Utility + Function

Gaurab Chakrabarti is the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Solugen, which he co-founded with Sean Hunt in 2016 with the mission to decarbonize the chemicals industry. Gaurab is a physician-scientist focused on using biology in unconventional ways to solve incredibly complex problems. As CEO, Gaurab is using his insights from enzyme engineering to develop and scale chemienzymatic process technologies. Gaurab studied computational neuroscience as an undergraduate at Brown University and received his MD & PhD in cancer biology and enzymology at the University of Texas. Gaurab is an author or co-author on more than 20 peer-reviewed publications and patents and an alumnus of Y Combinator and Forbes 30 Under 30 in Industry and Manufacturing. Gaurab lives in Houston with his wife, daughter, and Goldendoodle.

Henrik Fisker is a risk taking, innovation loving, protocol challenging legendary designer & entrepreneur who turns dreams into reality and believes in never giving up. An entrepreneur, creator, innovator, mentor, brand ambassador and a leading automotive designer. Best known among his creations are iconic cars such as BMW Z8, Aston Martin DB9, Aston Martin V8 Vantage, Artega GT, Fisker Karma, Viking motorcycle, Rocket and more recently Destino V8 and Force 1. Henrik Fisker is the founder, Chairman and CEO of Fisker Inc., an American automaker based in California USA, revolutionizing the development of electric vehicles with game changing battery solutions. Previously, Henrik Fisker founded Fisker Automotive in 2007 as the world’s first green luxury lifestyle automotive company, and took the idea from conception to a team of 600 people, from concept to full scale production, and sales of the company’s first model, Fisker Karma that sold more than 2000 vehicles. Under the leadership of Henrik, Fisker Automotive won numerous awards, including 2012 Time Magazine Best Inventions of the Year. Henrik Fisker resigned from Fisker Automotive in March 2013 due to major differences with management on strategy. In January 2016, Henrik Fisker cofounded VLF Automotive with Bob Lutz and Gilbert Villarreal, an American luxury sports car manufacturer based in Auburn Hills, Michigan that specialized in low volume, specialty cars. Henrik Fisker is head of design and product strategy at VLF, that currently has 3 models the VLF Destino V8, VLF Force 1 V10 and VLF Rocket. In 2016, HenrikFiskerlifestyle was launched, a lifestyle brand dedicated to creativity, innovation and entrepreneurship. In June 2013, he founded and currently serves as the CEO of HF Design, a design and innovation company developing a number of first-to-market consumer products in categories ranging from automotive, lifestyle, homeware, education and smart devices. The company announced a partnership with Benetti Yachts in April 2016, launching a 164-foot super yacht series called the Benetti Fisker 50. Previously, Henrik founded Fisker Coachbuild in 2005, an automotive design house that revived the art of coachbuilding by combining beautiful design with existing world-class engineering. Fisker Coachbuild created cars such as the Artega GT (German sports car), and the Fisker Latigo & Fisker Tramonto. From 2001 to 2005, Fisker held prominent executive positions at Ford Motor Company. He was creative director at Ingeni, Ford’s London-based design and creativity center. At the same time, Fisker served as Board Member and Design Director at Aston Martin in Gaydon, UK. As a board member, Fisker was part of a team that led the turnaround of Aston Martin. Henrik designed the Aston Martin V8 Vantage and was responsible for the production launch design of the DB9, variants of which were James Bond’s preferred vehicles. Fisker was also director of Ford’s Global Advanced Design Studio in southern California. Designed under his direction were several show cars including the Shelby GR1 concept showcased at the 2005 North American International Auto Show. From 1997-2000, as president and chief executive officer of BMW Designworks USA, BMW’s California-based industrial design subsidiary, Henrik led a team of 130 people and was responsible for both internal and external clients. Henrik created notable cars such as the BMW Z07 concept (1997) and BMW Z8 roadster (1999), another Bond car. Henrik sits on the advisory board of Panasonic Aviation and is a senior advisor to McKinsey.

