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.
Adam Rosendahl
Founder/CEO, LATE NITE ART, LLC
Adam Rosendahl is a creative facilitator, event producer and DJ based in Oakland, CA. In 2012 he founded LATE NITE ART, LLC, a creative experience lab that drives innovation and builds community inside of companies and universities around the world. Since then, he’s been on a creative rampage: facilitating over 100 LNA events in 5 countries, with 5,000+ participants. Partial list of clients include: Instagram, Pandora, Zendesk, Procter and Gamble, Mexico Tourism Board, Accenture, Old Navy, Clif Bar and the US Probation Office.
From federal probation officers and corporate executives to social entrepreneurs and university students, Adam has a knack for lighting the creative spark in everyone. He firmly believes that engaging the imagination is the key to changing our culture.
Amy Lazarus
Founder + CEO, InclusionVentures
Amy Lazarus is the founder and CEO of InclusionVentures where she works with organizations to make inclusion the norm. Growing up in a racially integrated community catalyzed Amy’s lifelong commitment toward diversity and inclusion. Lazarus is a master facilitator who provides strategy, coaching, training, and transformational experiences, infusing inclusion into the workforce, work culture, and work product. Select clients include: Salesforce, Pandora, Twitter, the James Irvine Foundation, the Bridgespan Group, Arabella Advisors, Deloitte, Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy, and Stanford’s Design School. Amy has presented at The White House, the World Economic Forum in Davos, Social Capital Markets (SoCap), Dreamforce, and TEDx. With more than 20 years of expertise, Lazarus creates spaces for others to challenge their assumptions, become aware of multiple aspects of their identities, form relationships across differences, and change behaviors to create welcoming environments. A graduate of Duke University and Carnegie Mellon University, Amy curated the Global Shaper hub in Washington, DC, was a Coro Fellow, practices tai chi, and sung back up for Aretha Franklin.
Anna Botelho
GoogleArts program manager at Google
The daughter of a music teacher, Anna Botelho has been involved in all the arts since early childhood. After graduating from Yale with a degree in music, Anna taught, competed, and performed worldwide in ballroom dancing, and eventually she founded and managed the dance program at Google (The Danceplex). She enjoyed growing the dance program from a few classes to 36 classes per week in styles from ballet to bhangra to breakdancing. She is currently building the GoogleArts program to meet all Googler's creative needs through visual and performing arts. Anna is fascinated by creating and growing programs, and specializes in creative marketing, user research, and new content to grow a community by 10x.
Anese Cavanaugh
Leadership Advisor, Creator of the IEP Method®, Author of Contagious Culture
Anese Cavanaugh is devoted to helping people show up and bring their best selves to the table in order to create significant positive impact in their lives. She is the creator of the IEP Method® (Intentional Energetic Presence), an advisor and thinking partner to leaders and organizations around the world, and author of Contagious Culture: Show Up, Set the Tone, and Intentionally Create an Organization That Thrives (McGraw Hill, 11/15). As a leading voice on intention, energy, and presence in leadership and culture, she helps people unlock greater leadership potential, collaborate more inspiringly, create more openly, intuit more bravely, and lead more joyfully and effectively. Top innovators and executives in companies like IDEO, Zingerman’s, Cooper, Fitbit, Nike, and others have engaged with Anese to strengthen team health, maximize leadership impact, and optimize company culture. In addition to appearing in publications like Harvard Business Review, The Huffington Post, CEO.com, and the NY Times, Anese writes regularly for Inc.com in her column “Showing Up”. Follow her @AneseCavanaugh.
Arden Pennell
Arden is goal is to support people in unlocking additional capacity for self-fulfillment and high performance. She is an experienced facilitator, speaker, and coach who has worked with organizations including Google, Facebook, 2 of the 4 Big Four firms, Albemarle, Sandoz, Coca-Cola, and Bristol-Myers Squibb.
