Gil Friend is the author of The Truth About Green Business (FT Press) and the forthcoming Profit on Purpose: Risk, Fiduciary Duty and the Laws of Nature. He is a founding board member of the Sustainable Business Alliance, Sustainable Berkeley, and the California Sustainable Business Council and serves on the executive board of OpenEco.org and the advisory boards of CleanFish, WattBot, Green World Campaign, and (past) San Francisco Mayor Gavin Newsom’s Clean Tech Advisory Council. Friend served in the California Governor’s Office, developing early sustainability policies and programs.
Doug Carlston was CEO, chairman, and co-founder (with brother Gary) of Brøderbund Software, a software publishing firm that produced such hit titles as Myst and Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?. Brøderbund was acquired by The Learning Company for $420 million, and the combined company was sold to Mattel for $3.6 billion. Carlston received his bachelor's degree from Harvard University in 1970 and also studied economics at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. He earned a J.D. from Harvard Law School in 1975.
Dr. Michelle Kraus is a veteran of the political blogging community. She has written on regulatory and political issues concerning the environment, the economy and the political landscape. After pioneering the use of advanced search and data applications for the 2004 political campaigns, she is often referred to as a “Google Ninja” working behind the scenes to build communities, craft messaging and reach out to voters with new and innovative technologies. Covering the Clinton Global Initiative in 2007, Dr.
Tyler is a board member and co-founder of Energy Crossroads, Global. He co-chaired the original Energy Crossroads Conference at Stanford University in 2007. Since then, Tyler has worked with the global team to establish Energy Crossroads as a global organization and worked closely with the Stanford chapter on the 2008 Conference, "From Vision to Action: Sparking Global Change." Tyler works as a consultant at ICF International on energy efficiency and climate change projects.
Robin Sloan is the vice president for strategy at Current, a participatory media company co-founded by Al Gore and Joel Hyatt. Current produces news by collaborating with its audience; it runs a cable and satellite TV network, available in 56 million homes around the world, and a social news site, current.com. Before Current, Robin worked at the Poynter Institute, a journalism school and think tank in St. Petersburg, Florida. There, with Matt Thompson, he produced EPIC 2014 (robinsloan.com/epic), a viral video view of the future of media.
An entrepreneur from an early age, McGeoy got her first taste of operating a business at age 11 running the school store. Years later, Michele’s most prolonged business adventure was Tailored Solution which developed database software for law schools. Over 40% of the law schools around the country used her software, with clients including Stanford, Yale, and Harvard. After ten years she sold the company and with proceeds from the sale, founded a non-profit to address the mounting digital divide.
Dr. Irving Mintzer is an internationally recognized expert on the impacts of energy technologies and climate change on human societies and natural ecosystems. A consultant to transnational corporations as well as multilateral financial institutions, Irving recently completed a review of worldwide private sector investment activity in clean energy technologies and energy efficiency systems for the Secretariat of the UN Framework Convention on Climate Change.
As a founding partner at Saatchi & Saatchi S, David has played a number of roles in the organization, including leading its brand strategy, creative and video production departments. As Vice President of Client Strategy, David has led ongoing engagements with key clients including Walmart Stores, Inc., Procter & Gamble, General Mills and NBCUniversal.
Pierre leads the definition and implementation of environmental sustainability strategies across HP, from the company’s internal operations and supply chain, to its products, services and solutions. After an early career as a management consultant, Pierre joined HP in 1999 in France where he held several program management positions in IT and business operations. He moved to California in 2004 to manage corporate marketing programs.
Arnold Wasserman is Founding Partner and chairman of Collective Invention, an innovation consultancy based in San Francisco focused on “Innovation for the Common Good” to improve life in the public domain. He is also chairman of the Idea Factory, a consultancy based in Singapore and San Francisco, specializing in Innovation, Strategy, and Design. He has been named one of “20 Masters of Design” by Fast Company magazine. He has held the positions of Vice President of Corporate Industrial Design/Human Factors at NCR, Xerox, and Unisys Corporation.
As some of you may have heard, Google last week made a surprise decision to stop developing Google Wave at the end of this year. At Next Agenda, we are very disappointed by this news.