The author of 13 acclaimed books, including New York Times nonfiction bestsellers Case Closed, Why America Slept and God’s Bankers. Posner was a finalist for the Pulitzer in History. “A merciless pit bull of an investigator” concluded the Chicago Tribune.  The New York Times said his latest book (2020), PHARMA, was “a withering and encyclopedic indictment of a drug industry that often seems to prioritize profits over patients…[it] reads like a pharmaceutical version of cops and robbers." Posner was one of the youngest attorneys (23) ever hired by Cravath, Swaine & Moore. A Political Science major, he was a Phi Beta Kappa and Summa Cum Laude graduate of the University of California at Berkeley, where he was also a national debating champion. At Hastings Law School, he was an Honors Graduate and was the Law Review’s Associate Executive Editor. He was a litigation associate at the Wall Street law firm of Cravath, Swaine & Moore before leaving in 1981 to co-found Posner & Ferrara, a New York public interest law firm. Several years of a pro bono legal representation on behalf of surviving twins of Nazi experiments at the Auschwitz death camp led him to coauthor his first book in 1986, MENGELE: The Complete Story, a bestselling and critically acclaimed biography of the infamous Nazi “Angel of Death,” Dr. Josef Mengele. Read a profile on Gerald on how the Mengele book led to him to leave the law. Publishers Weekly explains how he changed from being a Wall Street lawyer to a bestselling nonfiction author. In the past, he was a regular panelist on HistoryCENTER, the History Channel’s Sunday current events program. He has been a freelance writer for many news magazines, and a regular contributor to NBC, the History Channel, CNN, FOX News, CBS, and MSNBC. He is represented by BrightSight Group for lectures about investigative journalism and his books. His wife, author, Trisha Posner, works with him on all projects. Garry Wills calls Posner "a superb investigative reporter” and the Los Angeles Times says he is “a classic -style investigative journalist.” “Painstakingly honest journalism,” concluded The New York Times. “Posner, a former Wall Street lawyer, demolishes myths through a meticulous re-examination of the facts," reported the Chicago Tribune. "Meticulous research," Newsday. John Martin, former national correspondent for ABC News says “Posner is one of the most successful investigators I have encountered in thirty years of journalism.” Praise for Posner comes from all sides of the political spectrum. “One of America’s finest investigative reporters,” according to MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann. “Gerald Posner is maybe the best known and most thorough investigative journalist in this country. There aren't many left,” says FOX News’s Tucker Carlson. Anthony Lewis in The New York Times: "With 'Killing the Dream, he has written a superb book: a model of investigation, meticulous in its discovery and presentation of evidence, unbiased in its exploration of every claim. And it is a wonderfully readable book, as gripping as a first-class detective story." Jeffrey Toobin in the Chicago Tribune: "Unlike many of the 2,000 other books that have been written about the Kennedy assassination, Posner's Case Closed is a resolutely sane piece of work. More importantly, 'Case Closed' is utterly convincing in its thesis, which seems, in light of all that has transpired over the past 30 years, almost revolutionary....I started Case Closed as a skeptic - and slightly put off by the presumptuous title. To my mind historical truth is always a slippery thing. The chances of knowing for sure what happened in any event - much less one as murky as the Kennedy assassination - seem remote. But this fascinating and important book won me over. Case closed, indeed."

Gustav Söderström is the Chief Research & Development Officer at Spotify. He oversees the product, design, data, and engineering teams at Spotify and is responsible for their product strategy. Mr. Söderström is a startup seed investor and was formerly an advisor to 13th Lab (acquired by Facebook’s Oculus). Before joining the Company in 2009, Mr. Söderström was director of product and business development for Yahoo! Mobile from 2006 to 2009. In 2003, Mr. Söderström founded Kenet Works, a company that developed community software for mobile phones and served as the company’s Chief Executive Officer until it was acquired by Yahoo! in 2006. Mr. Söderström holds a Master of Science in Electrical Engineering from KTH Royal Institute of Technology.

