York City. The firm focuses on helping companies large and small move away from command-and-control bureaucracy towards news forms of self-organization, dynamic teaming, and empowerment. Clients include GE, Kaplan, Lloyds Banking Group, Citibank, and charity: water.
He also co-founded Responsive.org, a community of practice dedicated to changing the way we work. He is an active angel investor and helps build partnerships between the startups and end-ups he advises. He sits/sat on advisory boards for GE, American Express, PepsiCo, and Cooper Hewitt, as well as the board of directors for Smashburger. He is the author of Game Frame: Using Games as a Strategy for Success (Free Press, 2011) and the upcoming book Boxes & Lines.
Ashanti Branch - Founder + Executive Director, The Ever Forward Club
Ashanti Branch works to change how young men of color interact with their education and how their schools interact with them. Raised in Oakland by a single mother on welfare, Ashanti left the inner city to study civil engineering at Cal Poly – San Luis Obispo. A construction project manager in his first career, his life changed after he tutored struggling students and realized his passion for teaching. In 2004, during Ashanti’s first year teaching high school math, he started The Ever Forward Club to provide support for African American and Latino males who were not achieving to their potential. Since then, Ever Forward has helped all of its more than 150 members graduate from high school, and 93% of them have gone on to attend two- or four-year colleges, military or trade school.
The Ever Forward Club was featured last year in the documentary, “The Mask You Live In,” which premiered at the 2015 Sundance Film Festival. After completing a fellowship at the Stanford d.school in 2016, Ashanti stepped away from working for a school district and began working as the Founding Executive Director for Ever Forward-Siempre Adelante, in an effort to grow the organization to serve thousands of Bay Area students. In April 2017, Ashanti was awarded a fellowship from the national organization CBMA - Campaign for Black Male Achievement.
Cherie Healey - Possibilitarian, Founder of The Luminaries
Cherie works with leaders in tech and entertainment to help them create workplaces that solve the world’s biggest problems.
She does it by elevating their skills in mind AND heart so they can become the leaders of the Imagination Age, tap limitless creativity and innovation and inspire a new way to work.
Cherie’s been working with corporate leaders for 20 years to develop brand and people for a better world.
Through 1:1 coaching, Workshops, Speaking and Custom Designed Retreats, she lights the way at orgs like Google, X, Genentech, Nike, YouTube, Apple, GoDaddy, Fox Entertainment, I Heart Media and more.
Christopher Good – Creative Director, One WorkPlace
Chris is the Creative Director at One Workplace in California. His work is devoted to changing the way we think about the built environment. He is an advocate of the design thinking process and is a frequent speaker and presenter at events across the country, leading active workshops to solve big problems. Most of all he believes in the power of design to do good things for other people. Chris is a frequent contributor to UNREASONABLE and has worked with organizations such as IDEO, the Teachers Guild, the Unreasonable Group, and the Office of the First Lady.
Colleen McCreary - Chief People Officer, Credit Karma
Colleen McCreary Is currently Chief People Officer at Credit Karma as well as a consultant and advisor to multiple startups. Prior to her current role & consulting practice, she’s had over 20 years of experience in managing & developing talent in the tech industry including as Chief People Officer at Vevo, The Climate Corporation and was first Chief People Officer at Zynga navigating the start-up to public company transition by managing their growth from 130 to 4000 employees across the globe in three years under immense public scrutiny.
Colleen holds a BS from Boston University and MA from Columbia University Teachers College.
www.linkedin.com/in/colleenmccrearychiefpplofficer
Craig Forman - Senior People Scientist, Culture Amp
Craig's background is in Organizational Psychology and has been working with Tech organizations for over five years with a focus on Culture, Engagement and Talent; most recently with LinkedIn, Yahoo and Netflix. Currently, he is a Sr. People Scientist with Culture Amp, supporting enterprise level clients to develop Culture-First organizations by collecting, understanding and acting on employee feedback.
David Hassell - Founder and CEO, 15Five
David Hassell is the founder and CEO of 15Five, lightweight performance management software that includes continuous feedback, objective (OKR) tracking, peer recognition, 1-on-1s, and reviews. Named “The Most Connected Man You Don’t Know in Silicon Valley” by Forbes Magazine, David has been featured in The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Inc., Entrepreneur, Wired, and Fast Company.
