Innovation

Deanna Badizadegan is a musician and educator who works at the intersection of arts and innovation, and who holds bachelor's and master's degrees in engineering from Stanford University.

Riitta Katila is a professor of management science and engineering at Stanford University and faculty director of research at STVP, the Stanford Engineering Entrepreneurship Center. Her research is at the intersection of technology strategy and organizational learning. She is an expert on innovation, competition and entrepreneurship in large firms, and the question that drives her research is how tech-based firms with significant resources can stay innovative. Her award-winning research has appeared in the Academy of Management Journal, Administrative Science Quarterly, Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Strategic Management Journal, Research Policy and other outlets.

Bill Gross founded Idealab in March 1996 and serves as the company's Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer. Bill founded Idealab to create and build successful businesses that capitalize on innovations in areas with significant growth opportunities, including the Internet. A lifelong entrepreneur, Bill started several companies prior to Idealab. In high school, he founded Solar Devices, a firm that sold plans and kits for solar energy products. In college at the California Institute of Technology, he patented a new loudspeaker design and formed GNP Loudspeakers, Inc. After graduating from college, Bill and his brother Larry started GNP Development, Inc., which made a natural language product for Lotus 1-2-3 called HAL. In 1985, Lotus Development Corporation acquired GNP and Bill became a software entrepreneur at Lotus Development. In 1991, Bill started Knowledge Adventure, an educational software publisher that grew to be the third largest educational software publisher in the world and was eventually sold to Cendant Software and is now a division of Havas Interactive, which is owned by Vivendi. Bill serves on the boards of directors of numerous companies. He is also a member of the Board of Trustees of the California Institute of Technology and of the Art Center College of Design. Bill received his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology.

Melissa Valentine is an Assistant Professor at Stanford University in the Management Science and Engineering Department, and a faculty member of the Center for Work, Technology, and Organization. She conducts multi-method studies of groups and teams in organizations, with a focus on temporary teams. Her studies use longitudinal or multi-case comparisons to identify enabling conditions of fast-paced coordination in temporary teams. Recent work has focused on how crowdsourcing platforms can be used to assemble, coordinate, and adapt flash teams and flash organizations.

Working on campaigns that connect big ideas to personal and global impact, Rachel has traveled to Europe, the Middle East, and across the United States to collaborate, consult, and produce. She was Assistant Editor for the beloved children's program Sesame Street on Seasons 40 and 41. Both seasons were recognized with Emmys for Outstanding Achievement in Multiple Camera Editing. Working with Bertelsmann Media Worldwide, Brandeis University, and in independent film, she has interviewed experts in academia, film, politics, and business. Rachel holds an M.A. in Media Studies from the New School and a B.A. in Philosophy from Barnard College, Columbia University.

Patty McCord has spent many years working with companies to help people realize and practice leadership, pushing the boundaries of thinking about the way we all work. McCord served as Chief Talent Officer of Netflix for 14 years, where - with the management team - she helped to create the Netflix culture deck. When it was posted on the Web, the culture deck took on a life of its own, with Sheryl Sandberg saying it "may be the most important document ever to come out of Silicon Valley." The presentation has been viewed more than five million times. Patty believes people come to work as fully formed adults with a desire to make an impact and be proud of what they do and she's on a mission to spread the word that we can do this differently. She is frequently in the media with interviews and articles from Harvard Business Review, NPR, Fast Company and The Wall Street Journal.

Rich Cox challenges leaders, groups and companies to stretch farther and achieve more. He helps world leaders and change-makers inspire others to action. He unlocks the creative genius in entrepreneurs and teams so they can go out and dent the universe. He enables leaders to find their authentic voice and stand up as their most powerful selves. He transforms organizations into resilient cultures that thrive and adapt. He is a master coach and facilitator that empowers you to discover and develop your best self. Rich is a Lecturer at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business and teaches at the Stanford Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (d.school), London Business School. Rich's Management Design Firm, People Rocket, combines Art+Science+Design to bring disruptive elegance to Business, Organizations and Ventures and create better people, teams, and cultures. Rich coaches executives, leaders and teams at organizations such as the Clinton Global Initiative, Istanbul 2020 Olympic Bid Committee, TEDx, Mozilla, Google, Cisco, and JP Morgan Chase. He has an extensive background in business, finance and technology, working as Founder and CEO of Entango Corporation, a venture-backed e-commerce solution; VP of marketing for Ninaza, handling data capture for Phase IV clinical trials ; Lead Engineer for Infinity a SunGard company a derivative trading and risk-management platform and Engineer at Intel Corporation, where he helped create the first generation of Pentium processors.

