Matt Basford is the founder of Most Human and was a Partner and the General Manager of the NY Studio of Beyond, a global design and technology consultancy. Over his career, Matt has advised many Fortune 500 brands, including Google, Facebook and PayPal on using emerging technologies to create meaningful customer interactions. Now, Matt is focused on building a new business, Most Human, that seeks to bring more humanity into the workplace by enabling growing businesses to build healthy cultures from the ground up.
Oana Botez is a Romanian-American theatre, opera, dance and film designer, artist, and activist. She is the recipient of The Barrymore and Drammy Awards and her designs have raised critical acclaim nationally and globally. Ms. Botez is a graduate of Bucharest Art Academy (Romania) and has received an MFA in Design from NYU/Tisch School of the Arts. Oana was a major contributor for the first Romanian theater design catalogue, called Scenografica. She teaches at the Design Department at the Yale School of Drama and has taught costume design at Colgate College, Brooklyn College, and MIT. She resides in Manhattan, New York.
Adrienne Maree Brown is the author of two movement books, Emergent Strategy and Pleasure Activism, that offer new approaches for our collective future. In her own words: “I am about radical love, actions speaking louder than words, and communication as a point of evolution.” Brown has been facilitating professionally for over fifteen years and has worked with hundreds of organizations at all levels of scale, including informal collectives, foundations, national networks, and more.
Lauren Embrey is President and Philanthropic Visionary of The Embrey Family Foundation and CEO of Embrey Interests, Ltd. She serves on Boards in Dallas, Washington DC, and New York City, including the AT&T Performing Arts Center, The Women’s Media Center, and PEN America. Lauren’s passion is theater, dance, film, and human rights work. She produced the U.S. premiere of Truth in Translation in 2007. She is Executive Producer for the documentary Playground, and a documentary on The Apollo Theater. She is involved in Chicken & Egg Pictures, Impact Partners, and The Sundance Institute. Lauren has received many awards for her Philanthropic work, both at the community and national level. She is a member of the Threshold Foundation and Synergos Institute’s Global Philanthropy Circle. Lauren is currently working on her first fiction novel scheduled to be completed in 2020.
Robert Gass is a Co-Founder of Social Transformation Project and the Rockwood Leadership Institute and is widely known and highly regarded for his work in leadership development and organizational change over the last 30 years. He has worked as an executive coach and organizational consultant to Fortune 500 companies, nonprofits, and foundations, and he has offered seminars to more than 100,000 individuals at universities, education centers, and conferences around the world. He is the former President of ARC International, a global consulting and training company specializing in transformational change with Fortune 500 companies. Current and past consulting clients include the U.S. Senate and Congress, SEIU, the Democracy Alliance, the Tides Foundation, Sierra Club, and MoveOn.org, among others. Robert and Judith Ansara, his wife and life partner of more than 40 years, lead retreats for committed couples throughout North America. Robert is also a recording artist and performing musician.
Carla Goldstein, JD, is President of Omega Institute, the nation’s premier holistic learning center, offering innovative educational experiences that provide an integrated approach to personal and social change. An attorney with 25 years of public interest advocacy on women’s rights, poverty, public health, and social justice, Carla is on the forefront of transformational activism, a framework for change founded on the holistic principles of interdependence and fueled by an aspiration for a more unified, peaceful, and loving world. Carla is also co-founder of the Omega Women’s Leadership Center, a hub for convening, inspiring, and training women to #DoPowerDifferently, and she presents to all kinds of audiences on applying holistic principles in our everyday lives. She serves in an advisory capacity to several organizations on the cutting edge of new ways of thinking about activism, including Women Without Borders, Feminist.com, Ctznwell, and Living Room Conversations.
John Heller is the Chief Executive Officer of Little Sun. Founded by the contemporary artist Olafur Eliasson, Little Sun is an innovative social enterprise that provides affordable access to clean energy in Africa and mobilizes citizen-led climate action globally. Prior to joining Little Sun, Heller served as Managing Director of the Synergos Institute, a non-profit organization that generates collaborative solutions to poverty worldwide. Heller founded and led a social-purpose consultancy within Synergos that enabled corporations, foundations, and philanthropists to advance social impact. Clients included Walmart, PepsiCo, eBay, Shell, Bloomberg Philanthropies, Unilever, DuPont-Pioneer, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, Conservation International, and the UN Global Compact, among others.
Alan Lightman is an American writer, physicist, and social entrepreneur. He has a PhD in physics from the California Institute of Technology and six honorary degrees. Lightman has served on the faculties of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and is currently a professor of the practice of the humanities at MIT. He was the first person at MIT to have a joint faculty position in science and in the humanities. His essays and articles have appeared in many magazines and newspapers. His novels include Einstein’s Dreams, an international bestseller which has been translated into 30 languages, and The Diagnosis, a finalist for the National Book Award in the U.S. In 2005, Lightman founded the Harpswell Foundation, whose mission is to advance a new generation of women leaders in Southeast Asia.
