2010 Speakers

Tony Hsieh
CEO, Zappos

Tony is the CEO of Zappos. He originally got involved with Zappos as an advisor and investor in 1999, about 2 months after the company was founded. Over time, Tony ended up spending more and more time with the company because it was both the most fun and the most promising out of all the companies that he was involved with. He eventually joined Zappos full time in 2000. Under his leadership, Zappos has grown gross merchandise sales from $1.6M in 2000 to over $1 billion in 2008 by focusing relentlessly on customer service. Zappos was recently bought by Amazon for $1.2 billion dollars.

Prior to joining Zappos, Tony co-founded Venture Frogs with Alfred Lin. Venture Frogs is an incubator and investment firm that invested in Internet startups, including Ask Jeeves, Tellme Networks, and of course, Zappos.com. Prior to Venture Frogs, Tony co-founded LinkExchange, an advertising network that was successfully sold to Microsoft for $265M in 1998. Tony is the author of the forthcoming book: Delivering Happiness: A Path to Profits, Passion, and Purpose.

Roshi Joan Halifax
Zen Abbot

Joan Halifax Roshi is a Buddhist teacher, Zen priest, anthropologist, and author. She is Founder, Abbot, and Head Teacher of Upaya Zen Center in Santa Fe, New Mexico.

She studied for a decade with Zen Teacher Seung Sahn and was a teacher in the Kwan Um Zen School. She received the Lamp Transmission from Thich Nhat Hanh, and was given Inka by Roshi Bernie Glassman. A Founding Teacher of the Zen Peacemaker Order, her work and practice for more than three decades has focused on engaged Buddhism. She is a frequent participant in dialogues with His Holiness the Dalai Lama exploring the intersection of modern science and Buddhism.

She also embraces various technologies, and is very active on social networks like Facebook.

Chris Sacca
VC, Strategic Advisor, Twitter

Christopher Sacca is a venture investor, private equity principal, company advisor, and entrepreneur managing a portfolio of over a dozen consumer web, mobile, and wireless technology start-ups as well as an array of mature enterprises through his holding company, Lowercase Capital. Among his current holdings is Twitter Inc., where Chris was among the first investors and works with the company every week as a strategic advisor.

Previously, Chris served as Head of Special Initiatives at Google. The Wall Street Journal cited Sacca as "possibly the most influential businessman in America." He also just rode across the country on his bicycle.

Kaitlin Quistgaard
Editor-in-Chief, Yoga Journal

Kaitlin Quistgaard joined Yoga Journal in 2003 and was named Editor in Chief in 2006. She is an avid yogi, who began practicing more than two decades ago. During the late 1990s, Ms. Quistgaard served as Technology Editor for Salon.com and, prior to that, as Business Editor for Wired News and as a frequent contributor to Wired magazine. During a four-year stint in Argentina, she reported on politics and economics for Time magazine, the Miami Herald, and the Sunday Times of London.

Bradley Horowitz
Vice President Products, Google

Bradley Horowitz is the Vice President of Product Management at Google.

He oversees Google's communications products and social applications including Google Talk, GrandCentral, Blogger and Picasa. Before joining Google, Bradley led Yahoo's advanced development division, which developed new products such as Yahoo! Pipes, and drove the acquisition of products such as Flickr and MyBlogLog. Previously, he was Co-Founder and CTO of Virage, where he oversaw the technical direction of the company from its founding through its IPO and eventual acquisition by Autonomy.

Bradley holds a bachelor's degree in computer science from the University of Michigan, and a master's degree from the MIT Media Lab and was pursuing his Ph.D. there when he co-founded Virage.

Greg Pass
Chief Technology Officer, Twitter

Greg Pass is the Chief Technology Officer at Twitter. Previously, he was the VP of Engineering for the company. Prior to Twitter he was the CTO and co-founder of Summize, the Twitter search engine.

Greg is also a student of meditative & martial arts, and leads a weekly "Twideokinetics" practice at Twitter.

Tami Simon
Owner, Sounds True

Tami Simon is the founder and owner of Sounds True, a multi-media publisher dedicated to disseminating spiritual wisdom. Over their 22 year history, Sounds True has produced over 600 titles, been nominated twice for the Inc. 500 list of the fastest-growing companies, and is North America's leading publisher of spoken-word spiritual teachings.

Gopi Kallayil
Group Product Marketing Manager, Google

Gopi Kallayil is a Group Product Marketing Manager at Google with responsibility for marketing Google’s search advertising (AdWords) products to advertisers in the Americas and Asia Pacific. Earlier he led the team that markets Google’s Publisher facing advertising products (AdSense).

