Co-Chairman Genworth Financial Group

Ron Cordes has been involved in the wealth management industry for over 25 years. In 2006, he sold AssetMark Investment Services to Genworth Financial (NYSE:GNW), and currently serves as Co-Chairman of Genworth Financial Wealth Management, which is responsible for over $20 bb of assets under management in partnership with over 6,000 independent financial advisors. Ron is also President of the Cordes Foundation, which he established in 2006, and has committed over 30% of the Foundation’s portfolio to Impact Investments, about which he writes and speaks extensively. He is a member of the Board of Regents for the University of the Pacific, as well as Chairman of the Advisory Board for the University’s Global Center for Social Entrepreneurship, and is a Board member of FairTrade USA, ThinkImpact and the East Bay Community Foundation. Ron is co-author of “The Art of Investing & Portfolio Management”, published in 2004 by McGraw Hill, and was recognized as an Ernst & Young Entrepreneur of the Year in 2005. He holds a BS in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley.

 

President, CFRE | Ansbach & Associates

Charles Ansbach is a Managing Consultant for the Western United States and Asia for the Skystone Ryan Corporation, the leading international fundraising and management consulting company in the world. Mr. Ansbach speaks regularly on emerging issues of large scale fundraising, corporate partnerships and social entrepreneurism. He has helped organizations raise millions of dollars to support worthy causes, has created successful corporate sponsorship programs, designed major public/private partnerships and created nationally recognized social entrepreneur projects. Mr. Ansbach serves on a variety of Boards of Directors and was voted an “Outstanding Fundraising Executive of the Year” by his peers in the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

 

Founder | Maharishi Institute

Taddy Blecher has helped over 5,000 disadvantaged South African youth to go through university or other education post-school. These graduates are now earning well over R 200 million in annual salaries and will earn and put R7.8 billion into the economy over their working lives. He has helped raise over R 400 million to supporting education for the historically disadvantaged, including building a R 150 million empowerment fund to support education. As a return commitment the university students all teach in their communities and 600 000 South African school kids have been trained on life-skills. The organisation’s work has been supported in South Africa by Nelson Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, the Oppenheimer family, and internationally by Sir Richard Branson, Bill Gates, Oprah Winfrey, Dalai Lama, Michael Dell, amongst others. Dr Blecher’s work has been hailed as a potential model to offer mass-scale tertiary education solutions, and bring-about lasting poverty alleviation and has been written-about as a case-study in over 35 published books. Taddy is a recipient of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship and was chosen as a Young Global Leader of the World Economic Forum, as well as a Young Global Leader, as one of 100 people under the age of 40 making an exceptional contribution to the world.

Executive Director | Fundacion Paraguaya

Martin Burt founded Fundacion Paraguaya and brought an innovative microcredit program to Paraguay in 1985, while the country was under dictatorial rule that made citizen initiatives a particularly challenging and even dangerous undertaking. Over the years, Fundacion Paraguaya has supported 35,000 micro entrepreneurs who create 19,000 new jobs each year, and it has taking on innovative and entrepreneurial challenges through a Junior Achievement program that builds the skills of young entrepreneurs. Its agricultural school is breaking new ground by demonstrating that well-managed, sustainable agriculture can be profitable and by helping young people learn to think of themselves as rural entrepreneurs. Martin is a Pacific alum and is currently the visiting professor of Social Entrepreneurship. He has been recognized with the following international honors: Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship, Inter-American Development Bank Award of Excellence for Social Enterprise, and the Schwab Foundation Social Entrepreneur Award.

Venture Partner | Labrador Ventures

Mr. Foote has been a venture capitalist investing in early stage companies for the past 9 years. He serves on the Development Council of Entrepreneurs Foundation, a non profit organization that engages high growth companies in corporate citizenship and philanthropic efforts.

Before venture investing, Mr. Foote was a management consultant with Boston Consulting Group, working in a wide range of industries such as telecom, computers, healthcare, banking, and automotive on topics ranging from strategic alliances to Internet strategies. Mr. Foote also worked as a systems engineer for AT&T Bell Laboratories, developing artificial intelligence systems for testing the most complicated telecommunications networks.