Toni Townes-Whitley is corporate vice president of worldwide public sector and industry at Microsoft, where she leads company strategy for driving digital transformation across public-sector and commercial-industry customers. Prior to joining Microsoft, Townes-Whitley was president of CGI Federal, where she was responsible for a portfolio of more than $1 billion, leading 6,600 employees in more than 70 countries to deliver greater value to U.S. government civilian, defense and intelligence sectors. Prior to her role at CGI, Townes-Whitley held several management roles at Unisys Corporation leading global public-sector systems integration and the Federal Civilian group, where she achieved 500 percent revenue growth and doubled profitability. Townes-Whitley is a writer and presenter on topics of IT innovation and application. She sits on the board of directors for United Way, the Women's Center of Northern Virginia, and Leadership Foundry - an organization that prepares women to serve on corporate boards. She also continues to support the U.S. Peace Corps and is a former volunteer who served three years as a village teacher in Central Africa. She holds a B.A. from Princeton University.

David Eagleman is a neuroscientist, New York Times bestselling author and director for the Center for Science & Law. He is the writer and presenter of "The Brain," an international television series that asks what it means to be human from a neuroscientist's point of view. He is an adjunct professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, where his research encompasses time perception, vision, synesthesia and the intersection of neuroscience with the legal system. He has spun two companies out of his lab, NeoSensory and BrainCheck. Eagleman is the author of several books, including the international bestsellers "Sum" and "Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain." He appears regularly on National Public Radio and BBC to discuss both science and literature.

Carlos Watson is an entrepreneur and Emmy-winning journalist based in Silicon Valley. In 2013 Watson co-founded Ozy, an online magazine offering originally crafted news of the world presented as coverage and commentary ahead of the mainstream media. Watson has a textured background in both business and media. He previously anchored shows on CNN and MSNBC, and hosted a series of Emmy-winning interview specials. As a businessman, Watson built Achieva College Prep Services into one of the nation's largest college-prep companies before selling it to the Washington Post/Kaplan. He also worked at Goldman Sachs as the global head of education investment banking, and as a consultant at McKinsey & Company. Watson holds an B.A. in government from Harvard University and a J.D. from Stanford Law School.

Jesse Levinson is co-founder and CTO of Zoox, a robotics company developing fully autonomous vehicles and the supporting ecosystem required to bring the technology to market. He graduated from Princeton University and completed a computer science Ph.D. and postdoc at Stanford University. There, he developed algorithms for Stanford's winning entry in the 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge, and went on to lead the self-driving car team's research efforts. Levinson also co-created a popular mobile photography app, Pro HDR, that has been purchased by more than a million people.

Tim Kentley-Klay is co-founder and CEO of Zoox, a robotics company developing fully autonomous vehicles and the supporting ecosystem required to bring the technology to market. Prior to Zoox, Kentley-Klay founded three successful international design and technology-driven companies: XYZ Studios, Crayon and Wheelbarrow. He is an accomplished businessman, entrepreneur, designer, animator and filmmaker.

Kevin Weil is head of product at Instagram, overseeing consumer, growth and monetization products. Prior to Instagram, Kevin was senior vice president of product at Twitter, overseeing product development and design across Twitter's consumer and ad products, as well as Vine and Periscope. Between 2010 and 2014, he led product development for Twitter's advertising platform, including the acquisitions of MoPub and TellApart, as well as the development of Fabric, Twitter's mobile-services strategy. Previously, Weil led Twitter's analytics team, where he was an early evangelist and contributor to the open-source Hadoop ecosystem, an open-source software framework for storing data. Before joining Twitter in 2009, he was the first employee at web-media startup Cooliris, working in user growth and analytics. Weil holds a B.A. in mathematics and physics from Harvard University and an M.S. in physics from Stanford.

Judah Pollack is an author, professional speaker and strategic advisor on the art of leadership and the science of breakthrough thinking. He is a founding partner at Riverene Leadership, routine contributor to Fast Company, and regular guest lecturer at UC Berkeley's Haas School of Business. He is an established instructor for the U.S. Army's Red Team Leadership curriculum at the University of Foreign Military and Cultural Studies.