Speakers

Dr. Victoria Hale
Founder and Chair Emeritus of The Institute for OneWorld Health

Dr. Victoria Hale, Founder and Chair Emeritus of The Institute for OneWorld Health, is a pharmaceutical scientist who established her expertise in all stages of biopharmaceutical drug development at the US Food and Drug Administrations Center for Drug Evaluation and Research; and at Genentech, Inc., the world's first biotechnology company. Dr. Hale’s recent honors include; being elected to membership in the Institute of Medicine of the National Academies in 2007, being named a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation Fellow in 2006 and selection as an Ashoka Fellow for work in leading social innovation also in 2006. In 2005, The Economist named Hale the recipient of its Social and Economic Innovation award and Esquire Magazine named her Exec of the Year. That same year OneWorld Health was awarded the Social Responsibility Award at the prestigious Pharmaceutical Achievement Awards competition and received the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.

Kavita Ramdas
CEO Global Fund for Women

Kavita Ramdas grew up in India where she learned first hand about discrimination. Her commitment to justice and gender equality was strengthened by an activist mother, Mount Holyoke College, and graduate studies in development. After working with non-profits in India, Kavita was Program Officer for community development and population at the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation in Chicago. She leads the Global Fund for Women, the world’s largest grant making foundation exclusively funding international women’s rights groups. During her tenure, assets have tripled, enabling the fund to award $8.5 million annually to organizations in 167 countries. Recently appointed an Advisor on Global Development to the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, she is also a prolific writer and public speaker on human rights and international development.

Mary Lou Jepsen
Founder and CEO Pixel Qi and Former CTO One Laptop per Child

Mary Lou Jepsen was recently named one of the hundred most influential people in the world by Time Magazine in May 2008 for her work in creating Pixel Qi, and her previous work in creating One Laptop per Child where she was the founding chief technology officer and its first employee. Notably Mary Lou invented the laptop's sunlight-readable display technology and co-invented its ultra-low-power management system. Critically, she architected the XO laptop and transformed it into mass production. Mary Lou's earlier contributions have had world-wide adoptioin in successful HDTV, projector and head-mounted display products. In 1995 she co-founded the Microdisplay Corporation and served as its chief technology officer through 2003. Until the end of 2004, she was a group executive and the chief technology officer of the display division at Intel Corporation. Mary Lou holds a Ph.D. in Optical Sciences, a B.S. in Electrical Engineering (with honors) and a B.A. (req.) in Studio Art all from Brown University as well as a Master of Science in Holography from the MIT Media Lab..

Paola Gianturco
Photojournalist

Paola Gianturco has been working as a photojournalist for the past twelve years, documenting women’s lives in forty countries. Her new book, Women Who Light the Dark (September 2007) is her fourth to be published by powerHouse Books. All of Gianturco's books are philanthropic projects, for which she donates her royalties to carefully-selected nonprofit organizations that relate to each book's content. For Women Who Light the Dark, Gianturco is giving 100% of her author royalties to the Global Fund for Women, which advocates for and defends women's human rights by making grants to support women's groups around the world. Paola has been a guest on The Oprah Winfrey Show, CNN, NPR and Voice of America programs, and interviewed on many local radio and television shows. Paola Gianturco’s involvement with women’s issues is long-standing. She was senior vice president of the first women-owned advertising agency in the United States; co-taught executive institutes about women and leadership at Stanford University and Mills College; served on the Board of Directors of The Association for Women’s Rights in Development (1999-2000). Her board work in the international arena also includes serving as Chair (2000-2001) of the Board of the Crafts Center in Washington DC, which works with low-income artisans in 79 countries. Prior to 1995, Gianturco worked for 34 years in advertising, public relations and marketing. Gianturco graduated from Stanford University in 1961 and lives in Mill Valley, California.

Kirsten Saenz Tobey
Co-founder and COO of Revolution Foods

Kirsten Saenz Tobey is the co-founder and COO of Revolution Foods, a company focused on transforming school lunch by providing healthy, fresh, delicious meals and nutrition education to all students, often in communities battling the highest rates of obesity and related disease. Revolution Foods has served over 2 million meals since inception and today works with over 100 education programs in the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles serving close to 25,000 students. The company has raised over $11 million to improve health in schools and has plans to expand nationally. Prior to founding Revolution Foods, s career began as a teacher and coordinator of experiential education programs at Phillips Academy in Massachusetts as well as with Amigos de las Americas in Ecuador. Her passion for sustainability and community health led her to run a public health campaign for Earthjustice. She managed operations for the School for Field Studies in Mexico where she worked with college students to study the environmental and socioeconomic impacts of the fishing industry. During graduate school, she worked with the United Nations Hunger Task Force to evaluate the scalability of school feeding programs in Ghana and with the McDonald's Corporation to incorporate social and environmental responsibility into the supply chain. Kirsten has an AB from Brown University and an MBA from UC Berkeley.

Kjerstin Erickson
Founder and Executive Director of FORGE

Kjerstin Erickson is the founder and Executive Director of FORGE. She founded FORGE in 2003, when she was a 20 year-old junior studying Public Policy at Stanford University. Now 25, Kjerstin continues to manage FORGE's operations, growth and development. She has developed partnerships with the UN refugee agency and has worked with local governments in Zambia and Botswana to bring FORGE's work to serve 60,000 refugees in four different refugee camps in Southern Africa. Prior to starting FORGE, Kjerstin conducted research on women grantees in HIV/AIDS for the National Institutes of Health, worked in local community development. She has been named a Haas Public Service Fellow at Stanford, a "Top 10 College Woman" by Glamour Magazine, a "Person You Should Know" by CNN, and a Community Fellow for the Full Circle Fund.

