2015 Conference

Rooted in a troubling cycle of poverty and incarceration, Dion Drew was determined to make a change. In 2008, after completing another prison sentence, the Yonkers native vowed to make a better life for himself. After struggling to find gainful employment, Drew grappled with returning to his old ways. Greyston Bakery’s  unique Open Hiring policy, however, gave Drew his second chance. In 2009, Drew joined the Greyston team as an apprentice baker. Through his tenacity and strong work ethic, Drew received numerous promotions. Today, he proudly leads and supervises bakery employees as a bakery trainer, and continues to experience great success. Drew has shared his story at the U.N. and TED@Unilever; he has also been featured on the TODAY Show and in New York Times best-selling authors Sheryl Wudunn and Nicholas Kristof’s book, A Path Appears. Drew is a constant champion of Greyston Bakery and its mission to provide paths to self-sufficiency.

Greyston President and CEO, Mike Brady, manages the country’s leading social enterprise, a national model for comprehensive community development best known for the Greyston Bakery. Greyston Bakery has provided jobs and opportunities for hundreds of individuals and is the primary producer of brownies for Ben & Jerry’s ice cream. Greyston is an integrated network of programs that provides jobs, workforce development, childcare, housing, after-school programs and community gardens. Passionate about social entrepreneurism, the Greyston chief now serves as a thought leader on social enterprise management, mindfulness in business, and the development and success of Benefit Corporations. Brady is a regularly featured speaker on these topics and a multitude of related subjects, having presented at TED@Unilever, CGI America, the Ashoka Future Forum, as well as Harvard, Yale, Columbia, and Brown. Prior to joining Greyston, Brady was a partner with BAO Food and Drink, where he oversaw the development of the first incubator in the country dedicated to organic food production and distribution.  Brady has more than 20 years of experience in strategy and management positions identifying and exploiting new business opportunities in high-growth and transitional industries. He is also a business advisor to the American Sustainable Business Council (ASBC) helping to promote policies for a more sustainable economy. A graduate of the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, Brady now lives in Westchester, N.Y. with his wife and two sons.

Hugh Whalan has started three businesses in Africa focused on innovative financing of household solar to some of the poorest consumers on the planet. His first company pioneered crowd funding for energy loans to the developing world. His second company, a solar distribution and asset financing operation in Ghana, was acquired by a US private equity firm in an industry first. He is currently running PEG, which is using pay-as-you-go technology to provide financing for solar to 500,000 customers in West Africa by 2018. Hugh was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in 2015, and was recognized as one of Australia’s top 30 entrepreneurs under 30.  He is a frequent guest lecturer on social enterprise and entrepreneurship and has been covered in a wide range of mainstream media, including CNN, Forbes, New York Times and Fast Company.

Alaina Percival is Chief Executive Officer and Board Chair of  Women Who Code, a global 501(c)(3) nonprofit dedicated to inspiring women to excel in technology careers. She spent the first years of her career working at PUMAs headquarters in Germany managing the most innovative products for the brand. After completing her MBA, she accepted the role of Brand Marketing Manager for a women’s performance footwear company where she led the roll out the world’s first woman specific volleyball and basketball shoes. Her migration to the technical sector took place in 2010 and her tech industry experience includes heading up developer outreach at Riviera Partners in addition to working as the Director of Marketing for Snip.it – a start-up which was acquired by Yahoo! Percival currently serves as an advisor to CodePath. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her husband and is active in both the technology and education circles. She has traveled to more than 60 countries and speaks German.

Jenifer Willig is the founder of motive and WHOLE WORLD Water, a social enterprise uniting the hospitality & tourism industry to raise money for clean and safe water projects around the world (www.wholeworldwater.co). WHOLE WORLD Water works to engage the hospitality and tourism industry to filter, bottle, and sell its own water, and contribute 10% of the proceeds to the WHOLE WORLD Water Fund. Partnering with iconic brands including Nike, Apple, Dell, Microsoft and Starbucks, Jenifer most recently spent four years leading tremendous growth at (RED), the organization founded by Bono and Bobby Shriver to fight AIDS in Africa. Through her leadership, (RED) raised $185 million and became a global brand with a social following of more than 2.5 million people who actively advocate on behalf of (RED). Prior to joining (RED), Jenifer spent her career in advertising, working on global brands including AT&T, Levi Strauss & Co, British Airways and The Financial Times; running the New York office of M&C Saatchi; and developing the dot com business at TBWA/Chiat/Day SF during the tech boom of the late 1990s. She was recently named one of the 10 Most Generous Marketing Geniuses by Catchafire and Fast Company’s Generosity Series and recognized as one of the 40 women over 40 to watch.

Nina Tandon is on the cutting edge of science: where sci-fi meets reality. She works on growing artificial hearts and bones that can be put into the body, and studies the new frontier of biotech: homes, textiles, and videogames made of cells. Profiled in Wired and named one of Fast Company’s Most Creative People in Business, she speaks on the future of healthcare and technology, and biology’s new industrial revolution. Nina Tandon is CEO and co-founder of EpiBone, the world’s first company growing living human bones for skeletal reconstruction. She is the co-author of Super Cells: Building with Biology, a book that explores the new frontier of biotech. She is a TED Senior Fellow and Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering at the Cooper Union. She has a Bachelor’s in Electrical Engineering from the Cooper Union, a Master’s in Bioelectrical Engineering from MIT, a PhD in Biomedical Engineering, and an MBA from Columbia University. Her PhD research focused on studying electrical signaling in the context of tissue engineering, and has worked with cardiac, skin, bone, and neural tissue. Tandon spent her early career in telecom at Avaya Labs and transitioned into biomedical engineering via her Fulbright Scholarship in Italy, where she worked on an electronic nose used to “smell” lung cancer. After completing her PhD, she consulted at McKinsey and Company, but since 2010 she has continued her work in tissue engineering. Nina has published 10 journal articles (cited > 300 times, H = 9) and six book chapters, and she has three patents. She’s been published in Nature Protocols and Lab on a Chip and has been featured on CNN and in Wired and the Guardian. She has spoken three times at TED and at the Milken and Bloomberg tech conferences. She was named one of the 100 Most Creative People in Business by Fast Company, a Crain’s 40 under 40 people who have achieved success in business before turning 40, and a World Economic Forum Tech Pioneer.

Matt Stinchcomb is the Executive Director of Etsy.org, a 501(c)3 dedicated to helping people develop the skills, connections, and wisdom needed to use commerce as a tool to regenerate the self, the community, and the Earth. Previously, he was the VP, Values and Impact at Etsy.com. In that role he oversaw the stewardship of the company’s mission, and worked to give all employees the means and the desire to maximize the benefit their work has on people and the planet. In 2013, Matt was named a GOOD ‘Figure of Progress’. The next year he was named as one of the Purpose Economy 100. Matt serves on the boards of the Schumacher Center for New Economics and the Center for a New American Dream. He is a graduate of Oberlin College, and a reformed, professional musician. He lives in Brooklyn, NY with his wife, Benedikta, and their sons, Francis and Lewie.