INSIGHTS
Slideshow

Speakers

Mary Jane McQuillen EMBA ’07

Portfolio Manager and the Head of the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Investment Program, ClearBridge Advisors

Peter Knight

President, Generation Investment Management

Vinay Nair

Founder of Ada Investments; and Adjunct Professor, Columbia Business School

Valerie Cook Smith

Vice President of Corporate Sustainability, Citigroup

Paul Tierney

Co-founding member of Development Capital; General Partner, Aperture Venture Partners; and Adjunct Professor Columbia Business School

Paul Weissman

Founder and Principal, Centenium Advisors

Cesare Calari

Managing Director, Wolfensohn & Company

Sarah Gelfand

Director of the Impact Reporting and Investment Standards, Global Impact Investing Network

Patricia Devaney

Director of Impact Assessment, Root Capital

Antony Bugg-Levine

Managing Director, Rockefeller Foundation and Adjunct Associate Professor, Columbia Business School

Suresh Sundaresan

Chase Manhattan Bank Foundation Professor of Financial Institutions, Columbia Business School

Sophie Romana EMBA '08

Executive Director at PlaNet Finance US

Bruce Usher

Adjunct Professor and Executive-in-Residence, Columbia Business School

Christoph Sutter

CEO and Chairman, South Pole Carbon Asset Management

Rob Mosher

Director of Product Marketing, A123Systems, Inc.

Marilia Bezerra

Director of Commitments, Clinton Global Initiative

Sam Marks

Vice President, Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation

Sadie McKeown

Senior Vice President, Director of Hudson Valley and Connecticut Regions, Community Preservation Corporation

David del Ser Bartolome '08

Co-founder, Frogtek

Martin Hartigan '69

Formerly with the World Bank Group

Bright Simons

President, mPedigree Network

Paul Polizzotto

President, EcoMedia

Stuart Ruderfer

Co-CEO, Civic Entertainment Group

Justine Zinkin '02

Executive Director of Credit Where Credit Is Due

Lynne Sagalyn

Earle W. Kazis and Benjamin Schore Professor of Real Estate, and director of the Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate, Columbia Business School

Omer Imtiazuddin

Health Portfolio Manager, Acumen Fund

Paul Guenther '64

Former President, PaineWebber Group, Inc.

Randall Bourscheidt

President, Alliance for the Arts, New York

Patricia Cruz

Executive Director, Harlem Stage/Aaron Davis Hall

Chris Elam

Founding Choreographer and Artistic Director, Misnomer Dance Theater

Rick Larson

Director of Sustainable Ventures, The Conservation Fund; and Adjunct Associate Professor, Columbia Business School

Jim Thaller

Managing Director, Talier Trading Group, Inc.

Jonah Rockoff

Associate Professor of Professional Practice, Columbia Business School

Joel Rose

Founder and CEO, School of One, NYC Department of Education

Caroline Misan

Partner Manager, Latin America, VisionSpring

Craig Hatkoff '78

Founder, Tribeca Film Festival

Mike Quinn

CEO, Mobile Transactions Zambia

Bryan Corbett

Principal in Global Government and Regulatory Affairs, The Carlyle Group

Sivan McLetchie

Manager, Bridgespan

Saul Kornik

Chief, Africa Health Placements

Sanjiv Malhotra

Founder and CEO, Oorja Protonics

Jane Katz

Regional Affairs Officer and Director of Education Programs, Federal Reserve Bank of New York

Erik Shumar

Vice President and Community Reinvestment Act Officer, Amalgamated Bank

Robert Duvall

Former President and CEO, National Council of Economic Education

Martin Whittaker

Director, MissionPoint Capital Partners

Spencer Ante

Deputy Bureau Chief of the New York Corporate Bureau, Wall Street Journal

Jim Peyser

Managing Partner, NewSchools Venture Fund

Garrett van Ryzin

Paul M. Montrone Professor of Private Enterprise, Columbia Business School

Lara Galinsky

Senior Vice President, Echoing Green

Jeff Chu

Editor, Fast Company

Kristin Kearns Jordan

Founder, Bronx Preparatory Charter School

Violetta Ostafin

Principal, The Boston Consulting Group

Ken Berger

President and CEO, Charity Navigator

Summer Rayne Oakes

Co-founder and CEO, Source4Style

Amy Novogratz

Prize Director, TED

Arlo Chase

Senior Vice President for Policy Initiatives, NYS Homes and Community Renewal

Daniel Nissenbaum '88

Chief Operating Officer of the Urban Investment Group, Goldman Sachs

Paul Freitag

Managing Director of Development, Jonathan Rose Companies

Jane Reiss

Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, NYC & Company

Lane Harwell

Director, Dance/NYC

Diego Gonzalez Carvajal

Founder and President, Interrupción

Eric Schurenberg

Editor-in-Chief of BNET.com and Editorial Director of CBS MoneyWatch.com

Michael Faherty

Vice President, Brand Building Foods, U.S., Unilever NA

Lane McBride

Principal, The Boston Consulting Group

Jonathan Kaufman

Board of Directors and Founding Partner, One Percent Foundation

Rachael Chong

Founder and CEO, Catchafire

Doug Bauer

Executive Director, Clark Foundation; Adjunct Professor, Columbia Business School

David Edelson

Senior Project Manager, Energy Markets Products, NY Independent System Operator

Shayne McQuade '94

CEO, Voltaic Systems, Inc

Jason Ellis

Research Staff Member, the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center

