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Felix Kramer           
Founder of the California Car Initiative (CalCars.org)

Felix Kramer is an entrepreneur and lifelong environmentalist. Concentrating on innovative ideas, events and businesses in energy and technology, he builds ambitious and "first-ever" projects and companies.

In 2002, working with environmentalists, engineers, car experts and citizens, he founded the California Cars Initiative to put plug-in hybrid vehicles on the map by technology demonstrations, advocacy and buyers' clubs. CalCars.org created the PRIUS+ Campaign, converting the popular Toyota into a prototype grid-connected "PHEV." In April 2006 he became the world's first non-technical consumer owner of a plug-in hybrid. The non-profit CalCars.org may soon spin off a new company.

He says, "I envision millions of PHEVs, charged off-peak, providing distributed storage for a power grid fueled by increasingly renewable sources. Local travel will be electric, and low-carbon biofuels will provide range extension. This is a great way to significantly reduce greenhouse gases and use of imported oil."

As an environmentalist, in the 1970s, he was a legislative aide for a member of Congress, ran a nonprofit energy conservation and alternate energy conservation services company, created a trade association for conservation businesses, and directed a three-day citywide solar energy event in NYC.

In technology, he has an entrepreneurial track record with startups. He became a computer consultant in 1983, and in 1985 an early desktop publisher. In 1990, he co-authored "Desktop Publishing Success," (Dow Jones-Irwin, seven printings, over 20,000 copies),the first book on the business side of electronic publishing. He sold his DTP business in 1997.

He became involved with Internet ventures in 1994, first as one of the first online marketers. In 1997, he founded eConstructors. com, the marketplace for web development services, raised $1M from angel investors, assembled an international staff and built the world's largest searchable directory of web builders. He sold the company in 2001.

A graduate of Cornell University, he lives with his wife and son in Silicon Valley.

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Bruce Owen
Director, Public Policy Program
Member, Steering Committee
Senior Fellow, SIEPR
                                                           
Bruce Owen is the Gordon Cain Senior Fellow at SIEPR. He is the Morris M. Doyle Professor in Public Policy and director of the Public Policy Program and also a professor, by courtesy, of economics. Bruce’s research is in the areas of competition and regulation policy, law and economics, and mass media.

Professor Owen co-founded Economists Inc. in 1981 and was president and chief executive officer until recently. Economists Inc. is a consulting firm specializing in microeconomic analysis that provides expert advice to legal counsel, businesses, trade associations and government agencies.
Previously, Professor Owen was the chief economist of the Antitrust Division of the U.S. Department of Justice and, earlier, of the White House Office of Tele-communications Policy. He was a faculty member in the schools of business and law at Duke University, and before that at Stanford University.

He is the author or co-author of numerous articles and eight books, including Television Economics (1974), Economics and Freedom of Expression (1975), The Regulation Game (1978), The Political Economy of Deregulation (1983), Video Economics (1992), and Electric Utility Mergers: Principles of Antitrust Analysis (1994). He has been an expert witness in a number of antitrust and regulatory proceedings, including United States v. AT&T, United States Football League v. National Football League and the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission review of Southern California Edison’s proposed acquisition of San Diego Gas and Electric Co.

In 1992 he headed a World Bank task force that advised the government of Argentina in drafting a new antitrust law. More recently, he has advised government agencies in Mexico and the United States on telecommunications policy and Peru on antitrust policy. He is a consultant to the World Bank in connection with the economic evaluation of legal and judicial reform projects.

For more than 10 years, Professor Owen taught a seminar on law and economics at Stanford University’s Washington campus. His latest book, The Internet Challenge to Television, was published by Harvard University Press in 1999. His research interests include regulation and antitrust, economic analysis of law, economic development and legal reform, and intellectual property rights. He is a specialist in telecommunications and mass media economics.

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Jessica Flannery
Co-Founder, KIVA
Stanford, MBA

Jessica Flannery is the co-founder and spirit behind Kiva. She is currently pursuing an MBA at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Jessica has worked in rural Kenya, Tanzania, and Uganda with Village Enterprise Fund and Project Baobab on impact evaluation and program development. Earlier, Jessica spent three years in the Stanford Business School's Center for Social Innovation and Public Management Program, where she helped launch the inaugural Global Philanthropy Forum. Jessica has also worked at Potentia Media, the International Foundation, and World Vision International. Jessica also serves on the Board of Directors for New Creation Home Ministries, the Advisory Board for Stanford FUSION -- Future Social Innovators, and the International Child Resource Institute's Africa Advisory Board.

