Confirmed Speakers

• Nilofer Merchant
  Nilofer Merchant spent her early career working at companies like Apple. After getting hired (and then subsequently fired) by Carol Bartz of Autodesk, she founded and led a multi-million dollar consulting firm that helped companies like Symantec, Nokia and Adobe. From all that big company experience, she wrote a book to help big companies act flatter and be nimble, called The New How. Today, she advises, invests and writes. Most notably, covering the topics of collaboration, innovation and the human condition -- for Harvard Business Review.
• Whitney Johnson
  Whitney Johnson dared to disrupt when she began her Wall Street career as a secretary, and eventually rising to become an Institutional Investor-ranked sell-side analyst. She is the president and co-founder of the Clayton M. Christensen’s investment firm Rose Park Advisors – Disruptive Innovation Fund, and a regular contributor for the Harvard Business Review blogs. Ms. Johnson has been described as an "investor in stocks, people concepts, and dreams." She and her husband reside with their two children in Boston, Massachusetts.
• PJ Pereira
  PJ Pereira is Chief Creative Officer and Co-Founder of Pereira & O’Dell with 20 years of experience in the technology and advertising industry. A seasoned entrepreneur, PJ has held executive roles both at start up agencies such as AgenciaClick, which PJ also founded, to established international agencies such as AKQA where he was ECD working on global accounts such as McDonald’s, Nike, Coca-Cola, Visa, Red Bull, Target and Microsoft. He has received more than 60 international awards during the last 10 years and has served as President of juries at Cannes Lions, London International and One Show Festivals.
• Vivek Wadhwa
  Vivek Wadhwa is a senior research associate with the Labor and Worklife Program at Harvard Law School, an executive in residence/adjunct professor at the Pratt School of Engineering at Duke University, and a visiting scholar at the School of Information at University of California at Berkeley. He helps students prepare for the real world, lectures in class and leads groundbreaking research projects. He is also an advisor to several start-up companies, a columnist for BusinessWeek.com, a contributor to the popular tech blog, TechCrunch, and writes occasionally for several international publications. Prior to joining academia in 2005, Wadhwa was a technology entrepreneur, who founded two software companies.
• Rick Marini
  Rick Marini has been a pioneer in online social media for over a decade. Prior to founding BranchOut, Rick was the Founder & CEO of SuperFan, a profitable social entertainment site that produced social games for world-class companies including CBS, MTV, Sony, Universal Music, etc. Prior to founding SuperFan, Rick was the Co-Founder, CFO & Chief Strategist for Tickle.com. Tickle was one of the largest social media sites on the Internet. In 2002, Tickle won the “Rising Star” Webby Award as the fastest growing site on the Web and became a top 20 global Internet site with 200 million registered users. In 2004, Tickle was acquired by Monster Worldwide for over $100 million. Rick currently serves on the Advisory Boards of HR.com, Fwix, Lumos Labs, Founder’s Den, Stipple, FIGHTER, and Friendster (acquired by MOL).