Scheduled 2012 Speakers Include:
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Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen
Giving 2.0
Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen is the Founder, Chairman Emeritus and former Chairman (1998-2008) of SV2 (Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund), a venture philanthropy fund that leverages its partners’ financial, intellectual, and human capital to make a measurable impact in the Silicon Valley community. Under her leadership, SV2 built a portfolio of 25 grantees and nearly 400 investors, and it won the Silicon Valley Association of Fundraising Professionals Philanthropic Organization of the Year in 2008.
Laura is the Founder and Board Chairman of Stanford PACS (Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society), a global research center committed to exploring ideas to create social change and publisher of the Stanford Social Innovation Review (SSIR). Laura has created and teaches Stanford Graduate School of Business’ first course on Strategic Philanthropy and Stanford University’s first course on Philanthropy and Social Innovation. Learn more at www.giving2.com.
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Irene Au
Head of User Experience, Google
If you’ve used the internet at all, you are likely to have been touched by Irene’s work. Irene heads the User Experience and Design practice at Google, responsible for the user interface design of its products. Prior to Google, Irene was Vice President of User Experience and Design at Yahoo, where she built the interaction design and user research practice, and led product and platform design efforts worldwide. Irene began her career at Netscape Communications, where she was an interaction designer and led cross-product design efforts on Netscape's browser, mail/news client, and page editor. Irene holds a master's degree in human-computer interaction from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. She earned a bachelor's degree in electrical and computer engineering from the University of South Carolina, where she graduated summa cum laude.
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Arturo Bejar
Dir. of Engineering, Facebook
Arturo Bejar is a Director of Engineering at Facebook working on social tools to help people be more mindful of each other. This includes such areas as identity, harm and abuse prevention, ways to develop better online citizens, and tools designed to help resolve conflicts between individuals such as bullying.
Previously he was Chief Paranoid at Yahoo! where he worked with a global team dedicated to providing a secure online experience.
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Seane Corn
Yoga Teacher, Spiritual Activist
Seane Corn is an internationally renowned Vinyasa Flow yoga teacher and spiritual activist. She is well known for her passionate and inspirational style of teaching and the work that she is involved in throughout the world using yoga for positive social change. Since 2007, she has been training leaders of activism through her co-founded organization Off the Mat, Into the World.
Seane has spent time in India, Cambodia and Africa working with prostitutes and street children, teaching yoga, providing support for child labor and educating people about HIV/AIDS prevention. Seane is also co-founder of the Seva Challenge Humanitarian Tours, encouraging yoga teachers to get involved in fund and awareness raising efforts across the globe.
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Stuart Crabb
Head of Learning, Facebook
Stuart is responsible for Learning & Development at Facebook, including Leadership and Manager development, Acculturation of new employees, and supporting the growth and development of high performance teams. Prior to joining Facebook, Stuart was a Senior Consultant at The Marcus Buckingham Company, supporting strengths-based consulting and coaching assignments. Stuart is also the former Head Talent Development at Yahoo!.
Originally a lawyer by education, Stuart has spent 20 years in the Human Resources field with Yahoo!, Oracle, HP and Siemens. He has lived in Australia, Germany, Scotland and now the United States, although he is a native of the UK. His Clifton Strengthsfinder signature themes are: Strategic, Positivity, Communication, Developer and Woo :-).
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Jim Doty
Director & Founder, Project Compassion
Dr. Doty is the founder of the Center for Compassion and Altruism at Stanford (CCARE). He is a Clinical Professor in the Department of Neurosurgery at Stanford University. He completed his undergraduate training at the University of CA, Irvine and medical school at Tulane University School of Medicine in New Orleans, LA. In addition to being a neurosurgeon, he is also an inventor, entrepreneur and philanthropist, having given support to a number of charitable organizations including Children as the Peacemakers, Global Healing and Family & Children Services. These charities support a variety of programs throughout the world including those for HIV/AIDS support, blood banks, medical care in third world countries and peace initiatives. Additionally, he has endowed chairs at major universities including Stanford University School of Medicine and his alma mater, Tulane University School of Medicine.
