Dr. Antwi Akom is the Director of the Social Innovation and Urban Opportunity Research Lab, a joint research lab between UCSF’s Center for Vulnerable Populations and SFSU. His research lies at the intersection of science, technology, spatial epidemiology, community development, health communications, medical sociology, ethnic studies and public health. Dr. Akom’s work focuses on researching, developing and deploying new health information communication technologies that amplify the voices of communities often excluded from digital and physical public spheres and connecting them with resources that improve health literacy, health care delivery, and promote equitable economic development for vulnerable populations. Dr. Akom has an extensive background in building collaborative, community-facing technology projects and new models of urban innovation that help cities become smarter, more equitable, just and sustainable. 

Prior to joining UCSF/CVP, Dr. Akom co-founded and launched a series of technology projects in the San Francisco Bay area, including, Streetwyze—a mobile, mapping, and SMS platform that enables real time community-generated data to be integrated with predictive analytics so that health care providers, hospitals, CBOs and cities are empowered with forward looking knowledge to track health equity indicators, improve service delivery, and predict future trajectories for vulnerable populations. Streetwyze has been recognized by the White House, the Rockefeller Foundation, the Knight News Challenge, as one of the 12 new data tools to help vulnerable populations access opportunity. Dr. Akom’s work is the leading edge of a new era of participatory health and medicine where residents are empowered, informed and involved in the decisions that impact their daily lives through research, technology and policies that enable people and places to work together toward the development of individualized care.

Dr. Paulette Brown-Hinds is founder of Voice Media Ventures and the second-generation publisher of the VOICE and Black Voice News. The multimedia company includes weekly print and digital editions, film and new media content production, and a strategic communications firm specializing in community outreach and engagement. She is the founder of Mapping Black California, a geospatial technology community mapping and STEAM initiative, with a goal of building a “smart and connected” African-American community in the Golden State.

Andrew Buss directs the Innovation Management group within Philadelphia’s Office of Innovation and Technology. Aligned closely with the city’s chief administrative officer, Innovation Management focuses on developing capacity for innovation within municipal government and finding ways to make technology accessible and meaningful to the public. Before moving into the innovation space, he directed Philadelphia’s implementation of a citywide network of technology-enabled community centers known as Keyspots.

Dr. Beth Coleman is Associate Professor of Experimental Digital Media at the University of Waterloo where she directs the City as Platform Lab. Her work focuses on smart technology, big data, and civic engagement. Her practice engages research methods and design inquiry towards the creation of public, civic, and aesthetic works. She had published the monograph Hello Avatar: Rise of the Networked Subject (MIT Press). 

Her research affiliations include the Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society, Harvard University, and expert consultant for the European Commission Digital Futures. She is the co-founder of SoundLab Cultural Alchemy with an international exhibition history that includes the Whitney Museum of American Art; Recollets, Paris; Waag Society, Amsterdam; among others. She is a visiting scholar at Data & Society Research Institute, New York.

Lilian Coral joined Knight Foundation in September 2017. 

Coral is Knight’s director of national strategy, where she manages the national portfolio and focuses on the development of the foundation’s Smart Cities strategy. She came to Knight from the City of Los Angeles, where she served as chief data officer for Mayor Eric Garcetti. In this role, she led the mayor’s directive on Open Data beyond the lens of transparency and toward his vision of a data-driven Los Angeles through the management of the City’s Open Data program, the expansion of the use of data science and analytics, and the development of user-centered digital services. 

Coral led the development of the GeoHub, a first-of-its kind data management solution for integrating geospatial information across the City of Los Angeles’ 41 departments, and oversaw the publishing of 1,100 city datasets and APIs, the management of five portals of operational and financial data, and the roll-out of 15+ digital services, applications and public facing dashboards.

Prior to joining Garcetti, Coral spent 15 years working on a wide range of health and human services issues as an advocate and executive leader, having had the opportunity to work with labor unions, NGOs, foundations and human service agencies at all levels of government to transform the way government uses data and technology to serve its citizens.

Coral has a bachelor’s degree in international studies from the University of California, Irvine, and a master’s degree in public policy from the University of California, Los Angeles. She is a native of Colombia, a place from where much of her inspiration for innovation and social justice emerged.

