Board of Directors
Rhodes Rhodes Klement, Chair Over the last 15 years, Rhodes has developed and refined a unique vision for the art and science of brand. Borrowing from his formal training in such divergent fields as organic chemistry, classical ballet, and teaching sign language to the mentally handicapped, Rhodes perceives and abstracts meaning from seemingly random data to reveal new business opportunities and identify patterns that inhibit or promote positive brand perception. He is the co-founder of Branditecture, an agency that helps organizations build strong brands with strategy, identity and reputation management services. Before starting Branditecure, Rhodes led global Brand and Advertising for Sun Microsystems where he drove efforts to revitalize and build the end-to-end brand experience for the Sun and Java brand families. With his passion for social change, Rhodes led the development of live audience participation campaigns using Sun technology at Live8 concerts and U2’s recent Vertigo tour — where 500,000 people in 17 countries joined Bono’s ONE campaign to raise awareness for HIV/AIDS, poverty and debt in Africa. Rhodes also produced similar events with ColdPlay and CurrentTV. Rhodes offers brand strategy and brand experience consulting. He speaks internationally on brand experience, product design, usability and emerging marketing technologies and has been quoted in such publications as CMO Magazine,AdWeek, BrandWeek and CNet.
 Andrew Andrew Zolli, Executive Director and CuratorAndrew is a foresight and global trends consultant who analyzes critical trends at the intersection of culture, technology, and global society. His firm, Z + Partners, helps global companies and institutions see, understand and respond to complex change. Andrew was recently named one of the fellows of the National Geographic Society and has served as futurist-in-residence at both Popular Science and American Demographics magazines, as well as Public Radio’s Marketplace. Andrew is a network member of the Global Business Network, and serves as a visiting fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. In early 2005 he was named to Fast Company’s Fast 50, the magazine’s annual compilation of emerging business leaders. In the same year, he was named one of Red Herring’s “20 Under 35.”
 john legend John Legend, Director John Legend is a five-time Grammy-winner and multi-platinum singer, songwriter, and performer who has been heralded as one of the most striking, vital and important American musical artists to emerge in the 21st century. Legend, who began playing piano at the age of 4, made his name primarily as an in-demand all-star studio session writer and musician, working with luminaries including Lauryn Hill, the Black Eyed Peas, Alicia Keys, Common and Kanye West.  In 2005, Legend’s critically-acclaimed debut album, “Get Lifted,” helped him earn an astounding eight Grammy nominations – tying Mariah Carey and Kanye West for the most nominations for any individual artist or band that year – with the album selling more than three million copies worldwide.  In 2006, John’s second release, “Once Again,” quickly achieved an RIAA platinum certification and brought him a Grammy Award for Best Male R&B Vocal Performance (for “Heaven”). In 2007, inspired by reading “The End Of Poverty” by Columbia University Professor Dr. Jeffrey Sachs, John Legend traveled to Ghana in West Africa where he recognized “the real, tangible impact of extreme poverty on millions of people around the world.”  His response was to launch the Show Me Campaign (www.ShowMeCampaign.org), a grassroots movement whose mission is “to fight economic and spiritual poverty through fostering sustainable development (personal, social, educational, economic) at the individual, family, and small community levels.”
  Rich Frankel, Director Rich is the founder of RFD Productions and is an active producer and creator of integrated Web, DVD and TV content for corporate and entertainment industry clients. Rich recently produced two multiple Emmy Award–winning programs, featuring the work of rock icon Sting, which were simultaneously released across Web and DVD platforms as well. Rich previously served as the managing director of the Los Angeles office of THINK New Ideas. THINK developed integrated online and offline advertising for technology clients and software companies. Among its LA clients were Oracle, Network Associates, PreviewTravel.com, Miramax Films and CarsDirect.com. Before joining THINK, Rich ran the Creative Services Group at A&M Records, where he developed the visual imaging of The Police, Suzanne Vega, Joe Jackson, Sting, Janet Jackson, Sheryl Crow, Amy Grant, Supertramp and Soundgarden. At A&M, he produced award-winning short and long-form music videos. Two were awarded Grammys: “Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation” in 1989 and Sting’s “Ten Summoner’s Tales” in 1993. Before his decade at A&M, Rich was Warner Amex Satellite’s corporate creative director on the team that launched MTV, Nickelodeon and The Movie Channel.
