Aaron Dignan dressed up like a super hero for 180 straight days of the first grade, which marked the beginning of his life as an iconoclast, observer, theorist, and performer. Now, as a founding partner of the digital strategy firm Undercurrent and based in New York, he advises global brands and complex organizations like GE, American Express, Hyatt, and Ford on their future in an increasingly technophilic world. Aaron's first book, Game Frame: Using Games as a Strategy for Success, was released in 2011. Read Less

A.J. Jacobs is the author of four New York Times bestsellers, including "The Year of Living Biblically" (about his quest to follow every rule of the Bible as literally as possible); "The Know-It-All" (which chronicles the year he spent reading all 33 volumes of the Encyclopedia Britannica); and "Drop Dead Healthy" (about his attempt to become the healthiest person alive). He is the editor at large at Esquire magazine. He has appeared on The Colbert Report, The Today Show, Good Morning America, and Oprah, among others, and is a contributor to NPR. He lives in New York with his wife and sons. Read Less

Benjamin Shaffer is a designer/innovator who lives and works in Portland. As the designer and creative lead of Nike Flyknit he is orchestrating the growth of a new paradigm shift in footwear manufacturing that was introduced in the 2012 Olympics on the feet of the some of the world's fastest athletes. Now as a Studio Director, his passion for new materials and processes of making and a keen eye for aesthetic relevance has positioned him nicely at the incubation of Nike's future product within the Innovation Kitchen.

In a journey that began 12 years ago with Nike, Shaffer has designed products from a variety of categories ranging from Yoga, Dance, and Running, as well as contributing to the conceptualization of Nike Plus. Six years in, he joined the Innovation Kitchen assisting the Women's Training team with their Diamond Flex technologies, Free, and performance calibration as their Innovation Lead. From there he transitioned to be the Innovation Lead of Sportswear where he was charged with designing, developing, and introducing technologies such as Nike's Hyperfuse into Sportswear. Read Less

Brené Brown, Ph.D., LMSW is a research professor at the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work. She has spent the past decade studying vulnerability, courage, worthiness, and shame.

Brené is a nationally renowned speaker and has won numerous teaching awards, including the College's Outstanding Faculty Award. Her groundbreaking work has been featured on PBS, NPR, CNN, and has appeared in The Washington Post, Psychology Today, and many other national media outlets.

Her 2010 TEDx Houston talk on the power of vulnerability is one of the most watched talks on TED.com, with over 6 million views. She gave the closing talk, Listening to Shame, at the 2012 TED Conference in Long Beach.

Brené is the author of the #1 New York Times Bestseller "Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead" (2012). She is also the author of "The Gifts of Imperfection" (2010), and "I Thought It Was Just Me" (2007).

In 2007, Brené developed Connections, a psychoeducational shame resilience curriculum that is being facilitated across the nation by mental health and addiction professionals. The Connections Certification process was launched in 2012.

Brené lives in Houston with her husband, Steve, and their two children. Read Less

Cal Newport is an author and a professor computer science at Georgetown University. His writing focuses on unconventional advice for life in school and after graduation. His most recent book, "So Good They Can't Ignore You," argues that "follow your passion" is bad advice. Newport's writing and ideas regularly appear in major publications, including the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, New York Post, and Inc. Magazine. Read Less

As a Principal at Continuum, Craig works with a wide range of industries from national retailers and restaurant chains to healthcare and financial services. He understands how to translate the emotional needs of the user and the functional needs of the brand into one holistic, ownable experience that connects organizations and the people who rely on them.

Immersive research and empathetic journey mapping are integral to Craig’s approach. This allows him to understand the functional and logistical baseline that must drive the design while providing a first-hand understanding of the emotional experiences of the user. He believes that designing for employees and back-of-house needs is just as important as the consumer experience. Each space, object and message must work for the organization, the employees and the end user. The result is a complete experience that forms a powerful connection between the brand and people.

Craig has led programs for a multitude of services: designing a consultative retail service and space for the Canadian diamond chain, Spence Diamonds; reinventing Captain D's, a struggling Midwest seafood chain, with a successful new restaurant experience; creating a streamlined experience that works best for both patients and healthcare providers for Quest Diagnostics.