Jonathan Rappe '06

Associate Director, EcoSecurities

Tony Lent

Senior Managing Director, Wolfensohn & Company

Cliff Schorer

Adjunct Professor, Columbia Business School

Phil Westcott

Entrepreneur, Glovico.org

Dan Garblik

Entrepreneur, LongTail Grants

Marc Bush

Entrepreneur, Donor Universal

Jacob Mnookin

Founder and Executive Director, Coney Island Preparatory Public Charter School

Mary Jane McQuillen EMBA ’07
Mary Jane McQuillen is a Portfolio Manager and the Head of the Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) Investment Program at ClearBridge Advisors. Her responsibilities include integrating ESG research into the stock-selection process for institutional and high net worth client portfolios. Mary Jane has been with the ESG program at a predecessor firm since 1996 and has 14 years of investment industry experience. Mary Jane serves on the Board of Directors for the New York Society of Security Analysts (NYSSA) and is the former Chair of its Sustainable Investing Committee. She is also a Board member of the Social Investment Forum (SIF), the national nonprofit association dedicated to advancing and growing socially responsible investing (SRI), and is a Steering Committee member of the SIF's Sustainable Investment Research Analyst Network (SIRAN) working group.
Mary Jane is a long-standing and active member of the United Nations Environment Program Finance Initiative (UNEP FI) Asset Management Working Group (AMWG), which is a collaboration of asset managers from around the world who seek to integrate ESG into investment decision-making on a global level.
She received her MBA in Finance from Columbia Business School, where she was the former co-chair of the Bernstein Center's Leadership & Ethics Board. She holds a BS in Finance from Fordham University.
In 2008, Mary Jane was named a "Rising Star of Corporate Governance" by the Millstein Center for Corporate Governance and Performance at the Yale School of Management. She is also a member of Bpeace, a volunteer organization that works to introduce sustainable business skills to women in Rwanda, Afghanistan, and the Middle East.
Session: From Socially Responsible Investing to Sustainability
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Vinay Nair
Vinay Nair at Columbia Business School is the founding partner of Ada Investments, an asset management company based in New York. He is also the author of 'Investing for Change' (Oxford University Press), a book on the use of social variables in investment management. Prior to founding Ada, he was the research director and portfolio manager at Old Lane (Citi Alternative Investments) where he managed a portfolio based on research developments in corporate finance and asset pricing. He is also an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School where he teaches sustainability and investment management; a senior fellow at the Wharton Financial Institutions Center; and a professional fellow at the Center of Law and Business at New York University. Prior to becoming an investment manager, Dr. Nair was an assistant professor of finance at the Wharton School where he developed a course on private equity and acquisitions for MBA students. He continues to teach private equity as a visiting professor at the Indian School of Business. While at Wharton, Dr. Nair published in leading finance journals, and was quoted in several news media, in topics related to corporate governance, corporate finance and asset pricing. Dr. Nair completed his PhD in financial economics from the Stern School of Business at New York University with an award for the best thesis. His undergraduate studies were at the Indian Institute of Technology, where he was awarded the Governor's Gold Medal.
Session: From Socially Responsible Investing to Sustainability
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Peter Knight
Peter Knight is the President of Generation's US business. Prior to co-founding Generation, he was a Managing Director of MetWest Financial, a Los Angeles-based financial services company from 2001 to 2003. Mr. Knight started his career with the Antitrust Division of the Department of Justice. From 1977 to 1989, he served as Chief of Staff to former VP Al Gore when Mr. Gore was a member of the U.S. House of Representatives and later the U.S. Senate. Mr. Knight served as the General Counsel of Medicis Pharmaceutical from 1989 to 1991, and then established his law practice representing numerous Fortune 500 companies as named partner in a Washington D.C. law firm. Mr. Knight has held senior positions on four presidential campaigns, including serving as the campaign manager for the successful 1996 re-election of President Clinton. Mr. Knight currently serves as a director of Medicis Pharmaceutical and Par Pharmaceuticals. He is also a member of the Board of Directors of the National Park Foundation, the Cornell University Advisory Board for the College of Arts and Sciences and the Advisory Board for the Center for Sustainable Global Enterprise at Cornell's Johnson School.
Mr. Knight received his B.A. from Cornell University and his J.D. from the Georgetown University Law Center in Washington, D.C.
Session: From Socially Responsible Investing to Sustainability
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Valerie Cook Smith
Valerie Cook Smith is Vice President of Environmental Affairs for Citigroup. She is responsible for tracking environmental issues and providing relevant information to the businesses; serving as a liaison with the SRI (Socially Responsible Investing) community and NGO stakeholders; reporting on Citigroup’s environmental achievements, and helping to "green" Citigroup's operations, including real estate and procurement. Valerie earned her MBA with a concentration in Sustainable Enterprise from UNC-Chapel Hill, and her BA at the University of Virginia in Environmental Science. She has also worked for several environmental nonprofits, including the Houston Advanced Research Center, National Audubon Society, and the Brainerd Foundation. She spent two years with the Peace Corps in Honduras as an Environmental Specialist.
Session: From Socially Responsible Investing to Sustainability
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Bryan Corbett
Bryan Corbett is a Principal in Global Government and Regulatory Affairs at the Carlyle Group. He is based in Washington, DC. Prior to joining Carlyle, Bryan served in the Bush Administration as a Special Assistant to the President for Economic Policy and as Senior Advisor to Deputy Secretary Robert Kimmitt at the Treasury Department. He also served as Majority Counsel on the Senate Banking Committee. Bryan received his JD from the George Washington Law School, where he was editor-in-chief of the Law Review. He received a BA from the University of Notre Dame.
Session: From Socially Responsible Investing to Sustainability
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Paul Tierney
Professor Paul E. Tierney, Jr. at Columbia Business School, is an investment professional who has spent his life in various forms of international, entrepreneurial finance. After serving as a Peace Corps volunteer and graduating as a Baker scholar (MBA) from the Harvard Business School, he helped establish a venture-capital business in New York and later moved to London as a founding principal of a major European merchant bank. Subsequently, he became a partner in the U.S. investment banking firm of White Weld & Co., which was acquired by Merrill Lynch in 1978. At that point, Mr. Tierney cofounded the predecessor of his current equity investment firm, Darwin Capital Partners, managing a spectrum of hedge funds and operating investments in Latin America and the United States. One of these was Coniston Partners, a large strategic block-investment partnership. Mr. Tierney is a director of United Airlines and Liz Claiborne and has previously been the chairman or a director of other public companies as well as a number of educational and philanthropic entities. His primary not-for-profit activity is that of chairman of TechnoServe, an international economic development organization in Africa and Latin America.
Session: Private Equity in Emerging Markets: Looking Beyond the Internal Rate of Return
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Paul Weissman
Paul Weissman is the founder and principal of Centenium Advisors. He has more than 25 years of experience in sales, marketing, and financial services. Prior to Centenium Advisors, he was a principal and co-founder of Indochina Partners Ltd., a New York/Saigon direct investment company where he was responsible for negotiating more than $50 million of equity financing from Goldman Sachs, Zesiger Capital Group, and other institutional investors for direct investments in green-field manufacturing and real estate ventures in Vietnam. Prior to Indochina Partners, Mr. Weissman spent eight years at the New York office of Julien J. Studley Inc., a national commercial real estate company where he rose to Corporate Managing Director responsible for developing the company's business among Japanese and other Asian corporations occupying office space in New York. Mr. Weissman negotiated more than 25 transactions for Japanese and other Asian companies totaling more than $300 million. Mr. Weissman also worked and studied in Singapore/ Indonesia (1973), Japan (1974–1976), Hong Kong (1979–1980), and Thailand and the Philippines (1980–1982). Mr. Weissman received a BA in anthropology from Vassar College and Masters Degrees in public health and urban planning from Columbia University. Mr. Weissman is a Trustee of the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Foundation and the International Committee for the Disabled, and has served as a director of several Vietnamese ventures.
Session: Private Equity in Emerging Markets: Looking Beyond the Internal Rate of Return
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Cesare Calari
Cesare Calari is a Managing Director of Wolfensohn & Company, an investment firm specializing ‎in corporate advisory services and private equity investments in emerging markets. Prior to joining Wolfensohn in October 2006, Mr. Calari had a long career at the World Bank ‎Group, which he joined in 1981 after brief stints at the Bank of Italy and in private law practice. ‎Much of this career was spent at the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank`s ‎private sector financing arm. At the World Bank Group, Mr. Calari held various senior positions, including Head of the IFC ‎Brazil and Mercosur Division, Director of the IFC Africa Department, Director of the IFC Global ‎Financial Markets Group and, most recently (2001-2006), World Bank Financial Sector Vice ‎President. In this latter capacity, Mr. Calari was responsible for the Bank`s activities in the ‎financial sector, including research and policy development, advisory services and sector lending ‎for reform and restructuring. Mr. Calari also represented the Bank in various bodies responsible ‎for the development of a new International Financial Architecture, including the Financial Stability ‎Forum. He also served as Chairman of CGAP, a global facility for the promotion of microfinance.
Mr. Calari is an Adjunct Professor of Finance at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced ‎International Studies (SAIS) in Washington DC, and a member of the Capital Markets Advisory ‎Board of Georgetown University McDonough School of Business, of the Editorial Board of ‎‎"Savings and Development", and of the Bretton Woods Committee. He has served on various ‎corporate boards, including Moneda Asset Management (Chile), Zivnostenska Banka (Czech ‎Republic), International Bank in Poland, and Nomura Hungary.
Mr. Calari, an Italian national, has studied Law at the University of Bologna Law School (JD ‎‎1977), Economics and International Affairs at Johns Hopkins SAIS (MA 1979) and has attended ‎executive development courses at Harvard and Stanford.‎
Session: Private Equity in Emerging Markets: Looking Beyond the Internal Rate of Return
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Paul Weissman
Paul Weissman is the Founder and Principal of Centenium Advisors. He has over 25 years of experience in sales, marketing and financial services. Prior to Centenium Advisors, Mr. Weissman was a Principal and Co-Founder of Indochina Partners Ltd. a New York/Saigon direct investment company where he was responsible for negotiating more than $50 million of equity financing from Goldman Sachs, Zesiger Capital Group and other institutional investors for direct investments in green-field manufacturing and real estate ventures in Vietnam. Prior to Indochina Partners, Mr. Weissman spent eight years at the New York office of Julien J. Studley Inc., a national commercial real estate company where he rose to Corporate Managing Director responsible for developing the company's business among Japanese and other Asian corporations occupying office space in New York. Mr. Weissman negotiated more than twenty five transactions for Japanese and other Asian companies totaling over $300 million. Mr. Weissman also worked and studied in Singapore/Indonesia (1973), Japan (1974 – 1976), Hong Kong (1979 – 1980), and Thailand and the Philippines (1980 – 1982). Mr. Weissman received a B.A. in anthropology from Vassar College and a Masters Degrees in public health and urban planning from Columbia University. Mr. Weissman is a Trustee of the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship Foundation and the International Committee for the Disable, and has served as a director of several Vietnamese ventures.
Session: Making Room for Private Equity Firms in Frontier Markets
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Antony Bugg-Levine
Antony Bugg-Levine joined the Rockefeller Foundation in New York in January 2007. Among other responsibilities, he leads the Foundation’s Initiative on Harnessing the Power of Impact Investing that seeks to help catalyze an efficient industry that can deploy investment capital to complement philanthropy in solving social challenges at scale.
Prior to joining Rockefeller, he served as the Country Director of the international NGO TechnoServe in Nairobi, Kenya, where he helped to design and implement business solutions to rural poverty focused on smallholder farmer economic integration and consulting to medium-scale enterprises.
In Kenya he also worked with various capital providers — including micro-finance institutions, commercial banks and private equity managers — to develop profitable mechanisms to extend lending to rural businesses and smallholder farmers.
Earlier in his career, as a consultant with McKinsey, he focused in financial services and healthcare, managed the team that undertook a strategic review for the United Nations' Global Compact, and helped to develop new frameworks to incorporate social dynamics into corporate strategy.
A native of South Africa, he served in the late 1990s as the communications director at the South African Human Rights Commission and as a speechwriter and media strategist for the African National Congress's 1999 election campaign.
He is an associate adjunct professor at the Columbia Business School where he teaches Business Innovations in International Development.