 Heller Cheryl Heller, Director Cheryl is a writer, designer and communication strategist who helps clients integrate socially responsible behavior into sustainable brand communication and promotional programs. Her firm, Heller Communication Design, has developed a process through which corporations can play a leading role in alleviating the social and environmental issues facing the world, through programs that are both easy and profitable for them. Cheryl has written articles for Communication Arts, ID Magazine, Graphis Magazine and The Design Management Journal. She wrote a book for the AIGA on the best process for preserving innovation within corporations. Recently she wrote the lead story on creative strategy for Adobe’s online magazine, Proxy. She has been profiled in articles in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Graphis magazine, Communication Arts, ID magazine, How magazine, Print and PDN.
  Andrew Rasiej, Director Andrew is the founder and current chairman of MOUSE (Making Opportunities for Upgrading Schools and Education). He has also served on the New York City Board of Education’s task force on technology and has spearheaded several innovative projects that support efforts to bridge the “Digital Divide” in public education. Andrew is the chairman and co-founder of the Digital Club Network (DCN), the Internet’s largest live music channel. DCN broadcasts concerts of established and emerging artists from premier music venues around the world and makes archived recordings of these performances available for free over the Internet. Concurrent with his involvement in music and technology,He is also co-founder of the world’s largest annual digital music conference, “Plug In,” which is attended by executives from major record labels and technology companies.
 sarah laskin Sarah Laskin, Director Sarah Laskin is Vice President and COO for Mission Programs at the National Geographic Society. Through the Mission Programs Special Projects group, she oversees the Explorers Program, including the Society’s relationships with the Explorers-in-Residence, the NG Fellows, and the Emerging Explorers, and key program initiatives such as the Enduring Voices Project and Genographic. In 2004, she was among the founders of National Geographic’s All Roads Film Project, which showcases breakthrough film and still photography from indigenous and under-represented minority cultures around the globe. She currently serves on the All Roads Advisory Board. She is also a member of the Society’s Conservation Trust, a grant-making committee which supports conservation of the world’s biological and cultural diversity.  Prior to joining National Geographic in 2000, Sarah worked on ocean, coastal, and fishery policy issues in the Clinton/Gore Administration as Associate Director for Fisheries and Coastal Issues at the White House Council on Environmental Quality. She also held the positon of Program Examiner for National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration programs at the White House’s Office of Management and Budget. She was involved in organizing the U.S. Commerce Department and U.S. Navy’s National Ocean Conference in 1998, and was a co-author of the Clinton Cabinet’s “Looking to the Sea: America’s Ocean Future,” a special report on ocean policy.  
 Bill Gordon Bill Gordon, Director Bill Gordon is a serial entrepreneur originally trained as a cellular and molecular biologist.  He is founder and Managing Partner of WEG Family LLC, a private investment company. Bill returned to science after a long hiatus in 2004 through WEG Family LLC when he helped launch a biotechnology startup, Tetragenetics Inc, for which he is now President and CEO.  This cutting-edge company is on the verge of producing a number of breakthrough vaccines and biotherapeutics, and is committed to making all of its technology available in the fight against diseases of poverty in the developing world. Prior to starting WEG Family LLC, Bill co-founded Callahan Associates International, a communications development company focused on acquiring, developing, and managing communication ventures around the globe, including building and operating broadband systems throughout Europe. Bill’s first entrepreneurial venture started when he joined Quion Financial, where he helped launch private equity-funded businesses focused on communications and other aspects of infrastructure in Southeast Asia.  Prior to Quion, he had a successful career on Wall Street in the asset management business, after being trained as a cellular and molecular biologist and earning a Ph.D. from U.C. Berkeley.
