The Aspen Challenge

Get Inspired: February 22-23, 2013

For two power-packed days, you were on one of 20 teams from across L.A. that gathered at the California Science Center to hear from leaders tackling some of our toughest problems. They shared their experiences and issued a challenge, asking you to advance solutions. Now, you've chosen your challenge and are working to design your solution.

Be sure to visit the CHALLENGES, MEDIA, and RESOURCES pages to help you as your team works to turn your ideas into action and see some footage from this event.

	Jeff Ashby is the chief of mission assurance at Blue Origin, a Seattle-based commercial space flight company. A retired NASA astronaut, Ashby completed three space shuttle missions including orbital delivery of the Chandra X-ray telescope and two flights to assemble the International Space Station (ISS). He piloted the Space Shuttle Endeavour on a mission to install a robotic arm onto the ISS and was subsequently appointed commander of Space Shuttle Atlantis. Previous to NASA, Ashby flew fighter aircraft for the US Navy. His distinguished Naval career includes six deployments around the world, accumulating over 8000 flight hours, 1001 carrier landings, and 65 combat missions. In his final Naval assignment, Ashby served as commander of Strike Fighter Squadron 94 and led 220 men and women in combat operations with twelve F-18 aircraft.
	Linda Burch leads Common Sense Media’s education efforts, new program and strategy development. Throughout her career, she has dealt with the practical aspects of launching new products, negotiating partnerships, and building new ventures from the ground up, as well as broader strategic questions related to how to diversify and grow. Burch was senior vice president of business development and corporate planning at SyStemix, a biotechnology company that she helped build and then sold to Novartis. Previously, she was a strategic management consultant at McKinsey & Company in New York, where she served healthcare and consumer-products companies. Prior to that she spent five years in investment banking at Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch, where she negotiated joint ventures between US technology companies and the People's Republic of China.
	John E. Deasey is the superintendent of the Los Angeles Unified School District [LAUSD]. In this role, Deasy leads thousands of teachers, administrators, and staff in serving a diverse population of more than 600,000. Deasy joined LAUSD, after his post as deputy director of education for the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Prior to the foundation, he served as superintendent of the Prince George’s County, Maryland, Public Schools, where he earned a national reputation for his leadership in significantly narrowing the achievement gap between low‐income and minority students and their peers. Deasy has been a fellow at several organizations including the Annenberg and Broad foundations and the Aspen Institute. He has been State Superintendent of the Year, a presenter at numerous state and national conferences, and a consultant to school districts undertaking high school reform and district‐wide improvement strategies.
	Pierre Dulaine is the founder of Dancing Classrooms, an arts and social development program which uses ballroom dancing as a vehicle to change the lives of more than 400,000 children and their families. He is a well-known dancer and dance instructor whose work is the subject of the 2006 feature film Take the Lead and the 2005 documentary Mad Hot Ballroom. Dulaine’s current documentary project, Dancing in Jaffa, follows Dulaine as he returns to his birthplace, Jaffa, Palestine, to teach Jewish and Palestinian Israeli children to dance together. Dulaine has been on the faculty of the School of American Ballet, Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and the Julliard School. He has won four World Championship titles and performed on Broadway. In 2011, Dulaine received the Ellis Island Medal of Honor.
	David Gallo is an oceanographer and explorer who works to push the boundaries of oceanic discovery. Active in undersea exploration—sometimes in partnership with legendary Titanic-hunter Robert Ballard—Gallo was one of the first oceanographers to use a combination of manned submersibles and robots to map the ocean world with unprecedented clarity and detail. He was a co-expedition leader during an exploration of the RMS Titanic and the German battleship Bismarck, using Russian Mir subs. On behalf of the Woods Hole labs, he appears around the country speaking on ocean and water issues, and leading tours of the deep-ocean submersible Alvin.
	Ingrid Inema is a recent Stanford University graduate from Kigali, Rwanda. Ingrid is a survivor of the 1994 Rwandan Tutsi Genocide. She has worked to raise awareness about injustices happening around the world, and has worked to help curtail the HIV/AIDS epidemic for the past four years. Her participation in Global Nomads Group's video conference program between her high school and schools in the US opened her eyes to the rest of the world and changed her life, enabling her to seek an education and do good in the world. Ingrid is currently doing research on brain development at Stanford University and is planning on pursuing a career in child psychiatry. Ingrid likes people. The only thing she likes more than people is food, and Beyonce.
	Dean Kamen is the founder and president of DEKA Research & Development Corporation. DEKA has developed many cutting-edge technologies including the HomeChoice portable dialysis machine, the iBOT Mobility System, and the Segway Human Transporter. Kamen was inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 2005. He has received many awards for his efforts, including the National Medal of Technology in 2000 and the Lemelson-MIT Prize in 2002. Kamen has been a member of the National Academy of Engineering since 1997. Among Kamen’s proudest accomplishments is founding FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology), an organization dedicated to motivating the next generation to understand, use and enjoy science and technology.
