Otis Brawley

Otis Brawley, Chief medical officer for the American Cancer Society, is responsible for promoting the goals of cancer prevention, early detection and quality treatment through cancer research and education. He champions efforts to decrease smoking, improve diet, detect cancer at the earliest stage and provide the critical support cancer patients need. He also guides efforts to enhance and focus the research program, upgrade the Society’s advocacy capacity and concentrate community cancer control efforts in areas where they will be most effective. 

@OtisBrawley

Session: Overdiagnosed

Troy Carter

Entrepreneur, Investor & Music Manager -- Welcome to the art of hustle. From his humble roots in the streets of West Philadelphia, where he threw hip-hop events that grew into a talent management empire fusing pop, urban and musical points in between (John Legend and Meghan Trainor) to his transformation into tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Troy Carter is the closest approximation in the digital age to a Renaissance man. A high-school dropout who hit it big maintaining footholds in multiple industries while investing shrewdly in a portfolio of companies including Uber, Spotify and Dropbox, he is a case study in future-forward entrepreneurship — a CEO of beats, bytes and big ideas whose synergistic success story in music and technology ranks among the most riveting and relatable in business today.

@atomfactory

Session: Troy Carter

Greg Christian

Greg Christian is a highly successful consultant, chef, author and entrepreneur offering solutions to help transform food service into a more sustainable entity. Greg’s efforts as founder and developer of the Organic School Project (OSP) have been recognized on a national as well as local level. His involvement with the Organic School Project and strong background in the food service sector led him to launch Beyond Green: Sustainable Food Partners, a sustainability consulting firm, which provides organizations in the food service industry with in-house dining services, sustainable solutions, implementation strategies and the expertise to adopt sustainable operations.

Session: Does Doing Good Mean Doing Better?

Tammy York Day

Tammy York Day, Chief Operating Officer of Delta Dental of Kentucky, works closely with the CEO and executive team to design and implement strategies to achieve Delta Dental of Kentucky’s business goals. She oversees all operations functions of the organization, including the executive staff of sales and marketing, underwriting, information services, claims and customer service.

She developed the strategy and provides leadership and management for DDKY’s charitable initiative, Making Smiles Happen® which is aimed at promoting and improving oral health throughout the Commonwealth, as well as providing charitable support to a variety of non-profit partners in the surrounding communities. In 2015 and 2016, approximately $6 million was awarded to over 120 charities by the Making Smiles Happen® initiative.

Session: Does Doing Good Mean Doing Better?

Suzy Delvalle

President & Executive Director of Creative Capital. Delvalle is the former Executive Director of the Sugar Hill Children's Museum of Art & Storytelling. As leader of the Museum's development process, Delvalle oversaw all aspects, including physical, administrative, and programmatic; established partnerships with a wide range of NYC organizations for initial Museum programming; raised both capital and operating support; and built a robust Board of Trustees and Advisory Board. Previously, Delvalle served as Director of External Affairs at El Museo del Barrio in New York, where she secured the museum's first major city, state and federal funding including over $35 million in capital support and a three-year, $2 million capacity-building grant.

@creativecap

Session: Art @ the Edge

Heather Dewey-Hagborg

A Chicago-based transdisciplinary artist and educator who is interested in art as research and critical practice. She works in diverse media ranging from biology, and computation, to sculpture, performance and design. She has shown work internationally at events. Her work has been widely discussed in the media, from The New York Times and BBC to TED Talks and Wired. She has participated in policy conversations at the Woodrow Wilson Policy Center and the Norwegian Biotechnology Advisory Board.

@hdeweyh

Session: Art @ the Edge

Massimiliano Finazzer Flory

Actor, playwright and theater director. Lives and works in Milan and New York. In 2015, his next theater piece entitled "Being Leonardo da Vinci impossible interview" or the biography of the genius artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci. It premiered in London (2012) for the exhibition "Leonardo da Vinci. Painter at the court of Milan" (London, National Gallery). 