Susan Crawford is a professor at Harvard Law School. She is the author of Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age, co-author of The Responsive City: Engaging Communities Through Data-Smart Governance, and a contributor to WIRED. 

She served as Special Assistant to the President for Science, Technology, and Innovation Policy (2009) and co-led the FCC transition team between the Bush and Obama administrations. As an academic, she teaches courses about city uses of technology, the law of autonomous vehicles, and communications law. She was a member of the board of directors of ICANN from 2005-2008 and is the founder of OneWebDay, a global Earth Day for the internet that takes place each Sept. 22. 

One of Politico’s 50 Thinkers, Doers and Visionaries Transforming Politics in 2015; one of Fast Company’s Most Influential Women in Technology (2009); IP3 Awardee (2010); one of Prospect Magazine’s Top Ten Brains of the Digital Future (2011); and one of TIME Magazine’s Tech 40: The Most Influential Minds in Tech (2013). Ms. Crawford received her B.A. and J.D. from Yale University.  

Mark de la Vergne serves as the chief of mobility innovation for Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan. He is tasked with bringing new mobility services and technologies to Detroit residents. In 2018, this includes a first/last mile pilot with Lyft, overseeing the deployment of more than 500 e-scooters and an autonomous shuttle service for the largest employer in downtown, exploring connected technology at signalized intersections, a new microtransit service, and mobile payment for all transit in the Detroit region. He is originally from the Philadelphia area and a graduate of the University of Pennsylvania.  

Molly Fowler is Intersection’s Senior Urban Strategist, focused on the creation and implementation of technology solutions that improve quality of life in cities. She works closely with municipal partners to help solve urban challenges and improve access to services by harnessing the power of connectivity, real time data, and Intersection’s market-creating smart city solution, Link. Recently, she has focused on the launch of InLinkUK, a national roll-out of wifi and services in London and cities across the UK in partnership with Britain’s largest telecom company, as well as Intersection’s recent partnership with the City of Newark.

Past projects include work with Sidewalk Labs, the Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transit Authority (LA Metro), and several large US cities. Coming from a strong civic background, Molly previously served as Deputy Director of Communications for Los Angeles Mayor Eric Garcetti where she helped shape and communicate city policy to better serve Angelenos, with a focus on technology and sustainability, and economic development. Before that, she held leadership roles on election campaigns including L.A. Mayor Eric Garcetti and US Rep. Lois Capps (CA-24). She believes in the power of technology to create more opportunities for people to become informed, involved, and engaged with their surroundings and elected leadership. 

In 2014, Boston Mayor Martin J. Walsh appointed Jascha Franklin-Hodge to serve in his cabinet as chief information officer and lead the Department of Innovation and Technology. He managed more than 150 people and was responsible the city’s efforts to build exceptional, user-centered digital services, empower city employees with effective technology, and improve access to the internet and technical skills training for all Boston residents. 

Prior to his work with the city, Franklin-Hodge co-founded Blue State Digital (BSD) where he oversaw the development and operation of the BSD Tools, an online fundraising, email and CRM platform that raised over $1 billion and powered the digital presence of President Barack Obama’s 2008 and 2012 campaigns. 

Franklin-Hodge has served on the boards of Tech Goes Home, MITX (Massachusetts Information Technology Exchange), and Tech/Hire Boston. He studied computer science at MIT.

Dr. Erwin Gianchandani is the deputy assistant director for the Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering at the National Science Foundation, where he contributes to all aspects of the directorate’s management, including strategic and human capital planning, formulation and implementation of the directorate’s more than $900 million annual budget, and oversight of day-to-day operations.  

Previously, Gianchandani served as the deputy division director for the CISE Division of Computer and Network Systems. Before joining NSF in 2012, he was the inaugural director of the Computing Community Consortium, providing leadership to the computing research community in identifying and pursuing audacious, high-impact research directions; and director of innovation networking at the University of Virginia, reporting to the university’s vice president for research.