	William Kamkwamba is the co-author with Bryan Mealer of The Boy Who Harnessed the Wind: Creating Currents of Electricity and Hope, a remarkable success story about the power of human ingenuity in the face of crippling odds. The New York Times bestseller recounts the story of how he brought electricity and light to his family and his village, and calls attention to the plight of Malawi, a country caught in the grip of AIDS and poverty. A 2007 TED Global Fellow, Kamkwamba was a student in the inaugural class of the Pan-African Leadership Academy in South Africa. An accomplished speaker, he has addressed audiences at the 2008 World Economic Forum, multiple times at TED, and at schools and universities across the globe. Kamkwamba is currently a student at Dartmouth University.
	Li Lu is the founder and chairman of Himalaya Capital, an investment firm that trades on a global basis. He serves on the boards of numerous technology and high growth companies and several not-for-profit organizations. Lu is the author of Moving the Mountain: My Life in China, which recounts his experiences in his native country and subsequently became part of a feature-length documentary of the same title, directed by Michael Apted. He won Columbia University’s John Jay Award for distinguished professional achievement and was named a Global Leader for Tomorrow by the World Economic Forum, and a Henry Crown Fellow by the Aspen Institute. Lu’s championing of human rights has been recognized with the Raoul Wallenberg Human Rights Award from the Congressional Human Rights Foundation and the Reebok Human Rights Award.
	Eric Mead (master of ceremonies) is a performing artist who defies categorization. As an onstage travel guide, he conducts interactive tours of the fantastic. He insists that entertainment is the most powerful tool available for effective and meaningful communication. His magic, humor, and play with the audience are all aimed at sharing his unique point of view and making deep emotional connections. Mead believes magic can make a lasting impact by touching and enlightening audiences and making people question their most basic assumptions. Mead’s television credits include shows for Comedy Central, MTV, and appearances on Fox Family’s “Masters of Illusion.” Mead is a highly sought after keynote speaker, having presented numerous times at both TEDMED and The Entertainment Gathering. Last year at the Society of Neuroscience, Mead spoke to 10,000 scientists about the psychology of deception.
	Kristin Groos Richmond co-founded Revolution Foods in 2005 to transform the way we feed our students. Richmond continues to lead the growth of the company, which now serves 200,000+ healthy meals daily to youth across nine states and employs over 1000 community members. Prior to Revolution Foods, her career spanned from corporate finance to education reform, including co-founding the Kenya Community Center for Learning and serving as vice president at RISE. Richmond was on the White House Council for Community Solutions and is an Aspen Institute Entrepreneurial Leaders In Public Education Fellow, an Education Pioneers Fellow and an Ashoka Fellow. She is a board member of Lighthouse Community Charter School and UC Berkeley's Global Social Venture Competition. Richmond was named a WEF Young Global Leader and is one of TIME magazine's Education Activists of 2011.
	Tiffany Shlain is a filmmaker, artist, founder of the Webby Awards, and co-founder of the International Academy of Digital Arts & Sciences. Her films and work have received 50 awards and distinctions including Tribeca Film Festival’s Disruptive Innovation Award in 2012. Her last four films premiered at Sundance, including Connected: An Autoblogography about Love, Death & Technology, which the U.S. State Department selected as one of the films to represent America at embassies around the world. Shlain is currently working on a collaborative film process, which she calls Cloud Filmmaking. Her latest cloud film is Brain Power: From Neurons to Networks. Shlain is a Henry Crown Fellow of the Aspen Institute and she was invited to advise Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the Internet and technology.
	Anna Deavere Smith is an actress and playwright who is said to have created a new form of theater. She has won numerous awards, among them two Obies, two Tony nominations, a Drama Desk Award, a MacArthur fellowship and this year’s prestigious Gish Prize. She was a finalist for the Pulitzer for her play Fires in the Mirror. Her work combines the journalistic technique of interviewing her subjects with the art of interpreting their words through performance. She currently plays hospital administrator Gloria Akalitus on Showtime's hit series Nurse Jackie. Additional screen credits include The West Wing, The American President, Rachel Getting Married and others. Honorary degrees include those from Juilliard, Northwestern and Radcliffe. She is a professor at New York University. She founded and directs, Anna Deavere Smith Works, dedicatedz to convening and supporting artists whose work addresses the world’s most pressing challenges. She serves on the Board of Trustees at the Aspen Institute.
	Tom Sturges is an author, teacher, volunteer, music business executive, and lecturer with an extensive background in the music industry. He served as executive vice president and head of creative for Universal Music Publishing, with signing credits including Foo Fighters, Jack Johnson, 50 Cent, Owl City, and many others. He was president of Chrysalis Music and signed Smashing Pumpkins and Outkast during his time there. He was also vice president/general manager of Shaqille O'Neal's TWisM Records and Publishing. He now owns Tom Sturges Music, a joint venture with Downtown Music. Sturges' volunteer efforts have focused on enabling inner city children on a track to attend four year colleges, and the work he has done was documented in the award winning film Witness to Dream. Sturges currently teaches at UCLA, and has written two books on child rearing, with a third on creativity to be published this year.
	Hugo Van Vuuren is co-founder and partner at the Experiment Fund, expert-in-residence at the Harvard School of Engineering & Applied Sciences, and an entrepreneur. Van Vuuren received his masters of design studies from the Harvard Graduate School of Design where he was a fellow at the Berkman Center for Internet and Society and the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. A TED Fellow 2010, Van Vuuren studied economics at Harvard College and co-founded two startups backed by Y Combinator before helping grow Artscience Labs and The Laboratory @ Harvard as Founding Director. South African by birth, Van Vuuren enjoys the camaraderie and adventure of small teams tackling big problems and can be found in New York or Cape Town when not at home in Cambridge, MA.