Dr. Ashfaq Ishaq founded the International Child Art Foundation (ICAF) in 1997 and serves as its executive director. Today, ICAF is recognized internationally as a leading cultural and educational organization preparing the next generation for a creative and cooperative future through the arts.
Dr. Ishaq has a diverse professional background as entrepreneur, economist, educator and civil society leader. He opened his first business at the age of thirteen, and years later established an international project development company in Washington, DC. He started his career as an economist at the World Bank, investigating entrepreneurship and small business development.
He received a Ph.D. in Economics from the George Washington University, a Masters in Public Administration from the University of Punjab, and a BA in economics and statistics from Government College, Lahore, Pakistan.
Edward "Skip" Jackson, along with his wife, are co-owners of Iron Kettle Farm. Iron Kettle Farm began as a small roadside farm selling strawberries, corn, summer vegetables, tomatoes, and some fall produce from an abandoned corncrib. The farm has continued to expand over the years and now draws visitors from all over the Northeast. The farm is such a tourist attraction that it won the Governor's Agricultural Award at the New York State Fair in 1992 and the first-ever Agriculture-Tourism Award in 1998.
During the public season (May 1 to October 31), thousands of visitors come to admire the gardens, buy plants and produce, browse in the gift store, indulge in homemade "country" foods (cider, homemade doughnuts, pies, and cookies), and visit the baby animals: goats, sheep, ducks, chickens, miniature horses, donkeys and pigs.
Deborah Jackson is the Founder and CEO of Plum Alley, an e-commerce and crowdfunding site for women's innovation. Also a Founder of the Women Innovate Mobile Accelerator, an accelerator that invests in women-founded mobile tech companies, Jackson's initiatives and properties all have a common goal: to champion women to become builders of technology, companies and their own wealth.
Jackson is a frequent speaker, and judge for many events around innovation, women, technology, crowdfunding and entrepreneurship. She was recently named a top influencer in the crowdfunding industry, and in the past year, has spoken for the Texas, Boston, and Philadelphia Conferences for Women; Blogher Entrepreneurs; Harvard Business School; Columbia Women in Business; Wharton Women in Business; Womensphere; We Festival; and 85 Broads. Her accolades include Fast Company's League of Extraordinary Women in 2012, 40 Women to Watch in 2013 and Plum Alley being named by Forbes as a company to watch in 2014.
Deborah Jackson has an MBA from Columbia Business School.
Irwin Mark Jacobs, one of the founders of the Company, has served as Chairman of the Board of Directors since the Company began operations in July 1985. Jacobs served as chief executive officer of the Company until July 2005. He served as the Company's president prior to May 1992.
Before joining the Company, Jacobs was executive vice president and a director of M/A-COM. From October 1968 to April 1985, Jacobs held various executive positions at LINKABIT (M/A-COM LINKABIT after August 1980), a company he co-founded. During most of his period of service with LINKABIT, Jacobs was chairman, president and chief executive officer and was at all times a director.
Irwin Jacobs received his B.E.E. degree from Cornell University and his M.S. and Sc.D. degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Michael Jaffe is a producer and studio executive.
Jaffe, partner of Jaffe/Braunstein Films Ltd. (JBFL), began his career with his father, Henry Jaffe, in 1971. Together, they have produced 15 television movies and miniseries. He founded Michael Jaffe Films, Ltd. in the early 1980s and developed, produced or executive-produced five feature films during the next several years.
Returning to television, Michael produced The Great Escape, a four-hour mini-series for NBC starring Christopher Reeve, and then established Spectacor Films, a partnership with sports and entertainment businessman Ed Snider, with whom he distributed, produced, financed and executive-produced more than 20 films.
Jaffe is currently partnered in JBFL with Howard Braunstein and, together, they have produced more than 75 television films and miniseries, including Elvis Presley for CBS; Deliberate Intent, with Timothy Hutton, for FX; and The Monkees for VH-1. Jaffe/Braunstein Films also delivered Walking Shadow for A&E and Rodgers and Hammerstein's South Pacific for ABC, starring Glenn Close and Harry Connick Jr.
In 2003, JBFL produced more than a dozen television movies for the various networks, featuring such stars as Susan Sarandon, Ted Danson, Mary Steenburgen, Jami Gertz, Tyne Daly, Roma Downey, James Remar, Jacqueline Bissett, Kim Delaney, Beau Bridges, Fred Ward, Cybill Shepherd, Don Johnson, Sharon Lawrence, Marcia Gaye Harden and Jason Priestley. In 2004, the company produced Evel Knievel, starring George Eads, for TNT; The Brooke Ellison Story, starring Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio, John Slattery and Lacey Chabert, for A&E; and the joint venture Miracle Run, starring Mary-Louise Parker and Aidan Quinn. They also produced Faith of My Fathers, based on the bestselling book by Sen. John McCain and Mark Salter.
