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.
David Feldshuh has been artistic director at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts at Cornell University since 1984.
His play, Miss Evers' Boys, has been produced throughout the U.S., received the New American Play award, was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize and won seven Emmy awards as an HBO movie. He co-produced the video Susceptible to Kindness, for which he interviewed observers as well as survivors of the Tuskegee syphilis study. In 1994 the video won three awards: the Cine Golden Eagle, the Intercom Gold Plaque, and the International Health and Medical Film Festival award.
David's television script Harmony was written for an educational television project dedicated to teaching science to children and sponsored in part by the National Science Foundation. His short story "Are You Satisfied, Thomas Becket?" was recently published in a collection of stories by physician-writers.
Although full-time at Cornell, David continues to practice medicine and lectures frequently on the subject of human experimentation and the use of theatre in exploring important social issues. He trained as an actor at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Arts, is a member of Actor's Equity, and began his career at The Guthrie Theater in Minneapolis where he also served as an Associate Director.
David Feldshuh received his M.D. and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota.
Jim Prevor is the Founder and Editor of the Perishable Pundit which has quickly become the industry's most important forum for the discussion and analysis of issues relevant to the fresh foods industry including the trade's primary forum for discussing food safety and sustainability issues.
Jim Prevor is widely recognized as a leader in understanding and assessing the state of the perishable food industries and analyzing the prospects for the retail and foodservice venues in which perishable foods are sold. His comments and insights on issues such as food safety, sustainability and the competitive dynamics in the food retailing industry have been seen and heard on CNN, the Fox Business Channel, the BBC, National Public Radio and many network affiliates as well as over 100 newspapers and magazines, including The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The Los Angeles Times and The Wall Street Journal.
The founder and editor-in-chief of both PRODUCE BUSINESS and DELI BUSINESS magazines, Prevor also spearheads substantial trade and consumer research projects focusing on consumer attitudes toward various shopping venues. These research initiatives include the world's largest comparison of perishable food prices between Wal-Mart and competing shopping venues and a project comparing and contrasting consumer attitudes on sustainability in the UK and North America.
Prevor is also the founder of Perishable Solutions, a consultancy specializing in bringing strategic thinking to the fast-moving business of perishables. He travels the world visiting retail, foodservice, wholesale and production organizations and has given keynote addresses, workshops and seminars on every continent save Antarctica.
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.
Brian Milder is the Director of Strategy and Innovation at Root Capital. Milder coordinates organizational strategy and focuses on developing new markets and financial products to support Root Capitalâ€[TM]s growth. Previously, he served as Boston site director for Project HEALTH, a national nonprofit organization that connects low-income families to the resources they need to be healthy. He also worked in Chile as an entrepreneur-in-residence for the Nonprofit Enterprise and Self-sustainability Team (NESsT), which operates a venture fund to incubate sustainable social enterprises.
Brian Milder holds a B.A. in social studies from Harvard College and an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.
Frank Raiter is a Director of Luminent Mortgage Capital. Luminent Mortgage Capital, Inc. a real estate investment trust (REIT), invests primarily in the United States agency and other single-family, adjustable-rate, and fixed rate mortgage-backed securities. It also invests in residential mortgage loans.
For ten years until his retirement in 2005, he was a managing director of Standard & Poors and head of its mortgage backed securities ratings group.
Prior to joining S&P, Raiter was Chief Investment Officer and Treasurer of Caliburt Bank in Phoenix, Arizona. Before that he was the Assistant Director Office of Securities Transactions at the Resolution Trust Corporation where he was involved in the structuring and sale of residential and commercial mortgage backed securities. In 2006 and 2007 he taught courses in investment and finance at the College of Business at James Madison University.
In the Fall of 2008, Mr. Raiter testified before Congress on the role of the credit rating agencies in the current financial crisis.Frank Raiter earned a BA in Economics, with honors, from North Carolina State University and an MBA in Finance from the University of North Carolina.
Matt Faso is currently a Marketing Advisor at Haley Marketing Group, where he works with clients on their marketing programs. Prior to Haley Marketing, Matt worked for Ingram Micro (a Fortune 75 company) and for the Hearst Corporation, one of the largest media conglomerates in the world.
Matt Faso has been involved exclusively in marketing since writing an award winning business plan in the Entrepreneurship@Cornell program his junior year at Cornell University. He graduated Cornell in 2000.
Peter Hamilton is a Senior Analyst of Plebys Venture Development. In this role, he is responsible for coordinating and sourcing deal flow for Plebys.
Hamilton has worked as an engineer, researcher, marketing strategist, and consultant in a dozen countries. His clients and employers have included Solar Turbines (a Caterpillar company), Lockheed Martin, Exxon Mobil, General Electric, the California Air Resources Board, early and mid-stage startups, and several non-profits in the developing world.
Peter Hamilton holds degrees from Swarthmore College (BS, Engineering), UC Davis (MS) and Cornell University (MBA).