Andiara Petterle is CEO of Bolsa de Mulher, the
largest women-focused media group in Brazil and Latin America.

Passionate about building and leading fast-growing interactive media
companies from the ground up, Andiara's entrepreneurial zeal is matched only
by her enthusiasm for helping women create successful, engaged lives. At
Bolsa de Mulher, Andiara leads a team whose mission is to provide women with
information and opportunities for interaction. The company operates a
number of vertically focused websites and offers social networking, content,
services, e-commerce, and relationship tools for the Internet and mobile
devices. Bolsa de Mulher is also a leading provider of women-focused market
research through its Sophia Mind division.

The company's portfolio includes: Bolsa de Mulher.com (a content-driven
social network for women with over 9 million members), iTodas (women's
content), Estrela Guia (astrology), Feminice (teen topics), Bem Leve
(dieting and health services), Universidade Feminina (e-learning), Bolsa de
Bebê (babies and pregnant women), Netcard (e-cards), TeContei (celebrity
news and social network), Bolso de Mujer.com, Bolso de Bebé.com, and Sophia
Mind (business intelligence and research).

Andiara has MA and BA degrees in Social Communications from PUC-Rio, was a
guest researcher at Brown University, studied Interactive Media Development
at the University of British Columbia, and participated in the Women's
Leadership Program at Harvard Business School. She sits on the board of the
Brazilian Advertising & New Digital Strategies association (BrANDS ) and
regularly lectures and writes about digital media, the female marketing
demographic, and the future of media convergence.

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Antony Young is CEO of Optimedia US, a division of Publicis Groupe and leading media services agency that specializes in integrated marketing communications for clients such as T-Mobile, L'Oreal USA, Nestle, and Payless.

Having began his 20 year international advertising career with Publicis Groupe in New Zealand for Saatchi & Saatchi, Antony relocated to Hong Kong in 1995 as Saatchi & Saatchi Asia's regional head of media. In 1996 he was appointed chief executive of Zenith Media, where he launched the network across the region. Under his leadership, Zenith Media Asia established China's #1 agency; twice won "Media Agency of the Year" and claimed Asia's first ever Cannes Media Gold Lion.

In 2003, Antony transferred to London as CEO, ZenithOptimedia UK Group. On his arrival to the UK, he was instrumental in establishing the agency's proposition "The ROI Agency"... and shifting the agency's focus towards driving business results. ZO UK won assignments for P&G, L'Oreal and UIP (the combined marketing operation for Paramount and Universal pictures) during his time at the agency.

In July 2006, he relocated to New York to take the reigns at Optimedia US.

Antony has been responsible for developing strategy and executing media campaigns across 16 different countries for some of the best global brands-including Sony, Coca-Cola, McDonald's, Nokia, Procter & Gamble and Toyota.

Prior, Antony was CEO and co-founder of AdXplorer, a digital marketing specialist established in China. He is co-author of the business book, Profitable Marketing Communications (Kogan Page).

Brains on Fire helps organizations build movements. Born out of the bond between word of mouth marketing and identity development, they are devoted to helping organizations discover and sustain excitement about who they are and why they exist.

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C.K. Prahalad is Paul and Ruth McCracken Distinguished University Professor of Strategy at the Ross School of Business, The University of Michigan and is a globally recognized management thinker. In 2009, The Times of London ranked him #1 on their Thinkers 50 website (www.thinkers50.com). In 2007, Times of London and Suntop Media elected him as the most influential management thinker alive today. He is the author of the book Fortune at The Bottom of The Pyramid. He is coauthor of bestsellers in Management such as Competing for the Future, The Future of Competition and The New Age of Innovation. He has won the McKinsey Prize for the best article four times. He has received several honorary doctorates including one from the University of London and the Stevens School of Technology. Prahalad has worked with CEOs and senior management at many of the world’s top companies and is also member of the Board of NCR Corporation, Pearson plc., Hindustan Unilever LTD., World Resources Institute, and The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE).

Craig Donato is the founder and CEO of Oodle, a consumer internet company whose mission is to provide online tools that make it easier to buy, sell, and give locally. Found online at www.oodle.com, Oodle is currently available in several markets, including Philadelphia, Miami, Chicago, and Dallas, among others.

Prior to Oodle, Donato was CEO of Grand Central Communications, which provides an internet service for business-to-business integration.

Before joining Grand Central, Donato was a senior vice president at Excite@Home where he oversaw the Excite Search and Community business units and managed Network Programming.

Donato holds an M.B.A. from Stanford Graduate School of Business and a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Tech.

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The original mastermind of Nerdcore Hip-Hop and still its Final Boss, MC Frontalot (nee Damian Hess) takes great pleasure in identifying himself as a professional rapper in polite conversation.

Front was born in San Francisco and grew up in Berkeley. He was tall and gangling, scrawny, had trouble breathing, and could not see well. A special teacher was called in to help him attain basic competence on the monkey bars, another to privately administer standardized tests (his were three grade levels advanced from his classmates). Thusly, he was the most popular kid in his elementary school. Just kidding! He got pushed down a lot and called “nerd.” Did he maybe even deserve it? I mean, really – who strikes out at kickball?

