Theme: Trust

10am-4pm PST

The theme of TEDxConstitutionDrive is "Trust." Trust as both a noun and a verb. In an intimate venue with about 60 people, we explored different perspectives on trust that went beyond the basic morality and reached into business, technology and neuroscience to arrive at sometimes surprising conclusions.

Carr & Ferrell LLP
120 Constitution Drive
Menlo Park, California, 94025
United States

Anant Agrawal

Anant Agrawal is the Co-founder, Director and Head of Sales and Marketing for Cantaloupe Systems, Inc. of Berkeley, CA. Cantaloupe Systems is the leading provider of wireless remote machine monitoring systems and software management services for the Vending industry. More than 120 of this country

Paige Craig

Paige Craig is an entrepreneur, angel investor, board member and advisor to both early-stage consumer internet and new media companies as well as companies in the national security and defense sectors. Paige began his career in the military in 1992 when he was recruited and given early selection to West Point, the United States Military Academy. In 1995 Paige resigned from West Point, traveled the country and enlisted in the United States Marine Corps and served in a variety of domestic and overseas intelligence roles. After his military service he served as a consultant to the Department of Defense and Intelligence Community where he specialized in counter-intelligence, terrorism and emerging technologies. In 2003 he founded Lincoln Group, drove into Iraq and built the company from the front lines of Iraq, Afghanistan, Lebanon and Africa. In early 2007, Paige stepped out of the daily management of the company and started to pursue his passion for entrepreneurship & technology and became an angel investor. Since April of 2009, Paige Craig has invested in over 30 companies and focuses primarily on entertainment platforms and large social data companies. He has invested in Styleseat, ContextLogic, Backtype, Dealquad, Kiip.me, Identified, Ecomom, InDinero, Sharesquare, SocialRewards, MobileRoadie, Plancast, Knowem, Gotcast, Laughstub, Expensebay, Metricly, Klout, Graphicly, LiveMatrix, Mobstreams, Postling, Gamesalad, Gyroscope Technologies, Burstly, Takelessons, Yourjobstop, LiveFyre, Gamecrush, Mogotix, Setjam, as well as a handful of stealth companies. He continues to actively invest, advise & serve on the boards of early stage technology companies and loves to help entrepreneurs. Paige recently founded BetterWorks in Los Angeles with his cofounder George Ishii who previously worked at Adobe and then Paypal before cofoundeing Geni.com and Yammer. Together they're launching a revolutionary B2B platform for businesses to "Make Work Rewarding" - a company that spawned from their mutual passion for entrepreneurship as well as a belief that happier employees make for better companies. When he

Paul Zak

Paul J. Zak is a scientist, prolific author, entrepreneur, and public speaker. He is the founding Director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies and Professor of Economics, Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University. Dr. Zak also serves as Professor of Neurology at Loma Linda University Medical Center. He has degrees in mathematics and economics from San Diego State University, a Ph.D. in economics from University of Pennsylvania, and post-doctoral training in neuroimaging from Harvard. He is credited with the first published use of the term "neuroeconomics" and has been a vanguard in this new discipline. He organized and administers the first doctoral program in neuroeconomics. Dr. Zak's lab discovered in 2004 that the brain chemcial oxytocin allows us to determine who to trust. His current research has shown that oxytocin is responsible for virtuous behaviors, working as the brain's "moral molecule." This knowledge is being used to understand the basis for civilization and modern economies, improve negotiations, and treat patients with neurologic and psychiatric disorders. His book The Moral Molecule: Vampire Economics and the New Science of Good and Evil will be out in 2012.

Barak Kassar

Two jobs. Little sleep. Lots of fun. Barak is principal and creative director at Rassak Experience, an award-winning digital branding building and communications firm with offices in Barcelona and San Francisco. Clients range from startups who put the 2.0 in web 2.0 (Slide, StumbleUpon) and multinationals (Ricoh Innovations, Nokia). He's also co-founder (with his nine-year-old son) of Zibkids.com --- a web service that lets very young kids play and be entrepreneurs. Earlier work includes: Founder of INBOXTV, a pioneering online video entertainment company; VP Marketing and Business Development of CHOW (acquired by CNET/CBS); and Senior Marketing Manager at Wink Communications (acquired by Liberty Media); Marketing Manager at Ferris Research, an email technology research firm. Barak is quoted frequently on digital brand building and communications in trade and global business media

Colt Briner

Colt Briner, Professor of Magic at Santa Rosa Junior College, has been performing and refining his acclaimed repertoire of illusions for nearly two decades. His unique blend of comedy, magic and storytelling has entertained audiences around the world and earned him a place as one of the Bay Area’s premier entertainers. Colt’s unique “Phusion Technique,” a modernized version of Polynesian fire dancing, was developed over ten years of self teaching and private study. Colt has improved and enhanced his Phusion routine through frequent encounters with fire dancers and martial artists from around the world.

