Inactive

Gabriel Metcalf is the executive director of the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association (SPUR), one of the leading urban planning organizations in America. A member-supported non-profit that promotes good planning and good government, SPUR develops solutions to urban policy problems in the fields of economic development, transportation, housing policy, urban design, climate change, and energy policy.

Gabriel is the author of Democratic by Design: How Car-Sharing, Coops, and Community Land Trusts are Reinventing America, published by Palgrave.  He is a frequent writer and speaker on these topics and is frequently cited in the press.  He has been profiled in the Wall Street Journal and the San Francisco Examiner.

Mark Tercek is president and CEO of The Nature Conservancy, the global conservation organization known for its intense focus on collaboration and getting things done for the benefit of people and nature.

A former managing director for Goldman Sachs, where he spent 25 years, Mark brings deep business experience to his role leading the Conservancy, which he joined in 2008. He is a champion of the idea of natural capital-valuing nature for its own sake as well as for the services it provides for people, such as clean air and water, productive soils and a stable climate. Mark’s book, Nature’s Fortune: How Business and Society Thrive by Investing in Nature, written with Jonathan Adams, and published by Basic Books, explores why responsible stewardship of nature is of the utmost importance to businesses, governments and societies.

Growing up as a city kid in Cleveland, Mark was a late-bloomer to conservation. It was becoming a parent that sparked his passion for nature. “I want to be able to look my kids in the eye,” he says, “and tell them I did all I could to leave the world a better place.”

After more than two decades as an investment banker heading various business units for Goldman Sachs, Mark found an outlet for his interest in conservation when he was tapped to develop the firm’s environmental strategy. Inspired by the opportunity to help businesses, governments and environmental organizations work together in new, innovative ways, Mark left Goldman Sachs in 2008 to head up The Nature Conservancy.

Mark is a member of several boards and councils, including Resources for the Future, the Nicholas Institute for Environmental Policy Solutions and the Commission on Climate and Tropical Forests. He is also a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

Dan Gillmor, an internationally recognized author and leader in new media and citizen-based journalism, is the founding director of the Knight Center for Digital Media Entrepreneurship and the Kauffman Professor of Digital Media Entrepreneurship.

After reporting for newspapers in Vermont, Kansas City, and Detroit, Dan joined the San Jose Mercury News in 1994, writing a widely read column and blog that chronicled the dot-com revolution in Silicon Valley, and technology’s wider impact on policy and society. His blog is believed to have been the first by a journalist for a mainstream journalism organization.

In 2004 he published We the Media: Grassroots Journalism by the People, for the People, a book on citizen journalism that has been published in six languages. The book is widely recognized as the first to explain how the collision of journalism and technology has democratized the creation of and access to media, and why it matters.

In 2005 Dan left the Mercury News to work on grass-roots media projects. He continues to write in blogs and other media, including a regular op-ed column in PR Week magazine and guest columns on the Wall Street Journal’s “All Things Digital” site. He speaks frequently at conferences and major universities around the world on media and technology topics.

A member of Investigative Reporters & Editors, Dan serves on boards of directors or advisory boards for several media-related nonprofits including the California First Amendment Coalition, the Knight New Media Center at USC and UC-Berkeley, Global Voices Online and NewsTrust.

Ethan J. Leib is Professor of Law at Fordham Law School. He teaches in contracts, legislation, and regulation.

His most recent book, Friend v. Friend: Friendships and What, If Anything, the Law Should Do About Them, was published by Oxford University Press.  In it, he explores the costs and benefits of the legal recognition of and sensitivity to friendship. Along with his writing for Yale Law Journal and the University of Illinois Law Review he frequently writes for a broader audience in the New York Times, USA Today, Policy Review, Washington Post, New York Law Journal, The American Scholar, and The New Republic. Before joining Fordham, Leib was Professor of Law at the University of California–Hastings in San Francisco. He has served as a Law Clerk to then-Chief Judge John M. Walker, Jr., of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit and as a Litigation Associate at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP in New York.

His first book, Deliberative Democracy in America: A Proposal for a Popular Branch of Government was published by Pennsylvania State University Press. With Baogang He he edited The Search for Deliberative Democracy in China, published by Palgrave Macmillan and Privilege or Punish? The Challenge of Family Status in Our Criminal Justice System, written with Jennifer Collins & Dan Markel, was published by Oxford University Press.