San Diego

Andrew Biros, Ed.D., is Senior Director of Social Innovation in the Office of the Vice President and Provost at the University of San Diego.

He directs the Fowler Global Social Innovation Challenge, a global venture competition that has invested more than $1 million in seed capital across 50+ universities in 30+ countries on six continents. He is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the USD Collection on Innovation and Impact, an official partner collection of Harvard Business Impact, where he established the licensing partnership, scaled the USD Teaching Cases on Social Impact, and integrated the Kroc Community Dialogue Role-Plays. He also leads the Social Innovation Internship, which connects students with purpose-driven organizations and has grown from 2 placements in 2023 to 27 in 2025.

Before joining USD, Andrew held national leadership roles at New Tech Network, leading executive consulting and partnership strategy for K-12 district leaders across the United States. Earlier in his career, he co-founded a college-preparatory high school in East San Jose serving first-generation students, on assignment from Silicon Schools Fund. He began his career as a Leonore Annenberg Teaching Fellow with the Institute for Citizens & Scholars, teaching social science and English in Philadelphia neighborhood high schools.

His work sits at the intersection of educational equity, coalition-building, and capital deployment. He is a frequent keynote speaker, master of ceremonies, and panelist on social innovation and higher education.

He holds an Ed.D. in Educational Leadership from the University of Southern California, an M.Sc. in Public Policy from University College London, an M.Sc. in Secondary Education from the University of Pennsylvania, and a B.A. in Political Science from the University of Pennsylvania.

Jeff Blanton is a leading keynote speaker, successful business consultant, author and host of Jailbreak Leaders Podcast. His twenty year career in Corporate America began in engineering but quickly evolved from project leadership to senior management roles with large international corporations, life science companies and culminated in a successful NASDQ listed start-up.

In 2001, Jeff founded his own management consulting business, the Blanton Group, focused on overcoming the challenge of executing large strategic initiatives. Working directly with high level executives for over 20 years, Jeff aptly recognized what inspires companies to adapt and thrive in a rapidly changing marketplace. Jeff developed a game-changing formula, Jailbreak Leadership, that provides executives, senior management and teams the strategic skills and tools to have everyone on the team engaged around the company’s long-term inspiring purpose and processes to make it come true.

Whether on stage, in a boardroom or facilitating a workshop in an organization, Jeff provides the strategic skills, tools and guidance to create a passionate and committed team, loyal customers and a boosted bottom line.

Associate Professor in the Department of Management Information Systems and Director of the James Silberrad Brown Center for Artificial Intelligence Research at San Diego State University (SDSU).

Pronouns: He/Him

https://business.sdsu.edu/centers-institutes/ai

Aaron C. Elkins is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management Information Systems and Director of the James Silberrad Brown Center for Artificial Intelligence Research at San Diego State University (SDSU). Prior to joining SDSU, he was a postdoctoral researcher at both the University of Arizona and Imperial College London. Elkins studies human-robotics interactions that incorporate AI to explain and predict human emotion, deception, and mental health based on physiological and nonverbal behavior.  Additionally, Elkins investigates ethical AI which emphasizes explaining complex AI models and understanding biases and performance differences between and within different populations and groups.

Jo Dee Catlin Jacob completed a 27-year career in the U.S. Navy, where she was a pioneer in the all-volunteer force. She attained the rank of Captain. Her last tour of duty was as commanding officer of the naval station in Guam.

When Jo Dee joined Girl Scouts San Diego in 2001, she used her military savvy to originate Operation Thin Mint®. Through the program, San Diegans have sent more than 4 million boxes of Girl Scout Cookies to deployed U.S. military troops.

Under her leadership, the council successfully completed two capital campaigns, raising $8 million to improve camp properties. She retired from Girl Scouts in April 2016.

Jo Dee has received numerous honors, including the “Graduate of the Year” Visionary Award from LEAD San Diego, a national Public Relations Society of America Silver Anvil Award, a Nonprofit Leadership Fellowship to Harvard Business School, and San Diego Business Journal’s Most Admired CEO Award. The University of San Diego presented Girl Scouts San Diego its 2012 Kaleidoscope Award for Exceptional Governance.

She developed the curriculum and now teaches Social Entrepreneurship: Doing Well by Doing Good (MGT 167) to undergraduates at the University of California San Diego’s Rady School of Management. She is a member of UC San Diego Chancellor’s Advisory Committee on the Status of Women.

Jo Dee is active in the 500+ member Rotary Club of San Diego, serving as President during 2012-2013. She enjoys swimming, golf, and SCUBA diving.

Author of Beyond the Hoppo Ryodo: Japan, Russia and U.S. Relations in the 1990’s (AEI Press), Jo Dee graduated from Stanford (BA) and Pepperdine (MA) universities. She is the volunteer class correspondent for Stanford Alumni Association.