He spent the next twenty years or so trying to get over it. And kind of succeeded! Flash forward to 1999: the dotcom bubble is floaty and shiny; nerds everywhere imagine themselves to be popular and/or hip. Damian is getting overpaid to code web pages, which leaves him free in the evenings to play with audio software. A longtime idolizer of rappers, he has been committing his own esoteric hip-hop compositions to four-track tape since high school, revealing them to nobody. Suddenly! Multi-track desktop studios, cheap pro-grade recording hardware, skyrocketing bandwidth, semi-anonymous web publishing – these factors converge on Damian’s rap hobby like a flock of winged monkeys. He posts an MC Frontalot web page, dubbing his output “Nerdcore Hip-Hop” since his audience is composed of several Star Wars figurines who live on his desk (and also random internet people who click on his MP3s by mistake).

Now it is 2008. Nerdcore has metastasized into an internet phenomenon and underground touring powerhouse, with dozens of live acts and more than a hundred home-studio rhymers self-identifying within the subgenre. MC Frontalot, called alternately the movement’s godfather or grandfather (thanks, kids), leads the charge, performing for thousands around the country and at prominent geek gatherings such as the Penny Arcade Expo. He’s been featured in Newsweek, The New York Times, Spin, Wired, Blender, XXL, XLR8R, The London Daily Telegraph, NPR, G4TV, Esquire, The Guardian (UK), The Wall Street Journal, and scores of city papers nationally and internationally. He has released three studio albums, Nerdcore Rising (Sept 2005), Secrets From The Future (Apr 2007) , and Final Boss (Nov 2008). The documentary feature, Nerdcore Rising: The Movie, which focuses on Front’s live band and the Nerdcore phenomenon general, debuted at the South By Southwest Film Festival, March 2008.

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David Bernknopf one of the partners in the video production firm of SplendidVid, David was also a founding principal of Devonwood Media. He specializes in video production, media strategy, media relations, and crisis communication. His clients range from major law firms to large corporations including Chevron, ChoicePoint, Compucredit, and Church's Fried Chicken Restaurants, to political candidates, authors and athletes.

David's work focuses on understanding the changing nature of communications and devising creative and successful strategies which take advantage of both old and new media. He also has taught journalism, communications and public relations at a variety of Universities including the University of Colorado, American University, Northwestern University, and the Communication University of China in Beijing.

David has recently produced both long and short form videos for multiple platforms for Chevron, Georgia Governor's Council on Developmental Disabilities, and Church's Chicken.

An original employee of CNN, David worked at the network for more than 21 years, from 1980 to 2001. During those years, he won three Emmys, a National Headliner Award, and the Edward R. Murrow award.

He served in virtually every key role at CNN, from writer to documentary and political news producer before eventually serving as CNN's first Vice President, Director of News Planning.

Diaz Nesamoney, founder of Jivox, is a passionate serial entrepreneur now on his third successful startup. Before founding Jivox, he founded Celequest, raised over $20M in venture capital, and served as its CEO until early 2007, when the company was acquired by Cognos Corp. Celequest introduced the market's first BI appliance, a disruptive innovation that changed the way companies collected, analyzed, and acted on business intelligence information. He was previously co-founder, President and Chief Operating Officer at Informatica (NASDAQ:INFA), which he took from a startup to a publicly traded company in 1999 with a market capitalization of over $1 billion. Informatica pioneered data integration software as a category and is now the market leader with over $400M in revenue.

Diaz is a trustee of the American India Foundation, a leading international development organization charged with the mission of accelerating social and economic change in India. Diaz holds a Masters degree in Computer Science from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science in India.

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The field of nanotechnology is rapidly growing, and at the forefront is Dr. Chad A. Mirkin, world-renowned chemist and nanotechnolgy researcher. Dr. Mirkin is the Director of the International Institute for Nanotechnology, George B. Rathmann Professor of Chemistry, Professor of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Professor of Materials Science and Engineering and Professor of Medicine at Northwestern University.

A celebrated nanoscience expert, Dr. Mirkin is best-known for his development of nanoparticle-based biodetection schemes, the invention of Dip-Pen Nanolithography and contributions to supramolecular chemistry. He is the author of 380 manuscripts and 350 patents, and the founder of three companies, AuraSense, Nanosphere and NanoInk, which he established with his team at Northwestern University to commercialize nanotechnology applications in the life sciences and semiconductor industries. Currently, Dr. Mirkin is the third most cited chemist in the world. He was recently inducted to the National Academy of Engineering and selected for President Obama's Council of Advisors for Science and Technology. For Dr. Mirkin's impact on the fields of medicine, science and education, he has been awarded the 2009 $500,000 Lemelson-MIT Prize.

Dr. Mirkin’s accomplishments in these areas are well recognized, with over 50 national and international honors. Top awards include: the Biomedical Engineering Society's Distinguished Achievement Award, the ACS Inorganic Nanoscience Award, the iCON Innovator of the Year Award, a NIH Director's Pioneer Award, the National Inventors Hall of Fame (2002, 2004), the ACS Nobel Laureate Signature Award for Graduate Education in Chemistry, the Crain's Chicago Business 40 under 40 Award, the Discover 2000 Award for Technological Innovation, the ACS Award in Pure Chemistry, the Harvard University E. Bright Wilson Prize, the DuPont Young Professor Award, the NSF Young Investigator Award, and most recently the 2009 Pittsburgh Analytical Chemistry Award and the 2009 Esselen Award for Chemistry in the Public Interest.

A fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Dr. Mirkin serves on the Editorial Advisory Boards of over twenty scholarly journals including: American Chemical Society, Accounts of Chemical Research, Advanced Materials, BioMacromolecules, Macromolecular Bioscience, SENSORS, Encyclopedia of Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Chemistry-A European Journal, Chemistry & Biology, Nanotechnology Law & Business, The Scientist, Journal of Materials Chemistry and Journal of Cluster Science, Plasmonics. Dr. Mirkin is the founding editor of the scholarly journal Small, a premier international nanotechnology journal, and the coauthor of two bestselling books on nanobiotechnology, Nanobiotechnology: Concepts, Applications and Perspectives and Nanobiotechnology II: More Concepts and Applications.

Dedicated to inspiring youth in the sciences, Dr. Mirkin also engages in many educational projects. Through his work with the International Institute for Nanotechnology, he spearheaded the development of the DiscoverNANO Web site, designed to introduce youth to nanotechnology, founded and launched Nanoscape, a journal that communicates the results of successful undergraduate research projects, developed nanotechnology exhibits for the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago and developed two Research Experience programs, enabling undergraduate and high school students to conduct hands-on research in nanotechnolgy.

Dr. Mirkin holds a B.S. degree from Dickinson College (1986) and a Ph.D. degree in chemistry from the Pennsylvania State University (1989). Prior to becoming a chemistry professor at Northwestern University in 1991, he was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Eileen Gittins is the founder and CEO of Blurb, the creative publishing and marketing platform that enables anyone to design, publish, market and sell professional-quality books. She has been at the intersection of the Internet, consumer and enterprise software, imaging systems, search, and digital photography throughout her career. A passionate advocate for enabling technologies that offer new ways to do valuable things, Eileen is democratizing publishing for the rest of us with Blurb, which has published more than 1 million book titles since the company launched in 2006.

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Van Brenk, a 25-year health and safety veteran, oversees all of the U.S. EHS professionals, as well as serve as the EHS liaison to Skanska AB. In this role, he develops strategies to strengthen Skanska's leading role in establishing an injury-free workplace and supporting sustainable construction practices – and then sharing these best practices globally.

Van Brenk joined Skanska AB in 2006 and moved to Skanska USA Building Inc. in 2007 as the Senior Vice President, EHS. Prior to becoming a member of the Skanska team, van Brenk served as a health and safety consultant, conducting a review of Skanska's safety systems and processes as well as administering pilot safety studies for the Skanska Sweden, Poland, Czech and Koch units.

Van Brenk is a Certified Safety Professional (CSP) as well as a member of the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) at a national level. He is also a LEED AP. Internally, van Brenk is a member of Skanska's National Green Council and chairs the Safety Performance Network, which formulates global safety policies and strategies.

Skanska is one of the world's leading project development and construction groups with expertise in commercial and residential projects, design-build and public-private partnerships. In the United States, Skanska's four businesses include: Skanska USA Building, Skanska USA Civil, Skanska Infrastructure Development and Skanska Commercial Development.

The Skanska Group currently has 56,000 employees worldwide, more than 8,000 of whom work in the United States.

At any one time we have approximately 1,000 projects taking place in almost all of the 50 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Our U.S. headquarters are in Whitestone, New York.

The combined sales of our U.S. business units in 2008 totaled more than USD 6.3 billion. Approximately 75 percent of our business in the U.S. comes from repeat customers.

We were the first U.S. construction firm to have all of our operations uphold the ISO 14001 Environmental Management System (EMS) Standard - which immediately earns us one LEED credit on all our projects. We are also consistantly ranked as one of the top Green Builder's in the U.S. by Engineering News-Record.

As chief executive officer and co-founder, Hooman actively drives platform marketing and strategy initiatives at Clearspring. Earlier this year, Hooman was called to the White House, where he, along with a handful of other successful, young technology entrepreneurs, discussed the economy with Obama administration officials. He was also recently named one of Tech's Best Entrepreneurs in BusinessWeek and was nominated for Ernst & Young's Entrepreneur of the Year. When he is not busy building a better Web, you can find him writing his blog Widgify. Radfar graduated magna cum laude from the University of Pennsylvania with degrees in Economics and Computer Science. He holds an M.S. from Carnegie Mellon University where he researched Social Networking Theory.

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Janice Chaffin is group president of Symantec’s Consumer Business Unit (CBU), which includes Symantec’s Norton brand, the world’s security market share leader for consumer software and services. In this role she leads engineering, sales, marketing, strategy, business development, support, and services worldwide for the consumer group. In FY ’09 the CBU grew to become a $1.8 billion business.

Under Chaffin’s leadership, the CBU developed and launched Norton’s 2009 products, which have won more than 130 awards and are the fastest, lightest consumer security products in the industry. She also led an effort to expand the consumer portfolio, both through acquisition and internal development, to drive more customer value in areas such as online backup, consumer PC services and software utilities.

Providing the best possible customer experience is a cornerstone of Chaffin’s leadership. During her tenure, Norton customer satisfaction and loyalty has reached record levels. For two years running, Symantec has received a STAR Award for its outstanding support from the Service and Support Professionals Association.

Most recently, Chaffin served as Symantec’s executive vice president and chief marketing officer. As Symantec’s first CMO, Chaffin built a global marketing operation, which was named as a leader in the 2006 IDC Marketing Performance Matrix.

Prior to Symantec, Chaffin spent 21 years at Hewlett-Packard in general management and marketing leadership roles. She has been publicly recognized for her career accomplishments and community involvement, including being named to Women 3.0 Magazine’s “Top 100 Women in Corporate America.” Chaffin is a member of the Dean’s Advisory Council for the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. She is the President of the Saratoga-Los Gatos Chapter of National Charity League, Inc.