Mr. Foote received his undergraduate degree in Electrical Engineering from the University of Missouri Rolla (1988), and his MBA from the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business (1993), where he received the Shermett Award granted to the top 3% of students.

Founder | Sparkseed

Mike is the founder of Sparkseed, a nonprofit organization that invests in the top college-age social entrepreneurs in the United Sates. He ran his first national organization at the age of 18, which focused on building community on high school campuses to prevent school violence. Before founding Sparkseed, Mike served as a humanitarian on four continents, as a member of the Christian Peacemaker Teams in the West Bank, an orphanage volunteer in Jamaica, and a microfinance consultant in Nepal. Mike enjoys public speaking and has addressed audiences at the Yale Law School, Social Venture Network, the Haas School of Business at UC Berkeley, and many other venues. Mike received his B.A. from Boston College and an M.A.R. from the Yale University Divinity School. He is a member of the Sandbox Network and a Frank H. Buck Scholar.

General Partner | Velocity Venture

Jack is a Sacramento native who has evolved from CPA to entrepreneur to venture capitalist. As a CPA with PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Jack saw a wide range of businesses and was inspired to start his own – including one of the first Internet Service Providers in Sacramento. Through the 1990’s, Jack secured his reputation as a serial entrepreneur in founding three more software companies. His efforts were recognized in 2000 when he was chosen as “Entrepreneur of the Year” by the Money Hunt television show. Since 2000, Jack has focused his energy on venture capital and in 2005 launched Velocity Venture Capital to provide capital for entrepreneurs in the greater Sacramento area. Jack is now combining his operating experience with his venture capital investments to help drive the success of the most promising companies in the region. Jack and the Velocity fund management team work closely with company founders to fine-tune strategies, add management, build out Boards of Directors, grow revenues, raise capital, and facilitate a positive exit. In addition to successful historical efforts with Compassoft (venture backed by ATV), Atone (acquired by Core Logic), and Varatouch (acquired by Atrua), he currently serves as a Board member with Freepath, Jadoo Power, Laru Corporation and WINDensity. Jack has long-standing relationships within the region and has served on the board of Sacramento Area Regional Technology Alliance and SACTO, written for Comstock’s Business Magazine on technology investing, and has been a guest lecturer on venture capital at Sacramento State and UC Davis business schools. Mr. Crawford is an alumnus of Harvard Business School’s “Private Equity & Venture Capital” executive program and a graduate of the NVCA “Venture Capital Institute.” Jack earned a B.S. degree in Accounting from Arizona State University and is a Certified Public Accountant in California. Additionally, Jack is the Founder and Chairman of Social Venture Philanthropy-Sacramento – a foundation focused on mobilizing the next generation of philanthropists to “strategically give” donations and time to important non-profits focused on education, health and fitness. Jack and his wife, Karen, live in El Dorado Hills with their three children and enjoy golf, cycling and running. To establish a culture of fitness in his family and community, Mr. Crawford trained and completed an IronMan triathlon in France during 2009.

Managing Partner | Good Capital

Tim is the Executive Director in Giving Assets, Special Advisor to the Calvert Foundation, and Managing Partner for Good Capital, and an innovator in new financial instruments in the social enterprise sector. Over the last thirteen years, he has served in a number of capacities at Calvert Social Investment Foundation, including his current role as Special Advisor. Tim conceived of and launched the Giving Fund – the $40 million impact investment-based donor advised fund which has been spun out to a new organization, Giving Assets, for which he serves as the Executive Director. He was also instrumental in building the $225 million Calvert Community Investment Note sourced form 12,000 investors large and small (with more than $750 million invested into 300+ nonprofits and for profits globally), and helped launch Community Investment Partners, an analysis and asset administration group for community development and social enterprise investment with $300 million under administration. He co-founded and serves as Managing Partner for Good Capital, which in addition to its flagship Social Enterprise Expansion Fund LP, has two operating spin outs, the annual SOCAP Conference and Hub Bay Area. Additionally, he serves on the Board of Hub North America that links to a global network of 25 Hubs across five continents with 6,000+ members. He lives in San Francisco with his wife Julie and sons Milo and Gus.

