Mr. Feng Deng founded Northern Light Venture Capital (NLVC) in 2005. He currently manages approximately US$ 1.7 billion in committed capital with 4 US$ funds and 4 RMB funds. He has led and backed over 200 companies, focusing on 4 main sectors: TMT (technology, media and telecom), clean technology, healthcare and consumer.
Terra Weikel has a background in education, media production and community outreach: she taught at a rural high school in South Africa, worked as an editor and producer for video productions and live television, and ran a 2-year educational campaign for the award-winning film Lost Boys of Sudan, that raised awareness about the Darfur crisis and refugees in the US, as well as $1 million for refugee agencies.
For the past 15 years, Blair Palmer has leveraged her knowledge of technological innovations, project implementation, corporate responsibility, stakeholder engagement, and social enterprise programs to empower global health programs. She currently serves to help coordinate partnerships for UNICEF’s Innovation Unit, tasked with identifying, prototyping, and scaling technologies and practices that strengthen UNICEF’s work.
When I started Bookmemate I had a vision: to help small or medium sized businesses better manage their bookings and finances. Most of them were running a business with an appointment book, a spreadsheet and email, which had several disadvantages such as finding past bookings, calculating revenue or produce financial documents for the business.
Oren Yakobovich is a social entrepreneur working at the intersection of human rights and film-making. He is a leading voice on how to use visual information to create sustainable, lasting positive change in areas of conflict. He co-founded Videre in 2008, an NGO equipping oppressed communities with customized technology to uncover information from places where media can't or won't go. Before founding Videre, Oren led the video department at the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem.
Parminder was appointed the CEO of the Tony Elumelu Foundation in June 2015. She joined the Foundation as the Director of Entrepreneurship in April 2014, and is responsible for the design of the $100 million, multi-year, pan-African Tony Elumelu Entrepreneurship Programme. TEEP is an annual accelerator programme of training, funding, and mentoring, designed to empower the next generation of African entrepreneurs.
As vice president of Public Affairs and Communications at the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, Larry serves on the Kauffman Foundation’s senior leadership team. Jacob leads all internal and external communications with emphasis on marketing activities, institutional branding, media relations, employee communications, and executive support. He also serves as a critical thought partner to the strategy and partnership development for Kansas City grant making under the Foundation’s KC Civic engagement program.
Deena joined Google in 2012. As a Global Partnerships Manager, Deena leads strategic partnerships for new products and special projects in Research. Ahe previously spearheaded business development for autonomous units and Google[x], and led strategic partnerships for Google.org, where she was responsible for managing a multi-million dollar deal portfolio in civic innovation and computer science diversity.
David Mandelbrot became the CEO of Indiegogo in early 2016 after spending over two years as COO and SVP of Operations at the company. David has been an executive at high-growth online businesses for over 20 years, at both small start-ups and larger companies. Prior to Indiegogo he was VP and General Manager of Media and Entertainment at Yahoo where Dave led the teams that built Yahoo! News, Finance, Sports, Movies and Games into the #1 online destinations in their categories.
Lily is a financial journalist for Reuters TV, a newscast for the mobile-first generation (Reuters.TV). Based in Reuters’ San Francisco bureau, Lily covers technology and the West Coast. She’s also covered the World Economic Forum in Davos and the Aspen Ideas Festival since joining Reuters in 2014. Prior to Reuters, Lily spent several years freelancing for the BBC and other outlets, covering climate change in the Maldives, ethnic conflict in Kyrgyzstan, and public safety initiatives ahead of the World Cup in Brazil.
Marie Leznicki is Chief Experience Officer at Bridge International Academies, a network of nearly 500 nursery and primary schools across Africa and Asia. Since 2010, Marie has led radical innovation across how academies operate increasing speed of expansion into new markets. She is responsible for recruiting and training academy staff, managing academy operations, admitting and retaining pupils, driving community programmes, and developing new offerings like uniforms and school lunches.
Brian Milne is a former AP award-winning senior writer and editor for McClatchy Newspapers who has since gone the tech route. He has provided web/content/biz development services for sustainable techs such as Hortau, REC Solar and Mainstream Energy, as well as a handful of Top 1,000 websites (HP.com, About.com, Examiner.com, eBay.com, Experts-Exchange.com, Shopatron.com).
Abderrahim Foukara is Al-Jazeera Satellite Channel's Washington DC Bureau Chief and host of Min Washington (From Washington), one of the Arab world's most successful and influential shows. Min Washington offers Arab viewers in-depth and well-informed analysis of US affairs and their impact on North Africa and the Middle East. As a veteran journalist with unique insight into US as well as Middle East politics, Abderrahim Foukara has been an essential voice in the US media's coverage of the Arab Spring, bringing more clarity and context to it, appearing as a commentator on Face the Nation, CNN, and NPR, among others.
Andres Bautista is 44 years old and he was born in Bogota / Colombia. His first degree is in law and combines extensive legal and corporate management experience giving his clients the advantage of an attorney capable of understanding more than just the legal implications of a transaction or matter in litigation. Clients are represented by a lawyer who understands the real world challenges and pragmatic decisions facing today’s business and entrepreneurship. Admitted to practice law in Republic of Colombia since 1995 and currently limits his practice to corporate, employment, entrepreneurship and business matters.
Rahama Wright is a social entrepreneur working to innovate the shea butter supply chain in West Africa. Her social enterprise Shea Yeleen markets and distributes high quality skincare products, while providing living wages to cooperative members in Northern Ghana. The line of shea butter products is being distributed through 100+ Whole Foods Markets, Amazon.com, and SheaYeleen.com.
John Kunze brings in-depth knowledge of global payments technology to PayPal. As head of Xoom, John is responsible for expanding PayPal’s range of international money transfer services. Xoom makes it easy, fast and secure for people to send their hard-earned money to loved ones, which is important to PayPal’s strategic vision to make the movement and management of money work better for people.
Shaun’s first career was in the financial markets. He worked for Goldman Sachs in London and later managed his own hedge fund in San Francisco. Shaun was then drawn to the non-profit sector. He worked with street children in India and for fistula patients in Africa. And, at mothers2mothers, he led the launch and scale-up across Southern and East Africa of a program preventing mother-to-child transmission of HIV.
Brad is a senior writer for Bloomberg Businessweek. Brad Stone is the author of The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon, a New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller and winner of the 2013 Goldman Sachs/Financial Times Business Book of the Year Award.Brad joined Businessweek from the New York Times, where he had been a reporter since 2006. He covered Internet trends, as well as Silicon Valley’s biggest companies from the newspaper’s San Francisco bureau. In addition to writing for the paper, he wrote a weekly column, Ping, and was a founding writer of the paper’s technology blog, Bits.
Jacques joined Shinola in 2010 to lead the company’s product development and strategic brand direction. Leveraging his dynamic portfolio—from serving as a founding member of Webosaurs, where he oversaw the interactive division for Dallas-based animation studio, Reel FX, to his 10-plus years of industry knowledge spanning product marketing, branding and sales—Panis became President of Shinola in 2013.