Bugg-Levine is a graduate of Yale College and earned an MPA focused on Economic Development from Princeton's Woodrow Wilson School.
Session: Connecting the Dots through Social Impact Measurement
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Sarah Gelfand
Sarah Gelfand serves as the Director of the Impact Reporting and Investment Standards (IRIS) at the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN). She focuses on promoting adoption of the IRIS standards and overseeing the evolution of the IRIS taxonomy and indicators. Sarah previously worked in product development, business development, and strategic planning with several technology companies. Sarah also conducted public health research in malaria, HIV/AIDS, and cancer, among other areas. Sarah holds a BA in Applied Mathematics from Brown University and an MSc in Statistics from the University of Washington.
Session: Connecting the Dots through Social Impact Measurement
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Patricia Lee Devaney
Patricia Lee Devaney is the Director of Impact Assessment at Root Capital. Prior to joining Root Capital, Ms. Devaney was an independent consultant, focusing on microfinance research. She previously worked for five years at ACCION International, where she was responsible for the organization’s start-up poverty assessment project and other quantitative and qualitative research in microfinance. Ms. Devaney holds an MPA from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government and a BA in international studies from Colby College.
Session: Connecting the Dots through Social Impact Measurement
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Diego Gonzalez Carvajal
Diego Gonzalez Carvajal is the founder and president of Interrupción, a stakeholder community that is working to build a sustainable future through responsible consumption, sustainable development, organic farming and fair trade. He received his undergraduate degree in Economics in Universidad Torcuato Di Tella and his MBA in Buenos Aires at Instituto de Altos Estudios (IAE). He was elected an Ashoka Social Entrepreneur Fellow in 2004. Originally from Bariloche, Diego now lives in Buenos Aires.
Session: Connecting the Dots through Social Impact Measurement
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Suresh Sundaresan
Suresh Sundaresan is the Chase Manhattan Bank Professor of Economics and Finance at Columbia Business School. He has published in the areas of Treasury auctions, bidding, default risk, habit formation, term structure of interest rates, asset pricing, investment theory, pension asset allocation, swaps, options, forwards, futures, fixed-income securities markets and risk management. His research papers have appeared in major journals such as the Journal of Finance, Review of Financial Studies, Journal of Business, Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, European Economic Review, Journal of Banking and Finance, Journal of Political Economy, etc. He has also contributed articles in Financial Times, and World Bank Conferences. He is an associate editor of Journal of Finance and Review of Derivatives Research. His current research focus is on default risk and how its affects asset pricing and sovereign debt securities. He has worked as a senior strategist at Lehman Brothers in their Fixed Income Division during 1986-1987. He has consulted full time for Morgan Stanley Asset Management during 2000-2001. His consulting work focuses on term structure models, swap pricing models, credit risk models, valuation, and risk management. He has conducted training programs for leading investment banks including, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, CSFB and Lehman Brothers. He is the author of the text "Fixed-Income Markets and Their Derivatives." He has served on the Treasury Bond Markets Advisory Committee. He was the resident scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York during 2006. Suresh Sundaresan has testified before the United States Congress on the transparency of Corporate Bond Markets.
His current research work focuses on corporate bankruptcy, design of bankruptcy code, the role of collateral in interest rate swaps, and the role of central bank in providing liquidity to private capital markets. More recently, he has been working on micro-lending with a view to characterizing defaults, recovery rates, and interest rates in micro-loans. The research attempts to characterize the efforts that are needed to lower the borrowing rates. Another ongoing project explores whether the duration of the borrowing relationship has led to an improvement of borrower's welfare. At Columbia University, he is responsible for teaching two MBA elective courses: Debt Markets, and Advanced Derivatives. He has trained MBA and PhD students, who currently serve on the faculty at universities in the United States and abroad as well as in senior positions in major investment banks around the world.
Session: Leveraging Distribution Networks to Grow BOP Markets
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Sophie Romana EMBA '08
Sophie Romana is a private equity professional with a background in humanitarian relief and international development. She joined Planet Finance US in 2009 as Executive Director to run the US office and focus on launching a venture capital fund to help New York's small entrepreneurs gain access to capital. Prior to PlaNet Finance, she served as Vice President, Investor Relations at Mercantile Capital Partners a New York based PE fund focusing on the consumer and merchandising sectors. She brings her experience in the humanitarian and international development fields as she has worked for French non governmental organizations in France, Bosnia, Rwanda and Madagascar. Beyond her current involvement in microfinance, her interests cover carbon finance, social enterprises, corruption and governance in the banking sector. Sophie holds a bachelor degree in International Public Law and a Master’s degree in Public Law, both from Université Paris I Sorbonne and an MBA from Columbia Business School where she served as co-chair of the Sanford Bernstein Center for Leadership and Ethics' EMBA Student Board. She is a dual French-American citizen and currently lives in New York.
Session: Leveraging Distribution Networks to Grow BOP Markets
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Omer Imtiazuddin
Omer has been with Acumen Fund since 2006. Prior to joining Acumen Fund, Omer worked as a consultant for the International Finance Corporation leading the design of the Global Youth and Informal Enterprise Initiative. He also has experience in private equity having worked at Barnard & Co. LLC, a venture capital fund focusing on the communications, information technology and internet industries. Prior to that, he worked in investment banking at Morgan Stanley. Omer also has an extensive background in micro enterprise and small business development, having worked with ACCION, Women's World Banking, Trickle Up and the Business Outreach Center Network. Omer received his BA from Yale University and an MBA from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.
Session: Leveraging Distribution Networks to Grow BOP Markets
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Caroline Misan
Caroline Misan is responsible for managing partner relationships in Latin America and assisting the Global Sales & Operations team in sustainably expanding VisionSpring’s impact. Prior to joining VisionSpring, Ms. Misan worked with a variety of private and public sector organizations. Most recently, she worked for PRI Project Development, a project development and financial advisory firm, where she helped conduct feasibility studies and create business plans for Nigeria-based projects. Previously, she worked at the Brazilian Embassy in Washington, DC, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce and the Citigroup Private Bank. Ms. Misan received her B.A. in International Affairs from George Washington University. She is fluent in English, Spanish and Portuguese, and has lived and studied in several Latin American countries.
Session: Leveraging Distribution Networks to Grow BOP Markets
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Bruce Usher
Bruce Usher was CEO of EcoSecurities Group plc from 2002 to 2009, during which time he built it into the world’s largest public carbon credit company. EcoSecurities structures and guides greenhouse gas emission reduction projects through the Kyoto Protocol, acting as principal intermediary between the projects and the buyers of carbon credits. Usher took EcoSecurities through it’s only private funding round, followed by an IPO, a secondary public placement and strategic investment, and the sale of the entire company to JP Morgan in December 2009. EcoSecurities has 250 employees in 21 countries, and has amassed one of the industry’s largest and most diversified portfolios of emission reduction projects. Today, the company is working on 408 projects in 36 countries using 18 different technologies, with the potential to generate more than one hundred million carbon credits, representing approximately 10% of all projects approved by the United Nations under the Kyoto Protocol. Prior to EcoSecurities, Usher was co-founder and CEO of TreasuryConnect LLC, which provided electronic trading solutions to banks and was sold to eSpeed Inc in 2001. For the previous six years, Usher was COO of The Williams Capital Group, a boutique institutional investment bank specializing in capital markets activities for major corporations and institutional investors. Prior to that he spent four years as a Vice President at Lehman Brothers in both New York and Tokyo. Before joining Lehman, Usher worked for several years at the Chuo Trust & Banking Company in Tokyo. Mr. Usher is an Adjunct Professor of finance at Columbia Business School in New York, where he developed and teaches the Carbon Finance course and the Finance & Sustainability course in the MBA program. The objective of both courses is to utilize financial tools to create sustainable value for society. Usher has been teaching at Columbia since 2002. Mr. Usher received an MBA with Distinction from Harvard Business School.
Session: Approaches to Investing in Climate Change: Carbon Finance, Investment Management, and Private Equity / Venture Capital
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Christoph Sutter
Dr. Christoph Sutter is the CEO and Chairman of South Pole. Christoph has been working on CDM related issues since 1997 and has been a member of the UN CDM Executive Board Methodology Panel for several years. Before co-founding South Pole he was a consultant and carbon finance expert with McKinsey & Company. He holds a Ph.D. in environmental sciences, having written his thesis on CDM sustainability assessment methodologies. The World Economic Forum (WEF) selected Christoph as a Young Global Leader 2009.
Session: Approaches to Investing in Climate Change: Carbon Finance, Investment Management, and Private Equity / Venture Capital
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Martin Whittaker
Martin Whittaker leads MissionPoint’s environmental finance strategy, with a focus on origination and structuring in the carbon trading and specialty environmental commodity markets. Martin was most recently a senior vice president at Swiss Re where he was part of the Environmental and Commodity Markets team. At Swiss Re, Martin helped to establish and grow the company’s emissions trading and carbon insurance capabilities, and provided carbon advisory and clean energy market expertise to the company’s asset management organization. Prior to Swiss Re, Martin was a managing director of Innovest Strategic Value Advisors, Inc., where he led the firm’s clean energy and carbon finance practice, and was an Adjunct Professor at the University of Toronto where he taught environmental finance. Martin has also served in the downstream environmental group at Elf Aquitaine and in consulting with Golder Associates. Martin earned a PhD in environmental science from the University of Edinburgh, an MBA from the University of London, and MSc and BSc degrees in Chemistry from, respectively, McGill University, Montreal and the University of St. Andrews, Scotland.
Session: Approaches to Investing in Climate Change: Carbon Finance, Investment Management, and Private Equity / Venture Capital
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Jonathan Rappe '06
Jonathan is an Associate Director with EcoSecurities, a GHG emissions reduction project developer and Ireland-based subsidiary of JP Morgan. His responsibilities include management of commercial activities in the US and Latin America, including project origination, restructuring, and portfolio transactions. His prior position at EcoSecurities as Head of Investment entailed financial modeling, risk analysis and structuring of CDM project-based investments. Earlier work experience includes management of a 15 acre organic market garden and fresh food delivery business in Burlington, Vermont. Mr Rappe holds a Master of International Affairs and Master of Business Administration from Columbia University.
Session: Approaches to Investing in Climate Change: Carbon Finance, Investment Management, and Private Equity / Venture Capital
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Tony Lent
Tony Lent is a seasoned private equity investor and clean energy entrepreneur with seventeen years of experience in renewable, efficiency, and carbon-linked investments. In 2003, he co-founded US Renewables Group, a $750MM private equity fund that, through 2009, invested in fifteen companies across the renewable and clean energy sectors in assets, project developers, clean energy technology scale-up and services. Mr. Lent assembled the founding management team and shaped USRG’s investment strategy over time. At USRG, he had responsibility for sourcing, structuring and overseeing portfolio investments, and he managed deals and deal terms in geothermal, biofuels, landfill methane, and biomass. He established the firm’s biofuels and renewable chemicals verticals building out a pipeline of opportunities in the US and Latin America. He led the investment in ASA Alliances, an ethanol company which was sold to Verasun, and he was active in the conception and development of Fulcrum BioEnergy, a leading waste-to-fuels company.
From 1994 to 2002, Mr. Lent was a founding Managing Director of EA Capital, a financial advisory firm focused on renewables, carbon finance and forestry finance. Clients included Duke, AEP, energy technology companies, the US National Renewable Energy Lab and the World Bank/IFC. EA Capital developed the business plan for Terra Capital for the IFC, the first venture fund targeting biodiversity commercialization (located in Brazil), and advised the World Bank/GEF on setting up the Prototype Carbon Fund. Prior to forming EA Capital, Mr. Lent co-founded EcoTimber in 1992, a pioneer in commercializing forest products from sustainably managed forests in Latin America, Africa and Southern Asia.
Session: Approaches to Investing in Climate Change: Carbon Finance, Investment Management, and Private Equity / Venture Capital
