Harper Reed is an engineer who builds paradigm-shifting tech and leads others to do the same. Harper loves using the enormity of the Internet to bring people together, whether as CTO of Obama for America, CTO at Threadless.com, or on his own projects. Harper and his team created Dashboard, a site that connects volunteer teams and acts as an online component of the field office. You can often find Harper playing with new technology, looking for something to hack, or enjoying life in Chicago with his amazing wife, Hiromi.

Follow @harper on twitter, read his blog or email him.

Cathie Black is a Media Executive, bestselling author of the book Basic Black, small investor, and an advisor/board member in start-ups. She began her career selling ads for Ms. Magazine under Gloria Steinem, rose to become both president and publisher of USA Today and president and chairman of Hearst magazines, where she was responsible for more than 200 publications around the world including Esquire, Cosmo, Elle, and O, The Oprah Magazine. (She's the one who convinced Oprah to create a magazine in the first place). 

Cofounded two successful startups: Pixar (see Pixar founding documents) and Altamira (sold to Microsoft). Was present at the beginning of computer graphics at Lucasfilm and the New York Institute of Technology. Was the first Graphics Fellow at Microsoft. Received two technical Academy Awards for the alpha channel concept and for digital paint systems. 

Invented, directed, originated, or otherwise instrumental in the following developments: first full-color paint program, HSV (aka HSB) color model, alpha channel and image sprites, Genesis Demo in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, first Academy-Award winning computer-generated short Tin Toy, first computer-generated film Toy Story, Academy-Award winning Disney animation production system CAPS, and the Visible Human Project of the National Library of Medicine. 

Was a star witness in a trial that successfully invalidated five patents that threatened Adobe Photoshop. Has PhD from Stanford University and honorary doctorate from New Mexico State University. Is a member of the National Academy of Engineering.

Has published widely in theoretical computer science and computer graphics, and  holds four patents. Retired in 2000 to devote time to the emerging artform of digital photography and to scholarly genealogy, to which he has contributed two award-winning books and half a dozen learned journal papers. He is Trustee Emeritus of the New England Historic Genealogical Society, Boston, and a Fellow of the American Society of Genealogists. He is now writing a book on the biography of the pixel. For more see alvyray.com.

Sunny operates wherever executives, thinkers, artists, creators, innovators, entrepreneurs, educators, philanthropists connect and collide around the globe. Her medium is people, her expertise human network development. 

Author, serial entrepreneur, mentor and advisor, her client roster has included some of the world’s most prominent organizations, from GE, TED and Credit Suisse to MTV, the National Academy of Sciences, Techstars and Kickstarter, of which she is a founding board member. Sunny’s approach to unleashing potential is unique: it puts people, network building and management at the center of growth and possibility.

An American blogger, technical evangelist, and author. Scoble is best known for his blog, Scobleizer, which came to prominence during his tenure as a technical evangelist at Microsoft. He currently works for Rackspace and the Rackspace sponsored community site Building 43. He previously worked for Fast Company as a video blogger. He is also the co-author of Naked Conversations: How Blogs are Changing the Way Businesses Talk with Customers with Shel Israel.

Carl Gustav Magnusson is the Founder of CGM Design LLC, an award-winning design consultancy based in New York, NY. Carl has won numerous design awards including the Contract Magazine 2012 Legend Award for Lifetime Achievement. 

Before CGM Design, Carl began a thirty year career of design work at Knoll in 1972 as the Head of Graphics and Exhibits. He Founded the Knoll Design Symposium at Cranbrook Academy of Art, an annual event to explore the borders of design, featuring 100 speakers and 1000 guests over nine years including Morris Lapidus and Frank Gehry. 

Tamara St. Claire oversees Xerox Innovation Group’s commercial activities. StClaire has a unique breadth of expertise including R&D, operations, finance, marketing, sales, and contracting.

St. Claire joined PARC in 2009 as Vice President of Global Business Development and Head of Commercial Operations with the goal of aligning organizational processes with business strategy and exploring new markets and models for industry engagements. St. Claire has established the fundamental infrastructure for PARC's commercial charter. A key milestone was implementing a systematic portfolio-management process and strategic reviews that would provide a holistic view and clear criteria for evaluating PARC’s R&D investments. St. Claire has also implemented new sales methodologies and processes for shortening the sales cycle, established lead management, focused PARC's market-ready offerings, helped reorganize technical areas into programs, and rebranded PARC as being in the "business of breakthroughs".