Prior to joining Google, Gopi was Vice President of Strategic Alliances at Nextance, an enterprise Contract Management Software startup. Gopi was also a consultant with McKinsey & Co. where he worked on engagements helping the management teams of large corporations improve business performance and maximize revenues. Gopi has a degree in electronics engineering from the National Institute of Technology (India) and MBA degrees from the Indian Institute of Management and The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania.

Gopi also teaches a weekly yoga class at Google.

Stuart Crabb
Head of Learning, Facebook

Stuart is responsible for Learning & Development at Facebook, including Leadership and Manager development, Acculturation of new employees, and supporting the growth and development of high performance teams.

Prior to joining Facebook, Stuart was a Senior Consultant at The Marcus Buckingham Company, supporting strengths-based consulting and coaching assignments. Stuart is also the former Head Talent Development at Yahoo!. Originally a lawyer by education, Stuart has spent 20 years in the Human Resources field with Yahoo!, Oracle, HP and Siemens. He has lived in Australia, Germany, Scotland and now the United States, although he is a native of the UK. His Clifton Strengthsfinder signature themes are: Strategic, Positivity, Communication, Developer and Woo :-).

Mallika Chopra
Founder CEO, Intent.com

Mallika is founder and CEO of Intent, a new trusted wellness destination on the web, that she started to realize her personal intention to connect with others by sharing and listening to each others stories. She has spent the last ten years working in a variety of capacities in the media world. She is a graduate of Brown University, and has an MBA from the Kellogg Graduate School of Management.

Meng Tan
Head of Personal Growth, Google

Meng, whose official title at Google is “Jolly Good Fellow,” is an early employee of Google who for years worked as a Software Engineer at the company and is now Head of Google University's School of Personal Growth, where among other activities he oversees and teaches the mindfulness-based program, "Search Inside Yourself."

Jesse Jacobs
Founder, SamovarLife

Jesse Jacobs founded Samovar Tea Lounge in an effort to create more community, ritual, and vitality for anyone willing to stop and sit. Using tea, technology, three San Francisco locations, and an ecommerce site Samovar leads in both the physical and digital worlds - delivering "peace through tea" in every sip, and every click.

Linda Stone
Consultant

Linda studies attention, technology, and trends, as well as, our mind/body on technology. Previously, from 1986-2002, she worked in a variety of executive positions, ranging from marketing to research, to senior management, at both Apple and Microsoft.

Linda was a pioneer in the area of multimedia in the 1980's, and a pioneer in social media in the early 1990's. More recently, she has been writing and speaking about continuous partial attention, Zeitgeist (or ZG) Mapping, and email apnea. Linda believes that while we will continue to evolve technology in areas like search and information access, productivity and communications, one of next frontiers is human performance, which includes "embodied computing," and the "embodied office." Website: http://www.lindastone.net

Loic Le Meur
Founder Seesmic, Le Web

Loic Le Meur is a serial French entrepreneur and blogger. With his wife Geraldine, he organizes and hosts the most popular web conference in Europe, LeWeb, which brings together 2000 entrepreneurs from 40 countries. He is also the founder and CEO of Seesmic, which has created one of the most popular Twitter desktop clients.

Loic was named “Young Global Leader” by the World Economic Forum. He also advises the World Economic Forum and participates in their conference each year in Davos. Business Week Magazine named Loic one of The 25 Most Influential People on the Web.

Leah Pearlman
Communications, Facebook

After spending three years as a Product Manager at Facebook, Leah has recently moved over to become half of a two-person team responsible for generating and/or aggregating the information employees need to do their jobs and distributing that information effectively. The team also drives the systems and programs which empower teams and individuals to better communicate with each other.

She is also co-author of the book, Facebook for Dummies (Wiley, 2009)

Ben Parr
Co-Editor, Mashable

Ben Parr is the Co-Editor of Mashable, the world's largest blog focused exclusively on Web 2.0 and Social Media news. With more than 12.5 million monthly pageviews, Mashable is the most prolific blog reviewing new Web sites and services, publishing breaking news on what's new on the web and offering social media resources and guides

Ben is also a serial web entrepreneur, sci-fi author, and aspiring world changer. He has been writing for Mashable since August 2008. His previous experience includes project management for Facebook applications and content management in the web health space.