As founder of Project Compassion, Dr. Doty works with both the Stanford Institute for Neuro-Innovation and Translational Neuroscience and a variety of scientists from a number of disciplines examining the neural bases for compassion and altruism. He is on the Board of Directors of a number of non-profit foundations including the University of Southern California Brain and Creativity Institute, the Dalai Lama Foundation and the Friends of New Orleans (FONO).
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Rich Fernandez
Director of Executive Development, Google
Rich believes that people and organizations have the innate potential to be fully vital, capable and joyful – and sees his work as facilitating this expression of personal and organizational excellence.
Rich currently has the role of Director of Executive Development at Google, where he and his team work with people in senior roles to help them grow and develop as leaders.
Prior to joining Google, Rich worked as a leader in the talent, leadership and organization development space at companies such as eBay, Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase. Rich was also an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University in New York City, where he taught courses on organizational effectiveness and career development, and earlier in his career he worked in hospitals and community clinics.
Rich earned his M.A. in Social & Organizational Psychology and Ph.D. in Counseling Psychology from Columbia University. Rich received his B.A. from the University of California at San Diego, where he majored in surfing and minored in sun tanning.
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Michelle Gale
Leadership & Development, Twitter
Michelle Gale has worked in high-growth technology start-ups in San Francisco for over a decade. She began her career in recruiting, spent a few years teaching at the elementary school level, and transitioned into coaching & development in 2008. She currently works full time building Learning & Employee Development programs for the awesome peeps at Twitter and is passionate about bringing mindfulness into education.
Michelle is a student of various mindfulness based practices, somatic awareness, and the enneagram.
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Cherie Gardiner
Learning and Development, Zynga
Cherie currently leads the Learning and Development function for Zynga and focuses on building learning solutions that unlock potential, deepen engagement and bring more intention to the role of leadership at all levels of the organization. Prior to joining Zynga, Cherie was a Leadership Development Director for Microsoft in Seattle, led Leadership Development at EMI Recorded Music in London and ninemsn in Sydney.
She earned her degree in business from the University of Technology in Australia, an M.B.A from the University of Washington; and is completing her Masters of Integral Counseling Psychology at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS) in San Francisco.
Originally from New Zealand, she relishes California’s beauty and now lives in the Santa Cruz Mountains.
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Soren Gordhamer
Founder & Host, Wisdom 2.0
Soren is the founder and host of the Wisdom 2.0 Conference, the annual event exploring living with awareness and wisdom in the technology age. He is also the author of Wisdom 2.0: Ancient Teachings for the Creative and Constantly Connected (HarperOne, 2009), and is a regular contributor to the Social Media blog, Mashable.
He has led mindfulness programs in a wide range of settings, including to youth in New York City juvenile halls, trauma workers in Rwanda, teachers in Nigeria, and US technology companies. As project director for Richard Gere's public charity, Healing the Divide, he organized the Healing through Great Difficulty Conference with his Holiness the Dalai Lama. His website: www.sorengordhamer.com
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Roshi Joan Halifax
Upaya Zen Center
Joan Halifax Roshi is a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist, and author. She is Founder, Abbot, and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
She studied for a decade with Zen Teacher Seung Sahn and was a teacher in the Kwan Um Zen School. She received the Lamp Transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh, and was given Inka by Roshi Bernie Glassman. A Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, her work and practice for more than three decades has focused on engaged Buddhism. She is a frequent participant in dialogues with His Holiness the Dalai Lama exploring the intersection of modern science and Buddhism.
She also embraces various technologies, and is very active on social networks like Facebook.