President, CEO | ThinkImpact

Saul Garlick is the founder and executive director of ThinkImpact, an international non-profit organization that connects American students to rural villages in Africa to alleviate poverty through leadership and entrepreneurship. Garlick also serves as ambassador to the United States for The Buffelshoek Trust, an organization committed to the construction of much-needed schools in rural South Africa. Saul served as managing editor of the SAIS Review, as founder and Editor-in-Chief of The Hopkins Donkey and has worked on Capitol Hill for Rep. DeGette (D-CO) and as acting desk officer for Angola in the Bureau of African Affairs at the U.S. Department of State. Garlick serves on several boards including the Advisory Board for the Global Center for Social Entrepreneurship at Univ. of the Pacfic and the National Board of Directors of the College Democrats of America Alumni Association, and the Advisory Board of the Next America Project at CSIS. Garlick is a Truman Scholar and has received numerous awards including the William C. Foster Award, the Circles of Change Award, and the Fire Within Social Entrepreneurship Award. Garlick received his BA with honors in 2006 from Johns Hopkins University and his MA in American foreign policy and International Economics at the Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS) at Johns Hopkins University.

Founder | Roots of Peace

A cancer diagnosis and successful treatment prompted Heidi Kuhn to want to give back to the less fortunate and to live close to and nurture the land. Inspired by the international campaign to ban land mines, she founded Roots of Peace in 1997 at her family’s home in the California wine country. The organization takes practical steps toward sustainable development and enduring peace by converting minefields to vineyards, agricultural fields and safe migration corridors for wildlife. Roots of Peace has helped renew production in Croatia’s wine-growing regions. In Afghanistan, it has removed 100,000 land mines and proved farmers could earn more growing grapes than poppies. The model has been extended to additional provinces in Afghanistan and Angola, as well as a new start-up program in Vietnam. Heidi is a Pacific alum and a winner of the Skoll Award for Social Entrepreneurship.

Founder, CEO | MicroCredit Enterprises

Jonathan C. Lewis is the Founder and Host of iOnPoverty.  iOnPoverty produces online videos about economic opportunity and justice careers.  Candid, filmed conversations with accomplished social entrepreneurs (called Pathfinders) catalyze young professionals and students by providing the information they need to advance careers combating poverty.

 

He is also the Founder and President of the Opportunity Collaboration.  This strategic business retreat and networking summit for 300 senior level anti-poverty leaders occurs annually on World Poverty Day in Ixtapa, Mexico.

 

Jonathan is also the Founder and Board Chair of MicroCredit Enterprises.  This innovative social venture leverages private capital to make tiny business loans to deeply impoverished people, mostly women, in 22 developing countries on 5 continents.  A rarity in the non-profit world, MicroCredit Enterprises is self-sufficient without donations or grants.

Jonathan is a Lecturer at the Blum Center for Developing Economies, University of California, Berkeley.  He blogs regularly at the Huffington Post and the Skoll Foundation’s Social Edge.  For more information visit www.JonathanCLewis.me

 

Director | San Joaquin Delta College Small Business Development Center (SBDC)

Gillian has directed the San Joaquin Delta College Small Business Development Center (SBDC) since 1989, providing consulting, training, and resources to the business community in a four-county region. She also directs the Statewide SBDC Hub which provides assistance to the 25 community college-based SBDCs throughout California. In 2001, Gillian was honored by the Sacramento District SBA Office with the Women in Business Advocate award and in 2002 was named Small Business Advocate of the Year by the Stockton/San Joaquin African American Chamber of Commerce and received a similar award from the San Joaquin County Hispanic Chamber in 2007. In 2004 and again in 2007, she was presented the State Star Award by the National Association of Small Business Development Centers. Gillian currently serves on Rep. Jerry McNerney’s Small Business Advisory Board and is a founding board member of the newly formed Central Valley Microfinance Fund, that will be operated out of the Global Center.

