BIL:Oakland

Building a Better (National) Economy

Marco Vangelisti (Slow Money)

Marco Vangelisti came to the US as a Fulbright scholar in mathematics and economics at the University of California in Berkeley. He holds an MFA focusing on the intersection between public art and ecology and later worked for 6 years managing investment equity portfolios primarily on behalf of large foundations and endowments. In April 2009 Marco left the finance industry and has since been instrumental in the formation and development of the Slow Money Northern California chapter. Marco is currently developing Essential Knowledge for Transition – a curriculum for engaged citizens to understand the money and banking system, the economic system and the financial system and how we need to transform them.

Chelsea Rustrum (The Sharers)

Chelsea Rustrum is a sharing economy author, facilitator, and consultant with deep practical knowledge and hands on understanding of how the collaborative economy has come to fruition, grown, and continues to evolve business. She’s the author of It’s a Shareable Life, the founder of a social and educational series in the Silicon Valley, dubbed The Sharers.

Frank Ortiz (The Earth is Everyone’s Birthright)

Lifelong STEM educator, Frank has 15 years experience facilitating learners both from across the United States as well as abroad in fairly different educational settings. Former Director and Instructor at the Henry George School of Philadelphia and current Director of The Earth is Everyone’s Birthright.

Building a Better (Global) Economy

Catherine Ndungu-Case (Cheza Nami Foundation)

Catherine Ndungu-Case is the founder of the Cheza Nami Foundation, a non-profit organization whose goal is to promote cultural diversity and global citizenship through African Culture and performing arts. She is originally from Kenya, holds a master’s degree in cell and molecular biology and currently works in the clinical research field. She also has great passion in creating programming that fosters interconnections between people. Catherine was recently featured in Diablo Magazine’s top 40 under 40 for her contributions to the community.

Quisia D. Gonzalez (Robert Schalkenbach Foundation)

Quisia is a board member at Robert Schalkenbach Foundation (RSF), a non-profit organization established in 1925 to spread awareness of the ideas of the social and economic philosopher Henry George (1839-1897). After becoming a medical doctor at the Universidade de Pernambuco in Brazil, Quisia Gonzalez returned to her native Honduras, where she practiced medicine for three years until she moved to the US in 1989. She has worked extensively in the field of education, including adult basic education and literacy, as well as parenting and HIV counseling. In addition, she has been active in labor organizing at the Latino Workers enter, and is co-founder of the Proyecto de los Trabajadores Latinoamericanos, advocating for fair wages and immigration reform. Quisia taught at the Henry George School in New York for over 11 years and served on the school’s board for 5 years. Her personal experience in Latin America inspired her interest in Henry George and her commitment to Georgist principles. She is a fervent activist for economic justice, human, and indigenous rights.

Kiki Mwiti (Urban Global Ventures)

Kiki Mwiti is an emergent leader and serial entrepreneur in the fields of technology and global investment. Born and raised in Nairobi, Kenya [Africa’s tech hub] she watched the rapid rise of innovation across Africa and the dissemination of new forms of industry and markets. In 2008, she founded Urban Global Ventures [UGV], to strategically position and develop global firms for investment.

Athol Halle (Groundswell UK)

Athol has worked with the UK poverty-alleviating organization Groundswell since 2003, taking on the role of Chief Executive in 2006. His previous employers include Cardboard Citizens, Amnesty International UK and National Homeless Alliance.

Optimal Taxation

Joshua C. Vincent (Center for the Study of Economics)

Joshua Vincent has been an Executive Director at the Center for the Study of Economics since August 1997. Vincent has worked pro bono and as a consultant to over 75 municipalities, counties, NGOs and national governments. Vincent is the editor and publisher of Incentive Taxation, a journal that reports on land value taxation.

“Stand Up Economics”Yoram Bauman

Yoram Bauman is a PhD environmental economist and “stand-up economist.” He is the founder of the revenue-neutral carbon tax proposal (I-732) that will be on the ballot in Washington State in November 2016. He has been working on environmental tax reform since 1998, when he co-authored the book Tax Shift, which helped inspire the revenue-neutral carbon tax in British Columbia. Bauman also co-authored the Cartoon Introduction to Climate Change and the two-volume Cartoon Introduction to Economics.

Kris Nelson

Kris Nelson is a Principal at Phoenix Finance, which provides access to capital without collateral to small businesses and startups. He also serves as Legislative Director of Common Ground OR-WA, a non-profit organization that promotes a more democratic treatment of land and natural resources. Previously, Kris worked as a Principal at Genomics Consulting, where he helped launch a venture capital firm in clean technology. He holds a Master’s degree in Business Administration from Willamette University and a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism from Evergreen State College.

Robin Hanson

Robin Hanson is associate professor of economics at George Mason University and a research associate at the Future of Humanity Institute of Oxford University. He is known as an expert on idea futures and markets, and he was involved in the creation of the Foresight Institute’s Foresight Exchange and DARPA’s FutureMAP project. He invented market scoring rules like LMSR (Logarithmic Market Scoring Rule) used by prediction markets such as Consensus Point (where Hanson is Chief Scientist), and has conducted research on signalling.

Fred Foldvary

Fred E. Foldvary is a board member at Robert Schalkenbach Foundation (RSF), a non-profit organization established in 1925 to spread awareness of the ideas of the social and economic philosopher Henry George (1839-1897). Dr. Foldvary received his B.A. in economics from the University of California at Berkeley, and his M.A. and Ph.D. in economics from George Mason University. He has taught economics at the Latvian University of Agriculture, Virginia Tech, John F. Kennedy University, California State University East Bay, the University of California at Berkeley Extension, Santa Clara University, and currently at San Jose State University. Foldvary is the author of The Soul of Liberty, Public Goods and Private Communities, Dictionary of Free Market Economics. He edited and contributed to Beyond Neoclassical Economics and, with Dan Klein, The Half-Life of Policy Rationales. Foldvary’s areas of research include public finance, governance, ethical philosophy, and land economics.

Will Robots Take Our Jobs?

Edward Miller (Henry George School of Chicago)

Administrative Director of the Henry George School of Chicago, a non-profit educational organization which provides educational opportunities to the public on the topic of classical political economy. He serves as a board member for the Center for the Study of Economics. Previously, he has worked with the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies.

Andres Gomez Emilsson (Stanford Transhumanists Association)

Andrés Gómez Emilsson studied Symbolic Systems (with an Artificial Intelligence concentration) at Stanford, and later finished a masters in computational psychology at the same university. During his time at Stanford he co-founded the Stanford Transhumanist Association and became good friends with David Pearce, taking on the flag of the Hedonistic Imperative. Thus his ongoing interest in the functional, biochemical and quantum substrates of pure bliss. He is currently working at a Natural Language Processing startup in San Francisco, and in his free time he develops psychophysical tools to study the computational properties of consciousness (for more see qualiacomputing.com)

Julia Bossmann (Foresight Institute)

Julia Bossmann is the president of Foresight Institute, a leading NGO on world-changing technologies such as nanotechnology, biotechnology, and artificial intelligence. She holds a Masters degree with highest honors in brain & behavioral sciences from the University of Dusseldorf and neuroscience from USC. Julia’s professional experience includes scientific research in labs in Germany and in the USA, management consulting at McKinsey & Company, technology R&D at Bosch Research and Technology, and entrepreneurship at Anticip8 and Synthetic.