Debra Dunn
Associate Consulting Professor at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design

Debra Dunn is currently working as an Advisor to business start-ups and Social Ventures around the world and an Associate Consulting Professor at the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design (aka d.school) at Stanford University. Debra left HP in June of 2005 after 22 years. For the last 3 years of her HP career Debra was senior vice president of Corporate Affairs and Global Citizenship. Previously, as vice president of strategy and corporate operations, Dunn led corporate strategy, corporate development, corporate communications and brand management, corporate philanthropy and government affairs. Dunn was elected an HP vice president in November 1999. She was named general manager of HP’s executive committee in 1998 and led the Agilent spin off process as well as HP’s new business creation function. Dunn was named general manager of HP’s Video Communication Division in 1996 after assuming the role of marketing manager in 1993 and manufacturing manager in 1992. Dunn holds a bachelor’s degree in comparative economics from Brown University in Providence, R.I., and a master’s degree in business from Harvard School of Business in Cambridge, MA. She serves on the Boards of the Skoll Foundation, B Lab and Global Giving and the Faculty of Sustainability.

Neelam Noorani
Human Rights Lawyer

Neelam Noorani is an international human rights lawyer, currently serving as a legal officer in the Appeals Chamber of the Special Court for Sierra Leone(SCSL). At the SCSL, she has worked on legal issues concerning gender based violence and child soldiers, including the SCSL’s landmark decision to recognize forced marriage as a crime against humanity. She has also worked for the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia. Previous to her positions at these Courts, Neelam Noorani practiced commercial litigation in San Francisco. She holds a A.B. from the University of California at Berkeley and a J.D. from Santa Clara University School of Law and when not in Sierra Leone makes her home in San Francisco.

Denise Brosseau
Founder Brosseau Group & Strategic Leadership Coach

Denise Brosseau heads an executive talent agency, the Brosseau Group, serving as an ‘agent of opportunity’ for senior executives seeking to scale their businesses, fast-track their careers or identify their next opportunity. A Wellesley graduate with a Stanford MBA, Denise began her career working in the high tech arena for 10 years before co-founding a non-profit, the Forum for Women Entrepreneurs (FWE), which she grew to 7 chapters, 1200 members and almost $2M in revenues. While at FWE, she co-founded the Springboard Venture Forums, a highly successful venture conference series for women-founded and –led companies that still runs nationwide. In 2002, Denise left FWE (today operating as FWE&E) to start a consulting practice that grew into The Brosseau Group. Denise is a frequent speaker at conferences nationally and has been featured in many newspaper, magazine, TV and radio shows speaking about women’s leadership and entrepreneurship. She serves as Chair of the board of the Wellesley Business Leadership Council and the Housing & Human Concerns Committee in Redwood City.

April Chou
Partner New Schools Venture Fund

April Chou is a partner at NewSchools Venture Fund, a nonprofit whose mission is to transform public education through powerful ideas and passionate entrepreneurs so that all children – especially those in underserved communities – have the opportunity to succeed. As part of the leadership team, April has responsibility for investment strategy and management and also leads the organization's development efforts. Prior to joining NewSchools, April was a management consultant with McKinsey & Company in San Francisco, Beijing, and Washington, DC, where she advised clients on strategy, organization, and operations. As a Nonprofit Practice Community Fellow, she served nonprofit clients and helped build the firm's knowledge base about the nonprofit sector. April received her bachelor’s degree from Princeton University's Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs and completed her graduate work at Stanford, where she received an MBA from the Graduate School of Business and an MA from the School of Education. April currently serves on the Board of Governors of the Asian American Alumni Association of Princeton and chaired the organization from 2000-2006. In 2007, she became the youngest recipient of the Alumni Council’s prestigious Award for Service to Princeton. April lives in San Francisco with her husband Peter and their two sons.

Cindy Tuck
Undersecretary of California Environmental Protection Agency

Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger appointed Cindy Tuck as Undersecretary of the California Environmental Protection Agency (Cal/EPA) in July of 2007. As Undersecretary, Ms. Tuck is chief adviser to the Secretary on all environmental issues. She also oversees the functions and operations of the Office of the Secretary. Ms. Tuck has over two decades of experience in the development and implementation of California’s environmental laws, regulations and programs. She represents California on the Environmental Council of the States. She is the Secretary’s voting alternate for the Bay Delta Authority, the Ocean Protection Council, and the Board of Directors for the California Partnership for the San Joaquin Valley. Ms. Tuck holds a Bachelor of Science Degree in Civil Engineering and a Master of Science Degree in Environmental Engineering – both from the University of Illinois. She is a licensed Professional Engineer in the State of California. She also holds a Juris Doctorate Degree from McGeorge School of Law, University of the Pacific and is a member of the State Bar of California. She is a graduate of Leadership California.

Stacy Ho
Policy Associate at Green For All

As Policy Associate at Green For All, Stacy is primarily responsible for supporting efforts at the local and regional level to win concrete program and policy changes that support the development of an inclusive green economy. She also contributes to broader policy analysis and research, and to federal and state policy advocacy efforts. Stacy joins Green For All with a background in public interest environmental and social justice policy and law. A graduate of Yale University and Lewis & Clark Law School, she has served as environmental policy advisor to two New Jersey governors and pro bono attorney at Bay Area Legal Aid in San Francisco.