NAPA VALLEY: JUNE 7 - 10, 2018 •
SAN FRANCISCO: JUNE 10 - 14, 2018
Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger, III has been dedicated to the pursuit of safety for his entire adult life. While he is best known for serving as Captain during what has been called the “Miracle on the Hudson,” Sullenberger is a safety expert, speaker, and author. He currently serves on the U.S. Department of Transportation’s Advisory Committee for Automation in Transportation. He still flies privately.
Born and raised in Denison, Texas, Sullenberger pursued his childhood love of aviation at the United States Air Force Academy. In his graduation year at the academy, he received the Outstanding Cadet in Airmanship Award. In addition to his bachelor’s degree in psychology, he also has two master's degrees, one in industrial psychology from Purdue University and one in public administration from the University of Northern Colorado. He also has an honorary Doctorate of Letters from Purdue University.
Upon graduation from the Academy, Sullenberger served as a fighter pilot for the United States Air Force from 1975 to 1980. He advanced to become a flight leader and a training officer, attaining the rank of captain. During his active duty, he was stationed in North America and Europe. After serving in the Air Force, Sullenberger became an airline pilot with Pacific Southwest Airlines, later acquired by US Airways, until his retirement from commercial flying in March 2010.
Prior to gaining worldwide attention, Sullenberger was an active and ardent safety advocate throughout his four-decade-long career. He was selected to perform accident investigation duties for the United States Air Force, and served as an Air Line Pilots Association (ALPA) representative during a National Transportation Safety Board investigation. Additionally, Sullenberger served as a Local Air Safety Chairman for ALPA, and was a member of one of their national technical committees, where he contributed to the creation of a Federal Aviation Administration Advisory Circular. He was also instrumental in developing and implementing the Crew Resource Management course used by US Airways, and he has taught the course to hundreds of other airline crewmembers.
After logging more than 20,000 hours of flight time Sullenberger became internationally renowned on January 15, 2009 when he and his crew safely guided US Airways Flight 1549 to an emergency water landing in New York City’s frigid Hudson River. The Airbus A320’s two engines had lost thrust following a bird strike. Sullenberger and his crew received international acclaim for their actions that day, including the passage of a Congressional resolution recognizing their bravery. Sullenberger was ranked second in TIME's "Top 100 Most Influential Heroes and Icons of 2009” and was awarded the French Legion of Honour.
Sullenberger is the #1 New York Times best-selling author of Highest Duty: My Search for What Really Matters and also wrote Making a Difference: Stories of Vision and Courage from America's Leaders. Clint Eastwood directed the major motion picture about Sullenberger’s life, titled Sully, based on Highest Duty. Tom Hanks stars in the lead role; Aaron Eckhart and Laura Linney co-star. The film was released to critical acclaim in September of 2016 and garnered four Broadcast Film Critics nominations and one Academy Award nomination. Highest Duty has been republished as Sully: My Search for What Really Matters.
From 2009 to 2013, Sullenberger served as co-chairman of EAA Young Eagles—a program that inspires and educates youth about aviation. He is an international lecturer and keynote speaker at educational institutions, corporations and non-profit organizations about the importance of aviation and patient safety, crisis management, life-long preparation, leadership and living a life of integrity. In collaboration with DuPont Sustainable Solutions, Sullenberger developed and was featured in a multi-award winning video training program, Miracle on the Hudson: Prepare for Safety, which helps employees increase their commitment to safety and transform their organizations’ safety culture. These programs and endeavors are ideally suited to put Sullenberger’s expertise in safety and knowledge of high performance systems’ improvement, to work saving lives, saving money and bringing value to communities. To this end, at the request of Department of Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx’s request, Sullenberger began serving on the DOT’s Advisory Committee on Automation in Transportation in January 2017. The Committee will advise on transportation automation issues across a range of industries.
Sullenberger is married to Lorrie Sullenberger, a community, social, and women’s wellness advocate. She serves as an Advisory Board Member for Big Brothers Big Sisters Bay Area, and is a 26-year volunteer with Guide Dogs for the Blind. The couple and their two daughters reside in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Daniel Kraft is a Stanford and Harvard trained physician-scientist, inventor, entrepreneur, and innovator. With over 25 years of experience in clinical practice, biomedical research and healthcare innovation, Kraft has chaired the Medicine for Singularity University since its inception in 2008, and is the Founder and Chair of Exponential Medicine, a program that explores convergent, rapidly developing technologies and their potential in biomedicine and healthcare.
Following undergraduate degrees from Brown University and medical school at Stanford, Daniel was Board Certified in both Internal Medicine & Pediatrics after completing a Harvard residency at the Massachusetts General Hospital & Boston Children's Hospital, and fellowships in hematology, oncology and bone marrow transplantation at Stanford.