 Wenda Harris Millard Wenda Harris Millard, Director Wenda Harris Millard is President and COO of Media Link LLC, a leading strategic advisory and representation firm that provides critical counsel and direction to the media, advertising and entertainment industries and to companies and investors that interact with those sectors.

Previously, Ms. Millard was co-CEO and President, Media, Martha Stewart Living Omnimedia, Inc. which she joined in July 2007 after serving on its Board of Directors. Ms. Millard oversaw MSLO’s media businesses, which include publishing, Internet and broadcasting. Before MSLO, Ms. Millard was Chief Sales Officer at Yahoo!, where she led the team that drove revenue from $700 million to over $6 billion in six years and established credibility for brand advertising industry-wide. Previously, she was Chief Internet Officer at Ziff Davis Media and was a founding member of the executive team at DoubleClick, where she served as Executive Vice President. She was President and Group Publisher of SRDS, Senior Vice President and Publisher of Family Circle and Executive Vice President/Group Publisher of Adweek, Mediaweek and Brandweek.

Her awards include the 2007 John A. Reisenbach Award for Distinguished Citizenship; the 2006 “Advertising Person of the Year” Silver Medal Award from the American Advertising Federation; the 2005 Matrix Award for “Women Who Change the World”; and Advertising Age’s “Digital Media Master.” She was the subject of a profile by Tom Brokaw on NBC’s “Women to Watch” series.

Millard is immediate past chair of the Interactive Advertising Bureau and former president of the Advertising Club of New York. She has served on the Boards of the Advertising Council, the American Advertising Federation, the Advertising Education Foundation and others. Currently, she sits on the Boards of several emerging media companies, as well as on the Boards of the James Beard Foundation, Pop!Tech and Do Something. She served two terms as a Trustee of Trinity College in Hartford.

Ms. Millard holds an MBA from Harvard University and a BA from Trinity College.
 John Maeda John Maeda, Director John Maeda is a world-renowned graphic designer, visual artist, and computer scientist, and is a founding voice for “simplicity” in the digital age. Named by ESQUIRE magazine as one of the 21 most important people for the twenty-first century, Maeda first made his mark by redefining the use of electronic media as a tool for expression for people of all ages and skills. He is the recipient of the highest career honors for design in the United States, Japan, and Germany and serves on the board of trustees for the Smithsonian’s Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum. He has had major exhibits of his work in Paris, London, New York and Tokyo, and has written several books on his philosophy of “humanizing technology” through his perspective on the future of creative uses of technologies including THE LAWS OF SIMPLICITY (MIT Press) published in 14 languages. His design work and consulting for organizations like Google, Cartier, Samsung, Shiseido, Reebok, Chanel, Philips and Sony have led to seminal advances in how digital thinking meets the analog world with the greatest respect for humanity. Formerly a faculty member at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) for 12 years where he was Associate Director of Research at the MIT Media Lab. On June 1, 2008, he became the sixteenth President of the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) in Providence, Rhode Island, the preeminent college of art and design in the US. Maeda received both his BS and MS degrees from MIT, and earned his PhD in design from Tsukuba University Institute of Art and Design in Japan. In May 2003, he received an honorary doctorate of fine arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art, and completed his MBA in May of 2006. Maeda is a sought-after lecturer on “simplicity” at major universities and boardrooms throughout the world.
