Theme: Innovative Thinking

A day to connect innovative thinkers with the students of UMass Amherst to inspire them to take action and chase their dreams.

Amherst, Massachusetts, 01003
United States

Chris Herren

Former Celtics player and ESPN "30 for 30" speaker. He has suffered substance abuse throughout his career, but has refocused his life to put sobriety and family above all else. He founded "The Herren Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing assistance to families affected by addiction. In 2012 The Herren Project launched a national anti-substance abuse campaign, Project Purple, to encourage people of all ages to stand up to substance abuse.

Chris Herren

Former Celtics player and ESPN "30 for 30" speaker. He has suffered substance abuse throughout his career, but has refocused his life to put sobriety and family above all else. He founded "The Herren Project, a nonprofit organization dedicated to providing assistance to families affected by addiction. In 2012 The Herren Project launched a national anti-substance abuse campaign, Project Purple, to encourage people of all ages to stand up to substance abuse.

Owen Biddle & Zach Danziger Mister Barrington

By pre-recording their speech, Owen Biddle and Zach Danziger set out to challenge assumptions about live electronic music. Far from being canned, they improvise a series of pieces enabled by elaborate MIDI architecture which allows for free-form melodic, harmonic, and rhythmic composition. No click or backing tracks were utilized in this performance. The presentation culminates with the duo triggering rapid-fire video clips in real time using note data generated by the bass and drums to create a living multimedia experience.

Brian Halligan

CEO and Co-Founder of HubSpot, the 8th fastest growing tech company in the nation. He is the author of two books: Marketing Lessons From the Grateful Dead and Inbound Marketing: Get Found Using Google, Social Media, and Blogs. He has also been recognized as 2011's Ernst & Young Entrepreneur Of The Year and is currently a Senior lecturer at MIT Sloan School of Management.

Toni Blackman

Award-winning artist, selected by U.S. Department of State as the first ever hip-hop ambassador to the United States. In this position, she has served in Senegal, Ghana, Botswana, and Swaziland to host performances, workshops, and lectures on hip-hop music and culture. She is also the founder and director of Freestyle Union, a cipher workshop that uses free styling as a tool to encourage social responsibility. She also is as a member of the Spoken Word Committee of the Grammy's decision board, New York Chapter.

David Meerman Scott

David Meerman Scott is a marketing strategist, advisor to emerging companies, bestselling author of eight books including three international bestsellers, and a professional speaker on topics including marketing, leadership, and social media. He is a recovering marketing VP for two U.S. publicly traded companies and was Asia marketing director for Knight-Ridder, at the time one of the world’s largest information companies. David has lived and worked in New York, Tokyo, and Hong Kong. He currently lives in the Boston area. David serves as an advisor to emerging companies in the marketing technology category including Eloqua (successful IPO in August 2012), HubSpot, VisibleGains, Speakerfile, GutCheck, and Newstex, as well as varied nonprofits that interest him including the Grateful Dead Archive at UC Santa Cruz, HeadCount, and Nashaquisset. Previously, he was on the boards of directors of NewsWatch KK (successfully sold to Yahoo Japan) and Kadient (successfully merged with Sant).

Scott Kirsner

The question at the center of my writing, speaking, and conference-organizing is this: how do innovations that matter get introduced to the world? That question has led me to some interesting places, from the White House to the Sundance Film Festival, from the United Nations to the laboratories of dozens of biotech and medical device companies, from Google to Walt Disney World. (The food at Google is far better.) I write the weekly "Innovation Economy" column and blog for the Boston Globe and Boston.com. I've served as a contributing writer for Fast Company and Wired, and my writing has appeared in other places, too, including the New York Times, BusinessWeek, Newsweek, Salon, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter, the San Jose Mercury News, CIO Magazine, and the San Francisco Chronicle. I'm part of the founding team of three conferences that focus on the innovation economy in New England. The Nantucket Conference on Entrepreneurship & Innovation is held every June. Convergence: The Life Sciences Leaders Forum takes place every May. And Future Forward, our fall event, bounces around to various venues. I am also involved in hosting, speaking at, and moderating panels at a number of other events...most of them related to that big question above, and also how established industries and organizations can be more hospitable to innovative thinking.