Fran Maier

Since joining TRUSTe in 2001 Fran Maier has helped the company grow to certify the privacy practices of over 3,000 websites. In 2008, under her leadership, TRUSTe secured investment capital and successfully transformed from a non-profit industry association into a for-profit business. As President of TRUSTe, Fran oversees marketing and policy development, having over 15 years of experience building brands and consumer trust online, notably as a co-founder of Match.com. At Match.com she established credibility, safety, and trust in online dating, making Match.com the leading online dating service. In executive marketing roles at Women.com and Kmart’s BlueLight.com subsidiary, Fran both established new online brands and brought blue-chip offline brands onto the Internet. Fran speaks widely on privacy, security, and trust issues. She’s appeared before the Federal Trade Commission and the US Department of Commerce, and testified before the U.S. House of Representatives Subcommittee on Commerce, Trade, and Consumer Protection. Fran holds a BA and MBA from Stanford University and won a 2009 Stevie Award for Women in Business, Best Executive. In 2010, AlwaysOn named Fran among the Top 25 Women in Tech to Watch.

Kaitlin McGaw

Kaitlin McGaw is a singer-songwriter with an academic past. While an undergraduate at Harvard University, she majored in African-American Studies and spent her spare time focusing on social activism, taking her as far as Cape Town, South Africa, in her pursuit of understanding arts and social change. The poetry and performances in South Africa reignited Kaitlin’s artistic expression, and inspired her to move to San Francisco upon graduation to pursue music. Since moving to California, Kaitlin has released two albums, performed hundreds of shows, and done three solo tours. Her songwriting and performances draw in listeners with a combination of powerhouse vocals, tender stories, and intimate delivery. She trusts that this musical path – however unpredictable – is worth traveling.

Laura Slezinger

Laura is Managing Director for the San Francisco chapter of Girls in Tech, a social network enterprise focused on the engagement, education and empowerment of like-minded, professional, intelligent and influential women in technology. She has overseen many beneficial programs for GIT from highlighting women developers and extremely successful female entrepreneurs to providing workshops on basic business skills like public speaking.

Rebecca Mercuri

Rebecca Mercuri is the lead forensic expert at Notable Software, Inc., the company she founded in 1981. Her caseload has included matters involving contraband, child endangerment, murder, computer viruses and malware, wrongful work termination, class-action suits, copyright and patent infringement, and election recounts (most notably Bush vs. Gore). Dr. Mercuri has provided formal testimony and comment to the House Science Committee, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, the Election Assistance Commission, the National Institute of Standards and Technologies, the U.K. Cabinet, and numerous state legislatures and municipal bodies. She is a senior life member of the Association for Computing Machinery, where she authored the Security Watch feature and numerous guest columns of Inside Risks for Communications magazine, and is a co-founder and past chair of the professional joint chapter of the Princeton ACM/IEEE Computer Society. Rebecca is also an adjunct member of the Computer Engineering faculty at The College of New Jersey, where she teaches a broad range of topics, including a senior engineering lecture/laboratory elective on Digital Forensics.

Rob Fuggetta

Rob is the driving force behind Zuberance’s vision and strategy. He founded Zuberance in February 2007 because he saw a major opportunity for companies to harness the power of Word of Mouth and the Social Web to drive sales. As CEO, Rob is ultimately responsible for all aspects of Zuberance’s business including product, engineering, operations, customer success, and sales and marketing. Rob is a 20-year veteran of Silicon Valley who has played a leadership role in three start-ups including Genuity, which went public in June 2000. Rob was formerly a partner at Regis McKenna Inc., the legendary Silicon Valley marketing and communications firm, where he co-led the global Apple business.

Sri Artham

Sri likes to tell his friends that his old job was “making rich people richer” and his new job is “making poor people richer.” He spent close to a decade as a consultant advising some of the world’s largest companies on how to grow faster and become more profitable. Now he works for Fair Trade USA encouraging companies to pay developing world farmers a fair price for their products while protecting the planet. And he couldn’t be happier.