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Joe Hyrkin
President and CEO, Wordnik
Joe Hyrkin is the CEO of Wordnik, the leading meaning discovery engine. He has more than 20 years of experience in senior leadership roles both domestically and internationally. He has focused his career on creating and launching new businesses in the U.S. and Asia, and has been instrumental in pioneering creative revenue opportunities in the search, community and social Web spaces.
In 2010, Joe served as an entrepreneur in residence (EIR) at Trinity Ventures evaluating tech opportunities across next generation search, social commerce, community, crowdsourcing and social media. Prior to Trinity, Joe was the Senior Vice President of Sales and Business Development at Gaia Interactive, where he oversaw all revenue, including virtual goods, advertising, sponsorships and merchandise, as well as all business development efforts. Prior to Gaia Online, Joe headed up the business side of multimedia search and led BD for Flickr at Yahoo.
Before his time at Yahoo, Joe served as vice president of strategic accounts and Asia-Pacific operations at publicly listed company, Virage Inc., a provider of video search and publishing services and software. Prior to Virage , Joe ran The Economist Group’s business in China. Joe serves on the board of directors of Viximo, Inc., and multiple start up advisory boards. -
Thupten Jinpa
Buddhist Scholar, CCARE
Thupten Jinpa (Langri), Ph.D., was educated at the Shartse College of Ganden Monastic University, South India, where he received the Geshe Lharam degree. In addition, Jinpa holds a B.A. Honors in philosophy and a Ph.D. in religious studies, both from Cambridge University. He taught at Ganden monastery and worked as a research fellow in Eastern religions at Girton College, Cambridge University.
Jinpa has been the principal English translator to H.H. the Dalai Lama for over twenty five years and has translated and edited numerous books by the Dalai Lama, including his recently published Beyond Religion: Ethics for a Whole World, as well as Ethics for the New Millennium, The Universe in a Single Atom: The Convergence of Science and Spirituality, and Toward a True Kinship of Faiths: How the World’s Religions can Come Together. His own publications include writings, in Tibetan and English, on topics covering Buddhism, Tibetan philosophy, Buddhism and science, Tibetan grammar, as well as translations of important classical Tibetan texts, the latest being Essential Mind Training.
Jinpa is an adjunct professor at the Faculty of Religious Studies at McGill University, Montreal. In addition he is a visiting scholar at the Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education (CCARE) at the School of Medicine, Stanford University, and the main author of CCARE’s nine-week Compassion Cultivation Training (CCT) program.
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Jon Kabat-Zinn
Mindfulness Teacher
Jon Kabat-Zinn, Ph.D. is internationally known for his work as a scientist, writer, and meditation teacher engaged in bringing mindfulness into the mainstream of medicine and society. He is Professor of Medicine emeritus at the University of Massachusetts Medical School, where he was founding executive director of the Center for Mindfulness in Medicine, Health Care, and Society, and founder (in 1979) and former director of its world-renowned Stress Reduction Clinic.
He is the author of numerous books, incluiding two best-selling: Full Catastrophe Living: Using the Wisdom of Your Body and Mind to Face Stress, Pain and Illness (Dell, 1990), Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life (Hyperion, 1994).
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Gopi Kallayil
Community Partnerships and Marketing Leader, Google+
Gopi Kallayil works at Google on the marketing of Google+. Prior to this, Gopi led the marketing of the Company's flagship advertising products AdWords and AdSense.
Before joining Google, Gopi was Vice President of Strategic Alliances at Nextance, an enterprise Contract Management Software startup. He was also Vice President of Business Development and a founding management team member at Allegrix, an Application Software Provider startup acquired by Progress Software. While a consultant with McKinsey & Co., he worked on engagements helping the management teams of large corporations improve business performance and maximize revenues. Additionally, Gopi has led large Information Technology projects for global corporations in India, China, and the US. He graduated from The Wharton school of Business at UPenn and the National Institute of Technology in India.
He founded and teaches a weekly yoga program for Googlers called Yoglers. He has had a long term meditation practice and regularly returns to Burning Man.
