Elizabeth A. Mannix is the Ann Whitney Olin Professor of Management and Vice Provost for Equity and Inclusion at the Johnson School at Cornell University.
Professor Mannix's research and teaching interests include: Effective performance in managerial teams, diversity in organizations and teams, power and alliances, negotiation and conflict, and organizational change and renewal. Recently, she has been studying the effects of informal power in teams, and the multi-faceted effects of diversity on performance in organizational groups.
Elizabeth Mannix received her PhD from the University of Chicago.
Julie Eskay-Eagle is the Managing Director at September Ventures LLC.
Eskay-Eagle was a full time employee of The Wellcome Trust in London, UK from 2001-2004 where she established a formal Direct Investment Program. Prior to joining the Trust she was a Vice President with Lazard Freres in Health Care Investment Banking and a founding member of Lazard Technology Partners.
Before joining Lazard, Eskay-Eagle was a Health Care Specialist with McKinsey & Co. in New York.
Julie Eskay-Eagle has a bachelor's degree in Biomedical Ethics from Cornell University and an MBA from Columbia University.
Anne Loehr is a partner in Riverstone Endeavors. Loehr has owned and managed eco-friendly hotels and safari companies in Kenya for over 15 years. While managing 500 employees there, Loehr could not find seasoned trainers to teach leadership, coaching, and teambuilding skills. She began to study these skills herself, and after selling her properties she returned to the United States to specialize in executive coaching and leadership development.
Loehr has also co-founded Safaris for the Soul, leadership retreats that help senior managers find their organizational values and purpose. These trips take place around the world and have been featured in The Washingtonian, Business Traveler and Body+Soul. Loehr's award-winning book "A Manager's Guide to Coaching: Simple and Effective Ways to Get the Best Out of Your Employees," was published by the American Management Association in 2008. Her work has been covered in Newsweek International, National Geographic Traveler, CNN Money, Sunday Times (UK), Guardian (UK) and other international media.
Anne Loehr is a graduate of Cornell Universityâ€[TM]s School of Hotel Administration.
Luciana Aguiar is a former partner with Data Popular, a market research firm established in 2000 in Sao Paulo, Brazil with the mission to build unparalleled knowledge on low-and medium-income consumers. Currently, Aguiar is a senior partner of Plano CDE a new consulting and research company aiming at understanding business models focused on BOP markets (www.planocde.com.br) and has been in charge of introducing cutting edge ethnography methodology into market research in Brazil.
Aguiar worked as a Program Officer for UNESCO sponsored programs for low-income population in Brazil coordinated by The Comunidade Solidaria Initiative and Sebrae (1998-2003), as a Curator for art exhibits and educational programs at museums including Museu Virtual A Casa, Museu da Casa Brasileira, and Pinacoteca do Estado de Sao Paulo (1998-2003), and as a Postdoctoral Associate at the Department of Anthropology at the University of Sao Paulo (USP) (1993-97).
Luciana Aguiar holds a BA in Social Sciences from UnB in Brazil a MA in Anthropology and a PhD in Social and Visual Anthropology , both from Cornell University. She is the author of Spinning Lives (1996, University Press of America), a book based on her doctoral research.
Luciana Aguiar holds a BA in Social Sciences from UnB in Brazil a MA in Anthropology and a PhD in Social and Visual Anthropology , both from Cornell University. She is the author of Spinning Lives (1996, University Press of America), a book based on her doctoral research.
Amy Smith is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In addition, she is the founder of the International Development Initiative at MIT and has taught courses related to the subject for 10 years.
She served in the US Peace Corps in Botswana for four years before working in Senegal, South Africa, Nepal, Haiti, Ghana and Hondouras.
In 2004, she was selected as a MacArthur Fellow, recognizing her efforts in creating technologies to improve lives in the developing world and for her finding opportunities for students to do the same.
Amy Smith received her B.S. and M.S. in mechanical engineering from MIT and is currently working toward an M.S. in technology and policy.
Aija Leiponen is an Assistant Professor in Applied Economics and Management at Cornell University. She joined the department in 2001.
Prior to joining Cornell University, she carried out research at the International Institute of Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) in Austria, Institute for Industrial Relations in UC Berkeley, and the Research Institute of the Finnish Economy (ETLA) in Finland.
Leiponen's teaching and research focus on the sources and effects of technological change in the economy. The overarching goal of her research program is to understand the interactions between organizational arrangements and innovation.
Aija Leiponen received her Ph.D. in Economics from the Helsinki School of Economics and Business Administration. During her doctoral studies, she spent two years as a Fulbright scholar in the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley.
Leslie Ackerman is a Business Educator at the Alternatives Federal Credit Union based in Ithaca, New York. The is the director of "Business CENTS" which is a small business development program offering a "how to" business training course, seminars, one-on-one business counseling and marketing support for people interested in starting or expanding a business.
Alisa Cohn is founder of Alisa Cohn Coaching and is a Business Coach with more than ten years of professional experience in large and small corporate environments. Prior to starting her own company, her professional experience included working in the Middle Market Advisory Services Practice of PricewaterhouseCoopers.
Alisa Cohn earned her MBA from Cornell University, where she was awarded the Fried Fellowship for Leadership and Academic Excellence. Alisa is also a Certified Public Accountant.
Kathryn Blume is Co-Founder of the Lysistrata Project, the first worldwide theatrical event for peace. She has toured The Accidental Activist - her critically acclaimed one-woman show about Lysistrata Project - to over 30 cities in the US and Canada, receiving an Austin Critics Table Award nomination. She is an Artistic Associate at Vermont Stage Company in Burlington, where her play Vanya/Vermont - a modern adaptation of Anton Chekhov's Uncle Vanya - premiered in the spring of 2005. Kathryn's new solo show, The Boycott, premiered at VSC in January, 2007.
Her Off-Broadway credits include The Seagull, Mirandolina, and The Country Wife. Her Regional theater credits include Two Rooms, She Stoops to Conquer, A Child's Christmas in Wales, Sylvia, Waiting for Godot, A Streetcar Named Desire, Amadeus, June Moon, Antigone, Much Ado About Nothing, The Baby Dance, and Our Country's Good. Her Film credits include Deception, My Mother's Early Lovers, The Apartment, and Maybe It's Me.
In amongst her theatrical activities, Blume has had essays published in the books MoveOn.org's 50 Ways To Love Your Country, Code Pink's Stop the Next War Now, Outcry - American Voices of Conscience Post 9/11, and 365 Ways to Change the World. She has also had essays published in the weekly Seven Days and in Yes Magazine. Blume has worked for organizations such as the Sierra Club, Friends of the Earth, and Forest Watch. She founded Earth on the Air, a nationally-syndicated, award-winning environmental and social justice radio program, and was a company member of Living Voices, touring one-woman shows about the Holocaust and immigration to communities nationwide.
Blume co-founded The Hill Actor's Retreat Center and New Paradigms Personal Coaching Services, and has taught yoga, acting, Shakespeare, stress-reduction, and public speaking in venues across the country.
Kathryn Blume received her BA from Yale with a self-designed degree in environmental studies and theater.