Chaffin graduated summa cum laude from the University of California, San Diego. She earned a master’s degree in business administration from the University of California, Los Angeles.

Jay Adelson is Digg's Chief Executive Officer. He runs the place with coffee, cell phones and video chat.

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Jeff Cavins is a technology veteran with over 19 years of senior-level experience in emerging growth technology, software, Internet and digital media companies. Prior to Fuze Box, Mr. Cavins served as President and CEO of Loudeye Corporation (NASDAQ: LOUD), a global leader in digital media distribution technology, which was subsequently acquired by Nokia. During his tenure, he expanded the company globally, developed strategic partnerships with such companies as Microsoft, Nokia and Virgin, and grew shareholder value by over 1700%.

As Senior Vice President for Exodus Communications, a leading managed hosting and interactive web services company, he was responsible for almost $1 billion in revenue, 1100 employees and strategic partnerships with such industry leaders as Google, Yahoo! and MSN. Prior to that, Mr. Cavins served as President and CEO of CSI Digital, an advanced technology software and systems company developing visual interactive technologies for the TV and Film Industries. CSI Digital was recognized by Inc. Magazine in 2007 as the 100th fastest growing private company in America and, in the same year, won first place in the first-ever Deloitte and Touche Fast 50 Program. Prior to CSI, he spent nearly a decade in the Broadcast Division of Sony Corp.

Mr. Cavins is a member of the Board of Directors for Fuze Box. He is also a member of the Board of Directors for the Human BioMolecular Research Institute in San Diego and is a former Venture Advisor at Azure Capital in San Francisco.

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Jens Bang brings a strong background in consumer products marketing and management to Cone. Bang, twice a Cone client over a 20-year period, joined the agency in 1997 as Partner, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, was appointed President and COO in 1999, and was named CEO and President in 2005. He divides his time between day-to-day operations, client work and new business outreach.

With a depth of global experience and a diverse consumer products background, Bang has a strong record of achievement in the strategic positioning and development of leadership brands. His broad sales and marketing management knowledge comes from both the client and the agency side and was gained in rapid growth entrepreneurial environments as well as in large corporate businesses.

Bang is first and foremost a brand builder. He began his career at the Benton and Bowles Advertising Agency and International Paper in New York, and then moved to Boston to join an advertising agency as Account Supervisor managing the Timberland business. After three years, he moved to the client side and began his experience as a Cone client working as the first Director of Marketing at Timberland.

While Bang was Vice President of Global Marketing for Rockport, the company became the number one brand in comfort footwear. It is during this tenure that he and Cone partnered to develop the brand positioning that led to Rockport’s recognition as the market leader in fitness walking. The success of the Rockport brand was the second opportunity for Jens to strategically partner with Cone.

During a second stint at The Timberland Company, Bang was the Senior Vice President of Sales & Marketing, directing U.S. and Canadian operations for the company’s three strategic businesses: footwear, apparel, and retail stores. He managed the integration of these business units and the strategic positioning of the Timberland brand worldwide.

As Vice President and General Manager of Reebok Apparel, he led Reebok’s entry into the performance apparel business, spearheading its integration with footwear operations. Bang served as the Reebok liaison with the U.S. Olympic Committee at the 1992 Summer Olympics in Barcelona, Spain.

Prior to coming to Cone, Bang, an active sports enthusiast, served as Executive Vice President of Nordica USA, part of Benetton Sports System Group. There he was responsible for the sales and marketing of all brands, under the Nordica USA umbrella.

Bang is a graduate of East Carolina University and is listed in Who’s Who in America’s Colleges and Universities as well as Who's Who In Business. He is a member of the Counselors Academy of PRSA, both the National and N.E. chapters of PRSA, Ad Club Boston, and the Two/Ten Footwear Foundation. He also serves as a board member of The Council of Public Relations Firms.

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Did you know that Jim Koch, founder of The Boston Beer Company and brewer of Samuel Adams, travels to Bavaria each year to hand select the finest Noble hops for his brews? And that he tastes every batch of beer bottled? Jim’s passion for brewing quality, full-flavored beer and the desire to follow a family tradition led him to become the successful brewer that he is today. Making great beer is more than just his livelihood, beer is in his blood…in his briefcase…and more often than not, in his pocket.

Jim was born into an American family originally from Germany, with deep roots in brewing beer- first in Germany and then in St. Louis. For five generations, the men in the Koch family became brewmasters. At the time when Jim was looking to follow his passion, the brewing business was bleak. Small local breweries had closed all over the country and the industry’s mega-breweries were selling mass-produced, lighter beer. Jim’s father reluctantly retired from the beer business, and Jim went on to Harvard.

After graduating from Harvard, Jim took a hiatus from his graduate studies and followed his love of the great outdoors. He took a position teaching adventure skills for Outward Bound. For three years, he coached climbers into independence, urging them to muster the courage to face new challenges. Jim eventually returned to Harvard earning advanced degrees in both business and law, and on his second exit as a management consultant, he counseled the leaders of client corporations at the Boston Consulting Group. For six years, CEOs learned from Jim, and he learned from them.

