Global Digital Forum

6-7 May 2015

San Francisco, California

Athena Aktipis

Athena Aktipis, PhD., is an Assistant Professor in the Psychology Department at Arizona State University and Co-Director of the Human Generosity Project, the first large-scale transdisciplinary research project to investigate the inter-relationship between biological and cultural influences on human sharing across cultures. The human generosity project uses multiple methodologies to understand the nature and evolution of human generosity including fieldwork, laboratory experiments and computational modeling.

Shelby Clark

Shelby Clark is Executive Director at Peers, a member-driven organization that supports the sharing economy movement. One of the early pioneers, he founded the world’s first and largest peer-to-peer car sharing marketplace, RelayRides. Today RelayRides operates in over 2,300 cities across the United States. Shelby holds an MBA from the Harvard Business School, and a BS in biomedical engineering with honors from Northwestern University. 

Chip Conley           

From hotel guru to traveling philosopher, Chip Conley has lived out more than one calling in his lifetime. Founder and former CEO of Joie de Vivre, Chip grew his business into the second largest boutique hotel company in America during his 24 years as CEO. In 2013, he launched Fest300 and joined the leadership at Airbnb as Head of Global Hospitality and Strategy, where he's sharing his proven methods with hosts in nearly 200 countries. Chip is the author of four books including the New York Times bestselling EMOTIONAL EQUATIONS: Simple Truths for Creating Happiness + Success, where he travels from emotional intelligence to emotional fluency – placing meaning at the top of the balance sheet.

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Lee Cronk

Lee Cronk, Ph.D., is Professor of Anthropology in the Department of Anthropology at Rutgers University and Co-Director of the Human Generosity Project, a transdisciplinary, multifaceted effort to better understand sharing, mutual aid, and generosity both across cultures and throughout human evolution. His most recent book, which he co-authored with Beth L. Leech, is Meeting at Grand Central: Understanding the Social and Evolutionary Roots of Cooperation, published in 2013 by Princeton University Press.

Samer Hamadeh (YPO Metro New York)

   

Samer Hamadeh is the founder and CEO of Zeel Massage. Samer is disrupting the traditional massage therapy distribution model by offering clients same-day, in-home wellness services using an on demand platform. Prior to Zeel, Samer was co-founder and CEO of Vault.com, which he sold in 2007. Samer is a graduate of Stanford University holding a BS in Chemistry and a MS in Chemical Engineering.  He is also an entrepreneur in residence at Lightspeed Venture Partners.

           

Michael Jaconi

Michael Jaconi is the co-founder and CEO of Button, the acquisition and retention platform for the on demand economy. Rewards and loyalty programs have always played an effective role in the e-commerce world, but Michael sees a bigger opportunity in the mobile-led on demand economy. Prior to Button, Michael served as an executive officer of Rakuten, where he was tasked with boosting engagement and conversions at the Japanese e-commerce giant.

Yishai Knobel

     

Yishai Knobel is co-founder and CEO of HelpAround, a mobile app that connects people with diabetes - along with their friends, families and caregivers – and enables them to easily share diabetes supplies, services, support and advice. The network allows people with diabetes to get help anywhere in the world.  Prior to this, Yishai led Mobile Health at AgaMatrix, a diabetes technology startup company. Earlier, he served eight years in R&D leadership roles in the Israeli Army tech, where he won multiple awards including the highest award of the Tech Branch.  

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Wills Mahoney

     

Wills Mahoney is co-founder of Plowz and Mowz,which is disrupting the snow-plowing and lawn-care industry by providing these services on demand via its mobile app. The idea was conceived in 2012, during a harsh winter when Wills had a hard time finding someone to plow snow for his mother. Fast forward to today and the company is located in 34 cities and growing nationwide.   

Paul Malicki

    

Paul Malicki is an entrepreneur, digital marketing specialist and CMO of easyTaxi, a startup company that originated in the rocket accelerator program that focuses on bringing technology concepts to emerging markets.The app, which is similar to Flywheel, allows users to book a taxi, track it in real time and pay via phone thereby disrupting the use of conventional taxi services.Paul has led e-commerce consulting projects with more than ten new companies in the Philippines, Sweden, Brazil, Poland, and Taiwan. 

