The Franchise for Humanity 2015 program will be held at:

• Cordura Hall, Stanford University – 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, Friday, 20 February​

• Institute for the Future in Palo Alto – 8:00 am to 5:00 pm, Saturday, 21 February

Some of our distinguished collaborators (in first name alphabetical order):

• Andrew Trabulsi is a consultant, author, and entrepreneur, currently working at the Institute for the Future. Andrews work focuses on technology, geopolitics, and economic development policy. Based in San Francisco, his work and research has included technology capacity building with indigenous communities in the Amazon rainforest, economic development with the Federal Reserve Bank, innovation consulting with Deloitte LLP, and geopolitical analysis of trans-national criminal organizations. Andrew advises public, private, and social sector clients on issues of strategy, geopolitics, forecasting, and policy development. His first book, Warlords, Inc: Black Markets, Broken States, and the Rise of the Warlord Entrepreneur, comes out in Spring 2015.​

• Brian C. Donohue is the Founder and President of the Enterprise 501c3, a California non-profit corporation whose mission is to leverage the assets of colleges and universities into service to the public through revenue-generating contracts thus assisting higher education to attain fiscal sustainability. Formerly a designed official of the UC Regents and director of the campus-wide Business Contracts for UC Berkeley, Brian also taught Intellectual Property Law for 18 years. He is the author of The Spirit of Fiat Lux www.SpiritofFiatLux.net, and numerous articles, as well as a Co-creator of Franchise for Humanity and founding member of the California Health MRC. Brian has been a licensed attorney for 35 years and holds an M.B.A in Information Technology from George Washington University.​

• Dr. Fred Luskin has completed extensive research on the training and measurement of forgiveness therapy. His research demonstrates that learning forgiveness leads to increased physical vitality, hope, greater self–efficacy, enhanced optimism and conflict resolution skills. It also shows that forgiveness lessons the physical and emotional toll of stress, and decreases hurt, anger depression and blood pressure. Dr. Luskin is the author of the best seller Forgive for Good: A Proven Prescription for Health and Happiness and Stress Free for Good. He has worked with many organizations and has trained lawyers, doctors, church leaders and congregations, hospital staffs, teachers and other professionals to manage stress and enhance forgiveness all over the United States. 

• Gil Friend, Chief Sustainability Officer, City of Palo Alto, CA. Gil's formal job description is to "develop a world class sustainability strategy for the city, and manage the activities that will lead Palo Alto to being the greenest city in America." Widely considered one of the founders of the sustainable business movement, Gil was named inaugural member of the Sustainability Hall of Fame by the International Society of Sustainability Professionals, and "one of the 10 most influential sustainability voices in America" by The Guardian. As the founder & CEO of Natural Logic Inc, Gil helped companies in a wide range of industries design, implement and measure profitable sustainability strategies. "Natures' ecosystems have nearly 4 billion years of experience in the development of efficient, adaptive, resilient, and sustainable systems. Why should companies reinvent the wheel, when the R&D has already been done?" (Gil Friend, 1991). 

• Jerry Talley, Founder of the South Bay Organizational Network, works with organizations to help them discover and build the path from clearly stated goals to on-the-ground actualization. The most difficult part of the process is moving from the visionary or strategic into the operational and tactical which brings an exponential increase in the number of variables and the complexity of their interactions. Noting that personal agendas begin to encroach on corporate goals, along with distinguishing problems as having specific attributes that call for different appropriate processes, Jerry helps individuals and organizations develop new skill sets, attitudes, values, and even infrastructures.​

• Kimberly King is a social entrepreneur and strategy consultant working with innovation ecosystems across the world. Kimberly is CEO of multiple companies and organizations and has partnered with leading brands that include American Express, Coca-Cola, AT&T, World Trade Center Association and the United Nations. Kimberly’s passion is creating new social and economic paradigms and "taking high impact ideas to scale." Her focus is on community partnerships, network technologies and the empowerment of women and youth. She has been instrumental in the creation of micro-finance, small business, and cooperative development models on five continents, and is an honored recipient of the Eleanor Roosevelt Global Humanitarian Award. Kimberly is a founding member of numerous organizations and co-author of “The Power of Team” and the best selling series “Wake up and Live the Life You Love”. 