Dr. Kate Darling is a leading expert in Robot Ethics. She’s a researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Media Lab, where she investigates social robotics and conducts experimental studies on human-robot interaction. Kate explores the emotional connection between people and life-like machines, seeking to influence technology design and policy direction. Her writing and research anticipate difficult questions that lawmakers, engineers, and the wider public will need to address as human-robot relationships evolve in the coming decades. Forever interested in how technology intersects with society, Kate has a background in law & economics and intellectual property. She has researched economic incentives in copyright and patent systems and has taken a role as intellectual property expert at multiple academic and private institutions. She currently serves as intellectual property policy advisor to the director of the MIT Media Lab. Her passion for technology and robots has led her to interdisciplinary fields. After co-teaching a robot ethics course at Harvard Law School with Professor Lawrence Lessig, she began to work at the intersection of law and robotics, with a focus on legal and social issues. Kate is a former Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society and the Yale Information Society Project,  and is also an affiliate at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies. Kate’s work has been featured in Vogue, The New Yorker, The Guardian, BBC, NPR, PBS, The Boston Globe, Forbes, CBC, WIRED, Boston Magazine, The Atlantic, Slate, Die Zeit, The Japan Times, and more. She was a contributing writer to Robohub and IEEE Spectrum and currently speaks and holds workshops covering some of the more interesting developments in the world of robotics, and where we might find ourselves in the future. Kate graduated from law school with honors and holds a doctorate of sciences from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology (ETH Zurich) and an honorary doctorate of sciences from Middlebury College. In 2017, the American Bar Association honored her legal work with the Mark T. Banner award in Intellectual Property. She is the caretaker for several domestic robots, including her Pleos Yochai, Peter, and Mr. Spaghetti. She tweets as @grok_

Tony Arcabascio is the Art Director for Nanotronics and oversees all creative design across branding, marketing, and digital platforms. Tony also provides creative input on design for some engineering projects such as nHale™. Tony joined the Nanotronics team with over 25 years of experience in the streetwear and the fashion industry. In 1999, he co-founded the sneaker and apparel company Alife. Its headquarters on Orchard St. and their world renowned sneaker boutique, The Alife Rivington Club, on Rivington Street, served as a hub for a cross-section of the Lower East Side creative scene: artists, photographers, actors, musicians, sneaker-heads, skaters, and graffiti writers. Tony’s legacy of popularizing street wear serves as a perfect example for what Malcolm Gladwell highlighted in his pop-culture book, The Tipping Point, namely that ideas, attitudes and behaviors tend to spread contagiously in the same way as some infectious diseases. Tony is known in the New York arts and culture scene as a prescient brander and behind-the-scenes trend-setter. He has been the creative contributor to many of the brands New Yorker’s know and love today such as The Standard Hotel, WeSC, Damiani, and Buscemi. Today, Arcabascio makes a significant contribution to the Nanotronics ecosystem and culture where artists, designers, engineers, marketers, and business leaders work together to envision, and passionately work toward building, a more sustainable future.

Sarah Williams is currently an Associate Professor of Technology and Urban Planning. She also is Director of the Civic Data Design Lab at MIT's School of Architecture and Planning. The Civic Data Design Lab works with data, maps, and mobile technologies to develop interactive design and communication strategies that expose urban policy issues to broader audiences. Trained as a Geographer (Clark University), Landscape Architect (University of Pennsylvania), and Urban Planner (MIT), Williams's work combines geographic analysis and design. Williams is most well known for her work as part of the Million Dollar Blocks team which highlighted the cost of incarceration, Digital Matatus which developed the first data set on an informal transit system searchable in Google Maps, and a more a recent project that uses social media data to understand housing vacancy and Ghost Cities in China. Her design work has been widely exhibited including work in the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), the Cooper Hewitt Museum in New York City. Before coming to MIT, Williams was Co-Director of the Spatial Information Design Lab at Columbia University’s Graduate School of Architecture Planning and Preservation (GSAPP). Williams has won numerous awards including being named top 25 planners in the technology and 2012 Game Changer by Metropolis Magazine. Her work is currently on view in the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) and the Seoul Biennale Cities Exhibition in Korea.

The founder and the Director of Silent Cry Inc., Shawanna Vaughn, is a native of Bakersfield, California, and a mother of two.  Silent Cry, Inc. is the product of the tears she shed while overcoming the pain and hardships of incarceration, the loss of a brother to gang initiation violence and surviving cancer. She is the true definition of strength, courage and determination. "I've been impacted by the aftermath of senseless violence and I'm also formerly incarcerated. With that, I've turned tragedy into Healing through my pain. I now find my voice in justice and healing our communities and hearts. I’ve crafted a policy called, Post Traumatic Prison Disorder Shawanna W76337. It is a comprehensive policy on mental health reconstruction for children of incarcerated parents, Inclusive to long term individuals with vendor therapies available to combat depression and suicide prevention. And, offering services of holistic approach to post incarceration individuals because healthy lifestyles and mental stability reduces repetitive behaviors which lead to reincarnation. My life has been a journey one that has lead me to many places and I've had the wonderful pleasure to work with Columbia business school in simulations. My lifestyle is changing the narrative in criminal justice issues. I'm a member of the Confined arts project. A member of Peace and Justice studies. Proud to say May of 2019, I will be attending Columbia University. Education over adversity is a model I believe in and advocate to young people."

