Haviva Kohl manages Tech Development Programs for Google, dedicated to increasing the number of underrepresented students in Tech. This work builds on her professional career, leading Local, National and International educational initiatives focused on eradicating the ambition gap among young girls (www.swsg.org), expanding educational access (www.twb.org), and, inspiring others as a Teacher in the South Bronx and an Adjunct Prof. of Social Entrepreneurship at NYU. It also builds upon her personal struggle, leaving home at age 12 to get an education, and becoming the first in her family to attend and graduate college.
Haviva is a cum laude graduate of USC and has an MPP from the Harvard Kennedy School. She lives in Silicon Valley.
Elizabeth David-Dembrowsky is an attorney admitted to practice in NY, NJ, MA, FL, and CA. Her newest venture, Good Counsel Services, is a not for profit, New York-based organization dedicated to providing affordable access to legal advocacy and education to social entrepreneurs via white papers, webinars, workshops, and one-on-one services. She also serves as the Executive Director of Keren Or, Inc .- The Jerusalem Center for Blind Children with Multiple Disabilities, a position she has held since February 2012. Elizabeth holds her B.A. in Psychology from Boston University, Masters in Writing from the University of Warwick, and her J.D. from Brooklyn Law School where she attended night school while working full-time. Elizabeth is also a published poet and novelist and a produced playwright
Emily S. Niehaus is the Founder and Executive Director of Community Rebuilds, a nonprofit whose mission is to build energy-efficient housing, provide education on sustainability, and improve the housing conditions of the workforce through an affordable program. Emily holds a Master’s Degree in Applied Sociology and has worked as a social worker, a loan officer, and a bookkeeper. Emily is building a better world for the next generation. She furthers her passion of building affordable and energy-efficient housing through savvy networking, successful fundraising, mentoring emerging professionals, and lifting families out of poverty. She lives with her husband and son in Moab, Utah.
Jess is a Case Team Leader in The Bridgespan Group’s Boston Office. Since joining Bridgespan in 2012, Jess has worked with a variety of U.S. nonprofits and foundations on strategy, organizational effectiveness, and change management. Her clients include the Boys and Girls Clubs of America, YMCA of the USA, The Gates Foundation, The Ford Foundation, The Salvation Army, Nurse Family Partnership, and Enterprise Community Partners.
Jess helps to lead Bridgespan’s work on strategy for national nonprofit networks and federations as well as Bridgespan’s Pay-What-It-Takes initiative focused on ending the “overhead fiction” in nonprofit funding.
Amy Silverstein is a Senior Manager with Deloitte LLP and a senior leader of the Monitor Institute. Amy’s work includes developing transformative solutions for private sector and social enterprise clients to integrate social purpose into their core business, including Deloitte where Amy spearheaded leading edge corporate social responsibility programs, such as Deloitte’s National Pro-Bono Program which resulted in White House recognition and more than $3B in private sector pro bono commitments. Amy’s experience spans strategy at the intersection of social impact and business including in Retail & Consumer Products, Technology, and Financial Services. She holds a Master’s in Public Policy from the University of Illinois and a B.S. in Psychology with honors from Indiana University.
Dr. Falko Paetzold initiated and leads the Center for Sustainable Finance and Private Wealth at University of Zurich, a spin-off from his Next Gen Impact Investing program for ultra-wealthy millenials at the Initiative for Responsible Investment at Harvard University.
He is also a Post-Doctoral Fellow with the Sustainability Initiative at MIT Sloan, and founder of the global network of sustainability intra-preneurs GreenBuzz.
Falko developed sustainable investing structures at Bank Vontobel AG in Zurich, advised banks and family offices, and holds a PhD from University of Zurich and an MBA from University of St. Gallen (HSG) in Switzerland.
Professor Bloom is founder, Social Entrepreneurship Collaboratory (SE Lab) @ Stanford, Harvard and Princeton. He teaches about the design, development and leadership of innovative social ventures in global health, development, and the environment. He is currently an Entrepreneur-in-Residence (EIR) @ Harvard Innovation Lab (i-Lab) and teaches jointly on the Health Policy & Management faculty at the Harvard School of Public Health, and the faculty of Leadership Management and Decision Sciences at Harvard Kennedy School. He also served as an EIR @ Harvard Business School’s Rock Center for Entrepreneurship, and as Dean’s Visiting Professor in Entrepreneurship in the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Princeton. While teaching at Stanford from 1997-2003, Gordon created the SE Lab.