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Garrett van Ryzin
Garrett Van Ryzin is the Paul M. Montrone Professor of Private Enterprise at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business and Chair of the Decision, Risk and Operations Division. His research interests include stochastic optimization, pricing and revenue management, supply chain management and sustainable business. He co-teaches a course joint with Earth and Environmental Engineering on the business of sustainable energy.
Session: Energy Storage and Battery Technology
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Sanjiv Malhotra
Sanjiv Malhotra has extensive technical and business understanding of fuel cells and alternative energy technologies. Dr. Malhotra's professional experience includes more than 15 years in the design, development and commercialization of a variety of fuel cell technologies. Aside from heading Product Development teams, Dr. Malhotra has been the VP of Sales, Marketing & Business Development at pioneering Fuel Cell companies such as DCH Technology and H-Power, where he created and managed large sales and business development teams. While at H-Power he was instrumental in leading its IPO in Aug 2000. Dr. Malhotra worked at the renowned Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and led research on design and development of Zinc-Air Batteries with a leading battery manufacturer. Dr. Malhotra has been an advisor to leading VC firms such as Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers where he assisted its venture partners with due diligence of several energy related investment opportunities. Dr. Malhotra has served on many technical committees, panels and boards and has been a keynote and invited speaker at several international energy forums and events.
Session: Energy Storage and Battery Technology
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Rob Mosher
Mr. Mosher is Director of Product Marketing for A123 Systems Energy Solutions Group in Hopkinton, Massachusetts. Mr. Mosher is responsible for developing the pack systems product roadmap based on A123’s advanced Lithium Ion cell technology.
Session: Energy Storage and Battery Technology
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David Edelson
David Edelson is responsible for implementing new market rules and technologies supporting NYISO’s Energy Markets, including the centralized wind forecasting program and incorporation of renewable resources into the economic dispatch. For the past 15 years, Mr. Edelson has been designing and implementing business and technical solutions across the energy, financial, healthcare, and manufacturing industries.
Session: Energy Storage and Battery Technology
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Shayne McQuade '94
Shayne McQuade is the founder of sustainable products company Voltaic Systems and is the inventor and designer of Voltaic’s line of solar bags which were premiered on Treehugger. This is Shayne’s first effort in the development of sustainable products, following a decision to focus on ventures with a positive environmental impact. He has a 10 year history as an entrepreneur having been involved with multiple technology startup companies either as Founder, CEO, or negotiating the sale. Prior to that Shayne was a management consultant with McKinsey & Co. in New York and with KPMG in Australia, the UK and Taiwan. He has an MBA from Columbia University in New York, and a Bachelor of Business from Edith Cowan University in Australia.
Session: Energy Storage and Battery Technology
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Marilia Bezerra
Marilia Bezerra, director of commitments at Clinton Global Initiative (CGI), was born and grew up in Brazil. She received her bachelor's degree and a law degree from the Federal University of Ceara in Brazil. Before graduating she founded the Andancas Art School, an institution dedicated to providing art education and bridging the gap between children from the most privilleges areas and children in the slums of her native Fortaleza. Three years later, Bezerra accepted an invitation by the Catsapa Productions Company to work in production for performing arts events in Rio de Janeiro, where she remained for four years. In 1999, Bezerra moved to New York and joined the certificate program at the Laban Bartenieff Institute, receiving a CMA a year later. Subsequently, she served as the business and financial manager for AEA Consulting, a management consulting company with a client base of leading nonprofit cultural organizations throughout Europe, the Americas, and Asia. Bezerra received a master's of science degree (with distinction) in global affairs from New York University in 2007. Since 2006, Bezerra has worked in different capacities at CGI, most recently as the deputy director of commitments.
Session: A Cross-Sector Success Story: The Neighborhood Energy Loan Program
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Sam Marks
Sam Marks is the Vice President at Deutsche Bank Americas Foundation, where he manages the group's $5 million community development grants budget, and works in tandem with the bank's Community Development Finance Group to lend and invest in affordable housing and economic development. Before his career in community development, Sam founded Breakthrough New York (formerly Summerbridge at The Town School), an academic enrichment program in which high school and college students teach motivated middle school students from public schools. After earning a Masters in Public Policy & Urban Planning at the Harvard Kennedy School, Sam acted as Director of Housing & Community Development at the nonprofit community development organization WHEDCo.
Session: A Cross-Sector Success Story: The Neighborhood Energy Loan Program
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Sadie McKeown
Since 1996, Sadie McKeown has served the Community Preservation Corporation (CPC) as Senior Vice President and Director of Lending in CPC's Hudson Valley Region. In this capacity, she oversees the entire lending process from origination through underwriting, construction supervision and conversion to permanent financing. In 2007, she became the Regional Director of CPC's newly added region, Connecticut. Prior to this, in 1992, Ms. McKeown started as a Mortgage Originator at CPC. Ms. McKeown has spearheaded CPC's Downtown Main Street initiatives where the company seeks to concentrate its financial products and creativity in support of local revitalization efforts. The work that Ms. McKeown has done in conjunction with the Business Improvement District (BID) in New Rochelle has helped to shape CPC's efforts in other communities. Ms. McKeown has used these redevelopment tools as a guide for assisting other municipalities with their revitalization plans. The approach, aptly called the "New Rochelle Model," is being used in many other towns and cities throughout New York and New Jersey. In 2006, Ms. McKeown initiated CPC’s business expansion into the State of Connecticut, working to generate investment as well as build a pipeline of viable deals requiring long term capital in distressed communities. CPC's Connecticut initiative was successful in underscoring the demand for CPC's type of loan product. She continues to work towards identifying investors so that the demand for CPC dollars can be met.
Ms. McKeown has most recently been asked to head up CPC's newly created Energy Efficiency Retrofit Loan program. The program is aimed at greening multi-family buildings in low-income communities throughout the tri-state. The program combine public incentives for energy retrofits with private dollars to reduce a borrower's energy, heat and water costs as well as lower their carbon footprint.
Ms. McKeown volunteers as a Board member for several nonprofits including Community Capital Resources, a small CDFI loan fund involved in all facets of economic empowerment. She volunteers for organizations which support the creation and maintenance of affordable housing throughout the region. Ms. McKeown recently joined the Moderate Income Housing Board in Tarrytown, where she lives, and is helping to advise on affordable projects and policies in the Village. Ms. McKeown graduated from Fordham University with a BA in Communications and earned her Masters Degree in Human Services Administration with a concentration in Housing from Cornell University.
Session: A Cross-Sector Success Story: The Neighborhood Energy Loan Program
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Michael Sturmer
Michael Sturmer is a principal with Lemle & Wolff, Inc., a full service real estate company that operates more than 7,500 units in upper Manhattan and the Bronx. The firm specializes in the development and management of affordable housing with a particular emphasis on the revitalization of distressed properties. Mr. Sturmer oversees Lemle & Wolff's planning and development activities and is responsible for site acquisition, new construction and rehabilitation. A current focus for the company is the "green" renovation of 350 rent stabilized apartments. These projects have all been planned and coordinated with city agencies, private lenders and nonprofit organizations.
Prior to joining Lemle & Wolff, Mr. Sturmer spent 11 years working on the redevelopment of distressed public housing at housing authorities in Savannah, GA, Philadelphia, PA, and Kansas City, MO. Mr. Sturmer holds a Master's Degree in city and regional planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Bachelor's degree from Northwestern University.
Session: A Cross-Sector Success Story: The Neighborhood Energy Loan Program
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Spencer Ante
Spencer Ante has been writing about technology, business and culture for more than 12 years. He is currently Deputy Bureau Chief of the New York Corporate Bureau of The Wall Street Journal. Previously he was an associate editor and department editor at BusinessWeek. Before joining BusinessWeek in February, 2000, he was a staff reporter for TheStreet.com. Prior to that, he was a contributing writer at Wired News, a columnist for Business 2.0, and a producer for the Netscape NetCenter. Ante was also a founding associate editor of The Web Magazine. Over the years, Ante has also written for The New York Times, Wired, Men’s Journal, Salon, SPIN, Business 2.0, San Francisco Chronicle, and other publications. Ante received a bachelor’s degree from Indiana University’s Kelley School of Business and a master’s in journalism from the University of California at Berkeley.
Session: Innovative Mobile Phone Strategies and Applications in the Developing World
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David del Ser Bartolomé '08
David del Ser Bartolomé is the co-founder and CEO of Frogtek, which leverages the mobile phone revolution and brings the IT productivity boom to small businesses in the developing world. David worked for five years designing mobile applications in Vodafone's Research & Development group in Spain in partnership with companies such as Nokia, Adobe and Ericsson, as a telecommunications engineer. He studied at Columbia University to understand how inclusive business can foster economic development. He is the founder and Chairman of Microlumbia, a nonprofit fund focused on investments and consulting for microfinance institutions. He holds a dual degree in Telecom Engineering from the Universidad Politecnica in Madrid and ENST in Paris, and an MBA from Columbia Business School where he received the Nathan Gantcher Award in Social Enterprise.
Session: Innovative Mobile Phone Strategies and Applications in the Developing World
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Bright Simons
Bright Simons is a Ghanaian technology innovator, Development Activist and Social Entrepreneur. As the Director of Development Research at the award-winning African think tank IMANI (www.imanighana.org), and as the President of the mPedigree Network (www.mPedigree.Net), he works to promote innovation as the best response to Africa’s various developmental challenges. His insights have been shared through the Economist, New York Times, BusinessWeek, the Financial Times, Asian Times, and the BBC, where he is a regular commentator for the World Service. Bright is a Technology Pioneer of the World Economic Forum and a member of its Global Agenda Councils (the organisation's foremost expert body). Bright invented a system for large-scale supply chains between 2004 and 2005, that has been successfully deployed by some pharmaceutical companies to protect their brands from counterfeiters, and by consumers to instantly verify the genuineness of their medicines by means of a free text message. The concept is at the base of the mPedigree platform, arguably one of the most celebrated item of original technology to emerge from Africa. Bright has consulted for the World Bank in the development of a new strategy for Africa, and for the West African Health Organisation in the context of the latter's recent wide-ranging policy on medicinal counterfeiting in the region. A TED and Ashoka Fellow, he is also both a Tech Award Laureate and a member of the Evian Group's Brain Trust at IMD, widely considered to be Europe's foremost business school. In 2010, he became an Associate of the Archbishop Desmond Tutu Fellowship.
Session: Innovative Mobile Phone Strategies and Applications in the Developing World
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Mike Quinn
Mike is an entrepreneur with a passion for business in Africa. He moved to Zambia in February 2009, where he discovered a start-up business called Mobile Transactions with a vision of a "Cashless Africa". He introduced Mobile Transactions to the Grassroots Business Fund (GBF), and facilitated a $200,000 investment deal before joining the business full time. He has overseen growth from the first transaction to cash flow break-even, and was appointed CEO in January 2010. He has also joined the founding brothers as a full equity partner in the business and has invested his own capital. Mike has over 4 years experience working with businesses and social enterprises in Ghana, The Gambia, and Zambia. He also holds an MBA with Distinction from Oxford University, where he was a Skoll Scholar for Social Entrepreneurship, along with an MSc in Management Development from the London School of Economics. He grew up in Calgary, Canada, and completed his undergraduate degree in Mechanical Engineering at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver.
Session: Innovative Mobile Phone Strategies and Applications in the Developing World
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Martin Hartigan '69