Those learnings and his entrepreneurial spirit led Jim to the life-altering decision to start a business of his own. Convinced that he could find his niche in the competitive beer market, Jim followed family tradition and became a brewer. “My father thought I was crazy when I told him I wanted to start a brewery. ‘We’ve spent 20 years trying to get the smell of a brewery out of our clothes,’ Charles Koch said. I believed that it wasn’t in the clothes, it was in the blood. My dad shook his head, but at some level, he must have liked the idea, because he became my first investor,” Jim recalled. He also received from his dad the cornerstone of The Boston Beer Company: his great-great grandfather’s recipe for Louis Koch Lager.

With a determination to hand craft beer with a constant eye on quality and taste, Jim made his first batch of beer in his kitchen following the old brewing techniques. He insisted then, as he does now, that only the world’s finest all-natural ingredients will make the best beer, and that quality and flavor are the only standards worth pursuing. Jim wanted a beer brewed with American craftsmanship and pride. The recipe on that yellowed piece of paper from his father’s attic became known as Samuel Adams Boston Lager.

With a few bottles of beer, Jim made brewing a person-to-person business. When local distributors declined to carry the brew, he carried chilled bottles of his beer to bartenders around Boston and explained his idea. They thought the beer was unlike any other they’d tasted. They admired Jim for brewing the beer in small batches and keeping an obsessive eye on quality and flavor, rather than trying to compete with the larger brewers producing mass-quantity beer. They also thought naming the beer after Samuel Adams, a revolutionary thinker who fought for independence, made sense.

Needless to say, the beer caught on, and Jim built the business outward from his first accounts in Boston. Six weeks after the introduction, Samuel Adams Boston Lager was picked as “The Best Beer in America” at The Great American Beer Festival in the Consumer Preference Poll. Samuel Adams has won more awards in international beer tasting competitions in the last 20 years than any other brewery in the world.

Today, Jim’s passion to produce high-quality, flavorful beer continues. Jim still makes decisions based on quality and taste, not on costs. All eighteen distinctive styles of Samuel Adams beer are brewed with the same care and passion that was used when Jim brewed his first batch of Samuel Adams Boston Lager in his kitchen. Jim and the other brewers also enjoy challenging themselves to create brews that excite beer drinkers’ palates and push the boundaries in brewing.

As Jim looks back at the beginning of Samuel Adams, “making Samuel Adams Boston Lager and serving it to the most discriminating beer drinkers around the world is still the most compelling challenge I can imagine,” he reflects. “And, making it happen is the most fun you can have and still be working.”

Josue "Joe" Robles is president and chief executive officer of USAA, one of America's leading financial services companies. The association has been serving military families since 1922 and has become well known for its exceptional service, offering its 7 million members a comprehensive range of insurance, banking, investment products, financial advice and planning, and services designed to help them meet their financial needs. Headquartered in San Antonio, Texas, with offices throughout the United States and Europe, USAA owns or manages assets of $129 billion.

Robles oversees a corporate organization that includes USAA's Property and Casualty Insurance Group, Federal Savings Bank, Life Insurance Company, Investment Management Company, Alliance Services Company, and Financial Planning Services.

Robles was a USAA board member from 1990 to 1994 while on active duty, and joined USAA in July 1994 as special assistant to the chairman after retiring from the U.S. Army as a major general. He was named CFO and controller in September 1994, and added corporate treasurer to his responsibilities in 1995. He assumed the position of president and CEO in December 2007.

Born in Rio Piedras, Puerto Rico, Robles joined the U.S. Army in 1966. For the next 28 years, he served in a variety of command and staff positions, including active duty posts in Korea, Vietnam, Germany, and Operations Desert Shield/Desert Storm in the Middle East. Most recently, he served as the director of the Army budget and as commanding general of the 1st Infantry Division (the Big Red One).

During his military career, Robles was recognized numerous times for service and honor. He received the Distinguished Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster, the Legion of Merit with two Oak Leaf Clusters, the Bronze Star with Oak Leaf Cluster, and the Meritorious Service Medal with Oak Leaf Cluster.

Robles serves on the boards of directors of DTE Energy, the CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Hospital, the CHRISTUS Santa Rosa Children's Hospital Foundation, and the P16Plus Council of Greater Bexar County Foundation. He is a member of the FM Global Advisory Board and the Texas Governor's Business Council. Robles holds a bachelor of business administration degree in accounting from Kent State University and a master's degree in business administration from Indiana State University.

He and his wife, Patty, have three children.

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Julie Castro Abrams is a national leader in microfinance and women’s issues. She has been CEO of Women’s Initiative since 2001, following a non-profit career that spanned 20 years in Chicago. She led the transition of Women’s Initiative from a founder-led organization to a rapidly growing non-profit that has expanded throughout the Bay Area and increased the number of women trained and receiving microloans tenfold. Under her leadership, significant new services have been developed that contribute to the success of entrepreneurs and the economic growth in the communities served by the organization, and the Women’s Initiative has been recognized by the Urban Institute Best Practices Foundation, the Equal Rights Advocates and Cisco Innovation in Technology, among others. Julie currently serves on the Board of the California Association for Microenterprise Opportunity (CAMEO), on the OneCalifornia Bank Advisory board and is a highly sought after speaker and expert on microenterprise in the U.S. Julie is the recipient of the League of Women Voter’s “Women Who Could Be President” Award, SBA Advocate of the year 2009, Human Rights Award from the Commission on the Status of Women, the Women of Color Action Network Award. Prior to her work at Women’s Initiative, Julie served as Deputy Director and Director of Development and Marketing at Chicago’s Merit School of Music. Julie’s previous positions include Director of Development at Community Christian Alternative Academy and principal at the Catalyst Group consulting firm. She has also held positions with the Illinois Pro-Choice Alliance, the Chicago Department of Health, and the Chicago Foundation for Women. Julie studied for her masters degree in Social Service Administration at the University of Chicago and she has a BA in Human Development and Social Policy from the school of Education at Northwestern University. She currently lives in Novato with her husband and two children.