Executive Director | Peery Foundation

Dave is the executive director of the Peery Foundation, a family foundation based in Palo Alto, California. After working in the commercial real-estate business, he has turned his attention to bringing about social change through the work of the foundation. The Peery Foundation seeks to build self-reliance for youth and families living in poverty. The foundation does this by investing in social entrepreneurs in the San Francisco Bay Area and around the world. Dave earned a B.A. in Latin American Studies in 2005 from Brigham Young University, and lives in Palo Alto with his wife Lillie and their 4 children. The Peery Foundation is an early supporter of the Global Center, and a founding sponsor of its newly launched Ambassador Corps Fellowship Program.

President, CEO | TransFair USA

Paul Rice is President & CEO of TransFair USA. Since launching the Fair Trade Certified label in 1998, Paul has pushed to mainstream the Fair Trade movement by partnering with over 800 U.S. companies, expanding certification across food products, and exploring new categories such as apparel. With 2009 global retail sales of almost $5 billion, Fair Trade certification is helping millions of small farmers and workers live better. Paul has been honored for his pioneering work as a social entrepreneur by Ashoka, the World Economic Forum, Ethisphere, Fast Company magazine, and the Skoll Foundation for Social Entrepreneurship. Previously, Paul worked for 11 years as a rural development specialist in Nicaragua, where he founded Nicaragua’s first Fair Trade, organic coffee export cooperative. Paul holds a BA from Yale University and an MBA from UC Berkeley.

CEO | Bamboo Finance USA

Keely’s commitment to social change was sparked by her lessons learned working with people with terminal illnesses as a hospice volunteer in Sacramento, California in the early 1990s. She built on those lessons of appreciation for life through her work over the last decade in the field of social entrepreneurship with experience on five continents. She now currently serves as the CEO of Bamboo Finance USA, which is a commercial investment firm that specializes in the financing of social entrepreneurship globally. Keely joined Bamboo in 2007 after living in East Africa and working with the Acumen Fund, a global social venture investment fund. She supported the establishment of Acumen’s Nairobi office and provided management support to AtoZ, a producer of anti-malaria mosquito nets, focusing on distribution and pricing strategies in Tanzania. Earlier in her career, she was the first employee hired by the CEO of the Skoll Foundation where she designed grant programs for social entrepreneurs and led the team who created the world’s first online community for social entrepreneurs, Social Edge. She has also served as the Interim Executive Director of a social enterprise in Peru (ProPeru Fund) and a start-up professional development program for social entrepreneurs in India (Social-Impact International). She was a consultant on the viability of a UK based risk capital fund for Triodos Bank and economic development strategies for the Royal Bafokeng Nation, one of Africa’s wealthiest kingdoms. She studied politics at UC Berkeley and her passion for social business led her to pursue an MBA degree at Oxford University. She co-authored a publication on risk capital for social enterprises published by Oxford.

Founder, CEO | International Bridges to Justice

Karen is CEO and Founder of International Bridges to Justice. A former public defender, Karen first developed her interest in the cross section of criminal law and human rights as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow in 1986, after observing Southeast Asian refugees detained in a local prison without trial. In 1994, she moved to Cambodia to train the country’s first core group of public defenders and subsequently served as a United Nations Judicial Mentor. Under the auspices of the U.N., she trained judges and prosecutors, and established the first arraignment court in Cambodia.After witnessing thousands of prisoners of all ages being held without trials, usually after being tortured into making ‘confessions’, Karen founded International Bridges to Justice in 2000 to promote systemic global change in the administration of criminal justice. In the initial stages, she negotiated groundbreaking measures in judicial reform with the Chinese, Vietnamese and Cambodian governments. Under her leadership, IBJ has expanded its programming to sixteen countries, including Rwanda, Burundi and India. IBJ has created a Global Defense Support Program to bring IBJ assistance to public defenders worldwide. In 2010, IBJ launched the Justice Training Center in Singapore.A graduate of UCLA Law School and Harvard Divinity School, Karen was named by U.S. News & World Report as one of America’s Best Leaders in 2007. She has been recognized by the Skoll Foundation, Ashoka and Echoing Green as a leading social entrepreneur. Karen was the recipient of the 2008 Harvard Divinity School’s First Decade Award, and the 2008 American Bar Association’s International Human Rights Award. She also received the 2009 Gleitsman International Award at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Founder | The Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL)