  John Balen, Director John Balen is a General Partner at Canaan Partners where he focuses on investments in communications & mobility, and next-generation enterprise technology companies that are disrupting the balance of traditional markets. Before joining Canaan Partners, John held a variety of operational and financial roles, where he learned both how to build companies from the ground up and how to fund them. He served as a Managing Director of Horsley Bridge Partners, a multi-billion dollar private equity firm in San Francisco. During his nine-year tenure at Horsley Bridge, John was responsible for a wide spectrum of investments in technology companies, as well as many venture capital and buyout partnerships. Earlier in his career, John was a sales applications engineer at fiber communications startup Codenoll Technology Corp. and an engineer at Digital Equipment Corp. John currently serves on the boards of innovative digital media firms Blurb, Cardlytics, Casabi and Silicon Optix, mobile companies Command Audio and Dexterra, and enterprise technology firms Echopass, EZRez, ID Analytics and SOASTA. John received a BS in electrical engineering and an MBA from Cornell University. A firm believer in the value of education, John is the Chair of the Strategic Planning Committee, and as a board member serves on the Executive Committee of his children’s school. John frequently donates time and money to educational causes.
  Jason Rzepka, Director Jason Rzepka is vice president of public affairs at MTV, the #1 global youth brand. His charge, quite simply, is to use MTV’s superpowers for good. Jason does this by marshaling the network’s forces to engage and activate America’s youth on the biggest challenges facing their generation. He is responsible for the strategic direction of all of MTV’s “pro-social” campaigns, including the boundary-shattering, Peabody-winning “It’s Your (Sex) Life,” with the Kaiser Family Foundation, which has reached over 200 million young people on sexual health issues; Emmy-winning “Choose or Lose,” which has helped drive the largest youth voter turnouts in U.S. history; “A Thin Line,” which launched in December of 2009 and addresses the emerging issue of youth digital abuse; and many more.

Prior to his current role, Jason served as the head of communications at PopTech. While at PopTech, Jason built and implemented the communications strategy for the organization’s annual thought leadership forum, Social Innovation Fellows program, and Project Masiluleke: the largest-ever use of mobile devices for the delivery of HIV/AIDS and TB care.

Before PopTech, Jason held senior communications positions at MTV, mtvU, IMAX Corporation and Ruder Finn. He holds a bachelor’s of business administration from the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee.
  Clara Miller, Director

Clara Miller is President and CEO of Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF), a national leader in nonprofit, philanthropic and social enterprise finance. NFF, which Ms. Miller created and has run for over 25 years, serves as a “philanthropic bank” serving both social sector organizations and their funders. A 2007 Fast Company Social Capitalist award-winner, NFF has helped thousands of nonprofit organizations strengthen their financial health and improve their capacity to serve their communities. NFF is a federally certified Community Development Financial Institution (CDFI). Directly and with others, NFF has leveraged $1 billion of capital investment into nonprofits, and also has provided over $ 200 million in direct loans. Other products available to both nonprofits and funders include workshops, business analyses, loan guarantees and multi-year contracts to build balance sheet strength.

Ms. Miller was named among The NonProfit Times “Power and Influence Top 50” in 2006, 2007, 2008, and 2009. She is a board member of GuideStar, Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, Enterprise Community Loan Fund and is Treasurer of the Robert Sterling Clark Foundation Board. She serves on the Independent Sector’s Nonprofit Programs and Practice Committee. Ms. Miller was a Clinton appointee to the U.S. Treasury’s Community Development Advisory Board, initially as a member and later as its Chair. She chaired the Opportunity Finance Network board for six years.

Ms. Miller speaks and writes extensively about nonprofit capitalization and finance and has been published recently in The Financial Times, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Community Wealth Vanguard, Stanford Social Innovation Review, The Nonprofit Quarterly, and Worth Magazine.

Advisory Board Members  
  Malcolm GladwellAuthor and New Yorker magazine journalist Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, has been a tremendous bestseller for three years and counting. Malcolm has the uncanny ability to interpret research findings and tantalizing theories in sociology and other fields and apply them to business and organizational problems to generate value.  In The Tipping Point, Malcolm explains the dynamics of trends and helps organizations apply this knowledge to their own business strategies. He shows how ideas and trends start and spread, and offers tools for igniting, steering and/or sustaining trends that matter, whether in business, society, politics, technology or consumer behavior. He also helps organizations identify the types of people who are crucial to the trend process and deploy their talents strategically. His latest release, Blink – “about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye,” and the powerful conclusions we draw in those moments – appeared on the bestseller charts as soon as it was published in 2005.