Martin Hartigan spent a 30 year career working on private sector development across all agencies of the World Bank Group. He engaged extensively in IFC’s private project financing activities in Asia, Africa, and the Mid-east, and helped create the enabling investment regimes and institutional capabilities of member states worldwide to attract productive private investment. He helped establish the Bank Group’s successful Foreign Investment Advisory Service, initiating its program in sub Saharan Africa which, during his seven years there, helped strengthen the investment regimes of more than 30 countries. He then launched the Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency’s (MIGA’s) global Investment Marketing Services to assist member countries’ investment promotion agencies (IPAs) in program execution. Capacity-building components of that work included developing and introducing into IPAs new state-of-the-art, in-house software, and launching in 1995 the world’s first internet based investment information and networking marketplace (www.ipanet.net). The latter was an instant success enabling all member countries to disseminate globally their latest investment intelligence and opportunities and interact online with the world’s investment community.
After leaving the Bank Group, Martin launched a global Internet and interacting software business that for several years built and hosted websites for prestigious entities focusing on development, while also starting to create new environmental and triple bottom line reporting systems. He also served on the Board of Advisors of a WHO/World Bank/Rockefeller Foundation initiative focusing on public-private partnerships in health. Prior to his MBA at Columbia Business School, Martin’s work had included developing business software applications for an early 1960s version IBM mainframe system. Five years ago, Martin was invited by a leading faith-based organization in the Mt Kenya region to assist its community development efforts, which he is now attempting in unconventional ways involving, inter alia, use of ICT.
Session: Innovative Mobile Phone Strategies and Applications in the Developing World
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Jason Ellis
Dr. Jason Ellis is a Research Staff Member at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center in New York. His work over the last 10 years has focused on the design, implementation, and study of social computing technologies for underserved communities. He is currently the team lead for the Social Computing Group's work on mobile applications for developing nations. Jason's PhD work addressed inner-city classrooms, where he designed and implemented an online community of oral history. His work has appeared in conferences such as ACM CHI, CSCW, and DIS. Jason earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Georgia Tech.
Session: Innovative Mobile Phone Strategies and Applications in the Developing World
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Doug Bauer
Doug manages not only the Clark Foundation but is also executive director of the Scriven and Fernleigh Foundations. Prior to Clark, Doug was Senior Vice President with Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors (RPA) from 2002 to 2009 and led the organization’s Strategic Initiatives Team. Prior to joining RPA, he was a Vice President at Goldman, Sachs and Co. and President of the Goldman Sachs Philanthropy Fund, the firm’s charitable gift fund. From 1997 to 2000, Doug was Director of Community Partnership at SmithKline Beecham (now GlaxoSmithKline) and Executive Director of the SmithKline Beecham Foundation, where he focused on community-based health care around the world. From 1992 to 1996, Doug was a Program Officer for Culture at the Pew Charitable Trusts. And from 1988 to 1992, he managed the Scott Paper Company Foundation.
Doug’s opinions and ideas on philanthropy have been featured in the Associated Press, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Contribute, the Financial Times, the Los Angeles Times, The New York Post, The Wall Street Journal and on NPR and CNBC. Doug co-authored, with Steven Godeke, Philanthropy’s New Passing Gear: Mission Related Investing, A Policy and Implementation Guide for Foundation Trustees. Doug chairs the Better Business Bureau Wise Giving Alliance and serves on boards or committees for Children’s Health Fund, The Melalucca Foundation and Philanthropy New York (formerly NYRAG). Doug is a graduate from Michigan State University. He also holds a M.S. from Penn and a M.J. from Temple University.
Session: Civic-Minded Media
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Paul Polizzotto
Paul Polizzotto serves as President of EcoMedia, a division of CBS Corporation founded on the dual principles of environmental stewardship and public-private partnership and whose mission is to use corporate advertising dollars to produce media that raises public awareness about environmental issues and helps fund solutions. In this role Polizzotto oversees all operations and the strategic direction of the company, of which he created in 2002.
In 2010, EcoMedia completed extensive green makeovers of schools in San Francisco, suburban Cook County and Miami as part of its "Green Schools Initiative," a project the company started with CBS Corporation before its acquisition. The company is also ramping up its Sustainable Media activities, which enlists corporate clients to devote a portion of their advertising buys to fund energy efficiency retrofits and on-site renewable energy in municipal buildings across America.
Prior to establishing EcoMedia, Polizzotto founded and served as CEO of Property Prep, an industrial environmental cleaning company aimed at helping clients become environmentally compliant. As part of this initiative Polizzotto pioneered concepts known as Urban Watershed Cleaning and Zero Discharge, methods of cleaning urban and storm water runoff before it enters storm drain systems - thus protecting the waters into which they feed.
Polizzotto has earned many accolades and recognition for his environmental stewardship. Earlier this year he represented the U.S. State Department and the U.S. Embassy in the UK as an expert in social entrepreneurship, where he shared with international leaders how public-private partnerships in the U.S. are successfully helping local governments accomplish their climate action goals without placing further burden on the taxpayer. In 2009 Polizzotto and EcoMedia were the recipients of the United States Conference of Mayors Excellence in Public/Private Partnerships Award. Polizzotto was also named as one of the "Top 10 'Ecopreneurs'" in 2008 and called a "Public Private Visionary" by Vanity Fair in its 2006 "Green Issue." He was also honored in 2002 with the Santa Monica Baykeeper and the Waterkeeper Alliance's prestigious "Keeper Award."
Polizzotto serves on the Board of Trustees of Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s Waterkeeper Alliance, and the Board of Directors for Grades of Green. In addition, Polizzotto serves as a guest lecturer on social entrepreneurship at the USC Marshall School of Business where he is also an inaugural member of the Board of Advisors for the Society and Business Lab.
Session: Civic-Minded Media
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Stuart Ruderfer
Stuart Ruderfer is co-founder and CEO of Civic Entertainment Group (CEG), a public-spirited events & promotions agency founded in 1999. He serves as chief creative officer, responsible for overall client development & management. He has overseen the company's growth from its inception as a two-man operation to one of the most award winning agencies in the country, including "Agency of the Year" by PROMO Magazine. Prior to CEG, Stuart created the Marketing & Events Division for the City of New York under Mayor Rudolph ("Rudy") Giuliani. Recent client work include the CNN Grills during the 2008 Democratic and Republican National Conventions, HBO Entourage Air, A&E: The Recovery Project and NFLN: Keep Gym In School.
Stuart has served as Honorary FDNY Fire Chief since 2001 when he helped create BROTHERHOOD, a commemorative book that raised more than $2 million for firefighters' families after September 11th. Stuart was also an Executive Producer for the BROTHERHOOD documentary film which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival. Stuart graduated magna cum laude from The George Washington University in 1992, where he was elected to Phi Beta Kappa. He earned his J.D. from The George Washington University Law School in 1998.
Session: Civic-Minded Media
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Jane Reiss
Jane Reiss, EVP, Chief Marketing Officer of NYC & Company, the official marketing, tourism and partnership organization for the City of New York, is responsible for overseeing all of the organization's domestic and international marketing efforts, including the development and implementation of marketing strategies and advertising campaigns for NYC & Company, the brand's revolutionary website (nycgo.com) and the state-of-the-art, high-tech Official NYC Information Center, which opened in January 2009.
In her position, Jane manages all aspects of NYC & Company's local and global tourism marketing outreach; high-profile retail, dining and entertainment marketing initiatives; and those that encompass diversity, volunteerism and cause marketing. Jane also oversees the business development teams for corporate partnerships, which to date include blue-chip clients such as American Express, American Airlines, Google, AT&T, JetBlue, Travelocity, Red Bull and Coca-Cola, to name a few.
A veteran of the advertising industry for more than 20 years, Jane was most recently Managing Director/Partner at Margeotes Fertitta and Partners, a $500-million full-service advertising/marketing agency, where she headed up Strategic Development and Client Services for upscale and Fortune 500 clients such as AT&T Wireless, Coca-Cola, MediaOne Broadband and Campbell Soup Company. Her experience is proven in all areas of strategic and mission planning, brand stewardship, business development alliances and team-building across multiple disciplines.
Session: Civic-Minded Media
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Eric Schurenberg
Eric Schurenberg is Editor-in-Chief of BNET.com and Editorial Director of CBS MoneyWatch.com. Previously, Eric was managing editor of MONEY Magazine, deputy editor of Business 2.0, and an assistant managing editor of Fortune Magazine. He was also the managing editor of goldman.com, a Web site for Goldman Sachs Group's personal wealth management business. Schurenberg is a regular commentator on Nightly Business Report on PBS, and was a regular on Marketplace Radio, Westwood One, WCBS Channel 2 and The Early Show. He is also a regular speaker and moderator, most recently at the Morningstar Investment Conference and the National Economic Summit. Schurenberg has won a Gerald Loeb Award for distinguished business journalism, a National Magazine Award, and a Page One Award.
Session: Asset Development: Innovations for Reaching the Financially Underserved
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Justine Zinkin '02
Justine Zinkin is CEO of Credit Where Credit Is Due and Neighborhood Trust and has overseen both organizations dramatic growth since 2002. She has more than 15 years of experience in nonprofit and community development work. She previously served as Director of Economic Independence Programs at the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development, and as Director of Workforce Development at Common Ground Community HDFC. Justine holds an MBA from Columbia Business School, an MS in Population Studies from Harvard University's School of Public Health, and a BA from Brown University.
Session: Asset Development: Innovations for Reaching the Financially Underserved
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Jane Katz
Jane Katz is regional affairs officer and director of education programs. She is responsible for setting the Bank’s educational strategy, reviewing programs, and developing and launching new efforts to support economic and financial literacy in the Second District. Before joining the Bank in 2008, Ms. Katz was an economist and editor of the Regional Review at the Federal Reserve Bank of Boston. Ms. Katz earned a master's degree from Harvard University and a bachelor's degree from the University of Chicago.
Session: Asset Development: Innovations for Reaching the Financially Underserved
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Erik Shumar
Erik Shumar is the Vice President and Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) Officer at Amalgamated Bank. His responsibilities at Amalgamated Bank include creating and managing the financial education curriculum and seminars, establishing new and managing existing community-based and nonprofit organization relationships, and developing and managing retail banking products such as "Credit Assistance Programs."
In addition, he is a Doctoral Candidate in Social Policy & Administration at Columbia University School of Social Work. His research interests include the cultural development of adolescents in East Asia, international adoption, and nonprofit organizational decision-making. Mr. Shumar is currently writing his dissertation on behavioral finance and its application in financial education to create positive behavioral change in consumers with regard to how they conceptualize and understand their personal finances. In addition to his doctoral work. Mr. Shumar is also actively engaged as a freelance consultant for for-profit and nonprofit organizations regarding operational and financial management. He has taught courses in financial management, research methods, and quantitative analysis at Columbia University School of Social Work geared towards social enterprise.
Formerly, Mr. Shumar was the Director of Programs and Finance at the Coalition for Debtor Education, where he conducted financial education classes and also created a successful revenue-generating, social enterprise arm of the organization. Utilizing his concentrated studies in and specialized understanding of low and moderate-income populations as well as underserved communities, Mr. Shumar has served as a consultant on banking and behavioral finance-related issues for governmental agencies including the FDIC, Federal Reserve Bank of New York, New York City Department of Consumer Affairs, and the Manhattan Borough President’s Office. He has extensive international experience and is fluent in both Japanese and Korean. While in South Korea, he worked as the Educational Director for Kaplan Center Korea. In New York, he has worked as the Operations Manager for City Harvest and a Regulatory Consultant at ING. Mr. Shumar is a summa cum laude graduate with honors of Bucknell University and also holds a Masters in Public Administration from Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs and a Masters in Social Work from the School of Social Work.
Session: Asset Development: Innovations for Reaching the Financially Underserved
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Robert Duvall
Robert Duvall came to the Council for Economic Education, headquartered in New York City, as President and CEO in the spring of 1995. Prior to joining the Council, he was President of Pacific University in Oregon. The Council is the nation’s premier proponent of economic and financial literacy, and works as an independent, nonprofit and non-partisan organization through a unique nationwide network of affiliated state Councils and university-based Centers focused on teacher training and curriculum development. Through the Council, Duvall led the effort to improve the effective teaching of basic and applied principles of economics and personal financial decision-making skills in the nation’s schools, K-12, and also internationally, with the goal of preparing every young person for a successful life in the “real” world.