Sakena founded the Afghan Institute of Learning (AIL) in 1995 to restore educational and health programs in Afghanistan that were dramatically cut during 30 years of warfare. The organization’s 18 Women’s Learning Centers (the first of their kind in Afghanistan) provide services to more than 350,000 Afghan women and children each year. Its 16 Educational Learning Centers have trained 10,000 teachers and have provided school supplies to thousands of young Afghan students, while its university has prepared 180 students for careers as community leaders. AIL was the first organization to offer human rights and leadership training to Afghan women. AIL plans to expand its teacher training programs and its partnership network to 100 new community-based organizations, ultimately training 3,300 new teachers and improving the health of 500,000 women and children. Sakena has been honored with countless awards including the 2005 Democracy Award of the National Endowment for Democracy, the 2004 Women’s Rights Prize from the Peter
Gruber Foundation, the Ashoka Senior Fellow Award as the first Ashoka from Afghanistan, the 2006 Skoll Social Entrepreneurship Award, the 2007 Gleitsman International Activist Award from the Center for Public Leadership at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government, and most recently the Henry R. Kravis Prize in Leadership awarded in March 2009. Sakena is a Pacific alum and was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the University of the Pacific recognizing her as an exemplary social entrepreneur and humanitarian in 2007.

Professor of Organizational Behavior | Marriott School, Brigham Young University

Warner is a social entrepreneur and professor of organizational behavior at the Marriott School, Brigham Young University. He has been a leader in the global movement to prepare a new generation of college-age social entrepreneurs for fighting poverty. Using his courses and the university as a social enterprise incubator, he has spun off over 40 humanitarian projects in the past 15 years- providing capacity building mechanisms such as literacy, healthcare, microfinance, appropriate technology, and worker-owned co-ops. Over the last decade, Warner has been a founder, board chair, or director of Enterprise Mentors, HELP International, and the UNITUS Microfinance Fund as well as 13 other non-profit organizations that have established income-generating family microenterprises for self-reliance in 22 countries. Collectively, Warner, his students, and their associated non-profit organizations have raised over $10 million for microfinance, trained 140,000 micro-entrepreneurs in small business skills, and served more than a million impoverished microcredit clients in India, Mexico, Kenya, the Philippines, and many other countries.

Co-founder | Cordes Foundation

Marty Cordes is Co-Founder of the Cordes Foundation, which she created with her husband Ron in 2006.  She directs the activities of the Foundation focused on global human rights and empowering women and girls, including initiatives in education, health care and job training.   She also serves as Co-Chair of the Opportunity Collaboration, a global business retreat focused on poverty alleviation.   Previously, she enjoyed a career in the banking industry, and served in several volunteer leadership capacities with social service organizations in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Director | Enterprise Bank and Trust Company

Ken Ansin is the Director of the Enterprise Bank and Trust Company and is a serial entrepreneurs with experience owning and running businesses in the footwear, portable rest room, commercial banking, and cabinetry industries. A director of Enterprise Bank and Trust Company since 1994, he also chairs the Asset and Liability Committee there. His commitment to the nonprofit sector began in the late 1980s with board experience since at the United Way of North Central Massachusetts, Fitchburg State College, Applewild School and Children’s Aid and Family Service. Since 2004, he
has shifted his personal strategy from leading for-profit companies to a commitment within the international social sector, with a focus on microcredit. This has led him to dozens of developing countries in Africa and Asia for both research and involvement, with leading organizations including Oxfam, Grameen, Save the Children, Bandhan, BRAC, and Ashoka. He is also on the advisory council of BRAC USA, and as of 2010, he is director of New Resource Bank and President of Ansin Consulting Group. Mr. Ansin holds an M.P.A from the Kennedy School of Government

Co-founder | United to End Genocide

Mark Hanis is the Co-founder & board member of United to End Genocide (formerly Genocide Intervention Network & Save Darfur Coalition), an organization that engages and empowers the public, private, and citizen sectors to prevent and stop genocide and mass atrocities.