  Juan EnriquezJuan is a senior research fellow and director of the Harvard Business School Life Science Project. His most recent books are As the Future Catches You: How Genomics & Other Forces are Changing Your Life, Work, Health & Wealth (Random House) and The Untied States of America: Polarization, Fracturing, and Our Future (Crown). In 2001 Juan wrote “Transforming Life, Transforming Business: The Life Science Revolution” (co-authored with Ray Goldberg) in The Digital Enterprise (HBS Press), for which he won a McKinsey Prize. He also wrote “Technology, Gene Research and National Competitiveness” in Globalization and the Rural Environment (DRCLAS/Harvard University Press). He has authored more than a dozen Harvard Business School case studies, as well as articles for such  publications  as Science, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, and Trends in Biotechnology. He is contributing editor of The Journal of Biolaw and Business.
  Ethan ZuckermanEthan is a fellow of the Berkman Center for Internet & Society since 2003. His work focuses on the impact of technology on the developing world. His current projects include a study of global media attention, research on the use of weblogs and other social software in the developing world, and work on a clearinghouse for software for international development. In 2000, Ethan founded Geekcorps, a nonprofit technology volunteer corps. Geekcorps pairs skilled volunteers from US and European high-tech companies with businesses in emerging nations for one- to four-month volunteer tours. More than 3,500 technical experts have shared their talents and experience in more than a dozen developing nations, including Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Vietnam and Morocco. Geekcorps became a division of the International Executive Service Corps in 2001, where Ethan served as a vice president from 2001–2004. Prior to founding Geekcorps, Ethan helped found Tripod, an early pioneer in the web community space. Ethan served as Tripod’s first graphic designer and technologist, and later as VP of business development and VP of research and development. After Tripod’s acquisition by Lycos in 1998, Ethan served as general manager of the Angelfire.com division and as a member of the Lycos mergers and acquisitions team.
  Chris JordanChris Jordan is an internationally acclaimed photographic artist and social activist whose work explores the detritus of American mass culture. His newest series, titled “Running the Numbers,” depicts the staggering statistics that define our mass behaviors, in huge, intricately detailed panels as large as thirty feet wide. These astonishing works invite the viewer to walk up close and see every detail as a metaphor for the role of the individual in our hypermodern society. Chris’s work is exhibited widely in the US and Europe, and has been featured in magazines, newspapers, weblogs, documentary films and television programs all over the globe. In the Spring of 2008, Chris served as an international spokesperson for National Geographic in their global campaign for Earth Day 2008. A sought-after speaker on the subject of mass culture, Chris has appeared on several national television programs recently. He lives in Seattle with his wife the poet Victoria Sloan Jordan, and his son Emerson.
  Carolyn PorcoCarolyn is the leader of the Imaging Science Team on the Cassini mission presently orbiting Saturn, and a lead imaging scientist on the New Horizons Pluto/Kuiper Belt mission, which launched in January, 2006. She is a veteran imaging scientist of the Voyager mission to the outer solar system in the 1980s. She received her PhD in 1983 from the California Institute of Technology. Carolyn is the director of the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, where Cassini images are collected, processed and released to the public, and an adjunct professor at both the University of Colorado and the University of Arizona. She is also the CEO of Diamond Sky Productions, a small company devoted to the scientific, as well as artful, use of planetary images and computer graphics for the presentation of science to the public. Carolyn has been an active participant in guiding the American planetary exploration program over the last 15 years through membership on a host of NASA advisory committees, and in 2001/2002 was the vice chairperson for the steering group of the Solar System Decadal Survey, sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences and NASA. Her contributions to the exploration of the outer solar system have been recognized with the naming of Asteroid (7231) Porco.