Jessica holds a B.A. in Philosophy and Political Science from Bucknell University.

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Chip Heath
Professor of Organizational Behavior
Stanford Graduate School of Business

Chip Heath is a Professor of Organizational Behavior in the Stanford Graduate School of Business. His research examines why certain ideas - ranging from urban legends to folk medical cures, from Chicken Soup for the Soul stories to business strategy myths — survive and prosper in the social marketplace of ideas. A few years back Chip designed a course, now a popular elective at Stanford, that asked whether it would be possible to use the principles of naturally sticky ideas to design messages that would be more effective. The material from that course, How to Make Ideas Stick, has been taught to hundreds of students including managers, teachers, nonprofit leaders, doctors, journalists, venture capitalists, product designers, and film producers.

Chip is the coauthor (along with his brother, Dan) of a book titled Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die. The book will be published by Random House in January 2007.

Chip’s research has appeared in Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Quarterly Journal of Economics, Cognitive Psychology, Journal of Consumer Behavior, Strategic Management Journal, Psychological Science, and the Journal of Risk and Uncertainty. Popular accounts of his research have appeared in Scientific American, the Financial Times, the Washington Post, Business Week, Psychology Today, and Vanity Fair, NPR, and a National Geographic television show.

Chip has taught courses on Organizational Behavior, Negotiation, Strategy, International Strategy, and Social Entrepreneurship. Prior to joining Stanford, Professor Heath taught at the University of Chicago Graduate School of Business and the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University. He received his BS in Industrial Engineering from Texas A&M University and his PhD in Psychology from Stanford.

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William Barnett
Thomas M. Siebel Professor of Business Leadership, Strategy, and Organizations
Co-director of the Executive Program in Strategy and Organization
Director of the Executive Management Program: Gaining New Perspectives
Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford
Dhirubhai Ambani Faculty Fellow in Entrepreneurship for 2006-07

William Barnett studies competition among organizations and how organizations and industries evolve over time. He has studied how strategic differences and strategic change among organizations affect their growth, performance, and survival. This research includes empirical studies of technical, regulatory, and ideological changes among organizations, and how these changes affect competitiveness over time and across markets. His studies span a range of industries and contexts, including organizations in computers, telecommunications, research and development, software, semiconductors, disk drives, newspaper publishing, beer brewing, banking, and concerning the environment.

William Barnett is the Thomas M. Siebel Professor of Business Leadership, Strategy, and Organizations at the Graduate School of Business, Stanford University. After receiving his PhD in Business Administration from the University of California, Berkeley in 1988, Barnett was an Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin – Madison School of Business. In 1991, Barnett came to the Stanford Business School as an Assistant Professor. He became an Associate Professor in 1994 and received tenure in 1996, and has been a full professor since 2001. Barnett has also twice been a Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, and is a Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment at Stanford University. Barnett serves as associate editor or editorial board member for several academic journals.

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Paul Romer
STANCO 25 Professor of Economics
Ralph Landau Senior Fellow, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution

Paul Romer, one of the nation's leading economists, was the primary developer of New Growth Theory, a body of work that provides a fresh foundation for business and government thinking about wealth creation.

In 2002, Paul was recognized for his work in this field when he was awarded the Horst Claus Recktenwald Prize in Economics for outstanding achievement and contributions to the field. He also was awarded the Distinguished Teaching Award at Stanford University's Graduate School of Business (1999), named one of America's 25 most influential people by TIME magazine (1997), and elected a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (2000). He is a fellow of the Econometric Society and a research associate with the National Bureau of Economic Research. He was a member of the National Research Council Panel on Criteria for Federal Support of Research and Development, a member of the Executive Council of the American Economics Association, and a fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences.

Paul is currently the STANCO 25 Professor of Economics in the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and a Senior Fellow of the Hoover Institution. Before coming to Stanford, he taught economics at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Chicago, and the University of Rochester. He is also the founder of Aplia, which develops and applies technologies for improving student learning. This work springs from his conviction that improving education at all levels will be the key to sustaining technological progress in the twenty-first century and that better educational technology will lead better educational outcomes.

