Responsible Innovation & Entrepreneurship Conference Speakers' Bios

Riitta Katila is the W. M. Keck Sr. Professor of Management Science, Faculty Director of the Stanford Technology Ventures Program and HAI Sabbatical Scholar at Stanford Institute for Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence at Stanford University. Her research is in the intersection of technology strategy and organizational learning, using machine learning, statistical analysis and mixed methods. She is an expert on innovation, competition, and entrepreneurship in large firms, and her current research centers on digital platforms, regulation of technology ecosystems, decentralization of decision-making, and responsible and inclusive innovation. Katila's research pushes the theoretical boundaries of institutional logics, resource dependence and evolutionary search theories to understand how organizations innovate and change.

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. 

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. 

Meagan Mitchell (she/her) is a strategic people and operations leader, brand-builder, and creative systems thinker who has spent the last decade helping bold visions come to life. Prior to joining New_ Public, Meagan was a co-director at Mobius, overseeing operations and brand in service of the mission to create a more compassionate and just future with technology. She comes from a background in creative project management, as a senior program manager at SYPartners, a transformation strategy and design consultancy based in San Francisco and New York, and as a project director at IDW, an independent creative studio in Oakland. She is a mom to two wonderful kids and lives in Oakland.

Nasser Shahrasbi is an Associate Professor of Information Systems at the Lam Family College of Business, San Francisco State University. He is also the Director of the Lam-Larsen Initiative for Emerging Technologies and a member of the AI Taskforce at SFSU, contributing to the university's efforts to advance AI research and education. Dr. Shahrasbi’s research interest encompasses emerging technologies and their impact on organizations, communities, and societies. He has published several articles in top-tier academic journals and conferences. He is also actively engaged in collaborations with industry partners, and organizing several workshops and conferences to foster the dialogue among scholars, practitioners, and policymakers.

Yong Li is the Lee Professor of Entrepreneurship at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, and Research Director of the Troesh Center for Entrepreneurship and Innovation. He currently serves as the Co-Editor of Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, a leading entrepreneurship journal. His research focuses on how firms make investment decisions in highly uncertain contexts such as venture capital, crowdfunding, new venture innovation and international investment. He has published in leading management and entrepreneurship journals such as Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal, Academy of Management Journal, Organization Science, and Strategic Management Journal. He serves on the editorial boards of Academy of Management Journal, Academy of Management Review, Journal of Business Venturing and Journal of International Business Studies. He received PhD from the University of Illinois.

Stefan Hoffmann is Professor of Marketing at Kiel University (Germany) and he is co-founder of the Kiel Institute for Responsible Innovation (KIRI). He received a diploma in psychology from the University of Mannheim as well as a doctoral degree and a second promotion (habilitation) in business administration from the Technical University of Dresden. His research is founded in psychology and he is working with empirical methods. His main research interests are ethical, responsible, and sustainable consumption, digital marketing, and responsible innovation. He has published in several marketing journals, including the Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science, Journal of Retailing, International Journal of Research in Marketing, Journal of Service Research, and Journal of Consumer Psychology, as well as in journals about ethics and sustainability, such as the Journal of Business Ethics and Ecological Economics.

Denise Kleinrichert, Ph.D. is a Professor in Management and Ethics. She is a former Interim Associate Dean of the Lam Family College of Business, as well as the past Director of the Center for Ethical and Sustainable Business (CESB). This Center integrates ethics and sustainable business teaching and service to community and the university, as well as research. She also has served as Chair of the College of Business' annual Business Ethics Week from 2007-2018, is founder of the Ethics & Compliance Workshop series, co-developed the Ethical AI Certificate (multi-disciplinary: Business, Computer Science, & Philosophy Depts.), Business Certificate in Ethics & Compliance, and the MBA Emphasis in Ethics & Compliance. She has focused her academic career in the areas of business ethics and compliance, corporate social responsibility (CSR), sustainability, and women social entrepreneurs. She teaches two undergraduate courses: Seminar on Business & Society and Ethics at Work. She also teaches MBA seminar courses: Ethics and Compliance, Political, Social, Legal Environment of Business, and Sustainability and Business Opportunity. Her research publications include numerous peer reviewed journal articles and two book chapters on topics in ethics, risk and corporate boards, CSR, sustainability, and women entrepreneurs. She also has earlier corporate executive and management experience in risk management and human resources in the banking, healthcare and property/casualty insurance industries. 

Lihua Wang is a professor at the International Business Department, Lam Family College of Business, San Francisco State University. She holds a Ph.D. degree in Management and Organizations from Northwestern University, an M.B.A. degree from the Chinese University of Hong Kong, and a bachelor’s degree in International Economics from Nankai University, China. Her research interests include the internationalization of firms in emerging markets, corporate social responsibility, stakeholder management, and inter-firm relationships. She has extensive teaching experience in the areas of corporate strategy, organizational theory, cross-cultural negotiation, comparative management, international business, and global strategy. She has taught at Stanford University, Columbia University, the National University of Singapore, and San Francisco State University. She has published numerous articles in peer-reviewed journals, such as Strategic Management Journal, Industrial and Corporate Change, Journal of Business-to-Business Marketing, Management and Organization Review, Journal of World Business, Chinese Management Studies, Family Business Review, Asian Journal of Business Ethics, Journal of International Consumer Marketing, Management Decision, and Journal of Business Research.  

Sungha Jang is an Associate Professor of Marketing and the director of the Master of Science in Business Analytics at San Francisco State University. His primary research goal is to examine underlying mechanisms of marketing phenomena and develop quantitative models. Specifically, he is interested in consumers’ search behavior/choice decisions and firms’ advertising/targeting strategies. His current research focuses on measuring the effectiveness of digital marketing on firms’ various performance. He has published in Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Journal of Business Research, and Journal of Empirical Finance among others. He earned his Ph.D. degree from the University of Texas at Dallas. Prior to his academic career, he worked in the field of credit risk management for five years, during which he conducted several consulting projects for financial companies.