Stay tuned while we confirm additional guest speakers for this conference. We will add their biographies in the coming weeks, so please check back soon!
Jon Zieger, co-founder and former Executive Director, Responsible Innovation Lab
Jon Zieger is co-founder and former Executive Director of Responsible Innovation Labs, an independent nonprofit organizing the venture capital and startup community to create a better technology industry. Prior to RIL, Jon was the General Counsel and Global Head of Public Policy for Stripe, and held a variety of other senior legal positions at Microsoft. Mr. Zieger is an active angel investor and advisor for dozens of startups.
Minu Kumar, Ph.D., Professor of Marketing and Founder-Director of the Responsible Innovation and Entrepreneurship (RI&E) Research Initiative
Minu Kumar is a Professor of Marketing at San Francisco State University (SFSU) and is the Founder-Director of the Responsible Innovation and Entrepreneurship (RI&E) Research Initiative. He is also Co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Product Innovation Management. He earned a Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy from the Government College of Pharmacy (Bangalore University, 1996), a Master in Business Administration (Concentration in Pharmaceutical Marketing, 2002), and a Ph.D. in Marketing (minor: pharmaceutical marketing, 2008) from the University of Mississippi. His primary scholarly interest lies in the area of Innovation, New Product Design & Development, and Entrepreneurship. Professor Kumar has published in journals such as the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Psychology, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Product Innovation Management among others. His work has directly helped the university raise several millions of dollars for I&E programs. He has also worked for or consulted with firms such as Barilla, SAP, Ranbaxy Pharmaceuticals, Novo Nordisk Pharmaceuticals, Schering Plough Pharmaceuticals, Medtronic, Glaxo Smithkline, among others on product design & development, sales, and marketing projects.
Q Hamirani, Chief People Officer at HighLevel
Q is a mission-driven Chief People Officer, entrepreneur, and advisor to founders, boards, CXOs, and VCs. With expertise spanning startups, venture growth, private equity, and Fortune 100 companies across 25+ countries, he specializes in people strategy and business operations. Currently, Q is the Chief People Officer at HighLevel, a rapidly growing SaaS platform with over 1,000 global employees. Previously, he led People and Communication at Paper, a Series D edtech company, and played a pivotal role in Airbnb’s people operations during its IPO, pandemic responses, and the creation of its Live & Work Anywhere program.
Q’s achievements include pioneering Airbnb’s Digital Nomad program and establishing a global Center of Excellence to drive innovation and growth. Passionate about personal growth, travel, and the arts, he supports emerging creatives through his record label and film production ventures, embodying a commitment to leadership, culture, and impactful change.
Bahar Javadi, Ph.D., Assistant Professor of Management, San Francisco State University
Bahareh Javadizadeh, Ph.D., is an assistant professor of management at San Francisco State University. She specializes in Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior. Her research explores the individual and organizational outcomes of perceived identity threat in the workplace, the creation of façades of conformity as a coping mechanism, and the buffering role of the climate of authenticity. Moreover, Bahareh has an interest in exploring glass ceiling beliefs among women and minorities as well as civility in the workplace. Alongside her research, Bahareh has taught several courses in Human Resource Management, Organizational Behavior, and Teamwork. In her teaching, she centers her effort on the wholesale establishment of a challenging, engaging, and thought-provoking environment in which students are continually confronted with provocative questions and tasked with applying course materials to real-world examples.
Suzanne Gibbs, Independent Board Member, Coach, and Advisor
Over the past 25 years, Suzanne Gibbs Howard has been a pioneering entrepreneur, design strategist, and expert in digital experiences. With a foundation in anthropology, she began her career studying societal change in Zimbabwe, Tibet, and Israel before translating these insights into the worlds of technology and digital transformation. Drawn to the power of innovation to drive change, she entered the Silicon Valley start-up scene before joining IDEO, where she built and expanded the firm’s global design research capability, shaping the evolution of design thinking. As a Partner at IDEO, she led the Systems Change Studio and founded IDEO U, IDEO’s groundbreaking digital learning platform, which continues to impact learners worldwide.
Today, Suzanne is an independent board member, coach, and trusted advisor to leaders and organizations navigating complex transformations. She shapes strategy, brand, product, customer, and talent experiences, ensuring that innovation is both human-centered and ethically grounded. Her clients range from industry giants like Microsoft, MIT, Apple, Harvard, The Gates Foundation, and The Aspen Institute to cutting-edge startups like Studion, StepChange, and Crew. As a board member at Studion and Education Design Lab, she remains deeply engaged in the future of digital education, critically examining the societal implications of emerging technologies. Suzanne is driven by a lifelong passion for education, design thinking, and cultural insight, leveraging these forces to catalyze meaningful, sustainable change.
Mike Monteiro, Designer, Writer, and Artist
Mike Monteiro is a designer, writer, and artist living in San Francisco. He's written about ethics in the tech industry. He warned you about all this s**t. He's too much of a gentleman to tell you he was right, but he was right. He is an immigrant in the United States. By the time this conference rolls around there's a fairly good chance he'll either be deported or in jail. So he would like to get paid up front.