 

Hanis graduated from Swarthmore College with a degree in Political Science and a minor in Public Policy. He is the grandchild of four Holocaust survivors and was raised in Quito, Ecuador.  From February – August 2003, Hanis worked for the Office of the Prosecutor at the Special Court for Sierra Leone. He was a 2006 Draper Richards fellow, a 2006 Echoing Green fellow, a 2008 Ashoka Fellow, and a 2010 Prime Mover fellow. In 2009, Mark was named a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum.

Executive Vice President (Administrative) | American University of Nigeria

Joe’s career in the banking industry spanned 36 years. His last three assignments were as President of troubled community banks that required substantial restructuring to return them to profitability. During his career he also taught bank management, small business finance, and analyzing financial statements. Upon his retirement in 2005 he has taught at UOP in the Masters Program both entrepreneurship and organizational behavior. He also consults with small businesses and banks. He is on the board of the Katalysis Bootstrap Fund that supports a network of 22 microfinance institutions serving over 250,000 clients in the poorest countries of Central America. Joe conducted courses in Entrepreneurship at universities in Uganda and Rwanda in the fall of 2008 for SIS and the Global Center, which resulted in business plan competitions among the students in both institutions, judged by a delegation of visiting professionals led by Margee Ensign and Ron Cordes.

 

CEO | Otis McAllister Inc

Royce has more than 25 years experience in global trade and since 1991 has served as Chairman and CEO of Otis McAllister, Inc., a multi-million dollar international food and beverage import/export corporation founded in 1892. Otis is headquartered in San Francisco, with regional offices in Hong Kong, Mexico City, and Bangkok, and commercial operations in over 80 countries.  Otis is among the first corporations to integrate social entrepreneurship criteria into their corporate
grant program.  Royce is a graduate of Columbia University and has served on boards of several agricultural and trade organizations.  Royce is a member of the Lafayette-Orinda Presbyterian Church and an active member there of the Global Development Committee that funds sustainable development projects in Guatemala and other international programs.  He is in the process of forming his own family foundation to support social entrepreneurship initiatives. Royce is a founding sponsor of the Global Center’s Ambassador Corps Fellowship Program.

Volunteer | Grameen Foundation Bankers without Borders
Daniel is a graduate of the University of California, Berkeley, where he earned a Bachelor’s degree in English Literature and a Masters in Business Administration. He has lived and worked in challenging international environments as a banker and consultant to financial institutions and government agencies. Until the end of 2008 he was the Senior Country Executive in Japan for American Express Bank. He began his banking career in 1978 with Chemical Bank, where he filled a number of management positions in Tokyo, Singapore, and Sydney. He is proficient
in both Japanese and Russian. In 1988 he joined the Stanford Research Institute as a Principal Consultant to provide strategic planning and risk management consulting services to major global financial institutions. In 1992 he joined the Secura Group, a regulatory risk consulting firm based in Washington, D.C. In 1994 he was seconded to Arthur Andersen’s Office of Government Services to manage the World Bank funded Financial Institutions Development Project in Russia. He joined American Express Bank in 1997 to open its Moscow Representative Office.

 

Currently, he volunteers with the Grameen Foundation’s Bankers without Borders, Emerge Workplace Solutions and the social enterprise Banking on the Poor, assisting low income communities with gaining access to needed financial services. He also writes a blog at bankingonthepoor.blogspot.com.