Michael Brown is CEO and Co-Founder of City Year, an education-focused nonprofit organization that mobilizes idealistic young people for a year of service in high-need schools and promotes the concept of voluntary national service as means of building a stronger democracy. This year more than 3,100 City Year AmeriCorps members are helping to address the nation’s high school dropout crisis and turnaround low performing schools by serving as full-time tutors, mentors and role models in high-need schools in 28 U.S. cities. Michael is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he served as an editor of the Harvard Law Review. He currently serves on Harvard’s Board of Overseers. Prior to co-founding City Year, Michael served as a legislative assistant .
Catherine Mahugu is a seasoned techpreneur, changemaker, youth empowerment champion and a strong advocate of gender equality and equity.
With a love of all things binary and a keen eye for design, Catherine has been involved in various ICT for Development projects. In these projects, she has applied design thinking for social innovation. She is a certified human-centered design expert, a skill acquired at Stanford University – Hasso Plattner – d.School (California, USA). Catherine is the Founder of Soko, an ethical, innovative, fashion brand that expands access to economic opportunity for artisans in emerging economies. Her international achievements have made her a global thought leader in matters about Africa, next generation leaders and the role ICT and women play in entrepreneurship.
Anwar Khan is the Chief Executive Officer of Islamic Relief USA. He has more than twenty years of experience working in the field of humanitarian and development assistance. On behalf of IRUSA, Mr. Khan has been appointed to the board of Interaction, Joint Learning Initiative (JLI) and U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID)’s Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid (ACVFA). Along with other leaders in the international development field, Mr. Khan provides advice, analysis and recommendations to USAID on the most pressing development issues in the world today. He is also serving on the U.S. State Department’s Religion and Foreign Policy Working Group, where he advises on humanitarian issues and the intersection of faith and development.
Nina Huntemann is director of academics and research at edX. Nina is leading cross institution faculty initiatives, developing curriculum strategies and providing pedagogical expertise, managing educational policy projects, and facilitating research across edX university partners. Nina has over 15 years of college-level teaching, program administration, and faculty development experience. Earlier, she was an associate professor in the Department of Communication and Journalism at Suffolk University in Boston where she taught courses and published research in digital media studies. Nina received her Ph.D. in communication at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is also co-director of Women in Games Boston, a professional network for women working in the digital games industry.
Mark Kramer is a leading researcher, writer, speaker and consultant on strategies for social impact. He is best known as the co-author of seminal articles on Creating Shared Value, Collective Impact, and Catalytic Philanthropy. Together with Professor Michael Porter, Mark co-founded FSG, a global consulting firm which helps develop social impact strategies for many of the world’s largest foundations, corporations and nonprofits. Porter and Kramer also co-founded the Center for Effective Philanthropy, a nonprofit dedicated to improving foundation performance. Mark is a Senior Fellow in the CSR Initiative of the Center for Business and Government at HKS and a Visiting Lecturer at HBS. He is a graduate of Brandeis University, The Wharton School, and the University of Pennsylvania Law School.
Grace is Senior Manager, Corporate Programs at Yahoo, where she leads Tech for Good initiatives for Yahoo’s corporate social responsibility team, focusing on leveraging products and technical expertise to create social impact. She also supports the Office of the CEO through special projects pertaining to products, technology, and employee engagement. Previously, Grace worked with telecom and public sector clients to introduce new technology in emerging markets. She is passionate about improving access to information and technology around the world.
Hicham Oudghiri is co-founder and CEO of Enigma, a data intelligence company that puts data in the context of the real world, and makes it connected, open and actionable. Enigma won TechCrunch Disrupt in 2013, and releases all of its data for the open-source and civic communities to freely build upon and extend. Prior to Enigma, Hicham managed the private sustainable finance program at BMCE Bank, in partnership with the World Bank Group, where he created energy models for large-scale alternative energy projects across Africa. Hicham holds a B.A. from Columbia University, where he studied Philosophy and Mathematics.
