Speakers
Speaker sessions serve a myriad of purposes, but above all they unite the conference – they provide a common ground of ideas on which everyone in the Better World community can build. Speaker sessions are shared experiences that foster relationships by putting every attendee in the same mindset, on the same wavelength. Join our speakers in building a better world by design.
The 2010 ABWxD speakers include:
Emer Beamer
Eve Blossom
Ndubuisi Ekekwe
Robert Fabricant
Ramsey Ford
José Gómez-Márquez
Anil Gupta
Ben Hamilton-Baillie
Edward Mazria
Kate Orff
Charles Renfro
Damon Rich
Peter Scott
Keynote Panelists
Lisa Gansky
Peter Light
Edward Mazria
Aliza Peleg
Saul Kaplan (moderator)
Emer Beamer
Friday from 10:30 to 11am – RISD Auditorium – RISD
Emer Beamer is a social designer and conceptor, who has co-founded two idealistic organizations, NairoBits and Butterfly Works. She has deeply co-created 7 learning campaigns which are currently used in 16 countries in 3 continents. Her current title is research and development director at Butterfly Works, a social design studio, based in Amsterdam, with a team of 18 staff and working globally.
“I think the essence which makes our work at Butterfly Works unique and powerful is our ability to see the creativity in all people, even in the most harsh circumstances, to facilitate it’s growth so that the individual benefits, so that the world enjoys their creation and the balance of power is tipped in their favor.”
This vision is at the heart of her work which is an eclectic mix of digital design education, peace campaigns, HIV/AIDS school programs, tinkering festivals, global exchanges, children’s books, mobile phone games and solar gadgets.
Eve Blossom
Friday from 9:30 to 10am – RISD Auditorium – RISD
Eve Blossom founded Lulan Artisans to empower master weavers and artisans through creating a viable economic engine that celebrates their spirit, talents and traditions – giving them a stable foundation for their future. Lulan Artisans integrates Blossom’s design sensibilities with her commitment to create social change. Eve takes pride in Lulan’s products and loves working closely with its partners – over 650 weavers, spinners, dyers and finishers in small workshops in Cambodia, India, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam. Eve is not only committed to sustainable responsible design comprehensively, she is also intent on changing business methodologies to create economic options for artisans whether in Southeast Asia or in the United States.
Ndubuisi Ekekwe
Sunday from 9:30 to 10am – Salomon 101 – Brown
Ndubuisi Ekekwe is the founder of the non-profit African Institution of Technology. Dr. Ekekwe, featured in Marquis’ Who’s Who in America, is the Chair of the IEEE (Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers) Boston GOLD Executive Committee. An inventor, he developed microchips used in minimally invasive surgical robots and has authored many journal and conference papers. Dr. Ekekwe has organized more than thirty five seminars and workshops on technology design, innovation and diffusion across Africa for schools, small firms and governments. He is the General Chair of the Africa-wide Microelectronics & Entrepreneurship Rainfall School and the Tech Business Plan Competition to be held in Nigeria in 2011.
Robert Fabricant
Saturday from 10 to 10:30am – Salomon 101 – Brown
Robert Fabricant is the Vice President of Creative for frog design where he leads frog’s efforts to expand the impact of design into new markets and industries. An expert in design for social innovation, Robert is lead partner in Project Masiluleke, an initiative that harnesses the power of mobile technology to combat the world’s worst HIV and AIDS epidemic in KwaZulu Natal, South Africa. Robert is an adjunct professor at NYU’s Tisch School of the Arts where he teaches a foundation course in Interaction Design. In 2009, he joined the faculty of the School of Visual Arts in New York and is a faculty member of the Pop!Tech Social Innovation Fellowship Program. A regular speaker at conferences and events, Robert recently gave a keynote speech at the 2009 IxDA Interaction Conference. His work has been featured in a wide variety of publications, including I.D. Magazine, The Wall Street Journal, and Wired and he is a guest blogger for Fast Company.