Women's Initiative
Women's Initiative for Self Employment is the largest microenterprise training and funding organization in the country. The Bay Area non-profit provides high-potential, low-income women the training, resources and on-going support to start and grow their own businesses and become financially self-sufficient. The business management training, technical assistance, and financial services we provide — in English and Spanish — improve the quality of life for the women we serve, their families and our communities. The women who go through the program launch businesses, create jobs and stimulate the local economy.

Lane Bess has 25 years of experience in Sales, Marketing and General Management with expertise in driving sales growth of complex computer, networking and software solutions to Fortune 2000 and Mid-size business enterprises through channel partners and direct sales. As Executive Vice President and General Manager at Trend Micro, Lane led a significant portion of the company's growth overseeing North American Operations, Worldwide Sales and the Consumer Software Division. Lane has held Sales and Marketing leadership positions at NCR Corporation and AT&T Corporation, and applied his experience in scaling businesses to a number of successful technology start-ups. Lane Bess holds a B.S degree in Economics from Carnegie Mellon University and a Masters in Business Administration from the University of Dayton.

As CEO, Laura leads the worldwide Digitas organization, and with her executive team is expanding the agency network worldwide to better serve clients on a global basis. The Agency pairs media, marketing, technology, creativity, imagination and analytics to ignite emotional bonds between people and brands. Digitas also operates the brand content platform, The Third Act, the independent healthcare marketing brand, Digitas Health, as well as Prodigious Worldwide, the world’s only standalone, global digital productions company. With sister agencies Starcom MediaVest, ZenithOptimedia and Denuo, Digitas is a member of Publicis Groupe's VivaKi—a global digital knowledge and resource center that leverages the combined scale of the autonomous operations of its members to develop new services, new tools, and new partnerships.
Bringing to the role 20 years of experience in brand management, corporate strategy, and strategic consulting, Laura has led operations in the US and helped grow the agency to be recognized as a leading digital marketing agency, who helps the world's biggest brands develop, engage and profit from building profitable relationships with their customers.
Prior to joining Digitas in 1999, Laura was president of Marketing Corporation of America, providing strategic consulting services to clients in the pharmaceutical, technology, entertainment, and financial services industry. Previously, she led the consulting practice at Yankelovich Clancy Shulman providing strategic marketing services to Fortune and Service 100 clients. Before becoming a consultant, Laura worked in strategic planning for Pfizer Pharmaceuticals, as well as product management at Bristol Myers and the Quaker Oats Company.
She serves on the advisory board of the Tufts University Entrepreneurial Leadership Institute and the Board of Directors of Benchmark Electronics.
A summa cum laude graduate of Tufts University, Laura holds an M.B.A. from the University Of Pennsylvania Wharton School Of Business.

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Matthew Paese has consulted with CEOs and senior teams from many leading organizations around the world to design and implement strategic talent initiatives, including organizational talent strategy, succession management, CEO succession, executive assessment, executive coaching and development, and executive team building. Matt also maintains a number of executive coaching relationships with senior executives in a variety of industries.

Mike Rowe has had more jobs than you. In fact, Mike has had more jobs than anyone.

As the creator and executive producer of Discovery Channel’s Emmy®-nominated series DIRTY JOBS WITH MIKE ROWE, Mike has spent years traveling the country, working as an apprentice on over 200 jobs that most people would go out of their way to avoid. From coal miners to roustabouts, maggot farmers to sheep castrators, Mike has worked in just about every industry and shot in most every state, celebrating those hard-working Americans who make civilized life possible for the rest of us.

No one is better suited to the role of good-natured guinea pig than Mike – mainly, because it’s not a role. Dirty Jobs is entirely unscripted, and Mike doesn’t cheat – he actually does the work, with a sense of humor rarely portrayed in such professions. In fact, the notion of depicting hard work as noble and fun is central to his personal mission. On Labor Day of 2008, Mike launched a website call mikeroweWORKS.com, where skilled labor and hard work are celebrated in the hope of calling attention to the steady decline in the trades and bolster enrollments in trade schools and technical colleges.
In addition to DIRTY JOBS and his mikeroweWORKS endeavor, Mike is the voice of DEADLIEST CATCH, and the national spokesman for Ford Trucks. He has traveled extensively for The Discovery Channel, hosting SHARK WEEK in South Africa, where he field tested a steel mesh “shark-suit,” and EGYPT WEEK LIVE, where he opened and explored newly discovered tombs in The Valley of the Golden Mummies.

Before Dirty Jobs, Mike’s resume was no less eclectic. Without any formal training, he began his career as a professional musician, faking his way into The Baltimore Opera, and earning his union card in the process. Soon thereafter, he crashed an audition for The QVC Cable Shopping Channel, where he was immediately hired to sell dubious merchandise in the middle of the night. There, he impersonated a host for nearly three years, spending most of his tenure on double-secret probation, while learning the ins and outs of live television. After that, he worked when he felt like it, narrating, writing, acting and hosting programs like Worst Case Scenario for TBS, On-Air TV for American Airlines, The Most for History Channel, No Relation for Fox, and New York Expeditions for PBS.