Erlinde moved from the EU to the US in 2013 after her PhD, and currently works as an Associate Professor of Marketing at SDSU. She teaches Marketing Research and Sustainability at the Fowler College of Business, serves as the Chair of the SDSU’s Senate Sustainability Committee, and as a co-PI for SCEIN (Southern California Energy Innovation Network), a Cleantech incubator funded by the CEC (California Energy Commission). She serves on the Board of Directors for In Good Company, a local non-profit, and volunteers in her community. Her academic research interests include social, economic, and environmental sustainability. She works on federal grant-funded research on climate resilience in underserved communities. In her free time, Erlinde spends as much time as possible offline and outdoors (backpacking, hiking, bike riding, etc) or in her kitchen (vegan cooking). She lives in a small, sustainable biophilic paradise together with her husband and her adventure cat, Chamise.

Pronouns: They/Them

Malo Santo

Eyee is an award-winning AI expert. X is a Senior Policy Advisor for the Goldman School of Public Policy at UC Berkeley, and the CEO of Malo Santo – an AI consulting firm. X’s insights have been featured in Forbes, BET, and Wired, with multiple appearances on CNBC’s Power Lunch.

Over the past 17 years, X has served as an engineering leader, product manager, and researcher for companies like Microsoft, Google, and the Department of Defense. At Microsoft, X worked on cutting-edge Ambient Intelligence solutions that combined blockchain, AI, and IoT for Fortune 500 companies around the world.

At Google, X worked across all of Google’s AI products & research to ensure they were built responsibly & ethically. X created novel research teams, including the Skin Tone team, which developed techniques to improve AI’s ability to recognize diverse skin tones. This work set new industry standards for measuring skin tone in AI & enhanced products like the Pixel phone’s camera & Google’s Image Search.

Now, as CEO of Malo Santo, X empowers companies to build AI that scales – across geographies, cultures, and within communities. X has been seen in Forbes, BET and on CNBC’s Power Lunch.

Brian believes the world’s most wasted resource is human intention, and his mission is to help people turn their good intentions into tangible action. Brian has a social enterprise coaching business where he helps people to become the healthier, happier, best version of themselves. A percentage of proceeds are donated to charity and services are offered pro-bono to elevate impact leaders. He has become an authority in the personal development space through his podcast Self Improvement Daily, which has earned over 20 million downloads over the course of the last 6 years.

Additionally Brian is the co-founder of a nonprofit called For Purpose Foundation, which is all about making it easier for people to make a difference. He believes people have good intentions to get more involved in their community, volunteer more for a cause they care about, participate in philanthropy, or otherwise make a difference in the world. The For Purpose Foundation creates vehicles that meet people where they’re at and support them in making good on their good intentions to give back, overcoming the barriers that keep them in inaction.

DeLinda Forsythe retired from a 37-year career as an executive, CEO and entrepreneur in the contract furniture industry. She founded Innovative Commercial Environments (ICE) in 2006 from a spare bedroom. In 2022 DeLinda sold ICE to an employee that joined the firm in 2007 while a full-time college student. ICE has been on the Inc. 5000 7-times in part because of her decision to partner with Millennial co-workers. DeLinda captures this journey in Inspiring Generational Leadership: Your Guide to Design a Conscious Culture which provides a guide to the advantages of creating a culture of multi-generational mentorship.

California-born and raised, Natalie is Native Poppy’s founder and leader of all things floral design. She launched her intrepid flower business in 2015, to bring beauty to life’s important moments, and to make others happy.

With a deep love of the natural world, Natalie has grown her business into a celebration of all the beauty that nature has to offer. Natalie’s goal as a business owner is to create art that is authentic, ambitious, and true to her artistic point of view, and to become more balanced in how she lives day to day, taking time away from work to appreciate friendships, and kick back with her husband Steven and their dog, Cheddar. She hopes to encourage her team to step into their creative potential and share their talents with the world.

One of the first certified conscious capitalism consultants around the world – is the Founder and CEO of Symphony Advantage, which has been providing advisory and consulting services to executive level management for over 35 years. In addition to his work with Symphony, Kent is also a serial entrepreneur, an angel investor in purpose-driven companies, and a sought-after speaker in the U.S. and beyond.

Kent launched his first manufacturing company at age 14. Since then, he founded or led more than a dozen organizations. He accompanied his companies through all phases of their business cycle – start-up, growth, repositioning. He also led many of those through successful exits and raised tens of millions of dollars in private capital.

In his consultancy work, Kent is known as the ‘CEO to ‘CEOs’ who focuses on a win-win approach that delivers exponential value to all stakeholders, including its leaders, shareholders, employees, customers, suppliers, and the environment around it.