Ramsey Ford
Friday from 10 to 10:30am – RISD Auditorium – RISD
In 2008, Ramsey Ford founded Design Impact with his wife Kate Hanisian. Over the past two years they have worked to build a design-centered organization that empowers communities affected by poverty to design and implement life-improving solutions. To accomplish this, they have developed a method of integrating design into the structure of grassroots service organizations. Their pilot project in southern India is nearing an end and they are planning to scale in the next year through the creation of an international fellowship program. Ramsey is excited to share the experience of starting a non-profit design service and Design Impact’s vision for future growth.
José Gómez-Márquez
Sunday from 10 to 10:30am – Salomon 101 – Brown
José Gómez-Márquez is the program director for the Innovations in International Health initiative at MIT. Among the projects under his technology practice at IIH are the Aerovax Drug Delivery System, a device for mass delivery of inhalable drugs and vaccines to remote populations; SafePilot, a next generation cane for the blind; and most recently, the X out TB program, which aims to increase TB therapy adherence in developing countries using novel diagnostics and mobile technology. His technologies have been featured in Forbes, Wired, the Booz Allen Hamilton Technology Petting Zoo, and the Dow Jones Emerging Ventures Conference on Tomorrow’s Innovation. José has been a guest speaker at the NCIIA’s Invent2Venture discussing affordable technology and a director of MIT’s D-Lab: Health, a course on designing global health technologies at MIT. He arrived in the United States from his native Honduras on a Rotary scholarship and currently lives in Newton, Massachusetts.
Anil Gupta
Sunday from 4 to 4:30pm – Salomon 101 – Brown
Looking to the poor of India, business professor Anil Gupta saw innovations and talent that were not being supported. In response, he started the Honey Bee Network and began searching the country with colleagues, often on foot, finding a myriad of inventions developed out of necessity. These discoveries are documented and often shared with the global community, just as pollen is gathered by the honeybee to the benefit of both. Since 1988, the network’s database of original inventions has grown to over 12,000, and its newsletter is now published in eight languages and distributed to 75 countries. Gupta also worked with the government of India to establish the National Innovation Foundation, which holds national competitions to encourage new inventors and helps sustain them through the National Micro Venture Innovation Fund. Through his efforts, Gupta has uncovered groundbreaking devices such as a pedal-operated washing machine, a micro-windmill battery charger, and a hoe powered by a bicycle.
Ben Hamilton-Baillie
Saturday from 9:30 to 10am – Salomon 101 – Brown
Ben Hamilton-Baillie qualified as an architect, and worked in the fields of housing, transport and planning before founding his own company in 2003. He has had a lifelong interest in improving the quality of streets and public spaces, and finding new ways to promote safety, economic vitality and civility. He is one of the advisory experts on “Shared Space” for five European countries developing a range of practical projects to explore innovative street design. He is also consultant to English Heritage and an enabler for CABE Space.
Edward Mazria
Saturday from 10:30 to 11am – Salomon 101 – Brown
Edward Mazria is an internationally recognized architect, author, educator and visionary with a long and distinguished career. His award-winning architecture and planning projects span over a 35 year period, each employing a cutting-edge environmental approach to design. Most recently, Mr. Mazria has reshaped the national and international dialogue on climate change to incorporate building design and the “Building Sector.” He is the founder of Architecture 2030, an innovative and flexible research organization focused on rapidly transforming the U.S. and global Building Sectors from the major energy consumer and contributor of greenhouse gas emissions to a central part of the solution to the global warming, energy and economic crises. Architecture 2030 developed and issued the 2030 Challenge, a measured and achievable strategy to dramatically reduce global GHG emissions and fossil fuel consumption by the year 2030.
Mr. Mazria speaks nationally and internationally on the subjects of architecture, design, energy and climate change and has taught architecture at several universities including the University of New Mexico, University of Oregon and UCLA. His numerous awards include AIA Design Awards, AIA Design Innovation Award, American Planning Association Award, Department of Energy Awards, “Pioneer Award” from the American Solar Energy Society, first recipient of the Equinox Award presented on the 50th anniversary of construction of the world’s first commercial solar building, a 2008 National Conservation Achievement Award from the National Wildlife Federation and the first 2010 Hanley Award for Vision and Leadership. Most recently, he has been ranked second among the nation’s leading role models for green and sustainable design by the 2010 Design Intelligence Survey. He is a fellow of the Design Futures Council.