Kushal is the founder and CEO of Vittana, a non-profit that fights youth poverty in developing nations. It pioneered the Vittana Loan — a $750 student micro-loan that can triple a girl's income. An award-winning organization, Vittana works in 12 countries, helps 1,000+ youth escape poverty every month and its impact is regularly highlighted in world press including the Economist, Wall Street Journal, New York Times and many others. 

Previously, Kushal ran technology for a $1 billion team at Amazon and is the author of 20+ patents and papers. Kushal was recently named as one of Seattle's Top 40 People Under 40 and voted the #1 Game-Changer in Philanthropy by 1.7 million readers on Huffington Post. He is a frequent speaker on youth poverty, education and social entrepreneurship, including at SOCAP, Pop!Tech andTEDxBrussels. In his free time, he races triathlons, takes pictures and works with dogs. Kushal lives in Seattle with his 1-year-old German Shepherd puppy.

Marc Onetto is External Consultant for Amazon.com and Retired Senior Vice President of Worldwide Operations and Customer Service. From 2006 to 2013 he led the supply chain, warehousing, transportation and customer support operations for the largest e-retailer in the world. His responsibility covered the activity of tens of thousands of employees in the United States, United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, France, Italy, India, Japan, China, Morocco, South Africa and Costa Rica who assure the timely and quality fulfillment of millions of customer orders per day. Marc is a pioneer of the application of Lean management in retail distribution reinforcing the “customer-centric” culture of Amazon which has been the foundation for the company’s success.

Wendy Lea is the CEO of Get Satisfaction. Wendy founded The Chatham Group, where she currently serves as an angel investor, strategic advisor and board member for a long list of startup companies. Wendy chairs the board for women's entrepreneur group Watermark and serves on the board of Silicon Valley Social Venture Fund (SV2.org). She has been recognized as a Top 100 Woman of Influence in Silicon Valley.

Daniel Brusilovsky is the Head of Business Development & Growth at Ribbon, a San Francisco based payments company that makes it easy to sell across the web, on multiple platforms. Previously, he founded and was the CEO of Teens in Tech Labs, helping empower young entrepreneurs to build companies through its conference, incubator and other programs.

Prior to founding Teens in Tech Labs, Daniel most recently spent time as a Summer Associate at Highland Capital Partners, a 25-year old $3B+ venture capital firm that focuses on investments in seed, early, and growth stage companies in consumer and enterprise technology space.

Daniel was on the founding team of Qik, which was subsequently acquired by Skype. He also has worked at JESS3, and TechCrunch, as well as advising numerous startups in Silicon Valley.

You can find Daniel on Twitter as @danielbru.

Kathryn is the Founder and CEO of The Muse, a career discovery platform that has helped over 3 million people answer the question, “What do I want to do with my life?

Prior to founding the company, Kathryn worked on vaccine introduction in Rwanda and Malawi with the Clinton Health Access Initiative and previously worked as a management consultant at McKinsey & Company. She’s appeared on CNN, USA Today, Fast Company, PBS, Forbes’ 30-Under-30 in Media and INC’s 15 Women to Watch in Tech. Follow her on Twitter @KMin

Maia Young earned her PhD at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business in 2004 and is now an Associate Professor of Management & Organizations at the UCLA Anderson School of Management. Some of her research has examined people’s perceptions of leaders, and this work has found that charismatic leadership is partially a product of followers’ magical thinking, or their willingness to attribute the leader’s successes to powers that are innate and intangible.

Her other research has explored a variety of other topics including: how anger can impair or enhance decision making, how the availability of information affects negotiators’ goals and outcomes, how belief in fate affects individuals’ willingness to judge others, and how the language people use to describe changes in markets affect their predictions about how the market will trend in the future.

Her research has been reported in various media outlets including the Economist, NPR’s Marketplace, Strategy + Business, Inc.com and Psychology Today.

Michael Sorkin is is Principal of the Michael Sorkin Studio, a global design practice working at all scales with a special interest in the city and green architecture, President and founder of Terreform, a non-profit institute dedicated to research into the forms and practices of just and sustainable urbanism, President of the Institute for Urban Design, and Distinguished Professor of Architecture and Director of the Graduate Program in Urban Design at The City College of New York. He is the author or editor of more than 15 books on architecture and urbanism.

Roger Black is a well-known American media designer who has worked on newspapers, magazines, and web sites around the world. Roger Black's success is a combination of effective design and technological insight. One of the earliest adopters of Web publishing, he made the successful transition from print to Web even as he expanded his 30-year reputation as a leading print and typography designer. He has created websites for the world's largest companies, including American Express, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, HBO, and many others.

The ubiquitous media maven who as chief art director visually defined Rolling Stone and Newsweek, Roger Black also served as chief art director of The New York Times and New York magazine.