Rev. Konrad Ryushin Marchaj, Sensei, is a Zen priest in the tradition of Zen Buddhism, and a Dharma heir of the late John Daido Loori, Roshi. Ryushin Sensei was the Abbot of Zen Mountain Monastery in the Catskill Mountains of New York. Born in Warsaw, Poland, he immigrated to the United States in 1967. He received a Bachelor of Arts degree in Anthropology from Yale University in 1976, specializing in various expressions of shamanism throughout the world. He received his medical degree from Albany Medical College in 1980, working first as a pediatrician in Portland, Maine and then serving in the U.S. Navy as a physician for three years. He then returned to Albany for postgraduate training in psychiatry. After completing his residency, he served as medical director for a community psychiatric outreach program, the Mobile Crisis Team, which served Albany County’s disenfranchised and homeless population.
Surya Mattu is a Brooklyn-based investigative journalist, artist, and engineer who looks at the ways in which algorithmic systems perpetuate systemic biases and inequalities in society. Currently, he is an investigative data journalist at The Markup. Previously, he was a contributing researcher at ProPublica, where he worked on Machine Bias, a series that aims to highlight how algorithmic systems can be biased and can discriminate against people. Machine Bias was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Explanatory Journalism. He has shown work at The Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Sundance Film Festival, the Whitney Museum of American Art, V&A Museum, and Bitforms Gallery.
Darnell Moore is Director of Inclusion Strategy for Content and Marketing at Netflix. Prior to this he served as head of strategy and programs at Breakthrough, a global human rights organization seeking to make gender-based violence unacceptable. He is an award-winning writer and activist, a leader in the Movement for Black Lives, and a tireless advocate for justice and liberation. He is co-managing editor of The Feminist Wire and the author of No Ashes in the Fire, named one of the top 100 books of 2018 by the New York Times. His writings have appeared in several media platforms, including The Guardian, MSNBC, EBONY, The Advocate, and within academic journals. Darnell has spent the last two decades working in the fields of education, youth programming, community development, and media.
Leslie Salmon Jones has been practicing and teaching yoga since 1991 and is the founder of Afro Flow Yoga™, which is infused with electrifying dance movements of the African Diaspora. Her community outreach includes being a former consultant for the New York Knicks “healthy lifestyle clinics” which teaches self-esteem to youth. She has developed and facilitated programs such as the S.H.E. Network Program (Sustaining Healthy Eating for women of color) at Brigham and Women’s Hospital and a six-week SummerFit Program for at-risk youth at Mass General Hospital, Boston. She served as a board member for the organizations Free Arts NYC for At Risk Kids, NYC, and the United Nations Association of New York (UNA NY), and she is currently on the Diversity Committee at Kripalu Center for Yoga and Health, in the Berkshires of Western MA. As a professional dancer, Leslie worked with known greats such as Judith Jameson, Bill T. Jones, and Wynton Marsalis. She is a certified wellness coach through the Wellcoaches Corporation.
Nadja Shaw currently leads the learning and development strategy for the tech workforce accelerator, Trilogy Education Services. Prior, she served as the Director of Program Design at Teach for America, New York. There she set the vision, parameters, measures of success, and workflow for programmatic initiatives aligned to teachers’ most salient challenges in their path to becoming strong culturally responsive educators. She is a Harlem native who has previously served as a K-6 teacher and school leader. As founder of Collective Ideation Consulting, LLC, Nadja seeks to support teams, organizations, and leaders identify strategy aligned to Diversity, Equity, Inclusiveness (DEI), learning needs, and leadership development. She serves on the Board of Mercy Labs.
Kaylynn Sullivan TwoTrees is an artist/catalyst/guide who works across mediums, connections, and social constructions focused on creating sacred space for deep remembering and reciprocal communication/relationship with nature and the unseen world. Her work focuses on re-orienting to and regenerating an essential relationship with Self and Nature. She was past Artist in Residence for the The Vermont Network for Domestic Violence and a Whistenton Public Scholar at the Kettering Foundation and is currently a member of the faculty in the Leadership in Sustainability Master’s Program/University of Vermont Rubenstein School of Environment and Natural Resources. TwoTrees has received teachings from many indigenous elders and with their input, support, and guidance she continues to share teachings and practices. Through her work Practice for Living, Living Practice, she continues to offer these teachings through divinations, coaching, and private and group retreats. These offerings are intended to support each individual’s unique gift, calling, faith, practice, and spiritual path.