Robert Katz is a Knowledge & Communications Associate at Acumen Fund.
Before joining Acumen Fund, Rob Katz was an Associate with the Markets and Enterprise Program of the World Resources Institute. Katz researches, writes and speaks about "base of the pyramid" business approaches to poverty alleviation and environmental degradation. He is the co-founder and co-Managing Editor of www.NextBillion.net, a web site and blog about enterprise and development. As a principal analyst of household survey data and co-author for The Next 4 Billion: Market Size and Business Strategy at the Base of the Pyramid (March, 2007), he studied BOP market structure and spending patterns extensively.
Katz has consulted with a number of Fortune 500 corporations on BOP strategy, spoken to conferences around the world, and done scenario work for institutions such as the XPRIZE Foundation and the Institute for the Future, among others.
Rob Katz holds a B.A. in Political Economy from Georgetown University.
R. Douglas Kahn is Chairman and CEO of Ahura Scientific. Kahn is an internationally recognized entrepreneur, who brings more than 25 years of executive management experience to Ahura. He has an extensive track record of leadership in high technology companies.
Prior to joining Ahura Corporation, Kahn was CEO and President of PanAmSat Corporation, a leading international provider of satellite-based communications services. Prior to PanAmSat, he served as Chairman and CEO of Easel Corporation, guiding this software company through three rounds of venture capital investment, a successful IPO and ten years of growth.
Doug Kahn holds an MBA from Stanford University and a BS in operations research and industrial engineering from Cornell University.
Paul Breitenback is CEO of Quickstore24 Systems, a company that is leading the transformation of the vending industry into the digital age.
Previsouly, Breitenback was the Chief Marketing Officer at Priceline.com. Breitenback was also responsible for Product Development at Cendant Membership Services.
Paul Breitenback holds a bachelor's degree and an MBA from Cornell University.
David Berry, MD, PhD is a Principal at Flagship Ventures. He joined Flagship in 2005 while completing his M.D. from Harvard Medical School. David was previously awarded a Ph.D. through the MIT Biological Engineering Division, where he studied the biological effects of complex sugars with advisors Professor Ram Sasisekharan and Professor Robert Langer. David also did his undergraduate work at MIT, graduating in 2000 Phi Beta Kappa and Sigma Xi, with a degree in brain and cognitive sciences.
He was named as a member of the MIT Corporation - its Board of Trustees - in 2006. David's work has led to 11 peer-reviewed publications, over 20 patents and applications, as well as over twenty-five awards and honors including the prestigious Lemelson-MIT Student Prize in 2005 for invention and innovation. David was also named as the Innovator of the Year by Technology Review in its 2007 TR35 list of world's top 35 innovators under the age of 35.
At Flagship, David focuses on investing in and founding early stage life science and cleantech ventures and works closely with portfolio companies BG Medicine, T2 Biosystems, Epitome Biosystems and LS9.
Jason Hogg is the Founder, President and CEO of Revolution Money, Inc.
Previously, Hogg was a founder of MBNA Canada and served as Chief Business Development Officer responsible for establishing the bank's business development and marketing operations resulting in receivables of $1 billion.
Over five years with MBNA America, Hogg held executive positions in Loss Prevention, Credit, Compliance, Sales and Marketing. During this time, he co-founded MBNA's Sports Marketing practice, now a $4 billion receivables business and co-founded MBNA's credit counseling subsidiary, Financial Management Services, Inc.
Hogg's experience also includes COO and President positions at two technology organizations, Medsite, Inc. and HorizonLive, Inc. respectively.
César Gon is an entrepreneur in the information technology space and a faithful defender of Brazil's competitiveness when it comes to the global software business.
In May of 1995, he founded CI&T, a pioneering Brazilian business in area of informatics, with the goal of competing in the world markets. He was the first Brazilian vendor to receive the official designation of CMM in 2004 and the second to become CMMI5 by early 2007.