As a result of his extensive experience and expertise, Kent is a coveted speaker who has shared his powerful insights to engage audiences around the world in venues such as the United Nations, EO, St. Bonaventure University (SBU), FintechSouth, and many others. Kent is a published author in the Harvard Business Review as well as a contributor to Inc.com and Forbes. He is also the incoming president of the Entrepreneurs’ Organization U.S. East Bridge chapter and a member of the Conscious Capitalism Senior Leadership Network.

Hello! My name is Dylan Greher & I am a senior student (Earth & Space Ecopreneur) at UC San Diego studying International Business at the Rady School of Management, with a focus on lean startup methodology. I’m a connector and believe that bringing together problem-solvers from across disciplines & lived experiences will be instrumental in surmounting humanity’s social & environmental challenges.

I’m interested in mitigating Climate Change & addressing injustices that arise from an unhealthy relationship with Earth. For over 6,000 years (dating back to the first cities), the Tragedy of the Commons has diminished the well-being of life on Earth. Throughout human civilization, we’ve prioritized maximization (extracting as many natural resources as possible). While this behavior makes the quarterly numbers look good, there’s something missing. We are neglecting the prosperity of those who we do & don’t call our kin. We are harming local communities today while perpetuating harmful externalized costs on broader society & future generations.

In a broad scope, business is the #1 contributor to climate change. Thankfully, we can contribute to the movement of countries, businesses & people transitioning toward environmental stewardship. Conscious companies outperform extractive ones while teaching & exploring new ways of supporting a happier & healthier planet. A compassionate company culture can move mountains, driving innovation & social intrapreneurship at every level. By boosting sustainability beyond three months & into the future, businesses will thrive.

In my free time, I enjoy spending time outside, going to the beach & camping. Over the past couple of years, I’ve reconnected with my childhood interest in space, and I love learning about astrophysics & astronomy. I’m also a creative artist & use a variety of mediums & styles to explore sustainability, life, philosophy, the human condition, space, time & more.

Laura Hall is a global retail executive with a strong creative bent – bringing over 30 years of experience to the business of fashion and retail consumer goods. She left her last corporate role as President of Accessories for Polo Ralph Lauren in order to advise other global consumer goods companies. Having sat in their seat and been through most of the same challenges and opportunities, she brings a unique combination of experience, perspective, and purpose-driven business thinking. Laura is a respected female voice for socially responsible business practices that resonate with today’s Millennial and Gen-Z consumers.

Most recently, Laura – along with two other female C-Suite business leaders – founded WHYZ Partners (www.whyzpartners.com). WHYZ is a different kind of consumer goods consultancy: offering real world/real time expertise in merchandising, manufacturing, marketing, unified commerce, and sustainability. A primary mission at WHYZ is to partner with clients to empower the next generation of retail executives to create an ecosystem of extraordinary businesses and business leaders – under the purpose of promoting the ideals of financially and socially responsible business practices.

Most recently, as a founding author for Conscious Capitalism Press, Laura has published a children’s book titled ‘The ABCs of Conscious Capitalism for KIDs’: Create a Business, Make Money, Change the World’.

Michael Harth is one of the original founders of LAZ Parking, and is responsible for protecting, nurturing, and developing LAZ’s unique culture. After graduating with a psychology degree from the University of California at San Diego in 1981, Michael founded Sunset Parking, the West Coast brand of LAZ Parking. He developed Sunset Parking into a leader in the hospitality service industry with more than 175 locations, all defined by his commitment to delivering service with exceptional integrity and professionalism.

In 2008, Michael joined LAZ Parking as a senior partner after merging Sunset Parking with his childhood best friends, Alan Lazowski and Jeffrey Karp. Michael oversees the company’s human resources department, ensuring that above all, LAZ remains “all about the People”. He is a member of the National Parking Association and a founding member of the National Valet Parking Association.

Jesse is a seasoned entrepreneur with over 25 years of team leadership, business strategy and development as well as operations in multiple industries providing a broad and diverse perspective. His international blend of exposure spans start-ups, public, and non-profit companies, as well as the military and governments.

He enjoys leveraging his entrepreneurial spirit, technical background, and experiences to translate challenges and questions into opportunities for innovation. An advocate of purpose-driven leadership and elevating the human side of the business, Jesse currently serves as the Chief Operating Officer at Lotus Sustainables, a certified B-Corp, which has diverted over 3.5 billion plastic bags from landfills.