Duvall has become a national, and international, spokesman for the cause of improving economic and financial education, making it a core component of the pre-college curriculum. He has addressed numerous conferences of education and business leaders, testified for Senate and House Committees, and been interviewed on ABC, CNBC, CBS Market Watch, National Public Television and Radio, and numerous talk shows on both television and radio.
Duvall serves on the Boards of the Council, The Tiffany Consort, the Board of Advisors of Camilli Economics, and the Financial Literacy Commission of the National Association of State Boards of Education.
Duvall has his MA and PhD from Claremont Graduate University, and has published and lectured nationally on issues in education. He has served on the faculty and administration of Pitzer College, Claremont, California; Rollins College, Florida; and the University of Pennsylvania; and was a Distinguished Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University, England, in 1992.
Session: Asset Development: Innovations for Reaching the Financially Underserved
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Lynne Sagalyn
Lynne Sagalyn is the Earle W. Kazis and Benjamin Schore Professor of Real Estate and director the Paul Milstein Center for Real Estate at Columbia Business School. She is a specialist in real estate finance and urban development and teaches the Real Estate Transactions and the Advanced Seminar in Real Estate electives. Sagalyn is widely known as an expert in real estate equity securities and public development finance. Her research and writings on real estate investment, securitization, urban development and public policy have been published in both academic and professional journals. Her most recently completed book is Times Square Roulette: Remaking the City Icon, an analysis of the politics, policy and economics of one of the city’s largest and longest redevelopment initiatives. She is also author of Cases in Real Estate Finance and Investment Strategy and is coauthor of Downtown, Inc.: How America Rebuilds Cities. Sagalyn serves on a number of boards, including UDR (NYSE:UDR), Capital Trust (NYSE:CT), and a family real estate concern and has consulted for many public agencies and private firms.
Session: Social Enterprise and Real Estate: The Role of the Private Sector in Community Development
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Arlo Chase
Mr. Chase joined the agencies in May 2007. He works closely with senior leadership on the development of new housing programs as well as building strategic alliances with other state agencies, non-profit organizations and private developers. Previously, Mr. Chase was a senior associate at Nixon Peabody LLP, where he represented developers of affordable housing and syndicators of low-income housing tax credits. He graduated in 1999 from the New York University School of Law, where he was a member of Order of the Coif and a Root Tilden Public Interest Scholar. Following law school, Mr. Chase clerked for Chief Justice Shirley Abrahamson of the Wisconsin Supreme Court and Circuit Judge Robert Katzmann on the Second Circuit Court of Appeals. He has also published several articles in law journals, most recently “Rethinking the Homeownership Society: Rental Stability Alternative” (2009). Since 2008 he has served as an Associate Adjunct Professor of Law at Brooklyn Law School, where he teaches a class on housing.
Session: Social Enterprise and Real Estate: The Role of the Private Sector in Community Development
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Daniel Nissenbaum '88
Daniel Nissenbaum is the Chief Operating Officer of the Urban Investment Group, overseeing production, portfolio and compliance functions for the team. He joined Goldman Sachs in March of 2009. Mr. Nissenbaum has worked in the field of real estate and community development finance for 22 years, with positions at Chemical Bank, Chase Manhattan Bank CDC, JPMorgan CDC, Merrill Lynch CDC and HSBC Bank. In addition to leading transactional teams in those roles, Mr. Nissenbaum also crafted and directed CRA regulatory compliance, philanthropy and community outreach programs.
Mr. Nissenbaum leads two national organizations as Board Chair, the National Housing Conference, a national advocacy and policy proponent for affordable housing, and the Low Income Investment Fund, one of the nation's leading Community Development Financial Institutions (CDFI). In addition, he serves on the board of the Center for Housing Policy, and the Center for NYC Neighborhoods.
Mr. Nissenbaum earned a Bachelors Degree from Grinnell College, and an MBA from Columbia Business School. He and his wife Penelope have two daughters and live in New York City.
The Urban Investment Group (UIG), a division of Goldman Sachs Bank USA, provides community development financing and manages the Bank's Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) program. UIG's mission is to deploy the firm's capital to help transform distressed communities into sustainable and vibrant neighborhoods of choice and opportunity. Goldman Sachs Bank USA is a New York state-chartered bank and a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
Session: Social Enterprise and Real Estate: The Role of the Private Sector in Community Development
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Paul Freitag
Paul Freitag is a registered architect and LEED Accredited Professional, with more than 20 years experience in planning, design, and real estate development. Much of his career has focused on the redevelopment of underutilized properties for affordable housing and social service programs in distressed neighborhoods in the New York metropolitan region. He is also knowledgeable regarding the incorporation of green design into development projects and has particular expertise with the greening of mixed-income and affordable housing.
Mr. Freitag has lead several projects on behalf the Development practice group including: David and Joyce Dinkins Gardens, an 85-unit residential building that serves as a model for green affordable housing; Tapestry, a new 12-story mixed-income, LEED Silver residential building; and Via Verde / The Green Way, the winning response to the New Housing New York Legacy competition that offers a new approach to green and healthy urban living in the South Bronx.
A frequent speaker on green mixed-income development, Mr. Freitag received a Master of Architecture degree from the University of Virginia and a Master of Urban Planning degree from the City College of New York. His other degrees include a Bachelor of Science in Civil Engineering and a Bachelor of Arts in Art History from Brown University.
Session: Social Enterprise and Real Estate: The Role of the Private Sector in Community Development
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Lane Harwell '11
Lane Harwell is the director of Dance/NYC, the city's leading dance advocacy organization. Prior to joining Dance/NYC, he was the director of development at New York's arts-wide advocacy group, the Alliance for the Arts. His lifelong history in the arts also includes training at the School of American Ballet, a performance career with American Ballet Theatre Studio Company, and management experience in diverse theater and service contexts. Lane attended the Professional Children's School while performing with ABT.
He holds a BA in Philosophy from Princeton University and an MA in Performance Studies from the University of California at Berkeley. He is currently pursuing an MBA at Columbia Business School, focusing on the applicability of for-profit management approaches to the nonprofit sector.
Session: Developing Audiences: Consumption and Capital
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Paul Guenther '64
Paul Guenther was president of PaineWebber Group, Inc., the parent company of PaineWebber Incorporated, until his retirement in 1995. Since then he has focused on the nonprofit sector. He was appointed chairman of the New York Philharmonic in September 1996, where he served until 2009, when he was named chairman emeritus. From 1998 to 2004, he served as chairman of Fordham University, where he continues as a board member.
He is an investor in Walden Capital Partners L.P., a small-business investment company, and a member of its advisory committee. In addition, he serves on the Board of Directors of the Guardian Life Insurance Company.
Mr. Guenther earned a bachelor’s degree in economics from Fordham University in 1962 and an MBA in finance from the Columbia Business School in 1964. That same year, he began his career as a credit analyst with Manufacturers Hanover Trust Co. He joined PaineWebber Incorporated in 1966 as a securities analyst and served in a variety of positions. In 1984, when the company realigned its three principal subsidiaries into one, Mr. Guenther became chief administrative officer responsible for administrative services, operations and systems. He assumed responsibility for the firm’s retail sales business in 1987 and for investment banking activities in mid-1988. In late 1988, he was named president of PaineWebber Incorporated, and in 1994, president of PaineWebber Group.
Mr. Guenther was a recipient of an honorary LHD degree from Fordham University in 2005 and an honorary LLD degree from Concordia College in 1992. His organizational associations include Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, director; Columbia Business School, overseer; Lenox Hill Hospital, vice chairman; Frost Valley YMCA, chairman; Mary Flagler Cary Charitable Trust, trustee; Cristo Rey New York High School, directors; and the Governor’s Committee on Scholastic Achievement, trustee. He is a former director of the Securities Industry Association and a former president and director of Columbia Business School’s Alumni Association. He is a member of the Institute of Chartered Financial Analysts.
Session: Developing Audiences: Consumption and Capital
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Craig Hatkoff '78
Craig Hatkoff is a co-founder of the Tribeca Film Festival. He, along with Jane Rosenthal and Robert De Niro, created the festival immediately following the events of September 11th to help revitalize lower Manhattan. Craig also serves as Chairman of Turtle Pond Publications LLC, a private entertainment and media based company in New York. In addition to his current business activities, Craig is involved in a number of charitable and civic endeavors and is on the Board of Directors of the Tribeca Film Institute, the Sesame Workshop, Dr. Richard Leakey’s WildlifeDirect, The Desmond Tutu Peace Foundation, the Child Mind Institute, the Rock and Roll Hall Of Fame, The Alliance for Young Artists & Writers and the Borough of Manhattan Community College Foundation. He is also a member of the Clinton Global Initiative. He sits on the Board of Taubman Centers Inc., a New York Stock Exchange listed real estate company. In addition, he has co-authored with his young daughters a best-selling series of children's books including the New York Times #1 best-selling Owen and Mzee. He is very active in children's philanthropy and environmental causes. Craig graduated from Colgate University and received his MBA from Columbia University. He was an adjunct professor at the business school for five years. Craig resides in New York City with his wife Jane Rosenthal and their two daughters.
Session: Developing Audiences: Consumption and Capital
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Patricia Cruz
Patricia Cruz began her term as Executive Director of Harlem Stage/Aaron Davis Hall, Inc. in 1998. Ms. Cruz is responsible for overseeing programming and administrative management as well as long range planning, fundraising, fiscal management and program development in accordance with the mission of the institution. She directs a staff of 15 and is the chief liaison to the Board of Directors. Her accomplishments include: securing over $2 million in endowment funds; expanding programs and audiences; and successfully completing a $26 million Campaign for Aaron Davis Hall to expand the current facility and secure the financial stabilization of the 25-year old institution.
The highlight of her tenure is securing and renovating a historically landmarked 100 year old gatehouse building of the Croton Aqueduct System, across the street from the current ADH facility. Following a 2-year renovation, the facility provides a state of the arts theatre and offices for Harlem Stage. The project, completed in 2006, also has served as a catalyst for economic and community development for the 4-block area surrounding the Gatehouse. All of the activities cited above were made possible through public and private partnerships and designed to expand services to artists and communities.
Cruz is a member of The CalArts Board of Overseers and she is a past Board Member of The Andy Warhol Foundation. She is also past president of The New York Foundation for the Arts (NYFA), an organization that supports and nurtures the work of artists and arts organizations throughout the state and ArtTable, a national organization of women in the Arts.
Session: Developing Audiences: Consumption and Capital
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Chris Elam
Chris Elam is the founding Choreographer and Artistic Director of Misnomer Dance Theater, an award-winning dance company based in NYC. Heralded as “a true original” (The New York Times), whose “clarity of vision delights the soul” (the Village Voice), Elam’s work with Misnomer has toured to over 300 theaters in 11 countries. The breadth of his creative projects include choreographing for Bjork, the Sundance Channel, Apple Computers and the Danish Dance Theater. An innovator in connecting people with the arts, Misnomer is developing the Audience Engagement Platform (AEP), a disruptive web and mobile system to give audiences ways to directly interact with artists and their art. AEP has been widely-recognized in the business, technology, and arts communities and significant Foundation and public support. Elam frequently speaks at conferences ranging from TEDx to Fortune Magazine’s Brainstorm:Tech summit.
Session: Developing Audiences: Consumption and Capital
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Randall Bourscheidt
For more than 30 years, Randall Bourscheidt has held several positions in the management of public arts agencies and private organizations serving the arts. He was Deputy Commissioner of Cultural Affairs for New York City from 1981 to 1987, including a period as Acting Commissioner in 1982-83. As the chief operating officer of the Department of Cultural Affairs, he played an active role in the nearly three-fold increase in New York City’s arts budget in the 1980s. From 1995 to 1998, he was the Chairman of the New York City Advisory Commission for Cultural Affairs.