• Linda Staheli, Global STI Collaboratory Consulting. Linda has a wide-ranging background in both the executive and congressional branches of government, including roles as senior staff member for CRDF Global, Director of the Division of International Relations, Fogarty International Center at NIH, Assistant Director for International Affairs at OSTP, and Foreign Affairs Officer at the Department of State. She currently works in a variety of networked visionary projects, including the recently launched 'Teens Dream' online video contest created to inspire and support youth the world over, as well as the Boomer-Millennial Wisdom Bridge, a project with the Woodrow Wilson Center, to meld cross-generational wisdom with inspiration. Her vision of a virtual collaboratory to help scientists, the technology and the innovation sectors in addressing global challenges inspired efforts to create a crossover event between the Global Innovation Summit and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. The seed of that vision has been brought to bear in this year's Franchise for Humanity. 

• Mark Jacobson, professor of civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, uses large data analysis to look for correlations between human impacts and health measures, and to model energy use and sources toward sustainable technology use and energy production for humanity. He has used computer models of the atmosphere to look at multiple feedbacks between climate change and air pollution, including principles of gas and particle emissions and transport, gas chemistry, particle production and evolution, ocean processes, soil processes, and the atmospheric effects of rain, winds, sunlight, heat and clouds, among other factors to estimating deaths due to asthma and other complications of particulates in the air we breath. He has also created a ranking and use-rate of all potential energy sources to create a plan to power the world of all purposes, using wind, water and sun. 

• Mina Arasteh is a student at the University of California,Davis pursuing a BS in Environmental Policy Analysis and Planning and a double BA in Communications and Dramatic Arts. Mina is a KickActivist with the iMatterMovement, a youth empowerment movement for which she coordinates monthly youth council meetings to encourage youth in activism against global climate change. She has worked with the sustainable nonprofit Generation Green in helping local governments to be more sustainable through outreach, fact sheets and workshops. Other work includes contributions to the Town of Moraga’s Climate Action Plan and Sustainability Intern to the Executive of the Associated Students of UC Davis. 

• Ramin Sedehi is the leader of Berkeley Research Group’s Higher Education practice, working in strategic, academic, and administrative dimensions of higher education institutions, academic medical centers, and research organizations. Mr. Sedehi’s particular focus is on enabling leaders to transform their institutions by engaging holistic and adaptive strategies. Ramin brings more than 20 years of experience at the University of Pennsylvania, UCSF Stanford Health Care, and UCSF medical centers, working with those institutions through times of great change. His specialty is working with faculty, academic leaders, and boards to build trust and enhanced collaboration in an ecosystem of great complexity. Mr. Sedehi is a frequent speaker and contributor on higher education issues. He brings a commitment to transform the current challenges for young scientists faced by a lack of clear career objectives.in a shifting landscape of basic science in academia. 

• Sandy Bates, of The Innovation Partners, is an avid innovation entrepreneur and author who has worked in various aspects of innovation and marketing strategy for the past fifteen years. Sandy has mentored, coached and led more than one hundred innovation initiatives, and has recently turned her focus to the needs of the social sector with a goal of taking state of the art innovation practices, tools, and methodologies to address the most critical issues facing our world such as health care for the uninsured, natural resource conservation and education. Her book, The Social Innovation Imperative (McGraw-Hill) was released in December 2011. She is the former director and co-founder of the Strategyn Institute and spent nearly a decade working with Strategyn and its clients to create breakthrough products and services. By using her framework as a catalyst to streamline the innovation process and make it more accessible and applicable to the wicked problems of today, non-profits, NGO’s, the government sector, entrepreneurs, and corporations are creating new solutions that deliver social impact. 

• Stephanie Eberle is Director, Stanford School of Medicine Career Center. Stephanie has been developing a career path incubator based on the growing need for disruptive education and innovation at the workforce level for graduate and professional degree students and post docs in the University system. Seeing herself as a director of 'empowerment of work education' Stephanie blogs on such topics as 'Why you shouldn't follow your passion' (you'll be inspired by what you learn from her recent essay from Inside Higher Ed. Combining professional development with market trends and needs, Stephanie is creating a prototype within the medical and life sciences as well as graduate education at Stanford University. Her strange fascination with what motivates people to do what they do and make the choices they make informs her quest for a more generative work-future for our next generation of scientists and researchers.