Sam Gill joined Knight Foundation in June 2015. He oversees the Community and National Initiatives program, which works to attract and nurture talent, promote economic opportunity and foster civic engagement in 26 communities across the United States. He also oversees the Learning and Impact program, which pursues research on the broader context of Knight’s work and the impact of Knight-supported programs.

Previously, he served as vice president of Freedman Consulting, where he provided leadership for many of the firm’s projects, including strategic planning and evaluation, as well as campaign and initiative management. He has led or participated in projects for elected officials and candidates for office, Fortune 500 companies and many of America’s leading foundations.

He serves on the boards of the Phillip and Patricia Frost Museum of Science in Miami and the Miami-Dade Urban Debate League.

Stephen Goldsmith is the Daniel Paul Professor of the Practice of Government and the Director of the Innovations in Government Program at Harvard’s Kennedy School of Government. He directs Data-Smart City Solutions, the Project on Municipal Innovation, the Civic Analytics Network and Operational Excellence in Government. Previously, he served as the Deputy Mayor of NY and the Mayor of Indianapolis. His most recent book is A New City O/S: The Power of Open, Collaborative, and Distributed Governance.

Ashley Z. Hand is co-founder of CityFi, advising all sectors on the future of cities in a rapidly changing world. She has worked with communities around the world to identify strategies, policies, urban design and partnerships to more effectively embrace new technologies in a way that is human-centered. Previously, Hand served as the transportation technology strategist for the City of Los Angeles Department of Transportation, where she authored Urban Mobility in a Digital Age, a strategy that defines public policy, organizational change, and pilot initiatives to enable the city to shape a vision of the future that works for all Angelenos in an era of shared mobility and autonomous vehicles. Prior to her work in L.A., Hand served as the first chief innovation officer for the City of Kansas City, Missouri, creating the most comprehensive smart city in North America, among other civic innovation projects. She currently serves on the Advisory Council for the Carnegie Mellon University Traffic21/T-SET University Transportation Center and Open Architecture Collaborative and was recognized as a national change maker by 2018 Grist 50.

John Harlow is a postdoctoral scholar in the MacArthur Foundation Research Network on Opening Governance at the Arizona State University Center for Smart Cities and Regions, and a visiting researcher at the Emerson College Engagement Lab. He researches strategic intervention points for process innovation in governance. 

Harlow is currently working on a National Science Foundation grant to build a visual analytics tool for information deserts, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation grant “Opening pathways for discovery, research, and innovation in health and healthcare.” His prior work includes the design of the prioritization workshop that produced the first draft of Phoenix’s 2050 transportation plan, and Reinvent Phoenix’s rezoning around Phoenix’s light rail. 

Ellen Hwang is responsible for driving and building programs that spur municipal innovation to increase government capacity, equity, and efficiency. Through the Office of Innovation and Technology, she manages the City of Philadelphia’s Smart City initiative, SmartCity PHL. She has a background in urban planning, community development and nonprofit management. As a Temple University alum, she received her Bachelor of Arts degree in English and Master of Science degree in City and Regional Planning.

Alberto Ibargüen is president, CEO and a trustee of the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

He is the former publisher of The Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald. During his tenure, The Miami Herald won three Pulitzer Prizes and El Nuevo Herald won Spain’s Ortega y Gasset Prize for excellence in journalism.

He graduated from Wesleyan University and the University of Pennsylvania Law School. Between college and law school, he served in the Peace Corps in Venezuela’s Amazon Territory and was the Peace Corps Programming and Training Officer in Colombia, based in Bogotá. After law school, he practiced law in Hartford, Conn., until he joined The Hartford Courant, then Newsday in New York, before moving to Miami.

He is a former board chair of PBS and of the Newseum in Washington, D.C. He also chaired the board of the World Wide Web Foundation, founded by Web inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee to promote a free and universal Web. Over time, he has served on the boards of other arts, education and journalism organizations, including the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts, Wesleyan University and Smith College the Council on Foreign Relations, the Committee to Protect Journalists and ProPublica and the Secretary of State’s Foreign Policy Advisory Board.

Ibargüen is a member of the board of American Airlines. Previously he served on the boards of PepsiCo, AOL and Norwegian Cruise Lines and on the Citizen Advisory Committee of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board.