In her roles at The Energy Project, Arden served as Vice President of Product Development, where she was responsible for helping assess markets, listen to clients, and design and pilot products effectively across multiple departments. In her first role at The Energy Project, she led the training and development of facilitation team as Director of Faculty. She developed processes for recruitment, onboarding, performance assessment, and team growth. Under her leadership, client participants ranked facilitation quality at an average 96% out of 100%.
Prior to The Energy Project, Arden created and hosted innovation-focused conferences featuring the CEOs of leading technology firms such as Facebook and LinkedIn.
Arden is a certified Integral Coach and served as faculty at New Ventures West, a coaching school headquartered in San Francisco. She has also spent a decade studying the intersection of neuroscience and meditation, including intensive retreat practice.
Ashanti Branch
Founder / Executive Director, The Ever Forward Club
Ashanti Branch was raised by a single mother on welfare in Oakland and persevered to study Engineering at Cal Poly SLO. Branch changed careers after tutoring struggling students and realizing his passion was teaching.
In 2004, as a first-year teacher Branch started The Ever Forward Club as a support group for African-American and Latino males, who were not achieving to the level of their potential. The Ever Forward Club has a 100% high school graduation rate and 93% attending college, military or Trade School. Branch just completed a fellowship with the d.school K-12 Lab at Stanford University. This year he is working, for the first time, as the Founding Executive Director for Ever Forward - Siempre Adelante, which will have 10 clubs operating in middle and high schools across the Bay Area.
Bear Kittay
Previously Special Operations, Burning Man HQ
Bear is a serial entrepreneur, community builder and innovation strategist with expertise in the tech, real-estate, non-pro t, political and entertainment industries. In 2009, he co-founded Organizer.com, a market-leading, cloud-based suite for mobile eld contact of voters and consumers. In 2011, he discovered Shaker, an early-stage Israeli startup, and brought them to the USA to win TechCrunch Disrupt and led the Series A financing. In 2012, he became Burning Man’s Social Alchemist & Global Ambassador and spearheaded the acquisition of Fly Ranch, an iconic 3,800-acre site to be the year-round home for Burning Man. He has given talks around the world at a variety of conferences, festivals and TED events. A veteran fundraiser specializing in unorthodox ventures, he’s raised 34M+ mostly in angel capital and donations.
Betsy Crouch
Co-Founder, ImprovHQ
BETSY CROUCH has been inspiring peak performance through sales, sales management, coaching and consulting for over 15 years. She is an improviser, speaker, writer, and coach. She has conducted approximately 5,000 one on one coaching sessions. She is passionate about helping individuals and organizations find that spark that makes you come alive and thrive.
ImprovHQ inspires effective communication, exceptional collaboration and engaged culture through interactive learning experiences. Founders Zoe Galvez and Betsy Crouch combine their extensive experience in business, theater and coaching to develop valuable and applicable skills. Clients include: Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, Genentech 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.is and has worked with organizations such as IDEO, the Teachers Guild, the Unreasonable Group, and the Office of the First Lady.
Carson Linforth Bowley
Co-Founder, Emergent Collective
Carson is a creative director and multi-disciplinary designer specializing in rapid prototyping for innovation. He works as the founder of Metapattern, a creative studio supporting both humanistic technologists and technological humanitarians. Additionally, Carson leads the design team at Factory, an innovation incubator in San Francisco helping companies like Nike, Levi’s and GE bring an experimental methodology to their product development processes. He recently led a track on Immersive Storytelling in the MIT Media Lab’s Design Innovation workshop in Ahmedabad, India, bringing emergent creative tools like 3D cameras, VR headsets and drones to some of India’s brightest students from technology and the arts.
Dave Kashen
Co-founder & Managing Partner, Fearless Ventures
Dave Kashen is Co-founder & Managing Partner at Fearless Ventures, a VC fund committed to helping entrepreneurs become conscious leaders and build companies for the benefit of all stakeholders. He has founded two successful VC-backed startups, Worklife (backed by Y Combinator, acq. by Cisco) and Wellsphere (acq. by IAC/Sequoia-backed HealthCentral). He’s also spent more than 7 years serving as an executive coach to over 100 CEOs of fast-growing VC-backed startups, and trained leaders and consulted on culture at hundreds of startups.