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Beth Kanter
Beth's Blog
Beth Kanter is the author of Beth’s Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media, one of the longest running and most popular blogs for nonprofits. She co-authored the book titled “The Networked Nonprofit” with Allison Fine published by J Wiley in 2010 that received Honorable Mention for the Terry McAdams Award. Beth has over 30 years working in the nonprofit sector in technology, training, capacity building, evaluation, fundraising, and marketing.
In 2009, she was named by Fast Company Magazine as one of the most influential women in technology and one of Business Week’s “Voices of Innovation for Social Media.” She was named Visiting Scholar for Social Media and Nonprofits for the David and Lucile Packard Foundation in 2009-2012. She was a Society of New Communications Research Fellow for 2010.
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Jack Kornfield
Spirit Rock
Jack Kornfield is one of the key teachers to introduce Buddhist mindfulness practice to the West.
He is a founding teacher of the Spirit Rock Center in Woodacre, California, where he currently lives and teaches (www.spiritrock.org). Over the years, Jack has taught in centers and universities worldwide, led International Buddhist Teacher meetings with the Dalai Lama and worked with many of the great teachers of our time. He holds a Ph.D. in clinical psychology and is a husband, father and an activist.
His books have been translated into 20 languages and sold more than a million copies. They include, A Path with Heart; and A Wise Heart: A Guide to the Universal Teachings of Buddhist Psychology. Visit www.jackkornfield.org for more information.
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Scott Kriens
Director, 1440 Foundation
Scott is co-founder with his wife Joanie of the 1440 Foundation, which is a way of sharing with others their belief in the power of strong, healthy relationships for improving lives. 1440 supports organizations and serves champions working in the three domains of education, wellness, and the workplace. Scott’s belief in the power of strong relationships manifested itself in leadership development practices at Juniper Networks where he served as Chairman and spent 12 years as CEO, taking it from its early start up days to a $3.5B global company of over 7,500 people in more than 100 countries.
At this year’s conference, Scott will be announcing the 1440 Challenge, a $75,000 award program seeking the best new ideas for developing and sharing the relationship skills of self-awareness, authenticity, trust, and empathy through technology. Learn more about 1440 at www.1440.org.
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Karen May
VP, Leadership & Talent, Google
With over 20 years of professional experience as an organizational psychologist and leadership
coach, Karen joined Google in 2010 to head up the company’s learning, talent and career
development programs. Karen oversees a global team that supports more than 28,000 Googlers
in more than 60 offices in over 30 countries. The team implements a broad range of
developmental offerings, including executive coaching, new hire onboarding, leadership
development, and peer-to-peer instruction for Googlers of all levels, regions and tenure.Karen also works to ensure that much of Google’s learning curriculum is built in the spirit of our
innovative products, utilizing our technology and putting the user first. Under her leadership,
many courses are collaborative and interactive and integrated with social media and gaming
components. Googlers can often design the training pace that works best for them--whether it be
mobile phone mini-quizzes for those who are on the go, or sequential online modules for linear
learners.She earned her M.A. and Ph.D. in industrial and organizational psychology at U.C. Berkeley,
building on her B.A. in psychology from Mills College. Karen is also an active community leader
and has served as the president of the Mills College Alumnae Association and as president of the
Oakland (CA) Police Foundation Board of Directors. Karen regularly can be found hiking the hills
of Marin County with her husband and two dogs. -
Jane McGonigal
Co-founder, SuperBetter
Jane McGonigal, PhD is a world-renowned designer of alternate reality games — or, games that are designed to improve real lives and solve real problems.
She believes game designers are on a humanitarian mission — and her #1 goal in life is to see a game developer win a Nobel Peace Prize.
She is the New York Times bestselling author of Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World (Penguin Press, 2011) — and currently serves as the Creative Director for Social Chocolate, where she is making games powered by the science of positive emotion and social connection.
