Kelly Benoit-Bird on How Sea Creatures Make a Living

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iPad illustration by Peter Durand

Associate Professor, College of Oceanic and Atmospheric Sciences at Oregon State University Kelly Benoit-Bird applies acoustics to the study of ecosystems in the open ocean. Kelly has helped develop several new optical and acoustical instruments and has made fundamental acoustical measurements of species ranging from zooplankton to fish, squid, and marine mammals. Benoit-Bird has been named a MacArthur Fellow, has received the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, and has published in Nature, Marine Biology and the Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. Through her research into how predators target their prey, Benoit-Bird is creating a new understanding of key ecological processes in the ocean.

Sheila Bair: Reframe & Rethink

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Sheila Bair served as chairman of the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation for a five-year term, from June 2006 through June 2011. She presided over one of the most tumultuous periods in the history of the nation’s banking system, working to bolster public confidence and financial system stability. She has been a leading advocate and innovator of policies to end the doctrine of too-big-to-fail and taxpayer bailouts.

Steve Lansing & Julia Watson: Water Temples Forever

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Steve Lansing, a senior fellow at the Stockholm Resilience Centre, is helping preserve the centuries-old water-temple system in Bali that distributes water from a volcanic lake to over two hundred farming villages. Lansing and landscape architect Julia Watson are working with the people of Bali to craft a plan to enable tourists to explore the area and preserve it. Watson says the idea is to protect “the most resilient system and the most bio-diverse agro ecosystem known to man.”

Ken Banks: Freedom from Money

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Ken Banks recently launched Means of Exchange to look at how everyday technologies can be used to democratize opportunities for economic self-sufficiency, rebuild local communities and promote a return to local resource use. “I think we need to remember that we are more valuable as individuals than the sum of the notes in our pocket.”

Dan Schulman: Future of Retail Banking

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Dan Schulman joined American Express as group president, Enterprise Growth, in August 2010. Dan is responsible for the company’s global strategy to expand alternative mobile and online payment services, form new partnerships and build revenue streams beyond the traditional card and travel businesses. This includes the Serve digital payments and commerce platform, the prepaid business, Global Payment Options, Fee-Based Services, and the company’s Mergers and Acquisitions unit.

William Jack: Mobile Banking

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William Jack is an Associate Professor in the Economics Department at Georgetown University, where he is currently the Director of Undergraduate Studies. He is co-founder and co-director of gui2de, the Georgetown University Initiative on Innovation, Development and Evaluation, which conducts empirical field-based research to assess the impact and effectiveness of interventions and policies aimed at empowering individuals in developing countries to improve their lives. Major research themes include governance and accountability, the promotion of agency in the delivery of health, education, and other public services, the role of mobile technology in development, and financial development and integration.

Lisa J. Servon : Urban Banking

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Lisa J. Servon is Professor and former dean at Milano School of International Affairs, Management, and Urban Policy. Professor Servon holds a B.A in Political Science from Bryn Mawr College, an M.A in History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania, and a PhD in Urban Planning from the University of California, Berkeley. She teaches and conducts research in the areas of urban poverty, community development, economic development, and issues of gender and race. Specific areas of expertise include the financial lives of low-income communities, microenterprise development, and capacity-building for community-based organizations.

Jonathan Zinman: Innovating with Liability Mangement

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Jonathan Zinman is a Professor of Economics at Dartmouth College, and co-founder and Scientific Director of the U.S. Household Finance Initiative (USHFI) of Innovations for Poverty Action. He also serves on the inaugural Consumer Advisory Board of the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and as a Visiting Scholar at the Federal Reserve Bank of Philadelphia. He is a member of the Behavioral Finance Forum and the Sage/Sloan Foundations Working Group on Behavioral Economics and Consumer Finance. He works directly with institutions to develop and test innovations – in pricing, product development, marketing, risk assessment, risk management, and client communication – that are beneficial to both institutions and their clients.

David Bellwood: Quality Not Quantity

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David Bellwood, a marine biologist and an internationally recognized expert in coral reef fishes and systems, combines skills in such disparate fields as ecology, palaeontology, biomechanics and molecular systems to understand the nature of reefs. “The argument would be that if you’ve got a reef with a thousand species, it is a lot more resilient, and a lot more capable of maintaining itself than a reef with a hundred species. I don’t think that is true.”

Dean Karlan : Poverty Measures

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Dean Karlan is President of Innovations for Poverty Action, a non-profit organization that creates and evaluates solutions to social and development problems, and works to scale-up successful ideas through implementation and dissemination to policymakers, practitioners, investors and donors. He is a Professor of Economics at Yale University. "There are some problems that we can solve. But we have to be pragmatic about it and figure out what is actually working and what is not."

Peter Kareiva: Reframe & Rethink

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Peter Kareiva is the chief scientist for the Nature Conservancy. A member of the National Academy of Sciences, Kareiva is often noted for his emphasis on nature’s resiliency, rather than its impending doom. “Totally unnecessarily we get into a conversation where it is farmers versus conservation, where it is loggers versus conservation, where it is fishermen versus conservation.”

David Eagleman: We Are Our Biology

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David Eagleman is a neuroscientist at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. His areas of research include time perception, vision, synesthesia, and the intersection of neuroscience with the legal system. He is a pioneer on the power of the unconscious brain. "Are we free to choose how we act? Is the mind equal to the brain?"

Margrét Pála Ólafsdóttir: Adapting & Learning

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Margrét Pála Ólafsdóttir is a preschool management specialist in Iceland who advocates sex-segregated classes, natural play material instead of conventional toys, and a long-forgotten belief in discipline to develop optimism, courage, and resiliency in young children. “Feel the cold! I even take them into the snow -- and then the lava. Scream a little bit! But continue! And enjoy it!”

Bill Shore: Break the Rules

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Bill Shore is the founder and chief executive officer of Share Our Strength, a national nonprofit that is working to end childhood hunger in America. “Those of us who are passionate about social change and social innovation, we have got to find ways to break the rules. I believe it is a strategic necessity and a moral imperative.”