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Douglas Holtz-Eakin
Director of Economic Policy
John McCain 2008

Doug Holtz-Eakin is an extraordinary resource on economic policy, government spending and the economy. He was the former Director of the Congressional Budget Office (CBO), and is now Director of Economic Policy for John McCain’s 2008 presidential campaign.

As John McCain’s chief economic advisor, he is helping to shape the debate about the future of America’s economy, defining one of the most crucial issues of the upcoming election, and raising—and answering—some of the questions that will matter most to Americans over the next year.

Dr. Holtz-Eakin has a long and distinguished career of public service in this kind of role, reflecting a long-standing and broad interest in the economics of public policy and unparalleled expertise concerning the ways economic and political forces interact to influence world affairs.

As the former head of the CBO, he was the legislature’s chief number cruncher, giving lawmakers objective and independent analysis of the fiscal effects of proposed laws.

Dr. Holtz-Eakin also served for 18 months as Chief Economist for the President’s Council of Economic Advisers under President George W. Bush and for two years as Senior Staff Economist for President George H. W. Bush’s Council of Economic Advisors.

Dr. Holtz-Eakin’s research has focused primarily on two broad areas: economic policy and entrepreneurship and the economics of the estate and gift tax.
He has an ongoing interest in tax policy, the economics of aging, and the political economy of growth.

Recent research has centered on the economics of fundamental tax reform, productivity effects of public infrastructure, and income mobility in the U.S.

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Karen Kornbluh
Policy Director
Senator Barack Obama

Karen Kornbluh is policy director for US Senator Barack Obama (D-IL). Before joining Obama’s staff, Kornbluh founded the Work and Family Program at the New America Foundation where she argued for a modernized social insurance system to better meet the needs of today’s “juggler families.” She has written widely on technology, family and economic policy, including for The Atlantic Monthly, The New York Times and The Washington Post.  NY Times columnist David brooks cited Kornbluh’s 2006 piece “Families Valued” as one of the notable magazine articles of 2006. Her work on family policy has also been cited favorably in the Economist and the Chicago Tribune.

Earlier in her career, Kornbluh served in the Clinton Administration’s Treasury Department as Deputy Chief of Staff to Secretary Robert Rubin. From 1994-1997, she served in several roles at the Federal Communications Commission including Director of Legislative and Intergovernmental Affairs and Deputy Chief of the Mass Media Bureau. At the FCC, she handled a variety of issues including the conversion to digital television, the WTO agreement on basic telecommunications and educational technology. Kornbluh came to the FCC from US Senator John Kerry’s (D-MA) staff.

Prior to her government positions, she was a management consultant to Fortune 500 companies and an economist at Alan Greenspan’s economic forecasting firm, Townsend-Greenspan. She holds a BA from Bryn Mawr College and a Masters in Public Policy from the John F. Kennedy School at Harvard University.

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Brian J. Leske
Homeland Security & Legal Policy Director
Romney for President

Brian J. Leske is Homeland Security & Legal Policy Director for Romney for President, Inc.  He is responsible for briefing and advising Governor Romney in numerous policy areas, including homeland security, immigration, criminal & civil justice reform, technology, and legal policy.

Prior to joining the campaign, Mr. Leske served as Governor Romney’s Chief & Deputy Chief Legal Counsel in the State House where he advised the Governor on judicial selection, legal aspects of policy questions, and legal issues arising in connection with the Governor’s decision to sign or veto legislation.  Before joining the Governor’s Office, he served in the U.S. Department of Justice as an Assistant U.S. Attorney in the Anti-Terrorism & National Security Unit and in the Appeals Unit in Boston.

Mr. Leske also has worked as an in-house appellate counsel for a global telecommunications company in Washington, D.C., and as an associate specializing in appellate & Supreme Court litigation in a Washington, D.C.-based law firm.  He is a graduate of Dartmouth College and the Georgetown University Law Center.

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Thomas Kalil
Advisor, Hillary for President Campaign

Thomas Kalil is an advisor on science, technology and innovation policy to the “Hillary for President” campaign. 
He is the Special Assistant to the Chancellor for Science and Technology at UC Berkeley, where he develops major new multi-disciplinary research and education initiatives at the intersection of information technology, nanotechnology, microsystems, and biology.