After a period as a private arts management consultant, Mr Bourscheidt became President of the Alliance for the Arts in 1989. Under his direction, the Alliance—a nonprofit service organization specializing in research and audience development—published a series of influential reports on the economic impact of the arts in New York City and State and two studies of the effects of the recession on the arts in 2009 and 2010. In 1994, the Alliance established two Web sites to promote cultural access, NYC ARTS and NYCkidsARTS. In 2009, the Alliance published The Hudson Valley: A Cultural Guide. At the Alliance, Mr Bourscheidt established the Estate Project for Artists with AIDS, the first national effort to preserve the work of artists with HIV/AIDS or other life-threatening diseases. Also in the early 1990s, he began a lecture series for world cultural leaders, now the Arts Forum at The New York Times.
An avid lover of music and ballet, Mr Bourscheidt serves on the board of the David H. Koch Theater at Lincoln Center, the American Friends of the Paris Opera and Ballet, Moving Theater and the Center for Performance Research. He is Chairman of the Brendan Gill Prize Jury of the Municipal Art Society and a director of Artspace Projects.
Following his graduation from Columbia College in 1969 with a major in history, Mr Bourscheidt was the editor of the newspaper of the Episcopal Diocese of New York and Press Secretary to the Chairman of the New York Democratic State Committee. His career in public service began at the Department of City Planning in 1974. After working in the Office of Management and Budget, he became Executive Assistant to Cultural Affairs Commissioner Henry Geldzahler in 1978 before being appointed Deputy Commissioner by Mayor Edward I. Koch. Mr Bourscheidt has lived in New York City since 1962. He was born and raised in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Session: Developing Audiences: Consumption and Capital
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Rick Larson
Rick Larson is Director of Sustainable Ventures for The Conservation Fund (TCF), a national nonprofit organization with a unique dual mission of land & water conservation and economic development. Based in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Mr. Larson serves as NC Program Director of Natural Capital Investment Fund, a TCF affiliate that provides subordinated debt and equity to companies that promote and practice the sustainable use of natural resources. He also is assisting TCF with the development of investment vehicles for forestry-based carbon sequestration.
Prior to joining TCF, Mr. Larson was Managing Director for SJF Ventures, LP, a $45 million mission-driven venture capital fund with offices in Durham, NC and New York, NY. A member of the Fund's Investment Committee, he sourced, conducted due diligence on, and structured equity and subordinated debt investments in SJF portfolio companies. He served on the Board of Directors of Ryla Teleservices, Inc. and B.B. Hobbs, Inc. and as liaison to other portfolio companies. His other professional experience includes twelve years as Executive Director of REAL Enterprises, a nonprofit social venture that provides entrepreneurship curriculum, training and support to secondary and post-secondary instructors nationwide. He also worked in financial and shop floor supervisory positions in manufacturing for the Cummins Engine Company.
Rick is a director of TransFair USA, the certifier of Fair Trade products in the US. He is an adjunct associate professor at Columbia Business School where he teaches Financing Social Ventures. He has served as an evaluator and judge for numerous social venture competitions, including the Yale SOM-Goldman Sachs Foundation Partnership on Nonprofit Ventures and the Duke Fuqua School of Business Start-Up Challenge Social Entrepreneurship Track. He is a graduate of the NASBIC Venture Capital Institute and holds a B.A. from Amherst College and an MBA from the Yale School of Management.
Session: Supply Chain Management within the Developing World
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Summer Rayne Oakes
Affectionately known as "The World's First Eco-Model," Summer Rayne forged a career in sustainable style when she combined her degrees in Environmental Science and Entomology with her first sustainable design venture, The Organic Portraits Project, in 2001. She is now one of the leading authorities in sustainable design; author of Style, Naturally; correspondent on Discovery Network's Planet Green, and founder of her own consulting company, SRO, LLC. She has co-launched environmentally-preferable brands with Payless ShoeSource and most recently with Portico Home. Summer Rayne graduated from Cornell University and is a Udall Scholar and PERC Environmental Fellow. Vanity Fair has named her a "Global Citizen," Glamour anointed her one of "The 70 Women of Green," AMICA called her one of "The Top 20 Trendsetters under 40," and CNBC named her one of the "Top 10 Green Entrepreneurs of 2010." Summer Rayne enjoys caring for her two dozen exotic insects and can often be seen walking them in her local park.
Session: Supply Chain Management within the Developing World
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Jim Thaller
Jim Thaller is the Managing Director of Talier Trading Group; a specialty food development company based in West New York, NJ (USA). For more than fifteen years, Mr. Thaller has been developing products and market linkages for international food companies, with a special focus on Africa. At Talier Trading Group, Mr. Thaller has been responsible for spearheading a variety of programs in emerging markets, and is well-known for designing and implementing the African specialty foods program in the United States and Europe. He is a much sought-after speaker on African development, and as a consultant for implementing agribusiness development initiatives. Mr. Thaller holds a bachelor’s degree and sits on the boards of several food companies and international organizations.
Session: Supply Chain Management within the Developing World
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Michael Faherty
Michael Faherty is Vice President, Brand Building Foods, U.S., Unilever NA. His brands include: Hellmann's, Lipton, Ragu, Bertolli (sauce), Knorr, Wish-Bone, Slim-Fast, and Skippy. His prior career includes positions such as VP Brand Development, Spreads & Dressings NA; Marketing, Kraft Foods U.S. and Ogilvy & Mather Advertising. He has a BA from the University of Virginia and an MBA from The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.
Session: Supply Chain Management within the Developing World
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Jonah Rockoff
Jonah Rockoff is Sidney Taurel Associate Professor of Business at Columbia Business School and a Faculty Research Fellow at the National Bureau of Economic Research. Professor Rockoff’s interests center on local public finance and the economics of education. He has done research on the determinants of property taxation and expenditure in local public school districts, the impact of teachers and teacher certification on student achievement, and measuring the effectiveness of educational policies such as charter schools, school accountability systems, and teacher mentoring programs. His current work focuses on pre-employment indicators of effective teachers, the characteristics of effective school principals, and how information on teacher performance impacts school personnel decisions. He received his PhD in Economics from Harvard University in 2004 and a BA in Economics from Amherst College.
Session: ROI in Education: Increasing Innovation and Choice
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Kristin Kearns Jordan
Kristin Kearns Jordan is the founder and was until June of 2007 the director of the Bronx Preparatory Charter School: a classical, college preparatory middle and high school in the South Bronx. Bronx Prep opened in August of 2000 with 100 fifth and sixth graders selected by lottery. The first three classes of graduates are now all in college, attending schools ranging from Stanford to Georgetown to MIT to Swarthmore to Holy Cross to campuses of the SUNY and CUNY systems. Bronx Prep now serves nearly 700 5th – 12th grade students at a brand-new 70,000 square foot campus on Third Avenue and East 172nd Street.
The role of charter schools in overall public school reform efforts has been a consistent focus of Kristin’s, and since July of 2009 she has served as a fellow with a new poverty-fighting effort in the Roxbury section of Boston called Boston Rising. She is focused on developing an education/school reform strategy within this neighborhood renewal effort.
Kristin grew up in Exeter, NH, attending public schools through 8th grade and Phillips Exeter Academy as a day student for high school. She attended college at Brown University. Upon graduating from Brown in 1991, she moved to New York City and worked for five years at the Student/Sponsor Partners [S/SP], the last three years as Associate Executive Director. Kristin left the S/SP in 1996 to become a graduate student in history & education at Teachers College, Columbia University and for the 1996-1997 school year was a program associate at the Teachers College Center for Educational Outreach & Innovation. From January 1997 through January 2000 Kristin served as the founding Executive Director of the School Choice Scholarships Foundation in New York City.
Kristin has served on the S/SP board and joined several S/SP board members to found the Reading Excellence and Discovery Program (READ), an early reading intervention program for children in public and parochial schools. She now serves on the board of her son’s school, the Cathedral School of St. John the Divine, chairing its development committee. She also serves on the board and chairs the development committee of Bronx Prep.
Session: ROI in Education: Increasing Innovation and Choice
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Joel Rose
In February of 2009, Joel Rose founded School of One, an initiative within the NYC Department of Education (DOE) that leverages a combination of live, online, and collaborative learning to provide students with instruction that is personalized to their particular academic needs and learning preferences. Previously, Rose served as the chief executive for human capital for the NYC DOE, which has over 1 million students in more than 1,400 schools. He also served the Department as a strategic consultant and as chief of staff to the deputy chancellor for organizational strategy, human capital and communications. Prior to joining the Department, Rose served as a strategic consultant to the department, where he supported the development of the office of accountability and the growth of the department’s Empowerment Schools. Prior to joining the department, Rose served as a general manager at Edison Schools, where he was responsible for overseeing the development, operations, product design, and overall performance of Edison‘s after-school division. Rose has been involved in education for more than 14 years, first as a Teach For America corps member in Houston and later as a senior executive at Edison where he also served as the company‘s associate general counsel, chief of staff and vice president for school operations. He earned a bachelor’s degree in political science from Tufts University and a law degree from the University of Miami School of Law.
Session: ROI in Education: Increasing Innovation and Choice
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Jim Peyser
Jim Peyser is Managing Partner at NewSchools Venture Fund. From 1999 through 2006, Jim served as Chairman of the Massachusetts Board of Education. Prior to joining NewSchools, Jim was Education Advisor to two Massachusetts Governors, where he helped shape state policy regarding standards and assessments, school accountability, and charter schools. In 1995, he served as Under Secretary of Education and Special Assistant to the Governor for Charter Schools. He spent more than seven years as Executive Director of Pioneer Institute for Public Policy Research, where he helped to launch and support Massachusetts' first charter schools. Prior to joining Pioneer Institute, Jim held various positions at Teradyne, Inc. in Boston, an electronic test equipment manufacturer.
In his role with NewSchools, Jim currently serves on the board of directors for Achievement First, New Schools for New Orleans, Success Charter Network, and Uncommon Schools. He is also a member of the Board of the National Association of Charter School Authorizers (NACSA), the Massachusetts Center for Charter Public School Excellence. Jim holds a Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy from the Fletcher School (Tufts University) and a Bachelor of Arts from Colgate University.
Session: ROI in Education: Increasing Innovation and Choice
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Lane McBride
Lane McBride is a Principal in the Washington D.C. office of The Boston Consulting Group. Lane has been a member of BCG since 2003. Lane is a core member of BCG's Public Sector practice area, with a particular focus on education. Lane's education experience at BCG includes work at the national, state, and local level, and has been both within traditional public school systems and with charter school, nonprofit, and philanthropic organizations. A primary focus of Lane's work has been strategy development and implementation within large-scale transformations; he has supported transformation efforts including Delaware's Vision 2015, Dallas Achieves!, and the Academic Transformation Plan in Cleveland. In addition, Lane's work has included efforts focused on organizational design, cost efficiency, and performance management within education organizations. Lane is one of the authors of a BCG paper on cost efficiency in education published as a chapter in the recent book, Stretching the School Dollar: How Schools and Districts Can Save Money While Serving Students Best (Harvard Education Press, 2010). Lane's work at BCG outside of education includes experience in international development and marketing/consumer insight. Lane is a graduate of the University of Virginia, where he received a B.A. with Distinction in Government.
Session: ROI in Education: Increasing Innovation and Choice
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Jeff Chu
Jeff Chu is an articles editor at Fast Company, where he edits stories on topics ranging from the Chinese marketplace to urban affairs to social enterprise and philanthropy. He also writes; his recent stories include a profile of Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; an investigation into legal and ethical problems at the furniture retailer Design Within Reach--for which he won the 2010 Deadline Club Award for best business feature; and a profile of Rwanda’s audacious and risky development strategy. He was part of the launch team at the now-defunct Conde Nast Portfolio and, before that, he spent seven years at Time magazine. As a London-based staff writer, Jeff wrote about the business of James Bond, the plight of Zimbabwean dissidents, and the tribulations of Tony Blair. Then as a New York-based writer and editor, he covered religion, culture, and society.
