Mick Ebeling is an American film, television and commercial executive producer as well as an author, entrepreneur and philanthropist. He was named as on one of the Top 50 Most Creative People of 2014, won the SXSW Innovation Award twice in a row (2014 and 2015), and was awarded the 2014 Muhammed Ali Humanitarian of the Year Award. He is the CEO of Not Impossible, an organization that develops creative technology solutions to address real-world problems.

One of only a handful of African Americans to earn a PhD in entomology, Dr. Sammy Ramsey is an inspirational science leader and communicator who has defied the odds to achieve his dreams and is a testament to the power of grit, determination, and an unwavering commitment to one’s purpose. When people said he didn’t have what it took to make his mark in entomology, he proved them wrong by making a breakthrough discovery in the field of bee research — one that could potentially reverse a devastating pandemic in bee populations. And when people told him he didn’t “look” like a scientist, he remained true to himself and redefined what a scientist could look like. Dr. Ramsey has mastered the art of unconventional thinking to arrive at innovative solutions to some of the most significant challenges shaping the future of our society and teaches organizations and individuals how they can do the same as they address their most-pressing challenges in business and life head-on.

Bran Ferren is a designer and technologist working in entertainment, product development, engineering, architecture, and the sciences. He is former president of research and development, and creative technology for Walt Disney. Once known for entertaining millions by creating special effects for Hollywood, theme parks and Broadway, Applied Minds co-founder Bran Ferren now solves impossible tech challenges with previously unimaginable inventions. He has been named one of the “100 Most Creative People in Business” by Fast Company.

Dr. Lior Zoref is a researcher, advisor, TED speaker, and author of the best-selling book, Mindsharing – the art of crowd sourcing everything about the power of collective intelligence. His book was translated to many languages and was listed by Inc. magazine as one of the best books for entrepreneurs along with books by Richard Branson, Elon Musk, and Tony Hsieh. Dr. Zoref has been invited to speak at some of the world’s most innovative organizations, including Google, MIT Media Lab, Columbia University, The White House, Nike, Microsoft, and LinkedIn.

Dr. Ivan Joseph inspires and coaches people and teams to maximize their potential. An award-winning coach, educator, and leader, Joseph has spent his career leading cultural transformation, helping people believe in themselves, and creating cohesive teams. He speaks about self-confidence, embracing the “grit” to persevere in spite of setbacks, and leading teams to success, drawing from the lessons he’s learned from a life in sport. Dynamic and engaging, Joseph always leaves audience with a memorable experience that adds value long after the presentation ends.

Joel fuses his knowledge of improvisation and his experience with the corporate world to create presentations that make a difference. His humor and style create a positive and comfortable environment for his audience that allows them to take risks and explore their creativity.

Jane Chen is the co-founder and CEO of Embrace, a social enterprise that aims to help the 15 million premature and low birth-weight babies born every year, through a low-cost infant warmer. The Embrace infant warmer costs about 1% of a traditional incubator and is estimated to have helped over 250,000 babies to date. Most recently, Embrace Innovations launched a new line of baby products for the US market called Little Lotus Baby, which uses NASA inspired technology to keep babies at the perfect temperature so they can sleep better. They are using buy-one, give-one model: for every product sold, a baby is helped in a developing country by the Embrace infant warmer.

Referred to by his fans as “the Artist for the People,” Phil Hansen is an internationally recognized multimedia artist, speaker, author and innovator—at the forefront of bringing art to a wider audience. Crashing irreverently through conventional boundaries, Phil works at the intersection of traditional art, electronic media, offbeat materials, and interactive experiences. He is most widely known for his meta-art, videos that document the creation process (sometimes even through destruction), showing millions that art is action, not just result. For the tens of millions who have seen Phil’s art on TV and online, it’s hard to imagine that his artistic journey nearly came to an end when a tremor developed in his drawing hand. In exploring new ways to create art, he discovered that by embracing his shake, limitations could become the passageway to creativity. His inspirational story was first shared on the TED stage to a standing ovation, and then shared around the world including on PBS, BBC and CCTV. He’s the author of Tattoo a Banana, a guide to exploring creativity through art with everyday materials and he’s the founder of Goodbye-Art Academy, providing high quality and free art education videos to teachers and students everywhere.

Suhair is a technologist, design activist and thought leader in culture and innovation globally. In 2022, she founded the open-ended design Technology & Design Lab, an incubator for ideas and projects at the intersection of technology and creativity. Prior to this, Suhair spent over a decade at Google, where she worked on early-stage product development and strategy for cutting edge technology initiatives. Suhair lectures on Technology & Design in the Master of Architecture program at Central Saint Martins in London, leading future-thinking in technology, design and values-driven outcomes around sustainability, inclusion, and interdisciplinary innovation.

Benjamin Zander is the conductor of The Boston Philharmonic Orchestra and a guest conductor around the world. Zander was nominated for 2010 Grammy and recieved outstanding positive acclaim. Along with this Zander is a sought after speaker. He gave the opening Keynote address at the World Economic Forum in Davos, where on another occasion he was awarded the Crystal award for "outstanding contributions in the Arts and international relations. Using music as a metaphor and a medium, Benjamin Zander relates his position as a symphony orchestra conductor to the role of business leaders and challenges them to look at transformation and change in a new way.

As a cognitive neuroscientist specializing in music perception and cognition, he is credited for fundamentally changing the way that scientists think about auditory memory, showing through the Levitin Effect, that long-term memory preserves many of the details of musical experience that previous theorists regarded as lost during the encoding process. He has consulted on audio sound source separation for the U.S. Navy, and worked for two years at Paul Allen’s Interval Research Corporation, a Silicon Valley computer firm where he worked on issues in Human-Computer Interaction, and Applications of Cognitive Psychology.