Tina Sharkey
Chairman
BabyCenter LLC
Henry Crown Fellowship Program (HCF) Class VIII: 2004 Infin8 Class
Tina Sharkey, Chairman and Global President of BabyCenter LLC, has more than 20 years of experience in the evolution of new media, ranging from the introduction of HDTV in 1986 to the forefront of Web 2.0 today. She has been featured as a Top Leader in Technology by Businessweek, Fast Company, USA Today and Advertising Age, and currently serves on the boards of the Interactive Advertising Bureau and Ad-tech. Recognized by Advertising Age's 2008 Digital A-List, BabyCenter is the established leader in providing mom insights and innovative interactive marketing solutions to the world's leading brands. Since joining BabyCenter LLC in January 2007, Tina has led the brand to become the Web's #1 global interactive parenting and pregnancy destination, reaching 78% of new and expecting moms online in the United States, and reaching more than 20 million parents monthly across 22 markets worldwide. With 7 out of 10 babies born in the United States last year being BabyCenter babies, the brand is mom's first choice for all her pregnancy and parenting information. In this leadership role, Tina also advocates for women's maternal health issues across the globe. She has spoken at various conferences worldwide, and has lobbied Congress for support on mobile health initiatives that will empower women to activate engagement in their own health. Prior to joining BabyCenter, Tina worked at America Online, Inc., where she led AOL's social networking initiatives, including the AIM (Instant Messenger) and Social Media groups. Tina also led AOL's network programming and directed the transformation of AOL.com into an open online destination. Before AOL, she served as Group President of Sesame Workshop's Online Services and prior as co-founder and chief community architect of iVillage.com. Prior to iVillage, Tina collaborated with Barry Diller on a new home shopping channel, Q2, a division of QVC, helped launch the Adobe Acrobat and New York 1 brands, and has managed corporate brand strategies for Time Warner, QVC and Sony. Tina graduated from the University of Pennsylvania. She is a 2004 Henry Crown Fellow at the Aspen Institute and a founding board member of Baby Buggy, a non-profit organization dedicated to helping New York City's families in need.
Jim Whitaker
Filmmaker and Chairman
Whitaker Entertainment
Henry Crown Fellowship Program (HCF) Class VIII: 2004 Infin8 Class
James Whitaker is the Chairman of Whitaker Entertainment, which is based at Walt Disney Pictures. He most recently produced THE ODD LIFE OF TIMOTHY GREEN for Disney, which will be released in August of 2012. Whitaker began his career with Imagine Entertainment as an intern while attending the USC Peter Stark Producing Program. Upon graduation, he was brought on as a Creative Associate, and rose through the ranks to become President of Production, supervising development and production. While there, he executive produced such films as FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS, 8 MILE, CHANGELING, AMERICAN GANGSTER, CINDERELLA MAN, and CURIOUS GEORGE. Jim's passion for filmmaking emerged during his undergraduate years at Georgetown, where he worked on John Waters' film Hairspray, doing craft services. In 1988, he served as an intern for a local NBC affiliate and traveled to the Democratic and Republican conventions, working as a stringer for reporter Katie Couric. In 1989-90 he directed several socially-conscious films to raise money for non-profit organizations. Upon graduation, he joined the independent production company, Hillman & Carr, where he conceived and directed an award-winning public-service announcement against drunk driving, entitled Loaded. In 2001, after the World Trade Center tragedy, Jim conceived a film project centered on the country's recovery from 9/11. The documentary, REBIRTH, combined time-lapse photography of the World Trade Center Site with the intimate stories of five people coping with grief, which Whitaker followed for the nine years. The film premiered at the Sundance Film Festival, was released theatrically by Oscilloscope Laboratories and then ran on Showtime. It will have a permanent home as part of an exhibit at the 9/11 Memorial &Museum. Project Rebirth, which Whitaker founded, is also an established non-profit that will give all funds from the commercial release of the film to the Project Rebirth Center for victims of and first responders to events of traumatic loss. Jim earned his BA in Economics in 1990 from Georgetown University and a Master of Fine Arts from USC in 1993. He received an honorary doctorate from Pace University in 2011. Jim is a member of the 2004 class of Henry Crown Fellows at the Aspen Institute.
Shane Tedjarati
CEO
Honeywell China and India
Henry Crown Fellowship Program (HCF) Class X: 2006 Great Xpectations Class
Shane Tedjarati is the president and CEO of Honeywell Global High Growth Regions. He is responsible for driving Honeywell's business expansion in the high growth regions of the world: Asia, Africa, Latin America, the Middle East and Eastern Europe. Based in Shanghai, he has accumulated more than 20 years of consulting experience in various industries and has been working in China since 1992. He has a proven track record of creating localized go-to-market strategies, fostering cross-business cooperation and nurturing business partnerships in high growth regions. Prior to this role, he was the president and CEO of Honeywell China and India, where he was instrumental in engineering Honeywell's success story in these two countries, both of which have grown several fold and become major contributor to Honeywell's worldwide growth. Shane is the co-founder of Aspen Institute's Middle East Leadership initiative and is currently working to launch a similar initiative in East Asia and China. He is working on a book regarding the social and cultural ramifications of the sweeping changes taking place in the Chinese society. Shane is an avid aviator and he enjoys flying throughout the world and is a licensed commercial pilot. He graduated from McGill University in Montreal Canada with a BS in Computer Science and Mathematics, and earned an MBA from the University of Surrey in the United Kingdom. He speaks six languages and has lived in China for more than 20 years. He is a 2006 Henry Crown Fellow of The Aspen Institute, and a member of the Aspen Global Leadership Network.
