Speaker Bios

Ritu Agarwal

Dr. Ritu Agarwal is Professor and the Dean’s Chair of Information Systems at the Robert H. Smith School of Business, University of Maryland, College Park. She is also the founder and Director of the Center for Health Information and Decision Systems at the Smith School. Agarwal has published over 75 papers on information technology management topics in journals such as Information Systems Research, MIS Quarterly, Management Science, Communications of the ACM, Journal of Management Information Systems, Decision Sciences, IEEE Transactions, and Decision Support Systems, and has made presentations at a variety of national and international conferences. Her current research is focused on the use of IT in healthcare settings, technology-enabled transformations in the auto-retailing and printing sectors; and appropriate strategies for the management of IT human capital.

Agarwal has worked extensively with Fortune 500 companies including 3M, Freddie Mac, Dow Chemicals, Rohm and Haas, AstraZeneca, NCR, and others on a variety of research and consulting engagements and made several presentations to groups of senior IT and business executives. Her research has been sponsored by the Society for Information Management, U.S. Department of Labor, and DARPA. She is also active in executive education, and participates in the Smith School’s Executive MBA program.

Agarwal is currently serving as a Senior Editor for Information Systems Research, and an Associate Editor for Management Science. Other editorial appointments include MIS Quarterly Executive, Journal of the Association of Information Systems, Decision Support Systems, and Information Technology and Management. She recently completed a three year term as Senior Editor at MIS Quarterly. She is a member of ACM, AIS, INFORMS, and the Academy of Management. Agarwal is a member of the INFORMS board as Vice President for Subdivisions and served as a Vice President in the Association for Information Systems from 2003-2006.

Amanda Antico-Majkowski

Amanda Antico-Majkowski is an organizational and business development consultant based in the DC metro area. For over a decade, she has worked at all organizational levels serving as manager, leader, consultant, and coach. She works with clients to build sustainable organizations by engaging and understanding their core assets. She is currently in the research phase of her doctoral degree from George Washington University. The dissertation topic combines social capital with the growing phenomena of social entrepreneurship.

Antico-Majkowski has successfully consulted in corporate and non-profit environments. Her client list includes: AOL, Arent Fox, AstraZeneca, Dupont and a myriad of small business ventures. She combines her business acumen with her passion for social value creation. In May 2009, she co-led with David Carter, Accelerating Social Entrepreneurship: How Technology is Knocking Down Doors and Fueling Social Innovation.

Recommended inspirational reading:  How to Change the World, by Dan Bornstein

Mike Curtin

Mike Curtin is the currently CEO, DC Central Kitchen prior to which he had a 20 year career in the hospitality business, most of which has been spent in Washington, D.C. and Northern Virginia. With a focus on organizational design and training, he has focused on redefining DCCK departments and creating new positions that have allowed DCCK to run more efficiently. After graduating from Williams College with a BA in Religion, Curtin lived and worked in Osaka, Japan for three years. It was then that Mike decided he wanted to open a restaurant back in the States. After returning to the Washington area, he worked at the Hay-Adams Hotel, the Dixie Grill and McCormick and Schmick’s on K Street before opening his own restaurant, The Broad Street Grill, in Falls Church, VA.

In addition to growing the many programs of the Kitchen, Curtin has focused on expanding our social enterprise efforts. In 2008, 50% of the revenue raised by DC Central Kitchen, over $2.2 million, was the result of social enterprise and employment projects. This work is continuing through the DCCK growers’ coop, an innovative program where DC Central Kitchen works directly with local growers to purchase unclassified produce, or "seconds," and turn that product into better food for the Kitchen's partners while saving money and employing more graduates of the Kitchen's Culinary Job Training program. This program is now focused on processing and adding that business to the Kitchen's social enterprise portfolio.

Curtin lives in Falls Church with his wife, Maureen, and their three children, Maeve, Michael III and Ciara. 