Beth Kanter
Social Media Consultant

Beth is the author of Beth's Blog: How Nonprofits Can Use Social Media (http://beth.typepad.com), one of the longest running and most popular blogs for nonprofits and co-author of the fortcoming book, The Networked Nonprofit, to be published by J. Wiley in 2010. Beth is the CEO of Zoetica, a company that serves nonprofits and socially conscious companies with top-tier, online marketing services.

A much in demand speaker and trainer, she was the keynote speaker for the Cambodian Bloggers Conference in Phnom Penh, The Connecting Up Conference in Brisbane, Australia, Minnesota Council on Nonprofits, Making Media Conference in Chicago and others. She has presented about nonprofits and social media at some of the leading social media industry conferences including O'Reilly's Graphing Social Patterns, Gnomedex, SWSX, Blogher, and Podcamp.

Lori Deschene
Founder, TinyBuddha

Lori is the creator of the popular blog, TinyBuddha, and the Twitter channel by the same name.

After traveling all over the country and holding dozens of jobs in her twenties, she decided to focus her writing on happiness and everything that stands in the way. Prior to sharing her loves of quotes on the web, she spent three years writing for 'tween magazines Six78th and Discovery Girls. Her primary goal was to help girls love themselves, form healthy relationships, and find happiness within their confusing young adult lives.

She credits her Internet-free cell phone for helping her stay mindful, and thanks both yoga and her palm-sized Buddha statue for keeping her grounded.

Philippe Goldin
Neuroscientist, Stanford

Philippe Goldin is a research scientist and heads the Clinically Applied Affective Neuroscience group in the Department of Psychology at Stanford University.

He spent 6 years in India and Nepal studying various languages, Buddhist philosophy and debate at Namgyal Monastery and the Dialectic Monastic Institute, and serving as an interpreter for various Tibetan Buddhist lamas. He then returned to the U.S. to complete a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology at Rutgers University. Among other areas, he studies the effects of mindfulness meditation and cognitive-behavioral therapy on brain-behavior correlates of emotional reactivity and regulation.

Susan Kaiser Greenland
The Mindful Child

Susan works with children, parents and professionals around the world and consults with various organizations on teaching mindful awareness in an age-appropriate and secular manner. She is the author of the forthcoming book from Free Press, The Mindful Child, and founded with her husband The InnerKids Foiundation, which has brought prpgrams to under-served schools and neighborhoods in Los Angeles since 2000.

A blogger for both the Huffington Post and Intent, Susan is also active on Twitter and facebook, and together with her daughter started an online community for those interested in practicing mindful awareness with children, teens and their families at www.innerkids.ning.com.

Alana B. Elias Kornfeld
Living Editor, Huffington Post

Alana is the Living Editor at the The Huffington Post. Previously, she managed the Buddhism, Judaism, Paganism, and Politics sections as well as blogs at Beliefnet.com/Fox Digital. In addition to Beliefnet, her work has been featured in TIME Magazine, Newsweek, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency (JTA), Newsday (America's 6th-largest regional newspaper), and the Religion News Service (RNS).

Bill Tolany
Head of Integrated Media, Whole Foods

Bill Tolany leads Whole Foods Market's marketing and digital communications, including social media and mobile platforms.

Prior to joining Whole Foods Market, Bill served in leadership for several startups and created the award-winning board game "Dibs."

Mary Ann Brussat
Co-Director, Spirituality & Practice

Mary Ann is the Co-Director with her husband Frederic of Spirituality & Practice, a multifaith/interspiritual website providing resources for spiritual journeys. The site has a database of 9,000 book, audio, and film reviews; profiles of spiritual teachers; and sections devoted to 37 essential spiritual practices of the world's religions. Their E-Courses are reaching seekers around the world who discuss applying their spirituality to everyday life in online Practice Circles. The Brussats are the authors of the national bestseller Spiritual Literacy: Reading the Sacred in Everyday Life and distribute the 26-part DVD series based on the book.

Soren Gordhamer
Wisdom 2.0

Soren is the founder and host of the Wisdom 2.0 Conference, the annual event exploring living with awareness and wisdom in the technology age. He also the author of Wisdom 2.0: Ancient Teachings for the Creative and Constantly Connected (HarperOne, 2009), and is a regular contributor to the Social Media blog, Mashable.

He has led mindfulness programs in a wide range of settings, including to youth in New York City juvenile halls, trauma workers in Rwanda, teachers in Nigeria, and US technology companies. As project director for Richard Gere's public charity, Healing the Divide, he organized the Healing through Great Difficulty Conference with his Holiness the Dalai Lama.