Previously, Dave served as an investment professional for SPO Partners and as an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. Dave earned his MBA from Stanford’s Graduate School of Business, and a BS in Economics from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Dave has been a volunteer for the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, Big Brothers Big Sisters, the Hamilton Family Center and the Marin Suicide Hotline. He is married and has two children, Ben, 7 and Brody, 4, who he’s committed to creating a better world for.
David Hassell
Founder and CEO, 15Five
David Hassell is the founder and CEO of 15Five, the leading web-based employee feedback and alignment solution that is transforming the way employees and managers communicate. Named "The Most Connected Man You Don't Know in Silicon Valley" by Forbes Magazine, David has also been featured in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Inc., Entrepreneur, Wired, Fast Company, and the Financial Post.
Daniela Plattner
Facilitator, Strategist, Coach
A facilitator, strategist, and coach, Daniela helps people and organizations accelerate creativity and collaboration. She is a partner at Sightful, an innovation strategy consultancy and a founding facilitator at Play on Purpose. Daniela has worked with companies like Facebook, IDEO, Boeing, Eileen Fisher, Omega Institute, and presented at Nexus Youth summits at the United Nations and US Congress. She holds an MA in Intermodal Arts Consulting & Coaching, and a BA in Psychology. Daniela is certified in Integrative Health Coaching and 5Rhythms, a mindful movement practice she has been studying for over 15 years.
Dave O'Neill
Culture and Communications Manager, Airbnb
Dave has spent that last 5 years helping to design and scale Airbnb's culture through its core values and internal communications. His focus now is on coaching leaders to make values-based decisions and to genuinely integrate the core values into key moments of the employee journey.
David Ngo
Behavior Design, Stanford University
David brings Behavior Design to get the psychology right for organizations that use technology to improve lives of children and adults -- such as health, fitness, & education. His team of behavior designers, researchers, and programmers draw experience and training from Dr. BJ Fogg and the Stanford Persuasive Technology Lab. David created & graduated with Stanford University’s 1st Behavior Design program. He and Dr. Fogg are working on a book together on Behavior Design methods.
Diana Chapman
Co-Founder of The Conscious Leadership Group and 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.
Duncan Autrey
Mediation Program Manager, SEEDS
Duncan Autrey has been working as a peace maker for over 15 years. He has worked on conflicts in Paraguay, Argentina, Ecuador, Colombia, Seattle and the Bay Area. Duncan is dedicated to helping spread the awareness that conflict is an opportunity for growth. He is currently managing the mediation program at SEEDS in Berkeley where he is pursuing his dream by sharing the power of conflict resolution with the professional and business community. Duncan believes that the world needs to learn how we can communicate better, so that we can bring everyone's best selves forward.
www.seedcrc.org
www.duncanautrey.com
Emi Kolawole
Founder & CEO, Dexign LLC
Emi Kolawole is a multi-media professional with over a decade of experience and the founder of Dexign LLC. She has worked in television, web and print media. The founding editor of the Innovations section of The Washington Post, Emi was invited to serve as the editor-in-residence at The Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford University -- widely known as the d.school. She served as the editor-in-residence and as a senior media designer and lecturer at the d.school, working at the crossroads of media and design thinking with a focus on bias (race, gender and sexuality) and creative practice. Prior to that, Emi was the associate producer for "Washington Week with Gwen Ifill" and a staff writer for FactCheck.org, covering the 2008 presidential election. Emi is a graduate of The Madeira School, Wellesley College and American University. She is the founding Shaper and former Curator of the Global Shapers Palo Alto hub -- an initiative of The World Economic Forum, and she is an alumna of the French-American Foundation Young Leaders program. She was listed as one of Impact Design Hub’s ’40 under 40’, and is a member of the Brookings Society.