Prior to Continuum, Craig spent 8 years as a Studio Director at WalkerGroup, where he created retail experiences for brands as diverse as Cardinal Health, Busch Gardens, Tim Hortons, Playboy, Lladro, Motorola and Pepsi, among others. Read Less

Charlie Todd is the founder of Improv Everywhere, producing, directing, performing, and documenting the group's work since 2001. Based in New York, Improv Everywhere causes scenes of chaos and joy in public places and has executed over 100 missions involving thousands of undercover agents, including the legendary Grand Central Freeze and the infamous No Pants Subway Ride. The group's videos have received over 275 million views online. Charlie is also the author of Causing a Scene, published by Harper Collins. Read Less

Gretchen Rubin is the author of the blockbuster New York Times bestsellers, "Happier at Home" and "The Happiness Project"--accounts of her experiences test-driving the wisdom of the ages, current scientific studies, and lessons from popular culture about how to be happier. On her popular blog, The Happiness Project, www.happiness-project.com, she reports on her daily adventures in the pursuit of happiness.

Rubin is an enthusiastic proponent of using technology to engage with readers about ideas, and she has a wide, active following on social media. Not only that--"The Happiness Project" was even an answer on the game-show Jeopardy!

A graduate of Yale and Yale Law School, Rubin started her career in law, and she was clerking for Justice Sandra Day O'Connor when she realized she wanted to be a writer. She has written several books, including three novels that are safely locked in a desk drawer. Read Less

Heather Payne is an entrepreneur based in Toronto, Canada. She's the founder of Ladies Learning Code, a Toronto-based not-for-profit startup that runs popular workshops for women (and men) who want to learn computer programming and other technical skills in a social and collaborative way.

Ladies Learning Code now has chapters in Vancouver, Ottawa, Halifax, London and Calgary, a permanent workshop space in Toronto, and a thriving girls' program called Girls Learning Code. In 2012, she founded HackerYou as a way to bring more intensive technology learning experiences to Toronto and beyond. Recently she spent a year working on a project for the Mozilla Foundation: her job was to build a community of people and organizations in Toronto who care about raising youth as creators - not just consumers - of technology and the web. In December 2012, the project was granted $365,000 in funding from the Ontario Trillium Foundation. Heather was an early investor in ShopLocket, and in a former life, she helped startups like Pinpoint Social and Shopcastr to acquire their first users. In her spare time, she enjoys building websites and furthering her knowledge of Ruby on Rails. Read Less

Heidi Grant Halvorson is the Associate Director of Columbia University's Motivation Science Center, and a popular blogger for HBR, Fast Company, Huffington Post, Forbes, WSJ, and 99U. As a researcher, she studies goal pursuit, the obstacles that derail us, and the strategies we can use to overcome them. Her latest book is FOCUS: Using Different Ways of Seeing The World for Success and Influence. Read Less

Hosain Rahman is the CEO and founder of Jawbone, a groundbreaking developer of popular products and services for the mobile lifestyle. Hosain is passionate about bringing innovative, intuitive, and elegantly designed products to market that let consumers get the most out of their mobile experience. Jawbone is one of the largest venture capital-backed consumer electronics companies in the world.

Jawbone is a 2010 IDSA Design of the Decade winner. Jawbone introduced the BIG JAMBOX recently, and the Jawbone JAMBOX, the first intelligent wireless speaker and speakerphone, is now the best-selling speaker in the US. Jawbone also invented NoiseAssassin® technology, the only military-grade noise-eliminating technology that's built into its Bluetooth headsets like the Jawbone ERA and Jawbone ICON.

Hosain was named as one of Fortune's 40 Under 40 in 2012 and has spoken at several leading industry events, including D! and D! Mobile and has guest lectured at Columbia Business School. Read Less

Jane ni Dhulchaointigh is the Irish inventor of sugru, an innovative product that has been called 'the best invention since sellotape' and that's getting DIYers, gadget lovers and outdoors enthusiasts around the world very excited.

Jane was studying product design at the Royal College of Art in London in 2003, when she had a big idea. What if, instead of having to buy new things all the time, people could fix and improve the things they already had to work better for them?

From that initial spark of an idea, she led a long and dedicated scientific development process involving a small team of material scientists, designers and business people to develop an entirely new material that could make the idea a reality. The result after 6 years of R&D was sugru - a brand new silicone that's like play-doh or modelling clay that the user can form into whatever shape they like before it air cures into a tough, flexible, colourful silicone rubber. Used in this way, it can make all kinds of products more comfortable, safer or simply better.

Jane is passionate about promoting a culture of fixing, creativity and resourcefulness, and sees it as an antidote to the throwaway mindset. Her passion is hitting a chord with the growing number of people looking to live more sustainably and three years after launch there's already a vibrant 100,000-strong world-wide community building around the product.

And the idea is catching on: sugru (inspired by the Irish word for play) has been described as "21st Century Duct Tape" by Forbes.com and was named alongside the iPad by TIME magazine as one of the top 50 Inventions of 2010.

