Simon Sinek is an ethnographer and author of Start With Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action. Fascinated by the innovators, companies, and leaders that make the greatest change in the world, his book explores the remarkable patterns in how they think, act, and communicate. Sinek’s innovative views on business leadership have attracted international attention and earned him the invitation to work with many leaders and organizations, including: Microsoft, Mars, SAP, 3M, and the United States Military. He is recognized for teaching leaders and organizations how to inspire people.
COTT BELSKYScott Belsky is the Co-Founder and CEO of Behance, the leading online platform for creatives to showcase and discover work. Millions have used Behance to display their portfolios and find the top creative talent across industries. Behance powers the portfolios for many of the nation’s leading arts and business organizations, such as LinkedIn, AdWeek, and AIGA. In addition, he runs 99U, a think tank and conference, devoted to execution in the creative world working with companies to empower the careers of creative professionals.
DEBBIE MILLMANDebbie Millman has worked in the design business for over 25 years. She is President of the design division at Sterling Brands. She has been there for 17 years and in that time she has worked on the redesign of over 200 global brands.
Debbie is President Emeritus of the AIGA, the largest professional association for design. She is a contributing editor at Print Magazine, a design writer at FastCompany.com and Chair of the Masters in Branding Program at the School of Visual Arts in New York City. In 2005, she began hosting the first weekly radio talk show about design on the Internet. The show is titled “Design Matters with Debbie Millman” and it is now featured on DesignObserver.com. In 2011, the show was awarded a Cooper-Hewitt National Design Award.
Debbie is the author of five books on design including “Brand Thinking and Other Noble Pursuits,” (Allworth Press, 2011), “Look Both Ways: Illustrated Essays on the Intersection of Life and Design,” (HOW Books, 2009) and “How To Think Like A Great Graphic Designer” (Allworth Press, 2007).
Based in IDEO’s Chicago location, Neil studied the human brain and behavior at Oxford University, coming away with masters degrees in Psychology and Social Anthropology. From here he was drawn to London, where digital technology had given birth to a new musical genre: house music. He began writing about club culture, and within a few years was editor of Mixmag, the world’s biggest club magazine. He edited other magazines devoted to emerging cultural movements, most notably The Face. He also launched successful online titles such as B3ta and Popbitch that employed web communities to generate content.
At IDEO, Neil has led projects on everything from video game interfaces to digitally- enabled education. He has also taken his accumulated experience in psychology, technology and cultural trends, and woven it into a futurology offering. He gives regular talks on emerging trends and future scenarios, with an emphasis on the tension between new tech-enabled experiences and our relatively unevolved brains. Neil’s greatest wish is to travel back in time to meet his eight-year-old former self, and show him the mind-blowing capabilities of a 2012 cellphone.
Mike Isaacson, Executive Producer, The Muny
Allison Carmen, Founder & CEO, Material Mix
Eliot Frick, Founder & CEO, bigwidesky
Vijay Chauhan, Senior Entrepreneur in Residence, Biogenerator
Robert Fieldhouse, Co-founder & Owner, Blood & Sand; Creative Director, Brown Shoe Company
Adam Frager, Co-founder & Owner, Blood & Sand
TJ Vytlacil, Co-founder & Owner, Blood & Sand
Aaron Perlut, Managing Partner, Elasticity; Co-founder, Rally St. Louis
Chris Sommers, Founder, Givver & Sqwid; Co-founder, Pi Pizzeria
