Kate Bingaman-Burt is an illustrator and educator. She's been making work about consumption since 2002, teaching since 2004, and drawing since 2006. Her first book, Obsessive Consumption: What Did You Buy Today?, was published by Princeton Architectural Press in 2010. She lives in Portland, where she's an assistant professor of graphic design at Portland State University. Her work is represented by Jen Bekman in New York City. Recent clients include IDEO, Etsy, the New York Times, the MoMA and Hallmark.
Kimberly Howard was appointed in 2009 to oversee the Oregon Cultural Trust—to develop and sustain arts, heritage and humanities. Previously she was managing director at Portland's Interstate Firehouse Cultural Center and education/outreach director for Artists Repertory Theatre. Howard is an accomplished actress with credits in New York, the Williamstown Theatre Festival and Portland theaters, including Sojourn Theatre and Boom Arts' staged reading of Hollow Roots by Christina Anderson at Reed College.
Ben Huh is the founder and CEO of the Cheezburger Network. He's been credited with pioneering Internet culture as entertainment, crowd sourcing and mainstreaming Internet memes. His media company includes more than 50 online humor sites, receives 400 million page views monthly, has spawned two New York Times Best Sellers and inspired a TV series. He's a cofounder of Circa, an online journalism start-up reimagining the way we consume news. Huh holds a BSJ from Northwestern University and lives in Seattle with his wife, Emily.
Jonathan Krisel is a grad of NYU's Film School where he was obsessed with cable access, industrial films and animation. In 2007, he parlayed this into a role as director, co-executive producer, editor, animator and co-writer of Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! He's also co-directed, co-executive produced and edited Check It Out with Dr. Steve Brule. Krisel has just finished co-executive producing and directing the entire third season Portlandia and executive producing, writing and directing Kroll Show on Comedy Central.
Dr. Laurie Marker is founder and executive director of the Cheetah Conservation Fund. Having worked with cheetahs since 1974, Dr. Marker set up the not-for-profit Fund in 1990 and moved to Namibia to develop a permanent Conservation Research Centre for the wild cheetah. Dr. Marker also helped develop the U.S. and international captive program, establishing the most successful captive cheetah-breeding program in North America during her 16 years (1974—1988) at Wildlife Safari in Winston, Oregon.
During and after his 12-year career in the NBA, Brian Grant dedicated his life to programs assisting seriously ill and underprivileged youth. In 2008, he was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease and started the Brian Grant Foundation. The foundation is dedicated to helping those affected by Parkinson's live active and fulfilling lives. Among its other efforts, the foundation hosts an annual fund-raiser gala called “Shake It Till We Make It” that raises money to provide resources and support for those in need.
Brian Faherty, owner, founder and creative director of Schoolhouse Electric & Supply Co., began the lighting and lifestyle housewares brand in 2003. His passion stems from his desire to help people create personal spaces that inspire. Faherty is a proponent of micro-manufacturing and believes that building a strong U.S. vendor community will help to put the United States back on the map as a thoughtful, sustainable and competitive place to manufacture quality goods. Faherty lives with his wife, Jill, and their three children in Portland.
Since Naomi Pomeroy and her sous chef, Mika Paredes, opened Beast in 2007, Bon Appétit named her as one of the top six of a new generation of female chefs in 2008 and Food & Wine Magazine recognized her as one of the 10 Best New Chefs in America in 2009—and she's been named three times as a finalist for the James Beard Foundation Award for Best Chef in the Northwest. Pomeroy appeared as a contestant on Top Chef Masters and a judge on Top Chef. This year, she was included in the U.S. Diplomatic Culinary Partnership initiative in Washington, DC.
Di-Ann Eisnor, vice president of platforms and partnerships at Waze, runs U.S. operations and is crafting the cartography of "live mapping" for Israeli crowd-sourced navigation and real-time traffic. Eisnor is a neogeography pioneer and serial entrepreneur employing all means to increase the world's citizen mappers. Prior to Waze, Eisnor founded Platial, the People's Atlas, and Eisnor Interactive. Eisnor believes social mapping to be a critical tool for cultural diplomacy. She sits on the board of Gray Area Foundation for the Arts (GAFFTA).
Feast Portland co-founder Mike Thelin conceives, creates and consults for food-related projects nationally. He has invented pop-up cooking schools for Whole Foods Market, started a national food festival and worked with a wide range of partners to create projects that grab attention and maximize outcomes. After traveling the world, Thelin returned to Portland to launch a career as a food writer and critic and found the multi-platform Bolted Services. You may recognize him from the Cooking Channel's Unique Eats.
Guido Rahr is the president and chief executive of the Wild Salmon Center, where he works to help protect wild salmon habitats in the Pacific Northwest, British Columbia, Alaska, Russia and Japan. He has also worked with the United Nations, Oregon Trout, The Nature Conservancy, Conservation International, Rainforest Alliance and ESPN. Rahr is a master fly fisher who has explored salmon and trout streams all over the world. He lives in Portland with his wife, Lee, and their three boys.
Tom Brokaw has been an award-winning journalist and news anchor for over 40 years. His esteemed career includes the first one-on-one interview with Mikhail Gorbachev and the first network report on human rights abuses in Tibet with an exclusive interview with the Dalai Lama. He was also the only American network anchor to report from the scene when the Berlin Wall fell. In 1998, Brokaw published The Greatest Generation, one of the most popular nonfiction books of the 20th century.