In San Francisco, Mike is best known for his work on CBS as the host of Evening Magazine, a position he left in 2005 to begin production on Dirty Jobs. He currently lives in San Francisco, where he sometimes spends up to five days a month.

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Paul Venables is the proud Founder and Creative Director of a hot independent west coast ad agency by the name of Venables Bell & Partners. If Venables were here talking with you right now, he would surely point out that the agency's big, sweeping, trademark-able philosophy has nothing to do with buzz generation, media agnosticism or content creation, but is simply our intentions are good.

Those good intentions have helped Venables and his partners attract 150 of the nicest, most talented people you'll find in advertising as well as big-time clients like Audi, HBO, Barclays, Intel, The Coca-Cola Company, ConAgra Foods and ConocoPhillips. He has no doubt a cause and effect is at work there.

Doing right by people also seems to result in odd hunks of metal and Lucite showing up at the agency in the form of Cannes, D&AD, One Show, Webby, Communication Arts, Addy, Andy, Kelly and EFFIE awards.

Prior to opening VB&P in 2001, Venables was Co-Creative Director, Associate Partner and heir apparent of Goodby, Silverstein & Partners. By the end of his six plus years there he was running over $400 million in business and had won various and sundry industry awards for clients like Pacific Bell, Discover Card, Porsche, Bell Helmets, Nike, Polaroid, Netflix, HotBot and SBC.

Venables was also an Associate Creative Director at Korey, Kay & Partners, a copywriter at McCaffrey and McCall and, at the start of his career, a telephone receptionist at a small New York agency. He had attempted to start as a telephone receptionist at a big New York agency, but failed their typing tests.

Porter co-founded Ameritocracy, makers of Insight, out of a desire to help more people get concise, useful, diverse, credible information at the websites they already read, without having to spend extra time. Originally sparked by frustration with how misinformation impacts political elections, Insight evolved to allow smart readers like you to add relevant context and comments right in-line to online articles for others to see. Perhaps best of all, when content appears in multiple places (say, a quote from the 30 Second MBA gets covered in different blogs and articles around the web), top reader comments from each site are syndicated for all to read, right at the site they already frequent. Cool stuff.

Exemplifying the "will, not skill" mantra of startups, Porter is an expert at surrounding himself with people notably cleverer than he - which, he likes to think, isn't as quite easy as it sounds. He also founded, and sits on the board, of another cool Seattle-area startup, Nearlyweds!
His earlier career includes building software for Verizon Wireless, TV Guide, Zagat, and more, building online applications for aura readers and defense contractors, and being named "Employee of the Month" by Travelocity's CEO in his 6th month of employment (he quit during his 7th). In college, he was co-chairman of the largest, and newly on-probation, College Republican chapter in the country, and in 2008, he voted for change.

Robert J. Thomas is executive director of the Accenture Institute for High Performance based in Boston, Massachusetts and the John R. Galvin Professor of Leadership at the Fletcher School of International Affairs at Tufts University. He writes, teaches and consults about leadership and transformational change.

His newest book, Driving Results Through Social Networks, which he co-authored with Rob Cross is the first management book that applies network theory to leadership and organizational performance. Prior, his book Crucibles of Leadership: How to Learn from Experience to Be a Great Leader, was hailed by Harvard's Rosabeth Kanter as "a guide for aspiring leaders in all walks of life" and by Wharton's Mike Useem as "an organizational playbook for transforming managers into leaders."

In 2002, he co-authored with Warren Bennis a book entitled Geeks and Geezers: How Era, Values, and Defining Moments Shape Leaders that explores the motivations and aspirations of leaders under the age of 35 and over the age of 70. A BusinessWeek best seller and translated into 11 languages, the book was recently reissued with a new introduction as Leading for Lifetime. Bob has also published articles on leadership and change in the Harvard Business Review, Harvard Management Update, the Wall Street Journal and BusinessWeek.com. He is the co-author with Peter Cheese and Elizabeth Craig of The Talent Powered Organization, one of the first systematic efforts to chart a strategy for talent management in the global enterprise.

His first major book, What Machines Can't Do: Politics and Technology in the Industrial Enterprise, won the 1994 C. Wright Mills Award of the Society for the Study of Social Problems. Thomas has been a featured speaker at dozens of corporate and NGO events, including those sponsored by BusinessWeek, Harvard Business Review, MIT-Sloan School, Conference Board, Society for Human Resource Management, PBS, McGraw-Hill corporate learning, the Young Presidents Organization, the Treasury Executive Institute and NASA.

Thomas leads the Accenture Institute for High Performance, Accenture's global "think and act tank" with professional researchers based in Boston, Beijing, Chicago, Delhi and London. The Institute provides Accenture with original research and actionable insights on the global political economy and on the latest developments in business practice. In addition to producing proprietary insights, Institute researchers regularly publish their ideas in Tier 1 media and also serve as subject matter experts in some of Accenture's largest and most important consulting engagements.

In his role as a professor at Tuft University's Fletcher School, Thomas teaches courses on the personal and organizational dimensions of leadership to mid-career executives from all over the world and from business, government, the armed forces and NGOs. He also maintains his affiliation to MIT through his participation in the Sloan Fellows, the Leaders for Manufacturing, and the Greater Boston Executive programs. In addition, he periodically teaches in executive sessions for the Harvard Business Review, the Center for Management Research, and the International Consortium for Executive Development Research.