Ashwin Naik is a an entrepreneur/advisor with interests in healthcare delivery, social enterprise and
tech enabled health startups. Ashwin is the Founder of Vaatsalya Healthcare, an award winning social
enterprise, which was the first network of hospitals focused exclusively on Tier II and Tier III towns in
India. Vaatsalya has been recognised globally as winner of the Inaugural Porter Prize in India for value
based healthcare, the Most Innovative Healthcare Company by VCCircle in 2014 and India’s top 10
innovative companies by Fast Company in 2013 among many other recognitions.
Farai Chideya is a reporter, political and cultural analyst, and educator. She has worked in print, television, radio, and digital media and covered every Presidential election since 1996.
A fellow at Harvard’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy, she previously covered the 2016 election for FiveThirtyEight.com, with a focus on demographics and the American voter; hosted NPR’s News and Notes; was a reporter for ABC News; a political analyst for CNN; a host for the Oxygen Network; a consumer data and privacy reporter for The Intercept; and a reporter for Newsweek magazine.
She has won awards including a National Education Reporting Award, a North Star News Prize, and a special award from the National Gay and Lesbian Journalists Association for coverage of AIDS.
Hardy Merriman is the president of the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict. He has worked in the field of civil resistance since 2002. Hardy leads workshops for activists and organizers, speaks about these movements with academics, journalists, and members of NGOs; and develops resources for practitioners and researchers in the field of nonviolent conflict.
Hardy is also an adjunct lecturer at the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy (Tufts University). He is on the board of advisors of the War Prevention Initiative and was also an advisor to the Digital Activism Research Project.
David Wood directs the Initiative for Responsible Investment’s research and field-building work on responsible investment across asset classes, and currently manages projects on responsible investment strategy to successfully channel private investment to public purpose in the US. David has worked in the responsible investment field for over a decade, dating back to the IRI’s founding as the Institute for Responsible Investment at the Carroll School of Management at Boston College.
He has served on the board for the US SIF and currently serves on the boards of the Brookline Community Foundation and Stoneman Family Foundation.
A native of Baltimore, MD, David holds a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Virginia and a Ph.D. in History from the Johns Hopkins University.
In March 2017, Jaime Saavedra has been recently selected as the Senior Director of the Education Global Practice at the World Bank. From October 2013, until December 2016, Mr. Saavedra served as the Minister of Education of Peru. Prior to this position, he was the Acting Vice President of the World Bank’s Poverty Reduction and Economic Management network and Director for Poverty Reduction and Equity, based in Washington. A native of Peru, Saavedra Chanduvi has overseen operational, technical assistance, and analytical work in the areas of poverty and inequality, employment and labor markets, economics of education and monitoring and evaluation systems. He holds a Ph.D in economics from Columbia University and a Bachelor’s degree in economics from the Catholic University of Peru.
Brittany Packnett is a protester, activist and educator who is vice president of national community alliances for Teach for America, a co-founder of Campaign Zero (a comprehensive policy proposal to reduce police violence in the US based on community and activist input, research and rigorous data), and a member of the President’s 21st Century Policing Task Force. Packnett helped launch a newsletter covering protests around Michael Brown’s death and other police killings of African-Americans across the country — what has become known as the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Packnett was previously executive director for Teach for America in St. Louis after serving as a 2007 TFA corps member. She is an alum of Washington University in St. Louis and American University in Washington, DC.
Piyush Tewari is the Founder and CEO of SaveLIFE Foundation (SLF), a non-profit organization committed to improving road safety and emergency medical care in India. Previously, Piyush led the India operations of Calibrated Group LLC, a US-based private equity fund focused on the US-India corridor. Prior to Calibrated, Piyush served on the founding team of the India Brand Equity Fund, an initiative of the Prime Minister of India to promote the country as a competitive investment destination. Piyush is an Ashoka Fellow and an Echoing Green Fellow. In 2010, Piyush won the prestigious Rolex Award for Enterprise as a Young Laureate. He’s currently at Harvard University as an Edward S. Mason Fellow, pursuing a Master’s degree in Public Administration.
