Lynn Book is an innovative educator, internationally recognized performance artist, entrepreneur and creativity specialist who relocated from New York City to Winston-Salem, North Carolina in the fall of 2005 to accept a unique position as Faculty Fellow in Creativity at Wake Forest University.
For over twenty years Book has inspired students, professionals, businesses and institutions in a broad range of settings to create new models of innovation for individuals, workplaces and cultural domains. She has contributed to the development of groundbreaking programs that foster innovations in performance and new media in Chicago: The School of the Art Institute (1985-95), in New York City: The Sidney Kahn Kitchen Summer Institute (2000-05) and in Austria at the Transart Institute, Europe's first low-residency MFA program for new media, where she continues as an associate since it's inception in 2005.
Her 20 year teaching career in higher education has included institutions such as Sarah Lawrence College, New York University, Barnard College and Columbia College in Chicago, among others.
Her performance career has included citations, fellowships and awards from the National Endowment for the Arts, Illinois Arts Council, the New York Foundation for the Arts and MacArthur Foundation funding for the production of a radio drama based upon her original one-woman theater show, Gorgeous Fever.
Lynn Book holds a BFA in sculpture from Memphis College of Art and an MFA in performance art and media studies from School of the Art Institute of Chicago.
Lesa Mitchell is a vice president with the Kauffman Foundation. She is responsible for leading the Foundation's initiatives to advance innovations. Mitchell joined the Foundation in 2003.
She has been responsible for the Foundation's frontier work in understanding the policy levers that influence the advancement of innovation from universities into the commercial market. Under Mitchell's leadership the Foundation is identifying critical research opportunities, defining and codifying alternative pathways and identifying new models to foster innovation.
Prior to joining Kauffman, Mitchell's professional background included consulting for global pharmaceutical clients such as Takeda and Eli Lilly. She spent twenty years of her career in global executive roles at Aventis and Quintiles.
Lesa Mitchell has a bachelor's degree from the University of Kansas.
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.
Caroline Baillie is the Dupont Canada Chair of Engineering Education Research and Development at Queens University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada. Her role is to enhance the learning experience of engineering students across the Faculty whilst maintaining her research and teaching interests in materials science and engineering. She is cross-appointed into the Departments of Chemical Engineering, Sociology and Women's Studies.
Baillie is also a member of Critical Stage Company, which is "committed to new writing, or tackling established pieces in a new way..." Through Critical Stage and the Integrated Learning Centre at Queen's University, she has put on several productions using student and members of the Kingston community that link to the themes of engineering and society.
In popular culture, Baillie is best known as the host of "Building the Impossible", a four part documentary commissioned by the BBC in which a team of experts undertook the challenge of building historical inventions to their original specification to see if they really worked.
Baillie was formerly deputy director of the UK Centre for Materials Education at Liverpool University, Liverpool, United Kingdom. She was also formerly a lecturer at the Dept. of Mechanical and Mechatronic Engineering, University of Sydney, Sydney, New South Wales, Australia, and at Imperial College London.
Baillie has over 100 publications in materials science and education and is the author of four books on teaching and learning. Her recent publications include, 'Travelling facts: the Social Construction, Distribution and Accumulation of Knowledge', Campus Press and 'Effective Learning and Teaching in Engineering', Routledge.
Caroline Baillie obtained her PhD from the University of Surrey, Department of Materials, in 1991 and her Master of Higher Education at the University of New South Wales in 1995.
Katie Lucchesi and Chaun Sims are both students at Colorado State University who placed third in the 2006 University of Colorado at Boulder Cleantech Innovators' Challenge for their company, Bright Light Innovations.
Bright Light Innovations produces the Firefly Stove, an inexpensive stove that provides heat and electricity without emitting harmful kerosene or wood smoke. The company says it is designed for use in homes without electricity in developing countries. But the stove isn't just for cooking and warming a room. Because it uses a thermo-electric generator, a device that converts heat from the stove into electricity, the electricity generated can be used for light or stored in a battery for use at a later time.
Since placing third and winning $5,000 in the contest, Bright Light Innovations has received a grant from the National Collegiate Inventors and Innovators Alliance, which allowed the team to build and field test prototype stoves in India. The team, now working on a redesigned stove based on the field test results, expects that an updated model will be available in limited quantities later this year. Team members expect to establish a profitable business within a few years.
Katie Lucchesi is a senior at Colorado State University and expects to graduate in 2007.
Karen Katen is retired Vice Chairman of Pfizer, the world's largest pharmaceutical company; and she is chairman of the Pfizer Foundation, the company's global philanthropic arm devoted to supporting healthcare access, education and community outreach initiatives.
Most recently, Katen served as President of Pfizer Human Health - the company's principal operating group, responsible for discovery, development, manufacture, distribution and commercialization of prescription medicines, and for providing a broad array of innovative human-health services. Katen joined Pfizer in 1974.
Karen Katen was named among the top ten in Fortune Magazine's ranking of "50 Most Powerful Women in Business" again in 2005, a list that included her for eight consecutive years.
Karen Katen received her BA and MBA from the University of Chicago, where she now serves as a University Trustee and a council member of its Graduate School of Business.
Joanne Florino is the Executive Director of the Triad Foundation.
Prior to her role at the Triad Foundation, Florino began her work in the nonprofit sector in 1984 at Atlantic charities before taking a position with the Park Family Foundation. She worked for the Park Family Foundation until it split into two and became the Triad Foundation and the Park Foundation.
Joanne Florino holds a master's degree from Cornell University.
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.
Doris Buffet is the founder of The Sunshine Lady Foundation which is a private family foundation funded through her generosity. The mission of the foundation reflects the midwestern values and no-nonsense approach to decision-making that Doris grew up with in Omaha, Nebraska. Each Sunshine Lady Foundation grant is considered an investment, and the decision to grant funds is always based on an expected successful return. Doris Buffett is grateful to her father and brother (Warren Buffet) not only for providing her with the wealth to fund the foundation but also for their inspirational examples of integrity and generosity.
Buffett is passionate about her responsibilities as a philanthropist and a good citizen and her energy and enthusiasm are boundless. Among her many other roles, she has been a first grade teacher, domestic violence crusader, political activist, mother and grandmother. She is the self appointed Buffett family genealogist and her avocation is historic preservation.
Since its inception in 1996 the Sunshine Lady Foundation has awarded more than $30 million in grants.