Moschell Coffey

Director of Strategic Growth and Operations of The Good Dog foundation which was featured in Good Morning America and Entertainment Tonight.

Michael Guglielmo

"I had the gun to my head, and was going to kill myself, but I didn't have the balls to do it," he says. "Eventually — when I ran out of coke and bullets — I came out, threw the clips down, and surrendered. I still had the MAC-10 strapped over my shoulder and was drinking a Budweiser when they told me to stop and get down on my knees. Then they came at me — bulletproof shields, shotguns— smacked the beer out of my hand, and beat me down." At the time, Guglielmo had no clue how close he'd come to being executed. And what neither Guglielmo nor Robinson could possibly know was that, decades later, they'd be working together — saving lives under the least likely of circumstances. It's a wonder that none of the 200 bullets Guglielmo unloaded that night hit or killed anyone. What would come 20 years later, though, is more like a miracle. Today, Guglielmo is one of the top individual recruiters of bone-marrow donors in the country. This is his mission and his passion— he calls it his "true calling." Working with the international nonprofit DKMS, Guglielmo has organized more than 600 events that enrolled nearly 50,000 could-be donors, and in the process has secured 135 matches — giving 135 people with leukemia, auto-immune disorders, and other diseases a chance at survival, rather than an assured death sentence.

Steve King

12th employee at Facebook. Founder, General Partner @ Second & Fourth. As a Quintessential Business Development Leader, Steve’s success lies in his ability to rapidly execute innovative ideas from concept into multi-million dollar operations. For more than 13 years, Steve has established and led top-performing organizations with national and global market presence. In his early career, Steve was on the ground floor at Facebook (NASDAQ: FB), the world’s largest social utility site. As one of the first 15 employees hired at Facebook, Steve directed Media Sales in several key verticals and was responsible for landing landmark relationships such as Panasonic and Microsoft that paved the way to unprecedented revenue and market share growth.

Sushil Bhatia

Dr. Sushil Bhatia is an experienced Technical/Business Development Manager, innovator (he holds seven major patents), entrepreneur, author, consultant, professor and community leader. Through a career of over twenty-five years, he has co-developed or invented many products in common use today: Glue Stic, unique convention/seminar name badges, mailing labels, laser/copier labels, binding systems and electro-sensitive paper. He has led new product launch teams for Dennison with IBM and Gillette, and his efforts have led to commercial sales in the hundreds of millions of dollars. He has successfully started a variety of companies in diverse fields – printing, packaging, software, recycling and inks.

Nancy Gahles

Dr. Nancy Gahles is CEO and Founder of Health & Harmony Wellness Education and TeleHealth & Harmony. She is a Chiropractor, Certified Classical Homeopath and Ordained Interfaith Minister in family practice since 1979 specializing in integrative healthcare. Dr. Gahles is Pres. Emeritus of the National Center for Homeopathy and serves as Director of Public Education and Advocacy. Dr. Gahles is a member of the Board of Directors and the Federal Policy Comittee of the Integrative Healthcare Policy Consortium; the healthcare policy working group of the American Sustainable Business Council;Advisory Board, Integrative Healthcare Symposium and several ask-the-expert panels. She is a health columnist, free lance journalist and author of “The Power of $elf Care:A Common Sense Guide to YOUR Wellness Solution”

David Wax Museum

David Wax Museum is a folk and roots rock band blending traditional Mexican son music with Americana in what they call "Mexo-Americana." David Wax and Suz Slezak are its core members, while Jordan Wax (David's cousin), Greg Glassman, Mike Roberts, and Jiro Kokubu have played supporting roles. To date, all of the band's albums have been self-released, supported by grassroots efforts and an active touring schedule.