Recommended inspirational reading: The Omnivore’s Dilemma, by Michael Pollan

Brian Gaines

Brian Gaines is the Vice President of Regional Operations, Marketing and School Partnerships for College Summit. Gaines joined the staff of College Summit in 2006 after spending most of his professional career working for and creating several entrepreneurial endeavors at the intersection of the for-profit and not-for-profit worlds.

Before joining College Summit he was the Founding Executive Director of the Joshua Venture, a venture philanthropy fund working support innovative projects serving the Jewish community. Previously he was the CEO and Managing Partner of a chain of Ben & Jerry's retail outlets in the San Francisco Bay Area and served as the Western Regional Business Manager for Ben & Jerry's Homemade, Inc. He has also help to found several other nonprofit organizations including Ice Cream on Wheels (ICOW) and served as the President of the San Francisco Human Services Commission. 

Seth Goldman

Seth Goldman is President and TeaEO of Honest Tea, the company he co-founded out of his home in 1998 with Professor Barry Nalebuff of the Yale School of Management. Honest Tea is the nation's best-selling organic bottled tea company, with products distributed through more than 30,000 outlets in every state, as well as overseas. Over the past eleven years the company has thrived with a 66 percent annual compound growth rate, as consumers have shifted toward healthier and more sustainable diets. In 2008 The Coca-Cola Company purchased a minority interest in Honest Tea, fueling further growth as Honest became the first organic and Fair Trade brand to move into the world's largest beverage distribution system. The company has initiated community-based partnerships with suppliers in India, South Africa and Argentina . The company has also created marketing partnerships with City Year, TerraCycle, Saturn Hybrids and Jamis Bikes.

An entrepreneur at heart, Goldman started with lemonade stands and newspaper routes, created a non-profit urban service corps, and nearly pursued a prize-winning biotechnology idea before he started Honest Tea in his kitchen in 1998. He is a graduate of Harvard College (1987) and the Yale School of Management (1995), and has been awarded a Crown Fellowship from the Aspen Institute and Ernst & Young's 2008 Entrepreneur of the Year Award for the Mid-Atlantic region.

Recommended inspirational reading: The Call of the Wild, by Jack London

Shannon Hebert

As Vice President of Integrated Marketing, Shannon Hebert leads and manages marketing and sponsorship sales activities for National Geographic Global Media, including campaigns for National Geographic Specials, Kids Entertainment, Gaming, Giant-Screen, and Feature Film properties. In this role, Hebert works closely with corporate partners to design and execute campaigns to meet their marketing goals. Working with NG production, media and product divisions, as well as outside partners, Hebert has also developed integrated marketing campaigns that leverage National Geographic's vast media and outreach assets to successfully launch entertainment franchises including March of the Penguins, Sea Monsters: A Prehistoric Adventure, and Mama Mirabelle's Home Movies, as well as several prime-time specials on PBS.

Prior to joining National Geographic, Hebert was regional vice president of marketing and sales for Feld Entertainment, producers of Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus and Disney on Ice. In this position she oversaw all marketing and sales efforts for Feld Entertainment's touring properties throughout western United States and Canada. Hebert also served as a director of marketing for Radio City Entertainment.

Hebert graduated magna cum laude from Loyola University in New Orleans, where she received her Bachelor of Arts and Sciences in broadcast journalism. She lives in the Washington, D.C., area. 

Recommended inspirational reading: Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, by Stephen Covey &  Heart of Leadership, by Dusty Staub

Rosabeth M. Kanter

Rosabeth Moss Kanter holds the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professorship at Harvard Business School, where she specializes in strategy, innovation, and leadership for change. Her strategic and practical insights have guided leaders of large and small organizations worldwide for over 25 years, through teaching, writing, and direct consultation to major corporations and governments. The former editor of Harvard Business Review (1989-1992), Professor Kanter has been named to lists of the "50 most powerful women in the world" (Times of London), and the "50 most influential business thinkers in the world" (Accenture and Thinkers 50 research).

Kanter is the author or co-author of 17 books, which have been translated into 17 languages. Her 18th book will appear in August 2009, under the tentative title, The Vanguard: How Principle-Led Companies are Changing the World of Business (and Maybe the World). It elaborates on her recent Harvard Business Review articles, "Transforming Giants" and "Innovation: The Classic Traps."