Dr. Brad Braxton is the Founding Senior Pastor of The Open Church in Baltimore, Maryland, a culturally inclusive congregation committed to social justice activism and interfaith collaboration. He holds a Ph.D. in New Testament studies from Emory University, a Master’s degree in theology from the University of Oxford, where he was a Rhodes Scholar, and a B.A. degree in religious studies from the University of Virginia. He is the author of three scholarly books and numerous essays exploring the intersection of religion and social justice. Formerly he served as the Program Officer for Religion in the Public Sphere at the Ford Foundation in New York City. In spring 2017, he is a Lecturer at Harvard Divinity School.
Derek Yach has focused his career on advancing global health. He is Senior Vitality Consultant of the Vitality Group, part of Discovery Holdings Ltd. Prior to that he was SVP Global Health and Agriculture Policy at PepsiCo, where he supported portfolio transformation. He headed global health at Rockefeller Foundation, has been a Professor of Global Health at Yale University, and is a former Executive Director for Noncommunicable Diseases and Mental Health at the World Health Organization. He has authored or co-authored over 250 articles covering the breadth of global health. His has an honorary DSc from Georgetown University, MBChB from the University of Cape Town, BSc (Hons Epi) from the University of Stellenbosch, and an MPH from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.
Joann Chen is Vice President at Bain Capital Double Impact. Prior to joining Bain Capital, Joann was an Investment Officer at ImpactAssets where she contributed to investment management of an impact investment-focused donor advised fund and the development of new impact investment products. She previously served as Program Director at Spark Ventures, a social enterprise that incubates companies in developing countries to support local education programs. Joann started her career as a management consultant at The Cambridge Group where she developed growth strategies for Fortune 500 companies in consumer packaged goods and retail. Joann holds a M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and a B.A. in Economics from the University of Chicago.
Josh Deems is an Assistant Vice President in State Street’s Emerging Technologies Center, a group exploring disruptive technologies and their application in B2B banking and finance. Josh’s primary area of research centers on blockchain, the underlying framework of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin, and smart contracts. Prior to joining State Street, Josh was a consultant in the Asset Management practices of both EY and PwC, focused on creating digital asset manager experiences through new product offerings such as robo-advisors. Josh graduated from the George Washington University in 2011 with a degree in Business Administration, and is an avid paddle-boarder, hiker, and amateur cook.
Gina Nebesar is the Chief Product Officer and co-founder of Ovia Health, the health technology company behind the Ovia Fertility, Pregnancy, and Parenting apps. Ovia Health helps millions of women and families take control of their reproductive health and start families with confidence.
Gina worked as an engineer and production line manager at Northrop Grumman Aerospace Systems before founding her first startup Automatic Apparel. Automatic Apparel is an automated retail startup selling clothing and electronics through touchscreen vending machines.
She received her undergraduate degree in Industrial Engineering from the University of Southern California and her MBA from Harvard Business School.
David Eaves is a public policy entrepreneur and expert in information technology and government. In 2009, as an adviser to the Office of the Mayor of Vancouver, David proposed and helped draft the Open Motion which created one of the first open data portals in Canada and the world. He has gone on to work with numerous local, state, and national governments advising on technology and policy issues. In addition to working with government officials, David served as the first Director of Education for Code for America. David has also worked with 18F and the Presidential Innovation Fellows at the White House providing training and support. With a background in negotiation, David also advises non-profits and advocacy groups on critical negotiations.
Alex is the Director of Special Projects, Department of Innovation and Technology, City of Boston. In this role, Alex oversees several high-priority, cross departmental, strategic project areas for the City of Boston. Since 2014, Alex has worked for on a re-haul of the city’s permitting and licensing process, including leading the charge on Boston Permits & Licenses, the cities new front end permitting portal.
Alex holds a Master’s in Public Policy from the Harvard Kennedy School. Prior to graduate school, Alex was an Operations Manager for Action for Boston Community Development (ABCD), New England’s largest human service agency. She has a bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Wesleyan University in Ct. and grew up in the Greater Boston area.