Jeremiah Owyang

    

Jeremiah Owyang is the founder of Crowd Companies Council and former senior analyst at Forrester Research.  His career mission is to help corporations connect with customers using web technologies. He has conducted extensive research around the way disruptive sharing technologies are changing customer relationships.  He is an early thinker in the realm of customer experience, social business, interactive marketing, and now the sharing economy. He writes a daily blog, Web Strategy by Jeremiah.

John B. Rogers, Jr.

    

Jay, CEO and Co-Founder, Local Motors, is helping to build a game-changing American car company. Jay is relentlessly passionate about cars and the industry which surrounds them. His rides have included a 1991 BMW 535, 1971 Mercedes 300SL, a 1996 Dodge Viper R/T10, 1994 Chevrolet 1500 with hydraulic dump-bed, a 2002 Honda Element, and now he drives a 1971 Mercedes 280SL. Previously, John served for 6 years in the United States Marine Corps, where he was an Infantry Company Commander. He has worked as a consultant for McKinsey & Co., as an investment analyst at Ewing & Partners, and at a startup medical device company in the People’s Republic of China. 

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Michael Reitblat

Michael Reitblat is CEO and founder of Forter, a company which delivers a real-time fraud prevention solution for online merchants. This plug and play technology gives online merchants immediate “approve” or “decline” answers for all transactions and provides merchant protection in case of charge backs. Prior to this, Michael was VP, Products and Services for Pango Parking, a global provider of advanced technology solutions for mobile on/off-street parking. 

Don Spear

Don Spear is chairman and CEO of OpenSesame Inc., (alternate name, BlueTech) and served as its president. Don leads BlueTech and the growth of its two primary products, BlueVolt.com, a leading online learning management system, and OpenSesame.com. Don received an MBA from Harvard Business School and completed his undergraduate studies in electrical engineering and economics at Rice University.

Andy Sturner (YPO Miami)

    

Andy Sturner is president and CEO of Collaborative Boating, Inc., the parent company of Boatsetter.com, a peer-to-peer boat sharing marketplace.  Through his company, boat rentals are made accessible to consumers and makes sharing the waterways affordable without the high cost of boat ownership. The company launched a new app that allows boaters to “drop anchor” and share and discover activities along their boating journey. Andy is also active in the South Florida startup community. He earned his Juris Doctor degree from Brooklyn Law School.

Andrew Swain

    

Andrew Swain is former CFO at Airbnb. He joined the company in 2012 and left in September 2014. While there, the company experienced massive growth. The company reports over 800,000 listings worldwide, and has served over 17 million guests across 600 cities and 190 countries. Prior to Airbnb, Andrew was VP of Finance at Intuit’s consumer group, and before that he was VP of Corporate Strategy at Intuit. Andrew received an MBA from Harvard Business School. 

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Noel Taylor

Noel is the President & CEO of Cadasta, a newly established non-profit foundation that is building a technology platform and partner ecosystem for crowdsourcing land tenure and property rights data for vulnerable populations around the world. He has spent the last 15 years working internationally in the land administration sector, particularly in the developing country context. Prior to his former role as Senior Director of Global Business Development & Strategy for Thomson Reuters, he was the VP for International Operations with International Land Systems (ILS), Inc. Through the former, Noel worked extensively in researching and developing land sector go to market strategies and preparing corporate strategy plans. Whilst at ILS, he oversaw the delivery of the company’s global portfolio of projects covering advisory consulting services and customised land administration IT solutions. Noel holds a Masters in Geospatial Science from Curtin University of Technology and a Bachelor of Geomatics from the University of Melbourne.

Paul Touw

   

Paul Touw is the chairman of Vector Aviation, a private aviation sharing exchange for charter flights. Prior to this, he was chairman and CEO of icix and chairman and CEO of XOJET, Inc.  In 1996, Paul co-founded Arriba - a creator of business to business exchanges and one of the original companies in the sharing economy. Paul has a dual degree: BS in mechanical engineering and physics from the University of the Pacific School of Engineering.   

Adi Vaxman-Magid

 

Adi Vaxman-Magid is co-founder and CEO of Tripda, a company focused on ride sharing in emerging economies. Her mission is to revolutionize the way people travel by connecting passengers and drivers making similar trips benefiting the driver, passenger, society and the environment. Tripda allows regular people to reduce their travel costs, meet new friends, and conveniently reach their destination. Prior to Tripda, Adi was COO of Gett (GetTaxi USA), the number one international player in transportation on demand, second only to Uber. 

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