Through Goodmeasure Inc., the consulting group she co-founded, she has partnered with IBM on applying her leadership tools from business to other sectors; she is a Senior Advisor for IBM's Global Citizenship portfolio. In addition, she chairs a Harvard University group creating an innovative initiative on advanced leadership, to help successful leaders at the top of their professions apply their skills to addressing challenging national and global problems.

Richard Kiy

Richard Kiy is President & CEO of the San Diego based International Community Foundation, a public charity dedicated to expanding cross-border charitable giving along the U.S-Mexico border, Baja California Peninsula and communities across the Americas and Asia. Since taking over the helm of International Community Foundation in 2001, International Community Foundation has grown to over $12.5 million in assets and has granted totaling over $25 million to nonprofit organizations and other charitable causes in the regions that it serves.

With a background in environmental policy, Kiy has held several senior level positions in the U.S. Government including Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary for Environmental Health & Safety at the U.S. Department of Energy; Special Assistant for U.S.-Mexico Border Affairs at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency’s Office of International Activities and the Acting Environmental Attaché at the U.S. Embassy-Mexico. Kiy’s private sector international experience includes having served as Senior Vice President for Business Development for PriceSmart, Inc; Vice President for SAIC de Mexico; and Director for Environmental Information Systems with SAIC’s Venezuelan based subsidiary, INTESA.

Kiy is a graduate of Stanford University (A.B. Economics, 1984) and Harvard University's John F. Kennedy School of Government (MPA, 1986). Kiy is the co-author of the book Environmental Management along North America's Borders and co-editor of The Ties that Bind Us: Mexican Migrants in San Diego County.

Kiy serves on the board of the U.S.-Mexico Border Philanthropy Partnership, San Diego Grantmakers. He also serves as a member of UCSD’s Board of Overseers and the Binational Advisory Board of the San Diego Natural History Museum. Kiy is also an adjunct faculty member at the University of San Diego’s School of Leadership and Education Studies, Nonprofit Management Program where he teaches a Spring course on nonprofit management in the U.S.-Mexico Border Region. 

Recommended inspirational reading: Self Renewal: The Individual and the Innovative Society, by John W. Gardner

Paul C. Light

Dr. Paul C. Light is NYU Wagner's Paulette Goddard Professor of Public Service and founding principal investigator of the Organizational Performance Initiative. Until joining NYU, Dr. Light served as the Douglas Dillon Senior Fellow at the Brookings Institution, founding director of its Center for Public Service, and vice president and director of the Governmental Studies Program. He has served previously as director of the Public Policy Program at the Pew Charitable Trusts and associate dean and professor of public affairs at the University of Minnesota's Hubert Humphrey Institute of Public Affairs.

Light has written twenty-one books, including The President's Agenda, Vice Presidential Power, the award-winning Artful Work: The Politics of Social Security Reform, Thickening Government: Federal Hierarchy and the Diffusion of Accountability, The Tides of Reform: Making Government Work, 1945-1999, and The New Public Service. Light's most recent books are A Government Ill Executed, which explores the need to rebuild the federal public service, and The Search for Social Entrepreneurship, which tries to untangle the definition of the movement.

He is also frequent commentator on NPR's "Morning Edition," and a familiar face on ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox, CNN, and C-SPAN.

Steve Lynott

Steve Lynott is the President and CEO of Anerian, LLC a management consulting firm that helps businesses and government agencies design and implement new service innovation strategies.

Lynott has guided eight startup companies in his 30-year career including successful startups in consulting firms, three technology related firms and two web design firms. His service offerings include on-line collaboration, education, professional development, and conferencing tools.

Lynott has led many turn around efforts in the private sector and large scale strategy consulting engagements for government, associations and media companies including The Department of Energy, Dupont Corporation, IBM, SAE International and the US Marine Corps. His work has included many new service offerings and has focused his work on how to help teams identify new models, practices, and processes that enable organizations to re-invent their services delivery model.