A graduate of Princeton and the London School of Economics, Jeff was a 2004 Phillips Foundation fellow (his project examined complaint in American history). This fall, he will travel to China on a fellowship as part of the inaugural China-US Journalists Exchange and in 2012 he will be a media fellow at Stanford’s Hoover Institution.
Session: Consulting for Growth: Scaling Social Innovation
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Sivan McLetchie
Sivan McLetchie is a manager in Bridgespan's New York office. Sivan joined Bridgespan in the spring of 2009 and has experience in a variety on nonprofit fields, including global development, education and foundations.
Prior to joining Bridgespan, Sivan worked for ten years consulting to both for-profit and nonprofit organizations in strategy and operations. At PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sivan was a director in the firm's Organizations, People, and Change practice and served a mix of for-profit and nonprofit clients in both the international and education sectors. Prior to PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sivan worked at Booz Allen Hamilton, where she provided guidance about procurement and budgeting strategies for city, state, and federal government agencies.
Sivan holds a BA from Rutgers University in Political Science. Her graduate studies centered on Social Justice Theory (New York University) and International Relations (University of Virginia) where her dissertation focused on human rights and public policy. Sivan’s MBA is in Strategy and Operations from The University of California, Irvine.
Session: Consulting for Growth: Scaling Social Innovation
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Saul Kornik
Saul is the Chief of Africa Health Placements; a social profit organisation that is working to alleviate the severe shortages of health professionals experienced in the delivery of healthcare to the most disenfranchised communities of South Africa. This Project is a joint venture between the Rural Health Initiative (RHI) and FPD, a tertiary medical training institution. Saul was involved in setting up RHI from its infancy. He then facilitated the negotiation for the joint venture and oversaw the merging of the entities. In addition to donor-funding, the JV uses for-profit projects to cross-subsidise the nonprofit operations; and has started rolling this model out to other African countries.
Saul is also a founding member and sits on the board of Selador Capital – an innovation incubator focusing on socially uplifting initiatives in the areas of the environment, healthcare, education and telecommunications for the poor. The concept is to create social upliftment through profitable initiatives.
Saul has a number of years of corporate experience with Deloitte, Goldman Sachs and Lloyds TSB in South Africa, London and Bermuda. He is a qualified Chartered Accountant, Chartered Financial Analyst and has completed his Masters degree in intelligent pattern recognition techniques as applied to the prediction of corporate failure. He has also spent some time lecturing in these topics.
Session: Consulting for Growth: Scaling Social Innovation
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Violetta Ostafin
Violetta Ostafin, principal, New York, received her MBA from the Wharton School and her MA in International Studies from the Joseph H. Lauder Institute at the University of Pennsylvania. She earned her BS in Applied Economics and Business Administration from Cornell University. Prior to business school, Violetta was an analyst in real estate investment banking, an account manager at Merrill Lynch & Co, and a Fulbright Scholar in Poland. Violetta serves as the Social Impact Practice area node for BCG's New York Metro Offices.
Session: Consulting for Growth: Scaling Social Innovation
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Ken Berger
Ken Berger, president and CEO, joined Charity Navigator in 2008 after almost thirty years experience working in the charitable nonprofit sector. He has held leadership positions at a variety of human service and health care agencies, both large and small, and has operated programs serving the homeless, the developmentally disabled, the mentally ill, substance abusers, the medically underserved, and persons with HIV/AIDS, among many others.
Most recently, Ken was COO of Jawonio and earlier in his career Director of Operations at Professional Service Centers for the Handicapped, in both positions he oversaw residential, educational, employment, clinical and health care service to individuals with disabilities and special needs. Prior to Jawonio, Ken was the Executive Vice President & COO and then the President & CEO of The Floating Hospital, an agency that provided health care, social services and education to disadvantaged, lower income or at risk adults, children and families across New York City. Ken also held several leadership positions at Volunteers of America-Greater New York and the Morris Shelter managing a wide array of services to thousands of homeless families and individuals.
Ken has a deep passion for helping donors become wise givers by learning to make intelligent social investments in high impact nonprofits. He also has a deep interest in encouraging charitable nonprofits to excel and thrive even in challenging times. He is a regular presenter at conferences on both the domestic and international stage, is frequently interviewed by both regional and national media on nonprofit issues and has published a number of papers on issues affecting the sector's effectiveness. He is the author of Ken's Commentary, a blog about the nonprofit sector. Ken earned his Bachelor’s degree at the University of Buffalo. He went on to obtain a Master’s degree in Psychology from Antioch University and an MBA from Rutgers University. He is currently on the Board of Rutgers Business School's Institute for Ethical Leadership.
Session: Consulting for Growth: Scaling Social Innovation
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Cliff Schorer
Professor Schorer is a serial entrepreneur who specializes in the start-up acquisition and development of small and mid-sized companies. He focuses on businesses with unique ideas or technologies that are in need of guidance during their initial growth phases. Cliff has been involved with companies in the high tech arena, his last position being CEO of GeoVideo Networks, a Lucent Technologies Venture. Prior to that his career included businesses in the real estate, office-supply and health care industries. During the early 1990's he spent a considerable amount of time in Russia using his entrepreneurial approach to assist in the privatization process. During his extensive professional career, Schorer has lectured in numerous business and academic forums both in the United States and abroad. He has developed financial management software programs for business education through his publishing company Bized.
Session: Pitching Social Impact
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Lara Galinsky
Lara Galinsky is the senior vice president at Echoing Green. Her portfolio consists of the day-to-day management of Echoing Green, marketing and communications, evaluation, thought leadership, alliances, strategic planning, and internal capacity building. Lara is the co-author of Echoing Green's first book, Be Bold: Create a Career with Impact. Most recently, Lara Galinsky worked as the director of National Programs at Do Something, Inc., working with over 20,000 educators to inspire 4 million young people to get involved in their communities and develop vital leadership skills. Before that, Lara launched the BRICK Award (now called the Do Something Award), which annually honors and funds the most outstanding community leaders under the age of thirty. Lara graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Wesleyan University and has completed leadership programs at Columbia Business School and Georgetown University's School of Public Policy. She serves as board chair of StartingBloc, as well as a board member for the Nonprofit Workforce Coalition, NYC Venture Philanthropy Fund, and the Fast Forward Fund. She recently graduated from Coro's Leadership New York program.
Session: Pitching Social Impact
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Amy Novogratz
Amy Novogratz is the Director of the TED Prize, an initiative of the TED Conference. The TED Prize is awarded annually to three exceptional individuals who each receive $100,000, a wish to change the world and support in making the wish come true. Past TED Prize winners include Bono, Dr. Larry Brilliant, former President Bill Clinton, writer Dave Eggers, and religious historian Karen Armstrong.
Prior to joining TED, Amy worked in television production giving voices to youth who don't usually have a platform -- from documentaries for the Disney Channel on young people living with HIV, learning differences and body image issues to specials, sketch comedy, animation and interstitials for Nickelodeon, Noggin's The N, Oxygen, MTV and World Link. This lead to years of developing and producing Chat the Planet, a TV and web initiative that connects young people from around the world to talk about everything from politics, prejudices and war to sex, music and life in general. Amy spent the early part of her career in Washington, DC, where she helped start up the Social Policy Action Network, a nonprofit that bridges the gap between journalists, academics, policy makers and grassroots initiatives.
Session: Pitching Social Impact
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Jonathan Kaufman
Jonathan is currently a full-time student at the Olin School of Business at Washington University in St. Louis, MO. Prior to starting business school, Jonathan worked in Athens, Greece with the Caritas-Athens Refugee Program, a nonprofit that assists refugees from Afghanistan, Iraq, and Somalia. Before moving to Athens, Jonathan worked at Step Up on Second in Santa Monica, CA, on housing issues for homeless men and women suffering from severe mental illness as well as at Campus Kitchens Project on hunger-relief efforts in Chicago. Jonathan graduated from Vassar College in 2004 with a BA in Religion.
Session: Pitching Social Impact
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Rachael Chong
Rachael Chong won't rest until every professional can volunteer their skills and every nonprofit has access to skilled volunteers. As an investment banker, Rachael was shocked by the lack of opportunities for her to volunteer her professional skills. Frustrated by her inability to serve the greater good while keeping her day job, Rachael left corporate finance to work in microfinance. A year later, Rachael helped start-up BRAC USA, the US affiliate of BRAC, one of the largest nonprofit organizations in the world. At BRAC USA, Rachael created a strategy to effectively mobilize dozens of skills-based volunteers that freed up her and the President & CEO's time to raise $40 million in less than nine months. Rachael also pioneered a program that brought eleven Duke students to the rural Bangladeshi countryside for three months of story collecting. She has a Masters of Public Policy Degree from Duke University and graduated magna cum laude from Barnard College at Columbia University. Born in Australia, Rachael grew up all over Asia. She writes for the Huffington Post.
Session: Pitching Social Impact
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Phil Westcott
Glovico.org provides language tutorship over skype video-conferencing, via a web portal connecting teachers in the developing world with students in the United States and Europe. Glovico.org went live in May of 2010 and is achieving exponential growth to date. The management team is made up of a diverse and multi-talented group of individuals all passionate about international development and growing a globally recognized enterprise. Phil is a British entrepreneur and second year MBA student at Columbia Business School on exchange from IESE Business School in Spain.
Session: Pitching Social Impact
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Dan Garblik
LongTail Grants is an online fundraising platform targeted toward highschool and college students who want to raise money, awareness, and support for their own socially beneficial projects. By not requiring grantees to be associated with 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations, LongTail Grants hopes to catalyze youth community engagement by allowing students to start, and earn money from, whatever project matters to most to them. The possibilities for creativity and social impact are endless! Daniel is a graduate of Cornell University with a background is in hospitality and educational entrepreneurship – having started a boutique tutoring company in Los Angeles and the website TutorHand.com. Additionally, Daniel had been involved with numerous nonprofit and social enterprises and founded the Cornell Nonprofit Network of Los Angeles.
Session: Pitching Social Impact
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Marc Bush
Donor Universal is committed to building and ensuring a robust and secure, long-term, all-volunteer blood supply. The company is bringing the power of web 2.0 to blood centers; it is developing new social media and location-aware tools that will help blood centers better recruit and retain blood donors, improve the donor experience, and deliver significant cost-savings over established marketing methods. Marc Bush is the founder of Donor Universal. Marc founded and now serves as the Chair of Bike & Build, a charity bike touring company that has donated approximately $3M to - and mobilized over 80,000 volunteer hours for - affordable housing groups. Most recently, Marc worked with TechnoServe, an organization dedicated to developing sustainable business solutions to poverty in the developing world.
Session: Pitching Social Impact
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Jacob Mnookin
Coney Island Prep is the first public charter school in South Brooklyn, and the first public school to locate in a New York City Housing Authority housing development. The mission of Coney Island Prep is to prepare every student to succeed in the college and career of their choice, and the school opened in August 2009 to an inaugural class of ninety 5th graders, and currently serves 180 scholars in grades 5 and 6. The ambitious growth model has the school growing to serve more than 600 scholars in grades five through 12 over the next six years. Jacob's lifelong passion for education led to his joining Teach For America, through which he taught high school English in Newark, NJ, for three years. In 2007, Jacob earned a Masters in Public Affairs from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School. After graduating, Jacob began the challenging work of founding Coney Island Prep, work that was made possible through a Fellowship from Building Excellent Schools, a nationwide nonprofit organization that serves as a model for supporting educational excellence through charter schools.
Session: Pitching Social Impact
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