Tami is the chief strategist at TBL Alpha Advisory. A pioneer and thought leader on impact investing and taking social concepts to scale, Tami is currently helping the UN launch its first VC fund. A Harvard-trained strategist and former Bain consultant, her clients range from entrepreneurs to investors, corporations to intergovernmental organization. She also advises family offices on evolving their investment strategies. A sought after speaker on accelerating impact, she regularly addresses high profile audiences globally. Additionally, Tami advises a handful of standout startups each year, including last year’s $1mil Hult Prize winner. She serves on the Nexus Impact Investing Working Group’s Steering Committee and is Chairman of the Board for AIESEC.
Lant Pritchett is Professor of the Practice of International Development at the Kennedy School of Government. Prior to returning the the Kennedy School in 2007, he was lead Socio-Economist in the Social Development group of the South Asia region of the World Bank, resident in Delhi 2004-2007. Moreover, he worked as an adviser to Lawrence Summers when he was WB Vice President from 1991-1993.Professor Pritchett has published widely in economics journals and in specialized journals on demography, education, and health.. In 2006 he published his first solo authored book, Let Their People Come, and in 2013 his second, The Rebirth of Education: Schooling Ain’t Learning. He graduated from Brigham Young University in 1983 with a B.S. in Economics and from MIT in 1988 with a PhD. in Economics.
Andrea is the Vice President for Global Corporate Citizenship and Sustainability at M·A·C Cosmetics and the Vice President for the M·A·C AIDS Fund. She develops and executes the M·A·C AIDS Fund’s global grant-making strategy and public-private partnerships, CSR communications strategies, and employee engagement programs. Currently, M·A·C raises $40 million annually through the Viva Glam Campaign, 100% of the selling price of which goes to support the M·A·C AIDS Fund. She began her career as a clinical social worker at Boston Children’s Hospital and Cancer Care Inc. Andrea received her MBA from New York University’s Stern School of Business, her Master’s in Clinical Social Work from Boston College, and a bachelor’s degree from The College of the Holy Cross.
Andrew Kassoy is one of the co-founders of B Lab, a nonprofit building a global movement to redefine success in business so that all companies compete not just to be best in the world, but best for the world, creating a shared and durable prosperity for all. Before B Lab, he spent 16 years in the private equity industry; as a Partner at MSD Real Estate Capital, an investment vehicle for Michael Dell; and as Managing Director in Credit Suisse First Boston’s Private Equity Department and a founding partner of DLJ Real Estate Capital Partners. Andrew is a Board Member of Echoing Green, on the U.S. working group of the G8 Social Impact Investing Task Force, and on the Forbes Impact 30 list of leading social entrepreneurs. He graduated with Distinction from Stanford University.
As Vice President for Programs for Catholic Charities of Boston, Larry Mayes manages over 100 programs statewide and directs public policy and government relations for the charity at the municipal, state and federal levels. In February of 2015, Mr. Mayes was appointed by Mayor Martin Walsh to the Community Ombudsman Oversight Panel, to review conduct and professional interaction with citizens by the Boston Police Department. Mr. Mayes’ underlying interest is in human infrastructure and social culture policy, especially relating to the areas of urban studies, families, community policing, and media literacy. Mr. Mayes has his Master of Public Policy from Regent University. He and his wife reside in the Hyde Park section of Boston, MA.
Anisha graduated from Wellesley College with a Bachelor’s degree in Economics in 2012, then joined the Boston Consulting Group where she consulted with a variety of private and public sector clients. In 2014, she joined Strategic Grant Partners (SGP), a venture philanthropy focused on K-12 education. At SGP, she drove the grant-making process of due diligence, strategic planning, and investment white paper writing in support of $2M in grants, and provided consulting support to grantees. She is now pursuing a joint MPP-MBA degree at Harvard Kennedy School and Harvard Business School.
Alan Fritzler is a Researcher on LinkedIn’s Economic Graph initiative based out of San Francisco. In this role, he consults governments on workforce development, manages research partnerships with groups like the World Bank, and develops scalable data products based on one of the world’s richest data sets on human capital. Prior to joining LinkedIn, Alan lived in Chicago where he held roles in policy research at the University of Chicago’s Center for Data Science & Public Policy and the Illinois Network of Charter Schools. He holds an MS from Northwestern University and BS from the University of Iowa.