Previously, Kalil served as the Deputy Assistant to President Clinton for Technology and Economic Policy, and the Deputy Director of the White House National Economic Council. He was the NEC's "point person" on a wide range of technology and telecommunications issues, such as the liberalization of Cold War export controls, the allocation of spectrum for new wireless services, and investments in upgrading America's high-tech workforce. He led a number of White House technology initiatives, such as the National Nanotechnology Initiative, the Next Generation Internet, bridging the digital divide, e-learning, increasing funding for long-term information technology research, making IT more accessible to people with disabilities, and addressing the growing imbalance between support for biomedical research and for the physical sciences and engineering. He was also appointed by President Clinton to serve on the G-8 Digital Opportunity Task Force (dot force).

Prior to joining the White House, Tom was a trade specialist at the Washington offices of Dewey Ballantine, where he represented the Semiconductor Industry Association on U.S.-Japan trade issues and technology policy. He also served as the principal staffer to Gordon Moore in his capacity as Chair of the SIA Technology Committee.

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Greg Rosston
Deputy Director, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research
Deputy Director, Public Policy Program

Greg Rosston is a Research Fellow at SIEPR and Visiting Lecturer in Economics at Stanford University. His research has focused on industrial organization, antitrust and regulation. He has written numerous articles on competition in local telecommunications, implementation of the Telecommunications Act of 1996, auctions and spectrum policy.

He has also co-edited two books, including Interconnection and the Internet: Selected Papers from the 1996 Telecommunications Policy Research Conference.

At Stanford, he has taught Regulation and Antitrust in the economics department and a seminar for seniors in the Public Policy program. Prior to joining Stanford University, Dr. Rosston served as Deputy Chief Economist of the Federal Communications Commission. At the FCC, he helped to implement the Telecommunications Act. In this work, he helped to design and write the rules the Commission adopted as a framework to encourage efficient competition in telecommunications markets. He also helped with the design and implementation of the FCC's spectrum auctions.

Dr. Rosston received his Ph.D. in Economics from Stanford University and his A.B. in Economics with Honors from the University of California, Berkeley.

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Timothy Bresnahan
Chairman, Economics Department at Stanford
Member, Steering Committee,
Senior Fellow, SIEPR
Co-Director, Center on Employment and Economic Growth at SIEPR

Timothy Bresnahan is Chairman of the Economics Department at Stanford University.  He is also the Landau Professor of Technology and the Economy and, by courtesy, a Professor of Economics for the Graduate School of Business. He is the former Chief Economist of the Antitrust Division of the U. S. Department of Justice. His research focuses on industrial organization, applied econometrics, and the economics of technology. Currently, he is researching entry and appropriability in technology industries, competition between old and new-paradigm computing, and economic organization for high social return to technical progress.

Professor Bresnahan's teaching interests include econometrics, industrial organization, and microeconomics.

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Walter W. Powell
Professor of Education and Sociology
Stanford University

Walter Powell is Professor of Education and (by courtesy) Professor of Sociology, Organizational Behavior, Management Science, and Communication at Stanford University. He is also an external faculty member at the Santa Fe Institute. At Stanford, he is Director of the Scandinavian Consortium on Organizational Research (SCANCOR) and co-director of the Stanford Center on Philanthropy and Civil Society (PACS).

He joined the Stanford faculty in July 1999, after previously teaching at the University of Arizona, MIT, and Yale. He has been a fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and been a visiting faculty member several times at the Institute for Advanced Studies in Vienna. Powell was director of the Stanford Project on the Evolution of the Nonprofit Sector, an analysis of the circulation of managerial practices in the Bay Area nonprofit community, which mapped the flow of ideas among consultants, philanthropists, founders, business leaders, government officials, and nonprofit managers.

Powell is presently engaged in research on the origins and development of the commercial field of the life sciences. He has authored a series of papers on the evolving network structure of the biotechnology industry. This line of work continues his interests in networks as a form of governance of economic exchange, first developed in his 1990 article, "Neither Market Nor Hierarchy: Network Forms of Organization," which won the American Sociological Association's Max Weber Prize. Powell and his collaborators have developed a longitudinal data base that tracks the development of biotechnology worldwide from the 1980s to the present. With Jason Owen-Smith of the University of Michigan and a number of Stanford students, Powell is studying the role of universities in transferring basic science into commercial development by science-based companies, the consequences for universities of their growing involvement in commercial activities, and the impact of these efforts on local economic growth.