Starting in 2003, he participated in various mobilization efforts in the sector related to exports. In April of 2004, he helped found the consortium called Actminds, helping 10 Brazilian companies from the Campinas regions break into the American market. In November of 2006, he became president of the Organizational Commision of the first meeting of Entreprenerus at Unicamp and helped found Unicamp Ventures, serving as the first president and bringing together more than 150 companies as "daughters of Unicamp."
Currently (2007) he is the director and president of Ci&T Software S.A. leads the advisory board for DigitalAssets, S.A.
César Gon was a Computer Engineering student, with a masters degree in Computer Science from the State University of Campinas.
Zack Schildhorn is an Associate with Lux Capital, based in the firm's New York headquarters. Zack has been working with Lux since 2006, focusing on investments in energy and novel materials.
Before joining Lux, Schildhorn received his B.S. cum laude from Cornell University's College of Engineering, where he developed his own curriculum to study materials science engineering and business entrepreneurship. After being accepted into a highly selective dual-degree program, Schildhorn pursued his MBA at Cornell University's Johnson Graduate School of Management, where he helped teach in the entrepreneurship and private equity immersion program.
Antonio Francisco Ferreira Neto is partner and director of Unigen Tecnologia do DNA Ltda., a firm devoted to providing services such as DNA human parenthood diagnosis and DNA sexing and molecular-based pathogen identification for fowls and birds, and producing kits for biological sample collection for veterinary exams. Engene, a spin-off of Unigen is devoted to developing vaccines based on recombinant DNA.
In 1991 while in college, Ferreira Neto founded with his colleagues the first undergraduate student-directed biology firm in Brazil. Nowadays these firms are fairly common in most large universities around the country. Before starting Unigen, Ferreira Neto worked for 3 years as a commercial representative for large multinational pharmaceutical companies. Unigen materializes the dreams of its owners of providing innovative market-oriented services and professional expertise in biology outside the traditional field of academic research and teaching Unigen's mission statement is anchored in providing high standards in regards to quality of services and products, sharing a corporate culture that values human character and professional ethics. Unigen is part of the Economy of Communion (EdC) movement (http://www.edc-online.org/)
Antonio Francisco Ferreira Neto holds a BS in Biology and Medical Biology from Unicamp and a specialization in Molecular Biology and Genetic Engineering from CBMEC-Unicamp, both in Brazil.
In early 2007, high school student Zachary Peskin founded Special People Helping Others, Inc (SpPHO) ¯ an organization designed to create meaningful opportunities for individuals with developmental disabilities to build self-esteem and social awareness by helping others.
Early on, Zachary observed his family and various practitioners interacting with his older brother, Adam, who is autistic. Zachary was keenly aware of Adam's eagerness to help friends, family and the community in various ways and the satisfaction and enthusiasm that Adam displayed at the completion of each activity. Helping and supporting others gave him joy ¯ from making pancakes for the family (an activity he learned at school) to helping his teachers prepare and clean up the classroom. Zachary also observed this eagerness to help others while conducting the Special Needs Tennis Program which he founded for children and adolescents with disabilities. Over the last few years, Zachary noted that the highlight of each participant's experience focused not necessarily on playing tennis, but on helping to pick up the tennis balls at the end of each game. Similar to the empowerment that all individuals feel when helping others, those with developmental disabilities experience these same feelings of worth and contribution. SpPHO is based on these observations and the larger premise that individuals with developmental disabilities can achieve exceptional benefits in personal growth by helping others, while simultaneously demonstrating their ability to be a positive force in our communities.
Zachary's efforts with SpPHO were recently recognized by WMTR-AM Radio (Cedar Knolls, NJ) with the Kids Who Rock Award. In addition to his commitment to SpPHO, Zachary is a USTA-ranked junior tennis player and a member of the Millburn varsity tennis team. He is the founder of the Special Needs Tennis Program for adolescents and children with disabilities, member of the Millburn High School Peer Leaders (Millburn, NJ) and an editor of The Miller, the Millburn High School newspaper. Zachary is an avid reader, particularly in the area of economics, and has conducted professor-supervised research related to the modeling of economic and social impacts of international exchange rate dynamics.