We appreciate the contribution that these and all of our speakers make toward a successful conference!

Patricia Aburdene is a world-renowned speaker, author, and architect of corporate transformation. Having won recognition as co-author of the Megatrends books, she now inspires audiences with a concrete blueprint of how values, consciousness, and leadership will heal today's economic crisis. Her new book, Megatrends 2010: The Rise of Conscious Capitalism, was published in September 2005.

Jane Ambachtsheer is a Principal of Mercer Investment Consulting based in Toronto, Canada. Mercer Investment Consulting is a leading global provider of investment consulting services for pension funds, foundations, endowments and other investors in 35 countries. Ms. Ambachtsheer is responsible for Mercer's global responsible investing unit and consults to clients in Europe, Australasia and North America. She joined Mercer Investment Consulting’s London office in 2000, and transferred to Toronto in 2003. Prior to joining Mercer, she worked for pension benchmarking firm Cost Effectiveness Measurement (CEM), in Amsterdam and Toronto.

Paul R. Epstein, M.D., M.P.H. is Associate Director of the Center for Health and the Global Environment at Harvard Medical School, and is a medical doctor trained in tropical public health. Dr. Epstein has worked in medical, teaching and research capacities in Africa, Asia and Latin America. In 1993, he coordinated an eight-part series on Health and Climate Change for the British medical journal, Lancet. He has worked with the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), the National Academy of Sciences, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to assess the health impacts of climate change and develop health applications of climate forecasting and remote sensing. Dr. Epstein is coordinating the international project "Climate Change Futures: Health, Ecological and Economic Dimensions," with support from Swiss Re and the United Nations Development Programme. This project involves scientists, UN agencies, NGOs and corporate/financial sector leaders in the assessment of the new risks and opportunities presented by a changing climate. 
Back To Top

David C. Korten authored the classic international bestseller When Corporations Rule the World, which helped mobilize a global resistance movement against corporate-led economic globalization. His sequel, The Post-Corporate World: Life after Capitalism, helped inspire formation of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies. His latest contribution, The Great Turning: From Empire to Earth Community (May 2006), illuminates the nature and implications of the epic choice now facing the human species between domination and partnership as we confront the current challenges of peak oil, global climate change, and a global economic system on the brink of collapse.

Korten is co-founder and board chair of the Positive Futures Network, which publishes YES! A Journal of Positive Futures, and serves on the boards of the Business Alliance for Local Living Economies (BALLE) and the Bainbridge Graduate Institute, which offers a pioneering MBA program devoted to preparing managers for careers in socially and environmentally responsible businesses. He holds MBA and PhD degrees from the Stanford Business School, is a former Harvard Business School professor, and has thirty years experience as a development professional in Asia, Africa, and Latin America strengthening management education and pioneering the field of social development management.
Back To Top

Joel Makower (www.makower.com) has been a well-respected writer and strategist on sustainable business, clean technology, and the green marketplace for nearly 20 years. He has helped a variety of companies develop and implement their sustainability strategies, including GE, GM, Hewlett Packard, and Nike. The Associated Press has called him “The guru of green business practices.”

Mr. Makower is founder of the sustainable business portal GreenBiz.com; co-founder of Clean Edge, a clean-tech research and publishing firm; and a senior advisor at GreenOrder, a sustainability strategy consultancy. A former nationally syndicated columnist, he has authored more than a dozen books, including Beyond the Bottom Line: Putting Social Responsibility to Work for your Business and the World and The E-Factor: The Bottom-Line Approach to Environmentally Responsible Business. Mr. Makower is a Batten Fellow at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia, an advisor to VantagePoint Venture Partner’s clean-technology practice, and serves in a board or advisory capacity for a variety of other for-profit and nonprofit organizations.
Back To Top

Jacqueline Novogratz is founder and CEO of Acumen Fund, a not-for-profit global venture fund that uses entrepreneurial approaches to solve problems of global poverty. The Acumen Fund focuses on building financially sustainable and scalable enterprises that deliver affordable healthcare, clean water, and housing to the poor in six countries in South Asia and Africa. More than $30 million from individuals, corporations and foundations has supplied the resources necessary for the Acumen Fund to provide financial support and management assistance to both for-profit and nonprofit enterprises. Founded in 2001, the Acumen Fund now has offices in the US, India and Pakistan.

Ms. Novogratz began her career in international banking with Chase Manhattan Bank. Prior to creating Acumen Fund, she founded and directed The Philanthropy Workshop and The Next Generation Leadership program at the Rockefeller Foundation. She also founded Duterimbere, a micro-finance institution in Rwanda. In addition, she has consulted to UNICEF and the World Bank in various African countries. She is currently on the advisory boards of Stanford Graduate School of Business and of Innovations Journal published by MIT Press. She is an Aspen Institute Henry Crown fellow, a Synergos Institute Senior Fellow, and was a Rockefeller Foundation Warren Weaver Fellow. Ms. Novogratz holds an MBA from Stanford and a BA from the University of Virginia.
Back To Top

Bob Veres has been a commentator, author and consultant in the financial services industry for more than twenty years. He has worked as editor of Financial Planning magazine; as a contributing editor to the Journal of Financial Planning; as a columnist and editor-at-large of Dow Jones Investment Advisor magazine; and as editor of Morningstar’s advisor website, MorningstarAdvisor.com. He authored The Cutting Edge in Financial Services (Bloomberg Press, Jan. 2003), and has presented at many of the financial planning industry’s largest professional conferences.

Mr. Veres is editor and publisher of Inside Information, an interactive subscription-based information service for financial planning professionals. Inside Information presents a continuous and comprehensive review of the changes that the financial services profession is going through, what new services are being offered, new trends in managing a practice, shifts in the accepted wisdom about portfolio building, and pieces on how investment professionals can unlock their personal potential in a very demanding and competitive business. Mr. Veres has been named one of the most influential people in the financial planning profession by Investment Advisor magazine and by Financial Planning magazine, and was granted the lifetime achievement award for service to the profession by the National Association of Personal Financial Advisors.
Back To Top