Powell is a member of the Board of Directors of the Social Science Research Council. At Stanford, he is a faculty affiliate of the Center for Social Innovation at the Graduate School of Business, a member of the Public Policy faculty, and serves on the governing board of the France-Stanford program. He is an editor of Research Policy.

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John Hennessy
President, Stanford University

John L. Hennessy joined Stanford’s faculty in 1977 as an assistant professor of electrical engineering. He rose through the academic ranks to full professorship in 1986 and was the inaugural Willard R. and Inez Kerr Bell Professor of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from 1987 to 2004.

From 1983 to 1993, Dr. Hennessy was director of the Computer Systems Laboratory, a research and teaching center operated by the Departments of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science that fosters research in computer systems design. He served as chair of computer science from 1994 to 1996 and, in 1996, was named dean of the School of Engineering. As dean, he launched a five-year plan that laid the groundwork for new activities in bioengineering and biomedical engineering. In 1999, he was named provost, the university’s chief academic and financial officer. As provost, he continued his efforts to foster interdisciplinary activities in the biosciences and bioengineering and oversaw improvements in faculty and staff compensation. In October 2000, he was inaugurated as Stanford University’s 10th president. In 2005, he became the inaugural holder of the Bing Presidential Professorship.

A pioneer in computer architecture, in 1981 Dr. Hennessy drew together researchers to focus on a computer architecture known as RISC (Reduced Instruction Set Computer), a technology that has revolutionized the computer industry by increasing performance while reducing costs. In addition to his role in the basic research, Dr. Hennessy helped transfer this technology to industry. In 1984, he cofounded MIPS Computer Systems, now MIPS Technologies, which designs microprocessors. In recent years, his research has focused on the architecture of high-performance computers.

Dr. Hennessy is a recipient of the 2000 IEEE John von Neumann Medal, the 2000 ASEE Benjamin Garver Lamme Award, the 2001 ACM Eckert-Mauchly Award, the 2001 Seymour Cray Computer Engineering Award, a 2004 NEC C&C Prize for lifetime achievement in computer science and engineering and a 2005 Founders Award from the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Sciences, and he is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Association for Computing Machinery, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

He has lectured and published widely and is the co-author of two internationally used undergraduate and graduate textbooks on computer architecture design. Dr. Hennessy earned his bachelor’s degree in electrical engineering from Villanova University and his master’s and doctoral degrees in computer science from the State University of New York at Stony Brook.

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Meg Whitman
President and CEO, eBay Inc.

As president and CEO of eBay Inc. since March 1998, Meg Whitman has led the company to its current standing as an unparalleled global e-commerce engine.  Meg’s expertise in brand building, combined with her consumer technology experience, has built eBay into a leading company that is reshaping online commerce, payments and communications around the world.

Prior to eBay, Meg was general manager of Hasbro Inc.’s Preschool Division, responsible for global management and marketing of two of the world's best-known children's brands, Playskool and Mr. Potato Head.  During her tenure, Meg oversaw the reorganization of the Preschool Division and its resulting return to profitability.  From 1995 to 1997, Meg was president and chief executive officer of Florists Transworld Delivery (FTD), the world’s largest floral products company.  While at FTD, she oversaw its transition from a florist-owned association to a for-profit, privately owned company. 

Before FTD, Meg served as president of the Stride Rite Corporation's Stride Rite Division where she was responsible for the launch of the highly successful Munchkin baby shoe line and the repositioning of the Stride Rite brand and retail stores.  She has also held the positions of executive vice president for the Keds Division and corporate vice president of strategic planning.  Meg spent 1989 to 1992 at the Walt Disney Company, highlighted by her work as senior vice president of marketing for the Disney Consumer Products Division.  She also worked for eight years at Bain & Company’s San Francisco office where she was a vice president.  Meg began her career at Procter & Gamble in Cincinnati where she worked in brand management from 1979 to 1981.

Among Meg’s many accolades, The Wall Street Journal named her one of the 50 women to watch in 2005; Fortune has consistently ranked her among the top three most powerful women in business; and BusinessWeek hasincluded her on its list of the 25 most powerful business managers annually since 2000.  She is one of only five women in the world to have been consecutively ranked among the world’s most influential people by Time Magazine.

Meg is on the Board of Directors of Procter & Gamble and DreamWorks Animation.  Meg received a Bachelor of Economics from Princeton University and a Master of Business Administration from Harvard Business School.