 

Executive Director | Rise Up Foundation

Wendy Adams is Professor of Accounting and Social Entrepreneurship at Chapman University and the founding Executive Director of the Rise Up Foundation. Wendy Founded Rise Up in order to respond to the ongoing needs of families and children living in poverty and difficult circumstances. The Rise Up Foundation focuses on creating collaborations to empower people to make lasting
changes in their lives. After retiring from successful career in the metals recycling industry, Wendy started the Rise Up Foundation to enable her to use her time, experience and resources to help individuals and organizations rise above their circumstances to actualize their full potential.
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Wendy has spent her life being active in broad and varied community service and philanthropy, but the overarching thrust of her efforts has been on organizations and initiatives that help families and children. A major part of her time is spent partnering with UNICEF and World Vision on projects that directly impact the lives o impoverished children, including areas of microfinance and advocacy and awareness of the impact these organizations are making. Wendy started a family scrap metal business in California more than 20 years ago after graduating from the University of Certified Public Accounting license in 1986, Wendy became Chief Financial Officer of Adams Steel.  Alongside her siblings, Wendy oversaw the growth and success of the business as it transformed from a small family business to SA Recycling LLC, one of the largest and most successful regional metal processing firms on the west coast.

Founder | Starr Capital LLC

Nancy is a graduate of the University of California, Santa Cruz, where she earned a Bachelor’s degree in German Literature; Stanford University, where she earned a Master of Arts in Education; and the University of California, Berkeley, Haas School of Business, where she earned her MBA in Finance. She is a DAAD Scholar, fluent in German, conversational in Russian and Japanese, and has worked extensively in the investment, education, and fundraising sectors in Japan, Russia, Australia, Singapore, California, New York, and Massachusetts. A veteran educator in public, independent and international secondary schools, Nancy was the Founding Director of “The Study, An Academic Tutoring Service”, in Tokyo, Japan. Today she provides financial literacy and education consulting.  She was also the COO of Troika Dialogue Investment Company and Regent European Securities, two successful Moscow investment banks.

 

Currently, Nancy is a Registered Representative and an Investment Advisor with The Strategic Financial Alliance. She founded Starr Capital LLC which provides financial planning and investment management services for U.S. citizens living abroad.

 

President | University Plaza Waterfront Hotel

In 1972, at the age of 16, Northern California native Patrick K. Willis began his career as a “repo man” and by 19, he had purchased that same company from its founder. At an early age, Patrick was already making his mark as an emerging entrepreneur.

Today, American Recovery Service is the largest national automotive repossession servicing company in the world and the clear leader in its industry. Patrick Willis has served as President of both The California Association of Licensed Repossessors and National Finance Adjusters.

Recently, Patrick’s love for real estate led him to purchase a beautiful waterfront hotel in downtown Stockton CA, now renamed the University Plaza Waterfront Hotel. His ingenious business acumen has introduced a new lodging facility for graduate students, undergraduates, faculty and staff called the University Lofts, which will be ready for Pacific Community residency in fall 2012.
He was introduced to both the University of the Pacific and eventually TEDx, through fellow social entrepreneurs Spencer Ton and Jerry Hildebrand. The hotel became the lead sponsor of TEDx SanJoaquin and the experience inspired him to become more involved and to learn more about The Global Center for Social Entrepreneurship. Recently, Patrick and his culinary staff provided all the food and catering for the first Annual Hunger Banquet, hosted by the Council of University Social Entrepreneurs.

 

Visionary Founder | The World We Want Foundation

Lori Bonn has over 25 years of experience in finance, civic and charitable organizations, campaign management, international organizations, and national politics. She specializes in international development and social entrepreneurship offering advanced expertise in philanthropic management and poverty alleviation strategies. She is the Founder/CEO of Bonnventures, a consulting company she founded in 2004.

Her professional endeavors as a global philanthropic social change consultant have taken Lori around the world, engaging with leading networks of donors, foundations, governmental agencies, and social innovators devoted to solving many of the world’s most pressing social justice issues.

She is the Visionary Founder, President, and CEO of The World We Want Foundation, creating the first online funding platform devoted solely to young people implementing social action projects and sharing their “Stories of Social Impact.”