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Kelly McGonigal
Author, Stanford Health Psychologist
Kelly McGonigal, PhD, is a health psychologist at Stanford University and a leading expert on the mind-body relationship. She teaches for the School of Medicine’s Health Improvement Program and is a senior teacher/consultant for the Stanford Center for Compassion and Altruism Research and Education. She has received a number of teaching awards for her undergraduate psychology courses, including Stanford University’s highest teaching honor, the Walter J. Gores award. Her popular public courses through Stanford’s Continuing Studies program—including the Science of Willpower and the Science of a Calmed Mind—demonstrate the applications of psychological science to personal health and happiness, as well as organizational success and social change.
Her upcoming book, The Science of Willpower (Penguin 2011), explores cutting-edge research on self-control, stress, and what it takes to make a successful change. She is also the author of Yoga for Pain Relief: Simple Practices to Calm Your Mind and Heal Your Pain (New Harbinger 2009), which translates recent advances in neuroscience and medicine into yoga and meditation practices for people with chronic pain, stress, depression, and anxiety.
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Dustin Moskovitz
Co-Founder, Facebook and Asana
Dustin Moskovitz is a co-founder of Facebook and, more recently, Asana, a startup tackling the problem of workplace collaboration. At Facebook, he was a leader in the technical staff, where he oversaw the major architecture of the site. He was also responsible for the company’s mobile strategy and development. Starting Facebook with founder Mark Zuckerberg from their dorm room, Dustin has been instrumental in the growth and development of the site since its inception. Dustin attended Harvard University as an Economics major for two years before moving to Palo Alto, California to work full time at Facebook.
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Luke Nosek
Founder's Fund, Co-founder PayPal
Luke Nosek is a co-founder of PayPal and served as the company’s VP of Marketing and Strategy.
While at PayPal, Luke oversaw the company’s marketing efforts at launch, growing the user base to 1 million customers in the first six months. Luke also created “Instant Transfer,” PayPal’s most profitable product. Prior to PayPal, Luke was an evangelist at Netscape. Luke has also co-founded two other consumer Internet companies, including the Web’s first advertising network, and was an active venture capitalist in his personal capacity before launching Founders Fund. Luke received a BS in Computer Science from the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.
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Pierre Omidyar
Founder, eBay
Pierre is a technology innovator and philanthropist who—with his wife Pam—has established several organizations to help fulfill their vision of tapping the inherent capabilities of all people and creating opportunities that lead to positive social change. To date, the Omidyars have committed more than $1B to causes ranging from poverty alleviation to human rights to disaster relief.
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Leah Pearlman
CoCreator, The Happiness Institute
Leah Pearlman is a CoCreator of The Happiness Institute, located in San Francisco. The Happiness Institute is an intentional space for sharing, creation collaboration, experimenting, education, expression, and manifestation. It exists to honor and support people coming together to explore what makes them come alive. It is founded on the belief that honoring the wisdom of our own hearts is the surest path to happiness for ourselves and each other.
Leah is also author of Dharma Comics, a comic blog in which she draws on life to explore personal and universal truth. She has a background in technology, most recently having graduated from four amazing years working for Facebook working both as product manager and running internal communications.
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Lee Rainie
Director, Pew Research Center's Internet & American Life Project
Lee Rainie is the Director of the Pew Research Center’s Internet & American Life Project, a non-profit, non-partisan “fact tank” that studies the social impact of the internet. Since December 1999, the Washington D.C. research center has examined how people’s internet use affects their families, communities, health care, education, civic and political life, and work places.
The Project has issued more than 350 reports based on its surveys that examine people’s online activities and the internet’s role in their lives. All of its reports and datasets are available online for free at www.pewinternet.org.
Lee is a co-author of four books about the future of the internet that are based on Project surveys. His new book, co-authored with sociologist Barry Wellman, will be out in May. It is entitled Networked: The new social operating system.