Roger Black works from a small consulting firm in New York, Roger Black Studio. He is a founding partner in Danilo Black S.A. in Monterrey, Mexico, and the Font Bureau, both started in 1989. Roger Black and Jock Spivy founded Interactive Bureau, a strategic Internet design consultancy, in 1994. At Interactive Bureau, Roger Black led the creative team in producing sites for clients such as MSNBC, HBO, Barnes & Noble Online, Rogers Communication, and drugstore.com. From 1995 to 1997, Roger Black served as creative director for @Home Network, the leader in the field of broadband Internet access. Circle.com acquired Interactive Bureau in November 1999.

Jason Preston is the co-founder of Dent the Future, which explores the magic and science of visionary leadership and groundbreaking success. Dent, through a flagship conference of the same name, aims to translate the success of great leaders in business, politics, or charity into a set of lessons for those who would "put a dent" in the future. 

Jason has spoken at numerous local and national conferences including the Consumer Electronics Show, The Tweet House, and Ignite Seattle. He has also written about startups, social media, and emerging technologies in publications such as Seattle Business Magazine, Crosscut, and Geekwire. 

You can find jason on twitter as @jasonp and at his blog.

Dave is founder and CEO of Upstart, a crowdfunding platform that lets college grads raise capital in exchange for a small share of their future income.

Previously, Dave was President of Google Enterprise. He built Google's cloud apps business worldwide, including product development, sales, marketing, and customer support.

Dave was SVP of products & marketing at Virage, a pioneer in video search technology. He started in Silicon Valley as a Product Manager at Apple. 

In earlier life, Dave was an associate in Booz Allen's Information Technology practice in San Francisco. He started his career in software development with the Boston office of Accenture.

Before co-founding ToyTalk as CEO, Oren was an Entrepreneur in Residence at August Capital. A filmmaker and technologist, he spent more than 20 years at Pixar, most recently as Chief Technical Officer and Director of the Studio Tools group. His feature film credits include "Toy Story" and "Toy Story 2", "A Bug's Life", and Supervising Technical Director for "Finding Nemo".

Oren also helped found Pixar University and taught animation at the Academy of Art College for seven years. Oren currently teaches "Lean Launchpad" courses with Steve Blank at Stanford, Berkeley, Columbia, and for the NSF. And Oren plans to drop all of this in a heartbeat to become a pro snowboarder the minute that first sponsor shows up.

Brian Wong is the co-founder and CEO of Kiip (pronounced “keep”), which has raised $15.4 million in funding to date and is backed by IPG, Hummer Winblad, Relay Ventures, True Ventures, Digital Garage and others.

Called the youngest person to ever receive venture capital funding by CNBC and The Wall Street Journal, Brian received his Bachelor of Commerce from the University of British Columbia at age 18, after skipping four K-12 grades. He has been recognized with many awards for his accomplishments and leadership, including: Business Insider’s Top 25 Under 25 in Silicon Valley, 30 Under 30 in Advertising and 18 Most Important People in Mobile Advertising; Forbes’ 30 Under 30 in 2011 and 2012; Mashable’s Top 5 Entrepreneurs to Watch; iMedia 25; and the AdAge Creativity Top 50.

Before starting Kiip, Brian led key publisher and tech partnerships at the social news website Digg.com, where he accelerated the company’s mobile presence by launching the Digg Android mobile app.

Eugene Burger is the Dean of the McBride Magic and Mystery School in Las Vegas. He lives in Chicago and travels internationally. Eugene is universally recognized as one of the foremost teachers of magic in the world. He has twice won Close-Up Magician of the Year as well as twice Lecturer of the Year at the Magic Castle in Hollywood, where he also received a Performing Fellowship. Most recently he became the first American to receive the FISM (Federation of International Magic Societies) Special Award for Philosophy and Theory. In Chicago, Eugene works privately with beginners, intermediate and advanced students and consults with many professionals.

Maria is currently working on an assortment of non-fiction and fiction projects. Her first book, Mastermind: How to Think Like Sherlock Holmes, will be published by Viking on January 3, 2013. 

She writes the weekly “Literally Psyched” column for Scientific American, where she explores the intersection of literature and psychology, and formerly wrote the popular psychology blog “Artful Choice” for Big Think. Her writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, Slate, The New Republic, The Paris Review, The Wall Street Journal, The Boston Globe, The Observer, Scientific American MIND, and Scientific American, among other publications. She graduated magna cum laude from Harvard University, where she studied psychology, creative writing, and government, and is currently a doctoral candidate in Psychology at Columbia University. Before returning to school, she worked as a producer for the Charlie Rose show on PBS.