Kate Orff
Sunday from 9 to 9:30am – Salomon 101 – Brown
Kate Orff is an Assistant Professor at the Columbia University Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, where she teaches graduate design studios and interdisciplinary seminars focused on sustainable development, design for biodiversity, and community-based change. She is the co-editor of Gateway: Visions for An Urban National Park (Princeton, 2011.) Kate is also a registered landscape architect the founding principal of SCAPE, a landscape architecture and urban design office. Through her creative leadership of the firm, she explores the cultural and physical complexity of urban landscapes and their unique textures, ecologies, programs and publics. Kate has received design awards and lectures widely in the U.S. and abroad on the topic of urban landscape and sustainability. Her work has been cited in publications such as the New Yorker, the Economist, the New York Times, New York Magazine, in addition to architecture and planning publications such as Metropolis, Dwell, Azure, and many others.
Charles Renfro
Sunday from 3:30 to 4pm – Salomon 101 – Brown
Charles Renfro is a practicing architect and partner at Diller Scofidio + Renfro (DS+R), an interdisciplinary studio that fuses architecture, the visual arts and the performing arts while investigating issues of contemporary culture such as the spatial conventions of the everyday, the influence of media technologies on architecture, the changing definitions of domesticity, and the institution in the public realm. As a collaborator with Diller+Scofidio, he served as Project Leader on Brasserie, Eyebeam, the BAM Cultural District master plan (with Rem Koolhaas/OMA), Blur, the Boston Institute of Contemporary Art, and the redesign and expansion of the Juilliard School and Tully Hall at Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts among other projects. DS+R was awarded the National Design Award in Architecture from the Smithsonian Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in 2006. Renfro’s work with DS+R has been exhibited worldwide at many museums and institutions including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Whitney Museum; the Netherlands Architecture Institute; the Canadian Centre for Architecture; and the Centre Pompidou.
Prior to joining DS+R, Renfro was an associate at Smith-Miller + Hawkinson Architects and Ralph Appelbaum Associates, both based in New York. He was a founding partner of Department of Design in Brooklyn. His independent art and architectural work has been exhibited in several galleries nationwide. His writing has been published in Bomb and A+U magazines. He lectures frequently both in the United States and abroad. Renfro is a graduate of Rice University and holds a Master’s degree from Columbia University’s GSAPP. He has been on the faculty of Columbia since 2000.
Damon Rich
Saturday from 11 to 11:30am – Salomon 101 – Brown
A designer and artist, Damon Rich founded the Center for Urban Pedagogy (CUP) in 1997, a nonprofit organization dedicated to helping people understand and change the places they live, where he served as Creative Director for 10 years. Damon has taught design and planning at institutions including the Parsons School of Design, Heritage High School, the Brooklyn Museum, the Cooper Hewitt National Design Museum, and the Queens Library Adult Learning Center. He writes about architecture and politics for publications including the Village Voice, the Nation, Metropolis, and Architecture magazine. Damon has been awarded a New York State Council on the Arts award for his work with adult literacy and architecture, as well as a fellowship from the MacDowell Colony for his work on the history of urban renewal. In 2007, Damon was selected as a Loeb Fellow in Advanced Environmental Studies at the Harvard Graduate School of Design and an Artist-in-Residence at the MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies, where he developed a exhibition on architecture, real estate, and finance. He currently serves as the Urban Designer and Waterfront Planner for the City of Newark, New Jersey.
Peter Scott
Sunday from 3 to 3:30pm – Salomon 101 – Brown
Peter Scott is one of the world’s leading experts in the design and dissemination of biomass-conserving technologies in the developing world. In 1990 Peter committed his life to saving the forests of Africa. Since that time, he has designed a number of fuel-efficient technologies and trained producers in over 20 countries to set up for-profit businesses. His trainees have constructed over 400,000 household/institutional stoves, bread ovens, food dryers, and tobacco curing systems. In 2006 his work was honored with an Ashden Award for supporting local producers in Southern Africa to create highly profitable institutional stove businesses. In Malawi these producers have sold over $2 million in institutional stoves in the last six years. Peter runs a biomass energy consulting company (Rocket Science Consulting) and manages rocketstove.org. He has worked with a number of partners such as Aprovecho Research Center, German Technical Cooperation, Nature Conservancy, USAID, World Vision, The Paradigm Project, ETHOS, EWB, and Mercy Corps.