Gitta Salomon, User Experience Pioneer and Strategic Advisor
After decades shaping the field of user experience, Gitta Salomon stepped back from full-time work to focus on select strategic initiatives that promise meaningful impact. She's particularly interested in mentoring the next generation of UX designers and leaders and advising on projects that push the boundaries of human-computer interaction.
Her last full time job was at Cricut where she was VP of User Experience and built an interdisciplinary team. Before that, she founded and ran Swim, a UX/UI consultancy that served clients such as Gap, GoPro, Jeppesen / Boeing, NeuroPace, and Metromile. She also worked at Apple and IDEO, where she honed her skills in strategy, user research, design thinking, and interaction design. She has multiple patents, publications, and awards in the field of UX, and she enjoys mentoring, teaching, and speaking about design thinking, user-centered processes, and lean methodologies. She is passionate about solving complex problems and creating products that make a positive impact on people's lives.
Neil Goldberg, Adjunct Professor, Pacific School of Religion
Neil Goldberg has been at the forefront of Human Centered Design since the 1980s - via his early career at the workplace innovator Herman Miller, at his Silicon Valley innovation agency Praxis Design and in a series of ventures in the co-working, digital photography and solar power industries. Along the way he has made contributions to life-patterns bound in ergonomic work-places, turn-by-turn navigation, video-conferencing, mobile computing, mobile medical imaging, co-working, social photography and other emergent product systems that have become commonplace. He has taught product design and human centered design-thinking at leading universities including here at SF State in both the Design and Business schools. He has developed and currently teaches a course in Design Thinking for Social Change at the Graduate Theological Union and Pacific School of Religion. There he is engaged in promoting conversation between designers and religious scholar to explore ways in which the world’s wisdom traditions can inform industrial creative praxis, and vice versa.
Ruby Lee, Ph.D., Professor and Director of International Programs, Florida State University
Dr. Ruby Lee is The Bob Sasser Professor of Marketing, Director of The Dr. Persis E. Rockwood School of Marketing, and Director of Global Initiatives at the Florida State University College of Business. She was honored with two Fulbright fellowships awarded by the United States Department of State. She was first named the 2016-17 Fulbright-Hanken Distinguished Chair to visit Hanken School of Economics in Finland and was awarded the second time as a Fulbright scholar to visit the University of Prishtina in Kosovo in 2024. Dr. Lee earned her PhD from Washington State University, an MPhil from The Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a BSW (Hons) from The University of Hong Kong.
Throughout her academic career, she has published in prestigious journals such as the Journal of Marketing, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Decision Sciences, Marketing Letters, Journal of Product Innovation Management (JPIM), Journal of International Marketing, and Journal of World Business, among others. Her research interests encompass marketing strategy, innovation, strategic alliances, interfirm relationships, and knowledge management in multinational corporations within emerging economies. Recently, her focus has shifted towards innovation with broader impacts on society. Dr. Lee is a board member of the Product Development and Management Association and JPIM’s co-Editor-in-Chief.
Yikuan Lee, Ph.D., Professor of International Business, San Francisco State University
Dr. Yikuan Lee is a Professor in the International Business department at San Francisco State University. She previously served on the faculty of the Eli Broad College of Business at Michigan State University for two years. She teaches Global Business Environment Analysis, International Marketing, and Creativity & Entrepreneurship. In 2024, she received the Teaching Award from the Center for Equity and Excellence in Teaching and Learning at SFSU. Dr. Lee has also been invited to lead entrepreneurship training workshops for managers and graduate students at National Tsing Hua University, Taipei University, and Chang Jung University in Taiwan.
Her primary research interests focus on the diffusion of innovation, specifically from the consumer perspective—examining how consumer perceptions influence innovation adoption. Her work also explores product design and consumer behavior, with recent research focusing on mindfulness and subconscious influences on consumer perception and innovation adoption. She has published in Journal of Product Innovation Management, Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Marketing Theory, and Journal of Business Research. Her research has been widely recognized, earning her several grants and awards, including the best paper award from Journal of Product Innovation Management, the best paper award from Global Conference on Business and Economy, and the Research Competition Award from Product Development and Management Association, and the SF State Research, Scholarship and Creative Activities Fund.
Jan Auernhammer, Research Engineer, Stanford University
Jan Auernhammer is a Research Engineer at the Center for Design Research, Mechanical Engineering Design Group, Stanford University. His research interest focuses on the professional practices of design from various perspectives, including the psychology of thinking in design, team collaboration, physical and cultural environments, and societal implications. He worked at the University of Technology Sydney, Singapore University of Technology and Design, the National University of Singapore, Edinburgh Napier University, and DaimlerChrysler.
Arun Bedi, MBA, MPS in HR, Global Talent and Learning Practitioner, SHRM
Arun Bedi is a global talent management practitioner with almost three decades of experience in leading the learning and development strategy for sales organizations. He has held senior management positions in Fortune 500 companies including Visa, Paypal, Dell Computers and Cisco Systems. Most recently he led Visa’s global onboarding program and sales leadership development initiatives in North America. He earned his undergraduate degree, MBA, and MSc in Human Resources from Cornell University.