Daniel's academic research has focused on: stem cell biology and regenerative medicine, stem cell derived immunotherapies for cancer, bioengineering human T-cell differentiation, and humanized animal models. Clinical work focuses on: bone marrow / hematopoietic stem cell transplantation for malignant and non-malignant diseases in adults and children, medical devices to enable stem cell based regenerative medicine, including marrow derived stem cell harvesting, processing and delivery. He also implemented the first text-paging system at Stanford Hospital.
He is also the inventor of the MarrowMiner, an FDA approved device for the minimally invasive harvest of bone marrow, and founded RegenMed Systems, a company developing technologies to enable adult stem cell based regenerative therapies. Daniel is an avid pilot and has served in the Massachusetts and California Air National Guard as an officer and flight surgeon with F-15 & F-16 fighter Squadrons. He has conducted research on aerospace medicine that was published with NASA, with whom he was a finalist for astronaut selection.
A visionary global leader, entrepreneur, adventurer and best-selling author, Blake Mycoskie is Founder and Chief Shoe Giver of TOMS, and the catalyst behind the now-ubiquitous One for One® movement. While traveling in Argentina in 2006, Blake witnessed the hardships faced by children growing up without shoes. His solution was simple yet revolutionary – create a for-profit business that was sustainable and not reliant on donations. Blake’s vision soon evolved into the One for One business model, providing the powerful foundation for TOMS. Over the course of its first five years, TOMS provided millions of new shoes to children through humanitarian organizations, donating different kinds of shoes appropriate for each community. But Blake recognized other vital needs during his travels and saw that One for One could be applied to more than shoes. In 2011 he launched TOMS Eyewear to help restore sight to those in need with every purchase of sunglasses and optical frames. As he learned more about global development, he saw the opportunity to address two other needs in underserved communities. In 2014 Blake launched TOMS Roasting Co., a direct- trade, premium coffee line which helps provide clean water to developing countries and communities in need; in early 2015 came the TOMS Bag Collection, focused on safe births for mothers and babies through skilled birth attendant training and birth kits.
To date, TOMS has given over 75 million pairs of new shoes to children in need since 2006. TOMS Eyewear has helped restore sight to over 500,000 people in need since its launch in 2011, and TOMS Roasting Co. has helped provide over 450,000 weeks of safe water to communities in need. Blake’s trailblazing approach to business has earned myriad accolades over the last decade. In 2009, Blake and TOMS received the Secretary of State’s Award of Corporate Excellence (ACE). At a Clinton Global Initiative University plenary session, former President Clinton introduced Blake to the audience as “one of the most interesting entrepreneurs (I’ve) ever met” People magazine featured him in its “Heroes Among Us” section,and TOMS Shoes was featured in the Time magazine article “How to Fix Capitalism.” In 2011, Blake was named on Fortune magazine’s “40 Under 40” list, recognizing him as one of the top young businessmen in the world. Harvard’s School of Public Health accorded him its Next Generation Award, honoring an individual under age 40 whose leadership and commitment to health as a human right inspires young people to make “health for all” a global priority. Recognizing his ongoing commitment, Richard Branson recently asked Blake to join The B Team, a group of worldwide leaders which seeks to catalyze a movement of corporate executives who embrace a better way of doing business, both for the well-being of people and the planet.
“Our mission is very simple: to use business to improve lives. Not just the lives of the people we serve, but the lives of our customers, our employees, and our suppliers. That’s our first responsibility, our real responsibility.”
Daniel Saks is president and co-CEO of AppDirect, the only end-to-end cloud commerce platform for succeeding in the digital economy, which he co-founded in 2009 with Nicolas Desmarais. Under Dan’s leadership, the AppDirect ecosystem powers millions of cloud subscriptions worldwide and connects channels, developers, and customers to simplify the digital supply chain by enabling the onboarding and sale of products with third-party services, for any channel, on any device, with support. In addition, Dan established the five core cultural values of AppDirect – humility, true north, intensity, ownership and positive mental attitude – which guide the company’s overall vision. Dan credits these values for the company’s success, and mentors employees on embracing them as each individual grows in their career.
An innovative thinker, he approaches each goal with a framework and plan for achievement, leading to his success. A sought-after expert in cloud and startup innovation, Dan was named as one of the 100 Most Intriguing Entrepreneurs of 2017 by Goldman Sachs and appeared on the 2015 Forbes 30 Under 30 Enterprise Technology list. He was also the recipient of the prestigious McGill University Young Inspiration Achievement Award in 2018, part of the Desautels Management Achievement Awards, which honors business leaders who have made significant contributions to society.
Dan has spoken at numerous industry conferences, including Web Summit, Collision, CeBIT, among others. He is an advisor for the venture capital fund 8VC, and serves on McGill University’s International Advisory Board. He holds degrees from McGill and Harvard universities.