Keynote Panelists
Saturday from 3:45 to 5:15pm – Salomon 101 – Brown
This year, A Better World by Design is featuring an interdisciplinary discussion on how major sectors of our economy can work together to build a more sustainable system. We have leaders from the Energy, Transportation, Consumer Goods, and Building sectors. The panel will be moderated by Saul Kaplan.
Lisa Gansky
Lisa is an author of The Mesh: Why the Future of Business is Sharing, to be published by Penguin Press, Fall 2010 and the Mesh Directory live and online at www.meshing.it. For more than 18 years, Lisa has been an entrepreneur and environmentalist focused on building companies and supporting social ventures where there is an opportunity for well timed disruption and a resounding impact. A founder and CEO of several internet companies, including GNN (the first web portal sold to AOL) and the largest consumer photo sharing and print service, Ofoto (sold to Eastman Kodak in 2001), Lisa’s attention is on sustainable ventures with positive social impact. She puts a strong emphasis on clean energy, social networks, accelerating community engagement and awareness & exploring new platforms & business models. Lisa currently serves as a Director of Dos Margaritas, an environmental foundation with programs focused in Latin America. She is an advisor & investor in several social ventures including: New Resource Bank, Convio, Squidoo, Slide, TasteBook, MePlease, Instructables & Greener World Media.
Peter Light
Peter Light is responsible for Product Management at Bloom Energy. He was instrumental to the initial customer selection, feature definition, marketing, and launch of the company’s first commercial fuel cell-based Energy Server. Today he focuses on commercializing new products for new markets. Peter has a strong background in distributed generation technology, policy, and is an expert in the emerging markets of RECs, renewable biogas, and tradable environmental benefits. Peter previously worked at Energy & Environmental Economics (E3), Verdant Power, and the Rocky Mountain Institute. Peter holds a bachelor’s degree in Mechanical Engineering and Visual Art from Brown University.
Edward Mazria
See speaker description above.
Aliza Peleg
Aliza Peleg is the Vice President of Operations for Better Place, a venture-backed company that aims to reduce global dependency on oil through the creation of a market-based transportation infrastructure that supports electric vehicles, providing consumers with a cleaner, sustainable, personal transportation alternative. With an infrastructure of battery charging spots and battery exchange stations, drivers experience the feeling of infinite range at a cost less than that of driving an internal combustion engine car. Peleg oversees the global business operations for Better Place, managing the company’s day to day financial and administrative functions and directing external facing initiatives, including marketing, partner, and community relations.
Prior to joining Better Place, she was managing director of SAP Labs US, headquartered in Palo Alto, CA, where she was responsible for the strategy and operations of the company’s Labs facilities. Peleg obtained her BA in Mathematics & Computer Science and an MBA from Tel-Aviv University.
Saul Kaplan
Moderator
Saul Kaplan is the founder and Chief Catalyst of the Business Innovation Factory. Saul started BIF in 2005 with a mission to enable collaborative innovation. The non-profit is creating a real world laboratory for innovators to explore and test system level solutions in areas of high social importance including health care, education, energy, and entrepreneurship. His mantra is R&D for new business and systems. Saul is an innovation junkie who shares his musings on Twitter @skap5 and on his blog at itssaulconnected.com.
Prior to focusing on business model and system level innovation at BIF Saul served as the Executive Director of the Rhode Island Economic Development Corporation and as the Executive Counselor to the Governor on Economic and Community Development. He created Rhode Island’s unique innovation @ scale economic development strategy aimed at increasing the state’s capacity to grow and support an innovation economy, including an effort to turn the state’s compact geography and close knit public and private sector networks into a competitive advantage.