Carsten Schultz, Ph.D., Co-Founder of Kiel Institute for Responsible Innovation and Professor of Technology Management, Kiel University
Carsten Schultz is Professor for Technology Management at Kiel University since 2012. He is also a Co-Founder of the Kiel Institute for Responsible Innovation. From 2008 to 2011, he held the junior professorship for Management of Service Innovations and Technology Transfer endowed by Deutsche Telekom AG at the Technical University of Berlin. In 2004 - 2008 he headed the Siemens Center for Knowledge Interchange, the strategic partnership between Siemens and TU Berlin. He is committed to promoting knowledge and technology transfer as a member of the scientific board of the Center for Entrepreneurship at Kiel University, as a member of the supervisory board of the Kiel Science Center and as head of the Innovation Management sub-project of the Mittelstand-Digital Zentrum Schleswig-Holstein. Carsten Schultz is also member of the supervisory board of the University Medical Center Greifswald and a member of the scientific advisory board of the German Foundation for the Chronically Ill. He has published in peer-reviewed journals such as Research Policy, Journal of Product Innovation Management, Health Policy, and IEEE Transactions on Engineering Management, among many others. He is a member of the editorial review boards of the Journal of Product Innovation Management, the Journal Creativity Innovation Management and the Health Care Management Review. Carsten Schultz is the author of numerous publications in international journals and, among others, of the textbook Innovation Management (Hauschildt et al. 7th edition, 2022).
Kristina Nickel, Ph.D., Post-Doctoral Researcher, Kiel University
Kristina Nickel (Dr. oec. troph.) is a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Marketing and the Department of Technology Management at Kiel University since January 2024. Prior to her work at the Department of Marketing/Technology Management, she worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of A&F Marketing - Consumer Psychology, Institute of Agricultural Economics, Kiel University. Her research interests include design research, cognitive psychology, gender studies, and responsible innovation. Her work has appeared in academic journals such as Journal of Business Ethics, International Marketing Review, Journal of Business Research, Journal of Consumer Behaviour, and International Journal of Research in Marketing. She has had conference proceedings and presentations accepted at AMA, ACR, AWBR, EMAC, and PDMA.
Lufei Ruan, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Accounting, San Francisco State University
Lufei Ruan is an Associate Professor of Accounting at the LFCoB. She earned her Ph.D. with a concentration in Accounting from Carnegie Mellon University in 2016. Her primary research interests include debt contracting, bank loans, and auditing. Her work has been published in premier journals such as Journal of Accounting and Economics, Contemporary Accounting Research, Journal of Business Finance and Accounting, among others. In addition to her research, Lufei teaches courses on Introduction to Management Accounting, Accounting Information Systems, and AI-powered Accounting.
Nara Jeong, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Management, San Francisco State University
Nara Jeong, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Strategy and Sustainability in the Management Department at the Lam Family College of Business, San Francisco State University. She serves on the board of the Center of Ethical & Sustainable Business and is the Associate Director of Student Success for the Lam-Larsen Initiative at the College. Additionally, she is the Faculty Director of the Innovation & Entrepreneurship Pitch Competition at the university. Dr. Jeong’s research focuses on ethical decision-making, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), ESG, diversity, and social entrepreneurship. She earned her Ph.D. in Management from Washington State University, specializing in Strategic Management.
Ian Sinapuelas, Ph.D., Professor of Marketing and Associate Director of Research Programs for the RI&E Research Initiative
Ian Sinapuelas is the Associate Director of Research Programs for the RI&E Research Initiative and is a Professor of Marketing at the LFCoB. Ian was awarded a Ph.D. in marketing from Purdue University in May 2007. Professor Sinapuelas has published in journals such as the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Consumer Marketing, and Journal of Product and Brand Management among others. His teaching experience includes MBA-level marketing management at the German International Graduate School of Management and Administration in Hanover, Germany, as well as several business courses during his time at Purdue.
Chenwei Li, Ph.D., Associate Professor of Management and Associate Director of Engagement for the RI&E Research Initiative
Chenwei Li is the Associate Director of Engagement for the RI&E Research Initiative and is an Associate Professor of Management at the LFCoB. Previously, she served on the faculty of the Doermer School of Business at the Purdue University Fort Wayne for three years. Chenwei received her Ph.D. with a concentration in Organizational Behavior from the University of Alabama. Her primary research interests focus on leadership, employee voice and team creativity. Her work has been published in the management field’s premier journals such as the Journal of Management, Journal of Organizational Behavior, Journal of Business Ethics, among others. Chenwei received the 2020 Ascendant Scholar Award from the Western Academy of Management. She has served as an ad-hoc reviewer for management journals such as Journal of Management, Journal of Business Ethics, Management and organization review etc. Chenwei teaches Leadership and Influence Skills as well as Human Resource Management courses for MBA and undergraduate programs. She has also led leadership training workshops for managers of different levels in various companies and cultural settings.