  Jakob Trollbäck Jakob is a self-taught DJ-turned-designer, founder and creative director of Trollbäck + Company. Trollbäck + Company is a bicoastal creative studio committed to generating innovative visual and branding solutions. The company works across a variety of media, from film titles and trailers to TV commercials, environmental and architectural installations, branding, advertising and magazine and book design. 
  Stephen Hand Steve is President and CTO of Know Technology, the IT solutions and support company that he founded in 1998. Steve has 22 years of IT experience in a variety of industries including retail, finance and telecommunications throughout the US and in the Middle East. Dedicated to Maine’s IT community, Steve sits on the MESDA board of directors and serves as the chairman of the Maine Technology Institute IT board.  Steve is among the few who have been involved in the production of Pop!Tech since its beginning in 1997.
Directors Emeritus
  Harvey ArdmanA professional writer since graduating from college, Harvey began his career as a staff writer for Business Week magazine. Later, he became editor of the Research Institute of America’s Tomorrow magazine. He has freelanced for many magazines, including American Heritage, Esquire, the Magazine of Wall Street and Ladies’ Home Journal. Since the mid-’70s, Harvey’s work has been entirely freelance. Over the years, he’s written and published 20 books, including two spy novels, as well as dozens of documentary television shows and series for PBS, the Discovery Channel and Turner Broadcasting. He’s currently at work on his third spy novel, Tunnel Vision. Last year, he was an entrant in the International Whistling Contest. Ardman joined Pop!Tech at its second meeting and served as program director for several years. He lives with his wife and teenage son in Rockport, Maine.
  Bob Metcalfe Bob joined Polaris Venture Partners as a general partner in January, 2001. He specializes in Boston-based IT start-ups. He had three careers before becoming a venture capitalist: While an engineer-scientist (1965–1979), Bob helped build the early Internet. In 1973, at the Xerox Palo Alto Research Center, he invented Ethernet, the local-area networking (LAN) standard on which he shares four patents. In 2003, Ethernet’s 30th year, 184 million new Ethernet connections were shipped for $12.5 billion. While an entrepreneur-executive (1979–1990), Bob founded 3Com Corporation, the billion-dollar networking company, where at various times he was chairman, CEO, division general manager, and vice president of engineering, sales, and marketing. While a publisher-pundit (1990–2000), Bob was CEO of IDG’s InfoWorld Publishing Company (1992–1995). For eight years, he wrote an Internet column read weekly by more than 500,000 information technologists. He spoke often; appeared on radio, television, and the web; and produced conferences, including ACM97, ACM1, Agenda, Pop!Tech, and Vortex. Bob’s book credits include Packet Communication (Thomson), Internet Collapses and Other InfoWorld Punditry (IDG Books), and Beyond Calculation: The Next Fifty Years of Computing (co-edited for Springer Verlag).
  John SculleyJohn is former president and CEO of Pepsi; former CEO of Apple Computer; high-tech entrepreneur and venture capitalist. Named “Man of the Year” by Financial World, “CEO of the Decade” by Financial News Network and “Advertising Man of the Year” by Adweek as well as Ad Age, John draws from his boardroom experiences to offer valuable insight into leading change, the new global marketplace and the innovative concepts companies are developing to transform business. John was Pepsi’s CEO for five years, during which time the company’s successful “Pepsi Generation” and “Pepsi Challenge” marketing campaigns enabled the brand to become the largest-selling packaged goods in America. In 1983, Steve Jobs recruited John to Apple to bring big-brand marketing to the high-tech industry. Together, Jobs and Sculley successfully launched Macintosh and desktop publishing. During John’s decade as Apple’s CEO, Macintosh went on to become the #1-selling PC in the world. Since leaving Apple, John has pursued venture capitalism. Successful early-stage companies he worked with, which either went public and/or were sold, include Professional SportsCare, Select Comfort, NFO Research, Intralinks, Hotwire and InPhonic.