Emmy Negrin
Manager, Yahoo For Good, Yahoo Employee Foundation
Emmy is a Social Entrepreneur and currently an intraprenuer at Yahoo focused on Social Impact and culture initiatives. In her current role, she manages the Yahoo Employee Foundation teaching employees about philanthropy and oversees a $12M donor advised fund which grants to hundreds of nonprofits globally. She also designs, facilitates and leads cultural programs such as a Mindfulness Program and diversity initiatives for employees in partnership with community organizations. Prior to Yahoo, Emmy worked with organizations focusing on youth and experiential learning programs in the Bay Area such as Galileo Learning, Citizen Schools, Youth Community Services and was a global wilderness tour guide for Adventures Cross Country. She serves on the Advisory Board at UC Berkeley for the Executive Development program, Innovation and Leadership through Positive Psychology. She received her BA in Communication and Culture, International Development and Social Change from Clark University.
Elaine Lin Hering
Consultant, Triad
Elaine helps people have difficult conversations. As part of Triad Consulting Group, she works with individuals, teams and organizations to build skills in feedback, negotiation, influence and conflict management. A Harvard-trained lawyer turned conflict management professional, Elaine has worked on six continents and across industries to help people build greater capacity for communicating and working with others. She has worked with coal miners, micro-finance organizers, mental health professionals, senior government officials and teams trying to scale and launch. She looks at questions of team effectiveness, dialogue and learning with an eye to asking, “what works?”
Heidi Rosenfelder
Leadership Development Associate, Pixar Animation Studios.
Heidi is an executive coach, training and development professional, and a former civil rights / employment lawyer. She has broad experience working in and consulting with diverse workplace cultures ranging from Federal government agencies and law firms to non-profit organizations, academic institutions, and creative organizations.
Jamie Woolf
Manager of Leadership Development, Pixar Animation Studios.
Jamie Woolf has over twenty years of experience consulting with organizations on culture change and leadership development. She spent 10 years managing employee development at UC Berkeley, and has worked with a wide diversity of organizations including Levi Strauss, Kaiser Permanente, and The Institute of College Access and Success.
Jamie Woolf lives in Berkeley, California, with her husband, and her two daughters when they’re home from college.
Jenna Cushner
Global Ground Control Lead
Jenna Cushner leads a team called Ground Control who exist to bring Airbnb's unique culture to life through internal communications, experiential events, and the connection to the community of Airbnb Hosts and Guests. Her team both innovates and operates to ensure the Airbnb culture evolves by design and is driven by their core values to support Airbnb's mission to create a world where anyone can belong anywhere. Since joining Airbnb in 2011, Jenna and the Global Ground Control Team have been instrumental in scaling the culture from 200 employees to over 2,500 in 21 offices around the world.
Jenny Sauer-Klein
Founder + Director, The Culture Conference
Jenny Sauer-Klein is the founder and director of The Culture Conference. She is an expert at building collaborative teams, and shaping the culture of companies through play. Through her Play On Purpose programs, she helps rapid-growth companies bring their values to life so they can attract and retain the best talent. She is also the co-founder of AcroYoga, a global movement based on the values of trust, connection and playfulness. She successfully scaled this culture into a thriving international brand, community and organization with hundreds of thousands of practitioners including Hollywood celebrities, professional athletes and Silicon Valley entrepreneurs. She is a regular presenter at Wisdom 2.0 and Summit Series, and has been featured in The New York Times, Forbes, Fast Company and Newsweek.
Julie Markham
Chief of Staff, Unreasonable Group
Julie Markham dedicates her time to bridging the intersection of technology and social impact. Julie serves on the senior leadership team at Unreasonable Group, a company dedicated to driving resources to entrepreneurs working on products and services around the world’s greatest challenges. Some of the initiatives she has collaborated on include Unreasonable@Sea, the Girl Effect Accelerator with Nike Foundation, and Unreasonable Impact, created with Barclays. She is also the founder of pingWHEN - a personal safety mobile app that went through TechStars. Julie is a Fulbright Scholar, overeducated with 3 masters degrees and was selected as a member of the USA Today All Academic First Team. She is an aspiring hip-hop dancer and wanna-be comedian.