An Eagle Scout whose upbringing in Central California left him with a lifelong passion for fast cars and fresh vegetables, he lives in Brookline, Massachusetts, with his wife Rosanna, chair of the Women's Studies Department at Wellesley College, and their daughter, Alyssa.

Timothy "Scott" Case is a technologist, entrepreneur and inventor and was co-founder of priceline.com, the "Name Your Own Price" Internet service. As Chief Technology Officer, he was responsible for building the technology that enabled priceline.com's hyper-growth. Moving beyond technology he successfully launched several priceline.com businesses. These included Priceline for Gasoline, by far the firm's fastest growing business. At the Walker Digital Invention Laboratory, Scott helped build a portfolio of intellectual property, and is a named inventor on dozens of U.S. patents including the underlying portfolio for priceline.com. Previously, Scott co-founded Precision Training Software, a software company that developed the world's first PC-based simulated flight instructor and photo-realistic flight simulator.

In 2006, Scott joined the Malaria No More team to inspire individuals and institutions in the private sector to end deaths cause by malaria. He also serves as the Chairman of Network for Good (www.NetworkForGood.org), a national nonprofit that has distributed more than $100 million to 20,000 nonprofits. Network for Good provides online fundraising and communications services to over 5,000 nonprofit organizations. Scott continues to build social enterprises that use technology, commercial processes, and incentives to create sustainable, scalable solutions to improve people's lives.

Sherif Mityas brings to Movie Gallery, Inc. nearly 20 years of experience in the retail sector. He joined the company as COO in June 2008 and was promoted to President and CEO in March 2009. In his current role, Mityas is responsible for operating one of the largest entertainment retailers in the country with 3,500 stores and more than 25,000 employees. Prior to joining Movie Gallery, Inc., Mityas was a Partner at A.T. Kearney, Inc. where he was responsible for the firm's business development, staff development and intellectual knowledge capture for all practice groups across North America. He consulted for a number of global big box and U.S. based mass merchants, department stores and grocery chains in the areas of merchandising, category management and store operations. The plans implemented under Mityas' leadership aided numerous companies in increasing profitability and profit margins by reducing costs and optimizing the retail value chain for their consumers.

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Dr. Sophie Vandebroek is chief technology officer and president of the Xerox Innovation Group for Xerox Corporation. She was named to this position January 2006, and became a corporate vice president in February 2006.

Vandebroek is responsible for overseeing Xerox's worldwide research centers and for maximizing the company's multimillion-dollar investment in research and technology.

Most recently, she was chief engineer of Xerox Corporation and vice president of the Xerox Engineering Center. As chief engineer, a position she assumed in 2002, Vandebroek was responsible for coordinating Xerox's engineering efficiency and effectiveness, a period during which Xerox refreshed more than 95 percent of its office product line and launched its flagship iGen3™ Digital Production Press. Prior to that, she served as chief technology officer at Carrier Corp. From 1991 until 2000, Vandebroek held a number of increasingly responsible roles at Xerox including technical advisor to Xerox's chief operating officer and director of the Xerox Research Centre of Canada.

Vandebroek is a Fellow of the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers and served as an elected member on the IEEE Administrative Committee. She is also a Fulbright Fellow and a Fellow of the Belgian-American Educational Foundation. She holds 12 US patents.

Vandebroek has received awards from Xerox, IBM, HP, Monsanto, the Belgium National Science Foundation, Semiconductor Research Corporation, IEEE, and Cornell University. Vandebroek served as a judge for MIT's Technology Review Young Innovators awards, the Wall Street Journal Innovation awards and the FIRST Lego and Robotics competition regional awards. She currently serves on several university and professional advisory boards.

Vandebroek was born in Leuven, Belgium. She earned a master's degree in electro-mechanical engineering from Katholieke Universiteit, Leuven, Belgium, and a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Cornell University.

Sophie enjoys traveling, kayaking and skiing with her three teenage children.

Suzy Sandberg is president of PM Digital. Since 2001, Suzy and her seasoned management team have molded the company’s vision as it relates to, developing new products, new technologies and overseeing the day-to-day operations. Under Suzy’s leadership, PM Digital has quietly become one of the leading full-service internet marketing agencies specializing in search engine marketing.

Suzy also sits as one of six members of the executive team of parent company ParadyszMatera, participating in the decision-making of the entire company. Both ParadyszMatera and PM Digital have deep roots in the retail sector. Suzy is well versed in retail issues, currently working with such high profile clients as Chico’s, Bloomingdale’s and Eileen Fisher, among others.

Before PM Digital, Suzy spent seven years in magazine circulation, first at Newsweek as a direct mail manager and finally at Time Inc. as an associate director, managing direct mail campaigns for People, InStyle, Life and Entertainment Weekly.

Drawn to the fast pace of internet marketing, Suzy thrives on the art of developing unique client strategies by creatively leveraging search engine interfaces. A graduate of NYU’s Stern School of Business, she is a member of the DMA Search Engine Marketing Council.

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His tweets have been featured on NPR’s Weekend Edition, appeared in a book, printed onto t-shirts, read on television, and posted online at the Washington Post and New York Times. He’s been named to “funniest people” and “must follow” lists by the likes of Maxim, Paste Magazine, and PC World.

In his spare time, Tim Siedell is creative director and co-owner of a brand communications studio in Nebraska.

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