Topic: Social Innovation

Biz Stone

Christopher "Biz" Stone is an American entrepreneur who is best known as the co-founder of social media platform Twitter, blog-publishing platform Medium, and search engine Jelly. A progenitor of social media, Biz has been developing large-scale systems that facilitate the open exchange of information for nearly two decades.

Biz is also an active angel investor, board director, public speaker, and a prominent philanthropist. Most recently, Biz sold Jelly to Pinterest and returned to Twitter, full time.

Biz has been honored with the International Center for Journalism Innovation Award, Inc. Magazine named him “Entrepreneur of the Decade,” TIME listed him as one of the “100 Most Influential People in the World,” and GQ named him “Nerd of the Year.” In 2014, The Economist recognized Biz with their annual Innovation Award. In 2015, Biz's Twitter won an Emmy and Biz received CIPR’s most prestigious accolade for his leadership at the forefront of developing new forms of media.

Biz's philanthropic efforts are focused in the areas of animal rights, environmentalism, and education. He is an advisor and contributor to DonorsChoose, a nonprofit that helps classrooms in need. He and his wife also founded and operate the Biz and Livia Stone Foundation, which supports education and conservation in California.

In addition to being a technologist, Biz is a Visiting Fellow at The University of Oxford, an Executive fellow at UC Berkeley, a filmmaker, and an author. Stone’s book is titled, "Things A Little Bird Told Me," a sometimes humorous memoir in the business category. Having started out as an artist, Biz stresses creativity, learning from mistakes, and celebrating the triumph of humanity with a little help from technology.

Amelia Showalter

Amelia Showalter served as Director of Digital Analytics on Barack Obama’s 2012 presidential campaign. She led a cutting-edge Digital Analytics team that designed and implemented hundreds of experiments to improve the performance of all types of digital outreach. From long-term experiments for determining ideal email frequency to short-term tests optimizing all visual aspects of digital outreach, these experiments led to tens of millions of dollars in added revenue for the campaign. Showalter raised standards for data quality and statistical validity in the Obama campaign’s digital testing process.
Prior to her position at the Obama campaign, Showalter was a political consultant and provided strategic analysis and micro-targeting models to dozens of campaigns and organizations in the progressive political sphere. Showalter served as Director of Media Strategies with Changing Targets Media from 2009-2010, developing innovative television targeting tools for campaigns at the local, Congressional, and statewide levels. In 2011, Showalter became an expert in redistricting analysis, using advanced Monte Carlo simulation techniques to accurately predict Oregon’s legislative outcomes a year and a half in advance of the elections.
Originally from Olympia, Washington, Showalter graduated with honors from Harvard University and later from Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government with a Master’s degree in Public Policy. After the 2012 election, Bloomberg BusinessWeek named Amelia one of the “most eligible hires in techdom.”

Suneet Singh Tuli

Suneet Singh Tuli is the founder and CEO of DataWind Ltd., responsible for its overall vision, strategy and execution. He has 23 years of experience as a serial entrepreneur, having previously launched two successful companies that conducted Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) on the NASDAQ stock market. At DataWind and previous ventures, patented technologies were created to develop scanning, printing and imaging products that set world records in both price and performance. The innovative products and technologies created through these ventures have received numerous awards and accolades, including recognition by the Guinness Book of Records.
Most recently, DataWind’s Aakash/UbiSlate tablets have received worldwide attention, as the Company executes a vision to empower the next three billion people with computing and Internet access. On November 28, 2012, DataWind’s Aakash2 tablet computer was launched at the United Nations by the Secretary General, Ban Ki-moon.
Suneet has been recognized by Forbes magazine in its 2012 Impact 15 list as a “classroom revolutionary”, using innovative technologies to reinvent education globally. He has also been recognized as the entrepreneur of the year for 2012 at the World Sikh Awards.
DataWind has been recognized as the UK’s Most Innovative Mobile Company for 2012 by UK Trade & Investment and also received the Technology Achievement Award by the Indo-Canadian Chamber of Commerce.
Suneet regularly speaks about social innovation at various forums internationally. Among others, he spoke at the Internet Freedom Conference in Stockholm, the Beyond Access conference in Washington, D.C. and the Digital World conference in Dhaka.
Suneet graduated in 1990 with a Bachelor’s degree in Applied Science in Engineering from the University of Toronto.

Julian Ugarte

Julián is the Founder and Director of Socialab, a platform where more than 300,000 creative people propose solutions to overcome poverty and other social problems.

The organization runs competitions for technology-based business proposals that address major problems wrought by poverty in the region: food insecurity, lack of clean drinking water, struggling public education and so on. Then it taps its virtual community of 300,000 users to identify the best ideas and fine-tune them.

The network is the largest open innovation platform in the world. After spinning off from the youth-led Chilean nonprofit Techo in 2007, Socialab began hosting crow-sourced competitions in 2010 shortly after Ugarte participated in Singularity University’s 2010 GSP Program. Drawing its own funding from grants, including ongoing support from the Inter-American Development Bank and Movistar Chile, Socialab then incubates the winning projects, encouraging the nascent companies to test their products on real users and continue to iterate on their products. When it’s clear that the products will sell and the revenue model is solid, Socialab and the company approach investors.

In 2014 Socialab whittled 15.000 proposals down to 111 products that it supported based on $2.1 million in grants. It was incubating 35 companies. Among the projects Socialab has supported are MirOculus, a blood test for multiple forms of cancer (the company’s medical lead also participated in a Singularity GSP); Algramo, a Chilean company that uses a business model similar to Groupon’s to negotiate lower prices for food and household items; and Plasma Water Sanitation System, a pump that uses pressure and electricity to purify drinking water.

The mentioned projects have affected more than half a million people in less than 2 years. Julián is also a founding partner of IF (an innovative pole of business and culture in Santiago of Chile) and is one the directors of the innovation festival, FiiS. The work of Julián and Socialab has been distinguished by the World Economic Forum, the UN, Harvard, the Washington Post and CNN. Also Julián is Ashoka Fellow, Ambassador of SocialGood at UN Foundation, and Singularity University, World Impact Design Prize nominated (Finland). The talks of Julián are an explosion of knowledge about the world and society we need to build.