Session: da Vinci

Lee Dugatkin

Lee Dugatkin…Behavioral Ecologist, Evolutionary Biologist and Historian of Science. His main area of research interest is the evolution of social behavior and studying the evolution of cooperation, the evolution of aggression, the interaction between genetic and cultural evolution, the evolution of antibiotic resistance, and the evolution of risk-taking behavior.  He is the author of Principles of Animal Behavior, Mr. Jefferson and the Giant Moose and The Prince of Evolution.

@LeeDugatkin

Session: King of the Hill: The Evolutionary Roots of Power and Dominance

April Foster

Obsessed with combining relevant products and smart products with influencer brands, April Foster is pioneering the first Influencer Commerce(TM) company: Inked. After a career in sales and management, April founded Studio Calico, an e-commerce platform devoted to inspiration and subscription products in the paper-crafting industry. That platform, the foundation for the influencer model, serves an online audience in over 130 countries.  

Session: Southeast by Midwest: How Fast Tech Companies are Growing in the Middle.

Jeffrey Gibson

Jeffrey Gibson (Choctaw/Cherokee) is a painter and installation artist living in Brooklyn, New York. He graduated from the Royal College of Art in London, England with a Master of Arts degree. Before moving to New York, Gibson exhibited in group and solo exhibitions in both London and Norway. Since returning to the U.S., he has exhibited in museums and galleries in New York, Boston, Texas, and Connecticut. His work has been published in various books and magazines in the U.S., England, Norway, and Spain. His paintings and installations have been featured in exhibitions at The Aldrich Museum of Contemporary Art, The Jersey City Museum, and The National Museum of the American Indian (Smithsonian Institution).

http://www.jeffreygibson.net/

Session: Art @ the Edge

Yari Golden-Castano

MIT Lincoln Lab - System Analyst - working on an airborne laser communications project. A Candidate for the Mars One project (Human settlement of Mars).

Session: Thrivals 9.0

Stacy Griggs

Stacy Griggs is the President and CEO of El Toro. Mr. Griggs leads day-to-day operations at El Toro and is also one of the creators of El Toro’s four pending patents for IP Targeting. El Toro was named Businesses First’s Emerging Company of the Year for 2015 and to the GLI Hot Dozen. Stacy has led three different organizations that were recognized by Inc. Magazine on the Inc. 500 list as the fastest growing privately-held companies in the United States.

Session: Southeast by Midwest: How Fast Tech Companies are Growing in the Middle.

Emma Hiza

Emma Hiza is a passionate educator, curriculum designer, and program director who has worked extensively in the fields of education and public health both domestically and overseas. Her work includes classroom instruction, curriculum design and teacher training across various contexts in the U.S, Bangladesh, Rwanda, and Kenya. She has worked in public education in Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, DC and internationally with Partners In Health, the Asian University for Women, and the McKinsey Social Initiative. She is a culturally conscious, critically reflective practitioner who believes profoundly in education as the most fundamental mechanism for community-driven social change.

Session: Thrivals 9.0

Jamie Holmes

Future Tense Fellow at New America and a former Research Coordinator in the Department of Economics at Harvard University. He holds an M.I.A. from Columbia’s School of International and Public Affairs and his writing has appeared in The New York Times, The New Yorker, Slate, Politico, The Christian Science Monitor, The New Republic, The Atlantic, Foreign Policy and the Daily Beast. He is the author of Nonsense: The Power of Not Knowing.

Session: Nonsense

Nat Irvin

Author, innovator, futurist, teacher, commentator and founder of Thrivals at IdeaFestival, Nat Irvin, II, is the Woodrow M. Strickler Executive in Residence, Professor of Management Practice, College of Business, University of Louisville where he has taught change management, leadership, future studies, and team dynamics since 2007. From 1996-2007, Irvin led Future Focus 2020, a think tank dedicated to providing leadership in bringing futurist thinking to urban communities. In 2000, Future Focus 2020 became a center of the Babcock Graduate School of Management at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, where Dr. Irvin served as Executive Professor of Future Studies and as Assistant Dean for MBA Student Development.

@NatIrvinII

@Thrivals9

Session: da Vinci

Session: Thrivals 9.0