He is a fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences and a member of MIT’s Visiting Committee for the Media Lab. For his work to protect journalists in Latin America, Ibargüen received a Maria Moors Cabot citation from Columbia University. Wesleyan University, The George Washington University, University of Miami, Mercer University, the University of Nebraska, Arizona State University and Stephens College have awarded him honorary degrees.

Mrinalini (Lani) Ingram is vice president of smart communities for Verizon, where she is responsible for leading the strategy, engagement, implementation and solutions support across Verizon’s Smart Communities portfolio of products.

Prior to joining Verizon in 2016, Ingram spent over 15 years at Cisco Systems, where she held several leadership positions. Most recently, Ingram was responsible for strategy and business development for Smart and Connected Communities where her team focused on transforming physical communities into connected communities to drive economic growth, enable environmental sustainability, and enhance quality of life. 

Ingram also held leadership positions at Lucent Technologies and Price Waterhouse Coopers, LLC. Lani earned her MBA from Harvard University and her BA from Gonzaga.

A lifelong Philadelphia resident, Mayor Jim Kenney grew up the oldest of four children in a South Philadelphia rowhome. His father, a firefighter, and his mother, a homemaker, both worked second jobs to help their children pursue their education and, in 1980, Kenney became the first in his family to graduate from college. Just a decade later, Philadelphians elected him to serve as a city councilman at-large and, over the next 20 years he stood up for Philadelphia’s working families and progressive policies — fighting for a real living wage, broader protections for LGBTQ Philadelphians, marijuana decriminalization, and a more sensible immigration policy.

On Jan. 4, 2016, Kenney was sworn in as the 99th mayor of Philadelphia. In his first budget, the mayor worked closely with City Council to fund bold anti-poverty initiatives — including expansion of quality pre-K, the creation of 20 community schools and a $500 million investment in parks, recreation centers and libraries — by making Philadelphia the first major city to pass a tax on sweetened beverages.  In his first year, the mayor also increased efforts to spur economic growth in the city’s commercial corridors, launching a capital consortium for small businesses, creating a small business coach program, and expanding supports, including financial grants and loans, to small and immigrant businesses. Philadelphia also shined on the national stage in 2016, successfully hosting the Democratic National Convention and safely monitoring peaceful protests, without a single arrest. At the same time, the city finished 2016 with the lowest crime rate in nearly 40 years.

Under the Trump administration, the Mayor has also stepped up to defend the values of the City of Brotherly Love. When the Department of Justice threatened to take away funding for Philadelphia police officers unless they acted as an extension of ICE, the city sued and won. The mayor also kept Philadelphia’s commitment to the Paris Accord, and he created a World-Style Soccer Tournament called the “Unity Cup” to celebrate the city’s diversity and bring different neighborhoods together. Even though the federal government hasn’t provided additional resources to combat the opioid epidemic, the city still stepped up its commitment, engaging 1,400 former residents for direct services, including housing and drug treatment.  In his second year as mayor, Philadelphia made significant strides in both criminal justice reform and education. The city reduced its prison population by nearly 36 percent as part of the MacArthur Safety and Justice Challenge, and the number of pedestrian stops were cut in half. 

Building on his administration’s early commitment to education, the mayor launched an effort last year to return the school district to local control and to provide adequate financial funding resources for our teachers and students, so that every Philadelphian has a quality school in their neighborhood. 

Brian Komar is a digital transformation expert whose career includes leadership roles in the

public, private and nonprofit sectors. He currently serves as vice president, global impact engagement at Salesforce.org, where he leads the nonprofit social enterprise’s efforts to drive an impact-first mindset across the social sector. His work focuses on outcomes measurement and collaborative partnerships and network strategy that are grounded in collective impact.

Komar previously was vice president of marketing and outreach at Salesforce.org for four years,  where he built their global marketing and outreach team. Prior to joining Salesforce.org in 2012, he  served as director of industry solutions at Salesforce.com where he drove the go-to-market strategy for the government innovations team. 

Previously, he served in leadership positions at the Center for American Progress and the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, where he led digital transformation portfolios for social change.