Prior to launching the Pew Internet Project, Lee was managing editor of the newsmagazine U.S. News & World Report.
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Cordell Ratzlaff
Director of User Experience, Cisco
Cordell is passionate about creating products that people fall in love with. Over his 25-year career he has designed a wide assortment of products for people ranging from six-year-old girls to astronauts. He has done work for companies such as Apple, Disney, Microsoft, NASA, Yahoo!, Hewlett-Packard, Johnson & Johnson, Intel, and DaimlerChrysler.
At Cisco, Cordell currently leads a team of designers exploring how technology can be harnessed to enable people to collaborate more naturally across time and distance. -
Justin Rosenstein
Co-founder, Asana
Justin Rosenstein is the co-founder of Asana, a software startup in San Francisco building a new kind of collaborative information manager as part of its mission "to help build the central nervous system of the human organism." Asana is deeply committed to incorporating values like mindfulness, egolessness, and radical honesty into its culture and day-to-day operations. Before Asana, Justin led projects as an engineering lead at Facebook (including Facebook Pages and the "Like" button) and product manager at Google.
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Tim Ryan
United States Congressman
Tim Ryan was first sworn in as a member of Congress on January 7, 2003. Now in his fifth term, Ryan has proven himself to be strong advocate for the working families of Ohio's 17th District and a dynamic leader in the House of Representatives.
In 2006, Ryan was chosen by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi to join the Democratic Steering and Policy Committee, which is responsible for nominating Democratic Members to serve on House Committees and advising the Speaker on policy. That same year, Ryan was appointed to the powerful House Committee on Appropriations where his committee assignments included the Subcommittee on Labor, Health and Human Services, Education, and Related Agencies ("Labor-HHS"), the Subcommittee on Energy and Water Development, and Related Agencies ("Energy and Water"), and the Subcommittee on Defense.
Ryan is currently appointed to the House Armed Services Committee, where he serves on the Subcommittee on Emerging Threats and Capaibilities and the Subcomittee on Readiness, as well as the House Budget Committee.
He is also a practitioner of mindfulness and very interested in the application of wisdom in our modern world.
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Eric Schiermeyer
Co-Founder, Zynga
Eric is a co-founder of Zynga where he led product development and also spearheaded the creation of Zynga's wellness program, which maintains a strong emphasis on holistic and preventative health. Prior to launching Zynga, he was the CTO at eUniverse, the company that became Intermix Media, parent company of MySpace. He is currently helping to develop Integrative Health Programs (IHP), a company that is dedicated to providing on-site holistic health and wellness services to businesses and corporations. He also acts as an advisor/board member/angel investor to other Silicon Valley startups that either adopt wellness programs or further the adoption of wellness programs.
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Premal Shah
President, Kiva.org
Premal first began dreaming of “internet microfinance” while working at PayPal, the online payments company. In late 2004, Premal took a 3 month leave from PayPal to develop and test the internet microfinance concept in India. When he returned to Silicon Valley, he met other like-minded dreamers and quit his job at PayPal to help bring the Kiva concept to life and eventually to scale. Kiva today raises over $1 million each week for the working poor in +50 countries and was named a Top 50 Website by TIME Magazine in 2009.
For his work as a social entrepreneur, Premal was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum and selected to FORTUNE magazine's "Top 40 under 40" list in 2009. Premal began his career as a management consultant and graduated from Stanford University.
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Daniel Siegel
Co-Director, Mindful Awareness Research Center
Daniel J. Siegel, M.D. is a clinical professor of psychiatry at the UCLA School of Medicine where he is also on the faculty of the Center for Culture, Brain, and Development and the Co-Director of the Mindful Awareness Research Center at UCLA.
Dr. Siegel is the Executive Director of the Mindsight Institute, an educational organization that focuses on how the development of mindsight in individuals, families and communities can be enhanced by examining the interface of human relationships and basic