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Jeff Sheng is a photographer, artist and sociologist, whose artwork has been internationally exhibited, and has taught as a visiting professor of photography and visual studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara, and most recently at Harvard University in 2011. He is currently a doctoral Ph.D. candidate in Sociology at Stanford University.

Sheng first became known for his photographic series "Fearless," a project on "out" lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender athletes on high school and college sports teams, and since 2003, has photographed and interviewed over 150 individuals for this series. This project was recently nominated for a GLAAD award through a feature article by ESPN.

Between 2009-2011, his other photography series "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" on over 80 closeted service members affected by the government policy known by that same name, was instrumental in providing a face to the issue as part of the repeal debate, as the photographs were seen and published in Time Magazine, Newsweek, the New York Times, CNN, NPR, the BBC, and ABC World News Tonight. A graduate of Harvard University, Jeff also holds an MFA (master of Fine Arts) in studio art from the University of California, Irvine. Read Less

Joe defines the Airbnb experience. He is dedicated to creating an inspiring and effortless user experience through sharp, intuitive design, and crafts the product roadmap to make it so. Joe values products that simplify life and have a positive impact on the environment, and ensures that the company adheres to these tenets.

Prior to Airbnb, Joe was employed by Chronicle Books, co-founded Ecolet, a green design website, and developed several consumer products, including CritBuns, a product featured in the Cooper Hewitt Design Triennial. An alumni of the Rhode Island School of Design, Joe earned dual degrees in Graphic Design and Industrial Design. Read Less

Josh's career has spanned marketing analytics and quantitative finance, including running a data mining consulting firm, a quantitative strategy group at a $10b fund, and core components at the mortgage lead market, Root Exchange. Three years ago, Josh founded Simple, formerly BankSimple, a company that is working to radically redesign banking by using modern technology to help people worry less about money. Josh has a BSc. in mathematics and statistics from the University of Melbourne, most of a medical degree, and an MBA from Carnegie Mellon University. Read Less

Joshua Davis, joshuadavis.com is a New York based artist, designer, and technologist producing both public and private work for companies, collectors, and institutions. Currently residing at Code and Theory, codeandtheory.com as creative director of physical installations. Read Less

Kaaren Hanson is vice president of design innovation at Intuit, recognized in Forbes as one of the World's Most Innovative Companies. She worked closely with Intuit Founder Scott Cook to create the cross-company Design for Delight initiative. Harvard Business Review covered the success of their work, which she is continuing with her latest passion to create teams that deliver awesome product experiences. Prior to joining Intuit in 2002, Kaaren led User Experience teams at Silicon Valley companies ranging from large enterprises to small startups. She earned her PhD in experimental psychology from Stanford University and is currently a member of the Design Management Institute advisory board. Read Less

A vision for revolutionizing the way people work led Leah Busque to pioneer the concept of "service networking." Her passion for product innovation and devotion to user experience have propelled TaskRabbit into a leading role in the collaborative consumption movement.

Since bootstrapping TaskRabbit in 2008, Leah has expanded the company nationally, grown the team to more than 60 employees, raised nearly $40 million in venture funding from venerated investors like Shasta Ventures, Lightspeed Ventures, and Founders Fund, and inspired legions of startups to launch in the collaborative and service networking space. Fast Company named her one of the "100 Most Creative People in Business," and her achievements have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Wired, and Time. Under her leadership, TaskRabbit has gathered accolades as a finalist in the Crunchies and Mashable Awards, and was named "The Next Big Thing in Tech" by the New York Times. Prior to founding TaskRabbit, Leah was a Software Engineer at IBM, working in the Messaging and Collaboration Software Development Group.

Leah lives in San Mateo with her husband, TaskRabbit's VP of Technology Kevin Busque, and a cuddly black lab named Emerson. She graduated Magna Cum Laude from Sweet Briar College, where she earned a B.S. in Mathematics and Computer Science. Read Less

A founder of Wolff Olins - among the world's most iconic design companies. Now, as Michael Wolff and Company he works with clients around the world both as a designer and creative advisor. Amongst his recent clients are The Ministry of Sound and The UK Government's Technology Strategy Board in the UK, Citigroup in the US, and a Bank called Pyjom - "Let's go" - in Russia.

A former President of the CSD and the D&AD, Michael has given talks and interviews in Argentina, Australia, Brazil, China, Latvia, The Netherlands, India, Mexico, Norway, Russia, Sweden and Singapore. He's a visiting Professor at Central St Martins (The University of the Arts in London) and at Cape Peninsula University of Technology (Cape Town South Africa). He's a Senior Fellow at the RCA (The Royal College of Art), a member of the UK's faculty of Royal Designers for Industry, and is the 'Inclusive design champion' for the UK Government. Read Less

Nikhil Arora is the co-founder of Back to the Roots, an urban mushroom farm in Oakland, California. He and co-founder Alejandro Velez created the company during their senior year at the University of California, Berkeley from a belief that business can be used for good. After graduating summa cum laude in 2009, they founded the mushroom farm that now makes grow-your-own Mushroom Gardens using entirely recycled coffee grounds as the soil - an idea upon which he and Alejandro came across in a business ethics lecture.