Diana Chapman - Co-Founder, The Conscious Leadership Group & Advisor to Exceptional Leaders
Diana has been a trusted advisor to over 1000 organizational leaders and many of their teams. Clients from Genentech to Asana value her clarity, compassion, ferocity and playfulness. A well-respected facilitator for the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), Diana works with forums and chapters worldwide.
Diana’s dedication to the personal and global expansion of consciousness led her to the creation of The Conscious Leadership Group. She and her co-founder are spearheading a movement to propagate new models of leadership based on personal and collective awareness and empowerment. Their book, The 15 Commitments of Conscious Leadership, released last year has been receiving high praise.
Fresia Jackson - People Scientist, Culture Amp
Fresia is passionate about bringing data to people problems, which she has advocated for in diverse settings from government agencies to startups. She joined Culture Amp in June 2016, following the completion of her Masters in Industrial/Organizational Psychology. As a People Scientist, her primary focus is education. Sometimes that means strategizing one-on-one with customers on how to align their survey design with their organizational objectives. Other times that takes the form of facilitating workshops and webinars on how to most effectively utilize and act on employee feedback.
Heather Stern - Chief Marketing and Talent Officer, Lippincott
Heather Stern, Chief Marketing and Talent Officer at Lippincott, is a determined change agent, cultivating the global creative consultancy’s legacy from the inside out. Balancing strategic thinking with creative expression, Heather pushes the boundaries of brand building while nurturing a strong culture.
Heather is a champion of aligning internal purpose – what employees believe about their company’s brand – with external promises shared with customers and clients. By galvanizing and nurturing cross-functional and cross-regional teams, she guides HR to ensure a strong foundation for growth and innovation. She is dedicated to inspiring teams and creating a working atmosphere attractive to top global talent.
Isa Watson - Founder & CEO, Envested
Isa Watson is the Founder and CEO of Envested, a data-driven enterprise software company in the HR technology space that is revolutionizing community building within modern companies. Their social workplace engagement platform was named to the Inc Magazine 30 under 30 list in 2017. Envested has also been featured in Forbes and Fast Company and is backed by notable Silicon Valley VCs. Prior to founding Envested, Isa was a VP of Strategy at JPMorgan Chase and a data scientist at Pfizer. Isa has earned an MBA from the MIT, a MS from Cornell University and a BS in Chemistry from Hampton University
James R. Doty, M.D. – Clinical Professor, Department of Neurosurgery, Stanford University School of Medicine
James R. Doty, M.D. is the founder and director of the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education at Stanford University of which His Holiness the Dalai Lama is the founding benefactor. He works with scientists from a number of disciplines examining the neural bases for compassion and altruism.
He is the New York Times bestselling author of Into the Magic Shop: A Neurosurgeon’s Quest to Discovery the Mysteries of the Brain and the Secrets of the Heart now translated into 31 languages. Dr. Doty is also the senior editor of the recently released Oxford Handbook of Compassion Science.
Jason Rosoff - CEO, Radical Candor
As Co-founder and CEO of Radical Candor, LLC Jason is dedicated to helping other teams build the best relationships of their careers and achieve amazing results.
Before founding Radical Candor, Jason spent 7 years scaling Khan Academy from four people to hundreds as both Chief People Officer and Chief Product Officer. Working in partnership with The Gates Foundation and Google, he helped Khan Academy improve educational outcomes for over 100 million students and teachers worldwide. Previously, Jason was a product leader at Fog Creek where he helped build the teams that created StackOverflow and Trello. Early in his career, Jason led engineering operations for a white-label producer of photo books for Apple. Jason earned undergraduate and graduate degrees in management from New York University.
www.linkedin.com/in/jason-r-rosoff
Jay Bendett - Gender Inclusion Facilitator, Strategist & Founder, Argo Collective
Jay Bendett (They/Them) is a strategist and master facilitator who specializes in gender inclusion for workplace communities. Jay founded Argo Collective to transform startups, and corporations into supportive environments for trans and nonbinary identities by developing actionable tools to navigate complex situations. Through their work with Argo Collective Jay empowers team members to become agents of change in the workplace and the world at large. The artistry behind Argo’s process is the result of years conducting extensive research on Trans inclusion and safety in startups and schools, a Master’s degree in Gender Politics from NYU, and published works in academic journals.