Lynott has been married for 30 years, has three grown children and has a Masters Degree in Management and Information Technology from University of Maryland, University College. 

Recommended inspirational reading: 1776, by David McCullough; e-Myth, by Michael Gerber, Father Son and Company, by Thomas J. Watson and Peter Petre & The Education of a Wandering Man, by Louis Lamore

Heather Peeler

Heather Peeler, the Managing Director of Community Wealth Ventures, blends more than ten years of experience in the nonprofit sector with years in management consulting. She has worked in a variety of fields including the arts, publishing, health care, and philanthropy. Prior to joining CWV, she was a senior associate at Innovation Network, where she oversaw business development, public relations, marketing and new product development for a consulting firm serving nonprofits and foundations. Prior to joining Innovation Network, Peeler served as the Managing Editor for Foundation News & Commentary, the flagship publication of the Council on Foundations, where she oversaw the magazine's circulation and advertising programs and wrote features and organizational profiles.

After receiving an MBA from the Anderson School at UCLA, Peeler was the Executive Director of Small Press Distribution, a nonprofit located in Berkeley, CA that provides distribution services for independent literary publishers. While living in the Bay Area, she co-founded GenArt/SF, a nonprofit arts organization dedicated to increasing young people's participation in the visual arts.  

Recommended inspirational reading: Whatever It Takes, by Paul Tough

Shirley Sagawa

Shirley Sagawa is a visiting fellow with the Center for American Progress and the co-founder of sagawa/jospin, a consulting firm that provides strategic counsel to nonprofits. She has served as a presidential appointee in both the first Bush and Clinton Administrations. As Deputy Chief of Staff to First Lady Hillary Clinton, she advised the First Lady on domestic policy. As Special Assistant to President Clinton for Domestic Policy, Sagawa was instrumental to the creation of the Corporation for National Service. After Senate-confirmation as the Corporation’s first managing director, she led the development of AmeriCorps. Most recently, she led the Corporation for National and Community Service transition for President Obama.

Sagawa was the founding executive director of the Learning First Alliance, a partnership of national education associations. She has served as the Chief Counsel for Youth Policy for the Senate Labor Committee and as senior counsel to the National Women’s Law Center, responsible for military family and women’s policy. She is the author of two books, The Charismatic Organization: Eight Ways to Grow a Nonprofit that Builds Buzz, Delights Donors, and Energizes Employees (Jossey-Bass, 2008) and Common Interest, Common Good: Creating Value through Business and Social Sector Partnerships (Harvard Business School Press, 2000).

Sagawa is a cum laude graduate of Harvard Law School, holds an MSc Degree from the London School of Economics, and graduated magna cum laude from Smith College.

Recommended inspirational reading: Wikinomics, by Don Tapscott & Anthony D. Williams

Rachelle Sampson

Professor Sampson currently teaches managerial economics and business strategy in the part-time and full-time MBA core. Her research focuses on strategic alliances and the organization of corporate R&D. Her recent studies examine alliance structure and partner selection in the telecommunications equipment industry, legal contracting for alliances and optimal organization for innovation.

Sampson joined the University of Maryland after five years at the Stern School of Business, New York University. Prior to receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Michigan, she lived in Australia for 10 years. During this time, she received her law degree from Queensland University of Technology and was admitted as a barrister in New South Wales. Sampson also held several legal and consulting positions during this time, most recently at Ernst and Young advising firms on optimal expansion strategies for South East Asia. Since returning to the US, Prof. Sampson has received several awards for her teaching and research work, including the Ameritech Foundation Research Fellowship and the Gerald and Lillian Dykstra Fellowship at the University of Michigan.

Thomas Schelling

Dr. Schelling is an emeritus distinguished university professor in the Department of Economics and the School of Public Policy at the University of Maryland. In 2005, he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics for enhancing the "understanding of conflict and cooperation through game-theory analysis."