Debra Lam is the managing director of Smart Cities and Inclusive Innovation for Georgia Tech, and has a mandate to drive smart communities and urban innovation work across the university and beyond. Prior to this, she served as Pittsburgh’s first ever chief of innovation & performance where she oversaw all technology, sustainability, performance and innovation functions of city government. She crafted the city’s first strategic plan for innovation, Inclusive Innovation Roadmap. Prior to that, she was a management consultant at a global engineering and design firm. She has been the recipient of various awards, including one of the top 100 most influential people in digital government. She has worked and lived in New York, the United Kingdom, China, Taiwan, and Hong Kong. She is a graduate of Georgetown University and University of California, Berkeley.

Joel Nichols is the data strategy and evaluation administrator in the Free Library of Philadelphia’s Department of Strategic Initiatives. He has worked for the Free Library in multiple capacities, including as a children’s librarian and Techmobile manager. He is interested in public library innovation, evidence-based library practice and demonstrating the impact of public library services. 

Nichols has an MSLIS from Drexel, an M.A. in creative writing from Temple University, and a B.A. from Wesleyan University. He is the author of Out of this World Library Programs: Using Speculative Fiction to Promote Reading and Launch Learning and serves on the advisory group for ALA’s Center for the Future of Libraries. 

Keith Orris is senior vice president for Corporate Relations & Economic Development at Drexel University.  He is responsible for creating and implementing a strategy for Drexel to become a leading nexus for research, technology transfer and economic development in Philadelphia’s expanding innovation ecosystem. Orris launched Drexel Ventures, a university accelerator with a mission to expand the commercialization of Drexel’s patent portfolio, which regularly ranks in the top 50 of all universities in the world for the number of patents issued annually and increase the number of Drexel start-ups.

He also is the university lead for Schuylkill Yards, America’s next innovation community comprised of eight million square feet on 15 acres. This mixed-use development is situated adjacent to the nation’s third busiest passenger rail facility, 30^th Street Station, in the heart of the Northeast Corridor. The development is envisioned to be the home for research facilities, corporate offices, hubs, incubators and accelerators, venture funds, academic programs, and hospitality, residential and specialty retail uses.

Rob Phocas serves as the sustainability director for the City of Charlotte, an organization of 7,000+ staff and a city with nearly 800,000 residents. He supports a variety of internal and external programs in the energy, environment and sustainability spaces. Example internal initiatives include the implementation, and continued evolution, of the Internal Environmental Operations Plan. The IEOP sets, measures and reports out on goals from fleet to energy efficiency, employee commuting to green procurement practices. The sustainability office has developed an online dashboard to report out to the public the results of the plan and its continued evolution. 

Externally, Phocas works closely with Envision Charlotte and other community entities to advance Charlotte’s sustainability goals. His work with Envision Charlotte, one of the leading urban smart city programs, has evolved into the creation of the North End Smart District. That is a 3.6-square-mile area north of Uptown Charlotte with a vision to become a vibrant center for economic development and job growth with a great quality of life fueled by data, innovative technologies, and collaboration, on a foundation of equitable community engagement. His smart city efforts also include managing an internal smart cities cabinet, which consists of city staff from several departments leading smart city initiatives.

Shireen Santosham is a tech optimist.  In 2016, under San Jose Mayor Sam Liccardo, she launched the city’s Smart City Vision initiative and has since championed affordable broadband, autonomous vehicle pilots, a comprehensive privacy policy and apps and social media to help residents interact with the city more easily.  

Prior to joining the city, she launched innovative initiatives across sectors.She led research to size the gender gap in internet access for women in the developing world while a director at GSMA, helped to launch the Center for Government while at McKinsey & Co., helped to secure $50 million to combat global overfishing while at Oceana, and helped to stand up the Allen Institute for Brain Science while an impact investor at Vulcan Capital.

She was named to GovTech’s List of 25 Doers, Dreamers, and Drivers in 2018, and her work has been featured in Bloomberg Technology, KQED and Ars Technica.She has spoken at the Consumer Electronics Show, Mobile World Congress, the United Nations Beijing +20 conference, the United States Congress, Harvard University, UC Berkeley, Stanford University, and Columbia University.