Jenny Sauer-Klein - Founder + Director, The Culture Conference
Jenny Sauer-Klein is an experience designer and master facilitator who specializes in dynamic learning experiences that help companies engage their employees and bring their culture to life. She has designed and facilitated offsites and programs for companies like Airbnb, ESPN, and Toyota and Samasource, as well as running her signature Experience Design Training for internal teams. In her previous career as the co-founder of AcroYoga, she successfully scaled a thriving culture into an international brand, community and organization with millions of practitioners including Hollywood celebrities and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. She has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, Fast Company, and Inc., as well as Tim Ferriss’ new book Tools of Titans.
Jessica Amortegui - Senior Director Global Talent Development, Logitech
Jessica teaches leadership to executives and emerging leaders around the world. She brings a multi-disciplinary approach to her work having worked as a strategy consultant, organizational development practitioner, culture and employee engagement consultant, and thought leader in the field of leadership and management development. Jessica has been featured in Forbes, Fast Company, The Wall Street Journal, the Huffington Post, Chief Learning Officer, and Fulfillment Daily. In 2015, she was awarded the Positive Business Award for her ground-breaking work to cultivate more meaningful and connected workplaces. Jessica received an undergraduate degree from Dartmouth College and master's degrees from Cornell University and the University of Pennsylvania.
Jonathan Raymond - CEO of Refound & Author of Good Authority
After twenty years of not being able to decide whether he was a business development guy or a personal growth teacher, Jonathan stopped trying to figure it out. He’s the owner of Refound, a leadership development and media company that helps leaders and managers to start and manage meaningful conversations with their colleagues. He’s madly in love with his wife, tries not to spoil his daughters, and will never give up on the New York Knicks. Jonathan is the former CEO and Chief Brand Officer of EMyth, where he threw his heart, mind, and soul into trying to transform a 40-year old coaching brand. He has worked in tech, clean tech, and the nonprofit world after graduating law school in 1998. He lives in Ashland, Oregon, a lovely town that’s too far away from a warm ocean.
Julian Lute - Organizational Culture Consultant, Great Place to Work Institute
Julian Lute is an Organizational Culture Consultant in the Great Place to Work® Advisory Services Practice, where he excels at performing in-depth research and analysis of organizations and uncovering important data that executives can leverage to achieve company culture objectives. A skilled communicator and thoughtful listener, Julian enjoys gathering input from leaders and employees alike as he seeks to develop custom culture initiatives that engage everyone in the organization. A lifelong learner, Julian holds several degrees from the University of San Francisco including a B.A. in Psychology, an M.A. in International and Multicultural Education, and an M.B.A. with a focus on Service Design. He, his wife, Carrie, and son, Casel, reside in California's Bay Area and have a Miniature Schnauzer named Miles.
Lili Gangas - Chief Technology Community Officer, Kapor Center for Social Impact
Lili Gangas is the Chief Technology Community Officer at the Kapor Center for Social Impact. In this role, Lili helps catalyze Oakland’s emergence as a social impact hub of tech done right – where tech, diverse talent, and action driven partnerships can tackle pressing social and economic inequities of our communities head-on. Lili advises inclusive tech entrepreneurship ecosystem building activities Oakland initiatives such as Oakland Startup Network, TechHire Oakland, Kapor Center Innovation Lab to name a few.
Lili is a proud immigrant from Bolivia who believes in fostering inclusive tech ecosystems for all.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/liligangas/, Twitter: lilsg31
Lisa Skeete Tatum - Founder and CEO, Landit
Lisa Skeete Tatum is founder and CEO of Landit, a technology platform created to increase the success and engagement of women in the workplace, and to enable companies to attract, develop, and retain high-potential diverse talent. Landit provides each woman with a personalized playbook that empowers them with the tools, resources, know-how, and human connections they need to more successfully navigate their career path.
Lisa received her BS in chemical engineering from Cornell University and her MBA from Harvard Business School. She is a member of the Kauffman Fellows Class 4, a 2012 Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
https://landit.com/