Michele’s journey is rooted in empowering human connections, driven by her belief that we each have something inherently good, special, and unique within us. Her company, The Rooted Brand, is built on 30 years of insight: the strongest companies are those deeply rooted in a greater purpose. She has dedicated her career to finding the best in others, cultivating their purpose, and giving them a voice to stand out, be seen, and make a meaningful impact. Michele has transformed brands through strategic branding, communications, and relationship building, working with iconic names like The Rolling Stones, Fortune 500s like HP and Kodak, and numerous startups. Her expertise has elevated brand equity from inception to billion-dollar valuations, secured significant funding, and led to major acquisitions.  Michele is passionate about fostering meaningful relationships and elevating those who are conscious, care deeply, and are committed to uplifting humanity.

Pronouns: She/her

Director, Knowledge Management & Technology Innovation

Procopio, Cory, Hargreaves and Savitch LLP

Tiffany leads the firm’s knowledge management (KM) and records/office services functions while chairing the firm’s internal Technology Innovation group. With over 25 years of experience in KM and research, she oversees the firm’s investigative, business and legal research as well as evaluates and implements KM tools and processes. Tiffany is a dedicated advocate for the ethical and responsible implementation of AI technologies. With a focus on balancing innovation with societal impact, she ensures that AI solutions are designed and deployed with a commitment to transparency, fairness, and accountability. Tiffany trains attorneys and staff on efficient research strategies; conducts contract negotiations, budgeting and supervising; and advances the performance of various legal and administrative departments by establishing and implementing valuable workflow solutions. She is also a member of the Firm’s Technology Committee. In addition to working in the legal field, Tiffany was an information specialist with McKinsey & Company, a leading management consultant firm.

Rida Qadeer is a student filmmaker at UC San Diego with a double major in Media Studies and International Business with a minor in innovation and entrepreneurship. She is interested in story development and production because she loves taking an idea and turning it into an experience: a story with ups, downs, twists, and turns that keeps its audience at the edge of their seats! Rida plans to one day write and direct her own comedy television series with a social impact focus for a major motion picture company. Until then, she spends her time writing and developing her own screenplays, working on production shoots, and making her own short films with her buddies! In her freetime, she loves hiking, reading, traveling, taking too many photographs, and walking her foster cats (yes, you read that last one right).

Pronouns: He/HIm

https://jvmarketingtech.net/

Sylvester Raymond III is the visionary owner of JV Marketing Technologies, LLC, a company he founded six years ago with a commitment to provide an ethical pathway for app creators to realize their dreams. At the core of his mission is the Mobile App Planning Program (MAPP™), a groundbreaking initiative designed to empower app creators with a strategic roadmap for success before they embark on costly development endeavors. This innovative program garnered prestigious recognition as the recipient of the Better Business Bureau’s Torch Award for Business Ethics in September 2023.

Throughout his 40-year career, Sylvester has contributed his expertise to companies such as Bank of America, General Motors Warranty Division, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the Federal Reserve Bank. With a team of skilled engineers well-versed in iOS and Android development, blockchain technology, and AI development, Sylvester Raymond III continues to push the boundaries of technological innovation and ethical business practices at JV Marketing Technologies, LLC.

Ken has more than 25 years of management, finance and business development experience as an integral part of management teams that grew companies in fast-changing environments. He is Chairman and CEO of Goal Structured Solutions (“Goal”), a recognized industry leader in student loan program development, investing and management. Goal has managed over $10B in securitizations, invested its own capital in $3 billion of performing and non-performing student loans and manages over $26B of student loans for itself and third parties. Previously, he served as CFO and President of Goal Financial a $9 billion student loan company. Prior to joining Goal, he held executive positions at eAssist Global Solutions, NBC’s Internet Division and the public accounting firm, Arthur Andersen. He received his CPA in New York, an MBA from Columbia University and a BA in Accounting from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst.

Jessica Schwartz is a recent graduate of Joan B. Kroc Institute of Peace and Justice at the University of San Diego where she earned her Master of Arts degree in Social Innovation. Passionate about creativity and human connection, she is interested in harnessing the transformative power of business to further societal and environmental goals. In doing so, she aspires to create a better future for all of our planet and all of its stakeholders. In particular, Jessica is passionate about social innovation through the lens of human connection and how that can be translated into the sphere of sustainable fashion. She currently works as an Impact Intern at Ascent Funding and collaborates creatively with the sustainable clothing brand Hut Mentality. One day she dreams of weaving all of her threads of peace, innovation, and creativity into creating her own sustainable fashion brand.

Linda’s passion is to connect people with businesses that care about their needs and values. She brings 30 years of leadership in education and publishing in the private, public, and non-profit sectors. Currently, she oversees the Special Needs Resouce Foundation
and is the founder of a user-centric tech platform that promotes inclusion.

It is Linda’s mission to create a more inclusive and sustainable business community. Linda believes that through conscious capitalism, informed consumers can be assured that their purchasing power is making a positive impact. When we work as a collective group, both businesses and consumers win– and our communities thrive!