Arora was always interested in sustainability and job creation, and during college worked in Ghana for six months to implement a profitable recycling program at the 30,000+ student University of Ghana campus. He has been named one of 2012 Inc 30 Under 30 Entrepreneurs, a CNN Generation Next Entrepreneur to Watch, Forbes 30 Under 30, and one of BusinessWeek's Top 25 Social Entrepreneurs. The company has grown from a handful of employees to 31 employees, and was honored in Fall 2012 with an Empact100 award from the White House, recognizing Back to the Roots as one of the top 100 entrepreneurial companies in the US. Read Less

Ramit Sethi is the author of the New York Times bestseller, "I Will Teach You To Be Rich" and writes for over 450,000 monthly readers on his website, where he covers psychology, personal finance, and careers.

Ramit's unusual combination of psychology, analytical testing, and irreverent style led Fortune Magazine to call him the "new finance guru on the block."

Ramit appears on ABC and PBS regularly, and periodically writes for the New York Times. He studied social influence and persuasion at Stanford, and previously co-founded PBworks, a Silicon Valley collaboration startup. Read Less

Scott Belsky believes that the greatest breakthroughs across all industries are a result of creative people and teams that are especially productive. As such, Scott has committed his professional life to help organize creative individuals, teams, and networks.

Scott is Adobe's Vice President of Community and Head of Behance, the leading online platform for creatives to showcase and discover creative work. Scott co-founded Behance in 2006, and served as CEO until Adobe acquired Behance in 2012. Millions of people use Behance to display their portfolios, as well as track and find top talent across the creative industries.

Through his work at Behance and as author of the best-selling book "Making Ideas Happen," Scott has become an advocate for technology and community initiatives that empower the careers of creative professionals and help businesses leverage the creative potential of their people. He has worked with leading media and Fortune 500 companies, including GE and Facebook, and has traveled around the world to share his findings. In 2010, Scott was included in Fast Company's "100 Most Creative People in Business" list. Read Less

Tina Seelig is the executive director for the Stanford Technology Ventures Program and the director of the National Center for Engineering Pathways to Innovation (Epicenter) at Stanford University's School of Engineering. She teaches courses on creativity, innovation, and entrepreneurship in the department of Management Science and Engineering, and within the Hasso Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford. She received the 2009 Gordon Prize from the National Academy of Engineering, recognizing her as a national leader in engineering education.

Seelig earned her PhD in 1985 from Stanford University School of Medicine, where she studied Neuroscience. She has been a management consultant, multimedia producer, and an entrepreneur. Seelig has also written 16 popular science books and educational games. Her newest books are "Wish I Knew When I Was 20" (HarperCollins 2009) and "inGenius: A Crash Course on Creativity" (HarperCollins 2012). Read Less

Tony Schwartz is Founder and CEO of The Energy Project, a company that helps individuals and organizations fuel energy, engagement, focus and productivity by harnessing the science of high performance.

Tony's most recent book, "Be Excellent At Anything: The Four Keys to Transforming the Way We Work and Live", was published in May 2010 and became an immediate New York Times and Wall Street Journal bestseller. His previous book, "The Power of Full Engagement: Managing Energy Not Time", co- authored with Jim Loehr, spent four months on the New York Times bestseller list and has been translated into 28 languages.

Tony is a frequent contributor to the Harvard Business Review, and is one of HBR.org's most popular bloggers. His most recent HBR article, The Paradox of Productivity: How Sony Pictures Gets More Out of Employees By Demanding Less was published in May, 2010. He also writes for numerous other publications, including the New York Times.

Tony began his career as a journalist. He has been a reporter for the New York Times, an editor at Newsweek, a staff writer at New York and Esquire, and a columnist for Fast Company. He also co-authored the #1 worldwide bestseller The Art of the Deal with Donald Trump, and wrote What Really Matters: Searching for Wisdom in America.

Tony has delivered keynotes to audiences around the world and has worked with leaders at dozens of organizations including Apple, Ford, Google, Goldman Sachs, Intel, Ernst & Young, Kraft, Wells Fargo and Oracle, as well as the Los Angeles Police Department, the Cleveland Clinic and the National Security Agency. Read Less