Schelling came to the University of Maryland after twenty years at the John F. Kennedy School of Government, where he was the Lucius N. Littauer Professor of Political Economy. He has been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, the Institute of Medicine, and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. In 1991 he was President of the American Economic Association, of which he is a Distinguished Fellow. He was the recipient of the Frank E. Seidman Distinguished Award in Political Economy and the National Academy of Sciences award for Behavioral Research Relevant to the Prevention of Nuclear War. He served in the Economic Cooperation Administration in Europe, and has held positions in the White House and Executive Office of the President, Yale University, the RAND Corporation and the Department of Economics and Center for International Affairs at Harvard University.

He is best known for his books The Strategy of Conflict and Micromotives and Macrobehavior.

Recommended inspirational reading: Smokey: A Cow Horse, by Will James

Oliver Schlake

Dr. Oliver Schlake is a Tyser Teaching Fellow at Robert H. Smith School of Business, a senior business consultant, entrepreneur and researcher. His publications and research on scenario-based strategic planning and innovation strategy have been featured in leading academic and practitioner journals worldwide. Schlake has been an international management consultant and strategic advisor for leading companies and government agencies in Europe and North-America. Prior to joining the Smith School he was Assistant Professor for E-Business at National University, San Diego and CEO for German based consulting firm Scenario Management International (ScMI AG).

Naomi Stanford

Dr. Naomi Stanford is an expert organization design and human capital consultant based in Washington DC. Her current work is leading large scale organization design and change programs in Government and commerce. Her skills and experience were honed in the UK private sector where she worked in very large multi-national companies. Her earlier career was in graduate and post-graduate level business education and she maintains this affiliation by teaching organization theory on the doctoral program at Capella University (US), and human resource management at Roffey Park Institute (UK).

She has a PhD (focused on growing leadership capability) and two Master’s degrees. Additionally she is a Certified Management Consultant and a licensed corporate Wellcoach.

She is the author of two books on organization design: Organization Design: The Collaborative Approach, and The Economist Guide to Organization Design. She has written many articles on aspects of organization design and development and frequently spoken on the topics at conferences. 

Recommended inspirational reading: Strategy for Sustainability, by Adam Werbach, Collapse, by Jared Diamond, & A Whole New Mind, by Daniel Pink

Charles C. Stuart

Charles Stuart is president of Stuart Television Productions, which was incorporated in June of 1987, and specializes in producing documentaries. Recipient of six national EMMYS , two Duponts and various other national awards for producing, investigative reporting and writing, Stuart has over twenty-five years of experience in television and filmmaking.

He has written, produced and directed more than 50 hours of documentary programming for all major networks including eight Frontline hours for PBS, many co-productions with ABC, stories for 60 Minutes on CBS, and documentaries for Home Box Office, the Discovery Channel , A&E, TLC, Lifetime, CNN, MSNBC, ESPN, AMC and National Geographic.

Stuart has traveled the world for his work, which includes four films shot in Africa, Asia and the Middle East for "The New Heroes" series on PBS.

Recommended inspirational reading: Banker to the Poor: Micro-Lending and the Battle Against World Poverty, by Muhammad Yunus

Alan M. Webber

Alan M. Webber is an award-winning, nationally-recognized editor, author, and columnist. In 1995, he launched Fast Company magazine, a fresh, dynamic entry in the business magazine category. Headquartered in Boston, MA, the magazine became the fastest growing, most successful business magazine in history. Fast Company won two national magazine awards one for general excellence, one for design and Webber was named Adweek's Editor of the Year in 1999, along with co-founding editor William Taylor.

Prior to founding Fast Company, Webber was for five years the managing editor and editorial director of the Harvard Business Review. During his tenure, HBR was twice a finalist for National Magazine awards; he oversaw the journal's visual redesign and created the architecture for the journals editorial performance that continues to this day.

Webber is the co-author of two business-related books, Changing Alliances, a Harvard Business School study of the competitiveness of the U.S. auto industry, and Going Global, a look at the techniques and tactics needed to succeed in the global economy. His articles and columns have appeared in The New York Times Sunday magazine, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and the Los Angeles Times, among other publications.

Recommended inspirational reading: Creating a World Without Poverty, by M. Yunus