Alan Murray is the CEO of Fortune. He previously hosted an eponymous show on CNBC and was president of Pew Research Center from 2013 to 2014, where he oversaw a rapid expansion of the center’s digital footprint. Prior to that, Murray was at The Wall Street Journal for more than two decades. He served as deputy managing editor and executive editor of online from 2007 to 2012, with editorial responsibility for the company’s websites, mobile products, television, video, books, and conferences. During his time as Washington bureau chief, from 1993 to 2002, the bureau won three Pulitzer prizes. Prior to his current position, Mr. Murray was assistant managing editor of The Wall Street Journal, and author of the paper's "Business" column, which runs every Wednesday. Previously, he served as CNBC’s Washington, D.C., bureau chief and was co-host of “Capital Report with Alan Murray and Gloria Borger." While working at CNBC, he also wrote the Journal's weekly "Political Capital" column. Prior to that, he spent a decade as the Washington bureau chief for The Wall Street Journal. Mr. Murray joined The Wall Street Journal in 1983, as a reporter covering economic policy. He was named Washington deputy bureau chief in January 1992 and became bureau chief in September 1993. During his tenure as bureau chief, the Washington bureau won three Pulitzer Prizes, as well as many other awards. Mr. Murray is the author of three best-selling books: “Revolt in the Boardroom, The New Rules of Power in Corporate America,” published by HarperCollins in 2007; “The Wealth of Choices: How the New Economy Puts Power in Your Hands and Money in Your Pocket,” published by Random House in 1991; and “Showdown at Gucci Gulch: Lawmakers, Lobbyists and the Unlikely Triumph of Tax Reform,” co-authored with Jeffrey Birnbaum and published by Random House in 1987. “Gucci Gulch” received the American Political Science Association’s Carey McWilliams Award in 1988. Mr. Murray also garnered two Overseas Press Club awards for his writings on Asia, as well as a Gerald Loeb award and a John Hancock award for his coverage of the Federal Reserve. Mr. Murray began his journalism career in June 1977 as the business and economics editor of the Chattanooga (Tenn.) Times. He joined the Congressional Quarterly in Washington as a reporter in June 1980, and the following year became a reporter at the Japan Economic Journal in Tokyo on a Luce Fellowship. He serves on the Governing Council of the Miller Center for Public Affairs at the University of Virginia and is a member of the Gridiron Club, The Economic Club of New York and the Council on Foreign Relations. He has served on the Board of Visitors of the University of North Carolina. Mr. Murray received a bachelor’s degree in English literature from the University of North Carolina, where he was a John Motley Morehead scholar, a merit scholar and a member of Phi Beta Kappa. He earned a master’s degree in economics at the London School of Economics. In 2005, he completed the Stanford Executive Program. He is married to Dr. Lori Murray, a foreign policy consultant and former special adviser to the president for chemical weapons.

Kweku Mandela is a film producer most well-known for Inescapable (2012). He was born in Transkei, South Africa, and grew up in America, returning to his homeland in 1993. He attended APA International Film School in Sydney and is very active in the South African Film and Entertainment industries. He is dedicated to honoring his grandfather Nelson Mandela’s legacy by being heavily involved in both the entertainment and activist industries. He is a partner and President in one of South Africa’s largest Film and TV production companies, Out of Africa Entertainment and co-founder of the Africa Rising Foundation. Along with his cousin Ndaba, he is also the Global Ambassador for UNAIDS Global HIV/AIDS campaign called “Protect the Goal,” and is a founding member and ambassador for GenEndIt, which is aimed to fight the HIV/AIDS epidemic. He also sits on the board of the Global Citizen Festival where he champions youth activism. He has worked with and supported Oxfam Australia and Make Poverty History. He supports the UN Decade of Action for Road Safety and the Long Short Walk, a world walk for road safety, in memory of his 13-year old cousin Zenani Mandela who was killed in a crash 2 years ago.