Jaffe is a founding partner and serves on the Board of Directors of Allied Communications, Inc. (ACI), a new distribution company that created a 200-title library of network movies and miniseries purchased by Fremantle Media.
He earned a bachelor of arts degree from Yankton College and did graduate work at the University of Chicago and Cornell University, where he earned an master of arts degree in theater.
Leila Janah is the Founder and CEO of Samasource, a non-profit social business that gives digital work to impoverished people around the world.
Prior to Samasource, Janah was a a Visiting Scholar with the Stanford Program on Global Justice and Australian National University's Center for Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics. She was a founding Director of Incentives for Global Health, an initiative to increase R&D spending on diseases of the poor, and a management consultant at Katzenbach Partners (now Booz & Co.). She has also worked at the World Bank and as a travel writer for Let's Go in Mozambique, Brazil, and Borneo.
Leila Janah received a BA from Harvard.
Carushka Jarecka is founder of Carushka Bodywear. When she started her own company in 1978, at the age of 25, with only $3,000, Carushka knew that to be a success in the competitive fashion industry, she would need to create a niche that reflected how women feel about themselves. "My greatest strength as a business woman is originality. Our corporate slogan, 'Expect the Unexpected' is what I always want to provide the customers with."
Carushka Jarecka earned a degree from the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising in 1973, as well as a couture diploma from the Trippon School of Design.
Kevin Jarrell is a co-founder of Modular Genetics and is a recognized expert in RNA splicing and gene assembly. In his academic career at Harvard University, Boston University, and Ohio State University, his research resulted in numerous publications and contributed significantly to the current understanding of how living organisms manipulate their genetic information. In addition, Dr. Jarrell's work resulted in five US issued patents and five pending applications.
Robert Jarrow is the Ronald P. and Susan E. Lynch Professor of Investment Management, Professor of Finance and Economics at The Johnson School, Cornell University.
Jarrow has over 25 years of work-experience. His teaching and research interests involve the study of mathematical finance. He is interested in credit derivatives, risk management, investments and asset pricing theory.
Jarrow's consulting experience includes Citigroup, Bank of America, Barclays Capital, Bankers Trust, Merrill Lynch, World Bank, Nomura Securities, Kamakura Corporation, SEC, US Attorney's Office, FDIC, and expert witness assignments.
Jarrow has authored over 120 publications and working papers, four books on options and derivatives, and edited three other books including two on risk. In addition, he holds advisory board positions with centers in The University of Hong Kong and NUS. He has also served on the Merrill Lynch Academic Advisory Council.
Robert Jarrow holds a BA from Duke University, an MBA from Dartmouth, and a PhD in Finance from MIT.
Dr. Sundaresan Jayaraman is a Professor of Textile Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, Georgia. Most recently, his group's research has resulted in the realization of the world's first "Wearable Motherboard" or Smart Shirt. This invention led to the startup of the company, SensaTex, in which he serves as Chairman.
Dr. Sundaresan Jayaraman received his Ph.D. degree from North Carolina State University, in 1984, and the M.Tech and B.Tech degrees from the University of Madras, India, in 1978 and 1976, respectively.
Sara Jobin made history in 2004 as the first woman to conduct on the mainstage subscription series at San Francisco Opera. She conducted performances of Puccini's Tosca with Carol Vaness in the title role and Wagner's Flying Dutchman with Juha Uusitalo and Nina Stemme; the following season she conducted multiple performances of Bellini's Norma. Jobin has also led performances for the San Francisco Opera Center. Prior to her six years as an assistant with the San Francisco Opera, she conducted for Opera San Jose for four years. Her recording with Frederica von Stade of the music of Chris Brubeck has recently come out on the Koch International Classics label; it features the Tassajara Symphony, an organization she led for four years after its founding in 1998. She has also conducted the Orchestra of St. Luke's, Edmonton Symphony, Calgary Philharmonic, The Women's Philharmonic, Oakland East Bay Symphony, San Jose Chamber Orchestra, Dayton Philharmonic, and Toledo Symphony. At age 16 she attended Harvard and Radcliffe Colleges, where she was named a Leonard Bernstein Music Scholar. After graduation, as a John Knowles Paine Travelling Fellow, she studied conducting with Charles Bruck at the Pierre Monteux School. In 1999 she was the first recipient of the JoAnn Falletta Award, given by The Women's Philharmonic in recognition of a young female conductor of outstanding promise.
Elizabeth Johansen is a Product Designer at IDEO. Her client base includes the consumer and health markets including names like BriteSmile, Reynolds, Becton Dickinson, Alcon, 3Com and several startup companies.
Johansen is also active in the design for social impact domain, nurturing relationships with academia and NGOs while participating in sustainability roundtables in Boston.
Prior to IDEO, Johansen worked with Beckman Laser Institute and then Oregon Medical Laser Center to design and build two patented laboratory tools used in testing lasers for groundbreaking biomedical applications.