Susanne Seitinger leads public sector marketing in the United States for Signify, formerly known as Philips Lighting. She works with civic leaders to develop smart cities that leverage digital lighting for safe, inviting and responsive urban environments. Since joining Philips in 2012, she has worked on key projects from relighting the Zakim Bridge in Boston to Internet of Things projects for Los Angeles. She received a B.A. from Princeton University as well as a master’s in city planning and a Ph.D from MIT. Her dissertation Liberated Pixels: Alternative Narratives for Lighting Future Cities, explored the aesthetic and interactive potential for future lighting and display infrastructures. Seitinger is a sought-after speaker and commentator on the future of light and Smart Cities.

Micah L. Sifry is Co-Founder of Civic Hall. He also curates the annual Personal Democracy Forum, and also is the editor of Civicist, Civic Hall’s news site. From 2006-16 he was a senior adviser to the Sunlight Foundation, which he helped found, and currently serves on the boards of Consumer Reports and the Public Laboratory for Open Technology and Science. He is the author or editor of nine books, most recently Civic Tech in the Global South (co-edited with Tiago Peixoto) (World Bank, 2017); A Lever and a Place to Stand: How Civic Tech Can Move the World (PDM Books, 2015), with Jessica McKenzie; The Big Disconnect: Why the Internet Hasn’t Transformed Politics (Yet) (OR Books, 2014); and Wikileaks and the Age of the Transparency (OR Books, 2011). In 2012 he taught “The Politics of the Internet” as a visiting lecturer at Harvard’s Kennedy School. From 1997-2006, he worked closely with Public Campaign, a non-profit, non-partisan organization focused on comprehensive campaign finance reform, as its senior analyst. Prior to that, Micah was an editor and writer with The Nation magazine for thirteen years. He is the author of Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in America(Routledge, 2002), co-author with Nancy Watzman of Is That a Politician in Your Pocket? Washington on $2 Million a Day (John Wiley & Sons, 2004), co-editor of Rebooting America, and co-editor of The Iraq War Reader (Touchstone, 2003) and The Gulf War Reader (Times Books, 1991).

Dr. Anthony Townsend is an internationally-recognized expert on urbanization and digital technology. He is the founder of Bits and Atoms, a smart cities strategy consultancy and planning studio that works with industry, government and philanthropy on economic development, digital placemaking, and strategic technology forecasting. His first book, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers and the Quest for A New Utopia, was published by W.W. Norton & Co. in 2013. 

In 2001, Anthony co-founded NYCwireless, a pioneer in the community and municipal wireless movement. His first book, Smart Cities: Big Data, Civic Hackers and the Quest for A New Utopia was published by W.W. Norton & Co. in 2013. Anthony holds a Ph.D. in urban and regional planning from Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a master’s degree in urban planning from New York University, and a B.A. in urban studies with a minor in physics from Rutgers University. He lives in Jersey City, N.J.

Mark Wheeler, AICP, GISP, is the Chief Innovation Officer for the City of Philadelphia.

He had served as Acting Chief Information Officer for the City of Philadelphia Office of Innovation and Technology from January – September 2018. He previously served as Deputy CIO and Chief Geographic Information Officer, leading multiple teams of analysts, developers, and web designers. Wheeler joined the City in 2010 as a city planner for Philadelphia City Planning Commission and contributed to public outreach, land use and public facility planning for Philadelphia2035 district plans.

Christopher Wink is the publisher and CEO of Technically Media, which publishes local tech news network Technical.ly and nonprofit news site Generocity.org. In that capacity, he is a lead organizer of Philly Tech Week and Baltimore Innovation Week, among other events that bring smart people together. 

In 2017, Folio magazine listed him as one of the 100 most innovative media leaders in the country. Previously, he worked for a homeless advocacy nonprofit and was a freelance reporter. Wink is on the board of nonprofit youth coding program Coded by Kids, the project-based Workshop School, entrepreneurship network nonprofit Philly Startup Leaders and celebrated civic development program LEADERSHIP Philadelphia.