Ben Nelson is Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Minerva, and a visionary with a passion to reinvent higher education. Prior to Minerva, Nelson spent more than 10 years at Snapfish, where he helped build the company from startup to the world’s largest personal publishing service. With over 42 million transactions across 22 countries, nearly five times greater than its closest competitor, Snapfish is among the top e-commerce services in the world. Serving as CEO from 2005 through 2010, Nelson began his tenure at Snapfish by leading the company’s sale to Hewlett Packard for $300 million.

Prior to joining Snapfish, Nelson was President and CEO of Community Ventures, a network of locally branded portals for American communities. 

Nelson’s passion for reforming undergraduate education was first sparked at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School, where he received a B.S. in Economics. After creating a blueprint for curricular reform in his first year of school, Nelson went on to become the chair of the Student Committee on Undergraduate Education (SCUE), a pedagogical think tank that is the oldest and only non-elected student government body at the University of Pennsylvania.

Links

http://minerva.kgi.edu

Dr Aleks Krotoski is an award-winning international broadcaster, author and academic.

For the BBC and Channel 4, she has topped the ratings, won Emmy, BAFTA, Radio Academy, and Royal Society awards, and written and presented the landmark technology and social-science series for both radio – with BBC Radio 4’s The Digital Human – and international television – with BBC World’s The Virtual Revolution.

For The Guardian, she has consistently led the iTunes charts with the Tech Weekly podcast (2007-2015), pioneered environmental and business reporting with The Biggest Story In The World (2015), and taken her hit weekly column from newspaper to acclaimed book (Guardian Faber, 2013). Her award-winning video series for The Guardian, “The Power of Privacy”, was produced in 2015 in 5 countries.

Aleks’ BBC Radio 4 series Codes That Changed The World is the most requested radio series on BBC iPlayer, while Hidden Histories of the Information Age, and Last Bus To Serendip were both critically acclaimed. That led to a prestigious Public Engagement Grant from the British Psychological Society, and thereby the production of The N of Us, the first from Aleks’ independent studio, Pillowfort Productions. Also from Pillowfort Productions: The Resilient, an intimate interview series that eavesdrops on people's toughest times (for Flower) and BlackHatWhiteHat, a cybersecurity series about crime and security in the digital age.

As host, writer, and producer, Aleks Krotoski’s broadcasting success, has mirrored her academic credentials. Dr Krotoski holds fellowships at University of Oxford, and the London School of Economics. Her PhD broke new ground, studying information flow and the spread of ideas across digital spaces. She enjoys an international speaking career, to both corporate and general audiences. She is based in London and Los Angeles.

Links

http://alekskrotoski.com

Bert’s professional life is all about competent people. He thinks, publishes, consults, designs and sets up learning and development projects for corporations. His areas of expertise include technology enhanced learning and leadership development.

Bert has been active in the field of corporate learning and e-learning for the last 20 years, first as instructor and course designer, later as project manager, consultant and business development manager. He worked at IBM Learning Development Europe where he was responsible for commercial e-learning development projects across Europe, and the management of the learning innovation initiatives. Six years ago he joined the Center for Creative Leadership where he is now a faculty and EMEA's IP & Innovation Lead. Bert wrote the book 'Homo Competens – Let’s talk about competent people in the network age', frequently speaks at conferences such as OEB and blogs.

Bert is currently a faculty member of the Center for Creative Leadership (CCL) EMEA office. In his role he designs and develops customized leadership interventions and programs for clients. He is also the IP and Innovation Lead, making knowledge flow and orchestrating innovation initiatives.

Links

http://www.ccl.org

Twitter

Heather McGowan works at the intersection of the future of work and the future of learning advising education and business leaders to most effectively prepare for rapid and disruptive changes in learning, work, and society.

Accelerating disruptive cycles in industry, with rising automation and rapid adoption and scaling of technology, are making traditional jobs frameworks obsolete and demanding new and adaptive skill sets of workers.

In higher education, McGowan advises presidents and senior leaders to develop students’ agile learning mindset in order to prepare graduates for jobs that do not yet exist. McGowan also guides corporate executives to re-think and re-frame their business models, and their understanding of team and organizational structures, to be resilient and successful in changing markets.

Her corporate clients range from start-ups like publicly traded, Fortune 500 companies, including Autodesk and BD Medical. She is the co-author of the book Disrupt Together: How Teams Consistently Innovate (Pearson) and is writing a book on the future of work due out in 2018.

McGowan speaks internationally on the future of work and the future of learning. For more information visit www.heathermcgowan.com.

Selina Mayer has an academic background in business psychology and design thinking. These two fields add up to her overall interest in user-centered design and her passion for human behavior. By developing and conducting various professional education formats at the HPI Academy, she applies these fields of expertise in her working life on a daily basis. Selina facilitates and consults both method focused design thinking workshops, and solution driven long term projects. Having already worked for a globally operating engineering company and for a small Berlin Start-Up she is experienced with very different infrastructures of small, young but also big and traditional businesses. She enjoys the constant surprises and challenges that accompany these various areas and is curious to see what might be next.