Jaleh Bisharat, Co-Founder and Co-Chair, previously served as Vice President of Marketing for Amazon.com, the world’s leading online retailer. At Amazon.com she oversaw customer acquisition and retention, brand marketing, public relations, market intelligence and the customer experience group. Previously, Jaleh held executive positions at OpenTable, PointCast, Approach Software and Lotus Development Corporation. In 1999, Jaleh was named as one of Advertising Age’s Power 50 marketing executives. She holds an AB in Government from Harvard-Radcliffe and an MBA from Harvard Business School.
Thomas Layton, Co-Founder and Co-Chair, is CEO of Metaweb. Thomas was CEO of OpenTable from 2001 to June 2007. Previously, he was a co-founder of CitySearch, Inc., which later merged with Ticketmaster and is now a subsidiary of USA Networks. Prior to his experience at Ticketmaster-CitySearch, Thomas was with Score Learning Corporation, a leading educational services company, where he served first as Chief Financial Officer and later as President and Chief Operating Officer. Thomas holds an MBA fro m the Graduate School of Business at Stanford University and a BS from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He is also a Crown Fellow with the Aspen Institute.
Steven Addis, Board Member, is the CEO of Addis Group, a prominent brand strategy and design firm. After beginning his career as a professional photographer, Steven entered brand management at The Clorox Company where he led the new products group. In 1987, Steven left Clorox to create a new breed of branding firm – the first of its kind to truly blend excellence in brand strategy and brand expression. Realizing this vision, Addis combines senior managers taken from the country’s top marketing companies with world-class designers and copywriters. Clients span numerous business categories and include Kelloggs, Intel, Dole, Annie’s Homegrown, Harrah’s, and UC Berkeley. Steven is also a director of the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive.
Greg Gretsch, Board Member, is a managing director at Sigma Partners with a thirteen-year background in technology, largely as an entrepreneur. Most recently he served as Vice President of Electronic Direct Marketing for Kana Communications after joining the company through Kana’s acquisition in 1999 of Connectify, Inc., which he co-founded in 1997. His first technology startup was Vicarious, an education and reference CD-ROM publisher, which he founded in 1993 and where he served as CEO. Greg has also held various management positions in IS, marketing and product marketing with companies including Arthur Andersen, Apple and Kaleida Labs. He received his B.B.A. in MIS from the University of Georgia.
Lawrence Lessig, Board Member, is a Professor of Law at Stanford Law School and founder of the school’s Center for Internet and Society. Prior to joining Stanford, he was the Berkman Professor of Law at Harvard Law School. Professor Lessig has won numerous awards, including the Free Software Foundation’s Freedom Award, and was named one of Scientific American’s Top 50 Visionaries, for arguing “against interpretations of copyright that could stifle innovation and discourse online.” He is the founder of Change Congress and Creative Commons. Professor Lessig teaches and writes in the areas of constitutional law, contracts, and the law of cyberspace. Professor Lessig earned a BA in economics and a BS in management from the University of Pennsylvania, an MA in philosophy from Cambridge, and a JD from Yale.
Dan Newman is Co-Founder and Executive Director of MAPLight.org, a nonpartisan nonprofit illuminating the connection between money and politics in unprecedented ways. MAPLight.org’s groundbreaking website reveals relationships between campaign donations and legislative votes, helping citizens and communities hold their elected officials accountable. The Sunlight Foundation called MAPLight.org “a preview of the next generation of money-and-politics reporting.” Dan, an entrepreneur and political organizer, is the author of three books on speech recognition software and is the founder of Say I Can, a speech recognition firm. Dan co-founded the Berkeley Fair Elections Coalition and has served as a consultant to various political and nonprofit groups, including the Center for Voting and Democracy, Israel Venture Network, and the Mental Health Association of San Francisco. He received a MA in Psychology from the University of California at Berkeley, where he attended on a National Science Foundation Fellowship, and a BA in Biomedical Ethics from Brown University. He lives in Berkeley, California.
Emily Calhoun, Research Director, leads the MAPLight.org research team and oversees the accuracy and timeliness of MAPLight.org data. She has extensive research and project management experience across several fields including economics, production of a PBS documentary, and television news. She received her Masters in Economics from The New School of Social Research in New York, while tutoring secondary students. She has a BA in International Relations from American University in Washington. She has also studied at Universidad de Belgrano in Buenos Aires.
Pamela Heisey, Communications Director, designs and executes MAPLight.org’s strategic communications programs. She has 17 years of marketing experience in communications, public relations, community outreach, marketing, events, sustainability programs and direct mail. She has integrated many innovative, high-impact public relations campaigns into forward-thinking private and non-profit institutions. Pamela studied Mass Communications at California State Hayward and lives with her partner Jan in Kensington, CA.
Susannah Nadler, Research Coordinator, coordinates the MAPLight.org research internship program. Susannah’s previous experience includes teaching English and American Government to middle school students and being a wilderness instructor. She received her BA in English Literature from Wesleyan University, where she graduated both Phi Beta Kappa and with honors.
Andrew Page, Associate Director, leads development efforts for MAPLight.org. Andrew has over 20 years experience in the nonprofit sector. He has served both as a Membership Director and Political Director of a large California-based grassroots lobby. He has extensive experience in coalition building, strategic planning and organizational development. He received his BA in Philosophy from Tufts University.
Ben H. Bagdikian, Advisory Board Member, is dean emeritus of the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California at Berkeley. His seven books include The Media Monopoly, now in its seventh edition. He was a member of a group that won a Pulitzer Prize for local reporting, has been a Washington Bureau Chief, a foreign correspondent who has covered a war and a revolution, and an Assistant Managing Editor for National News of The Washington Post, for which he provided The Pentagon Papers.
Paul Braund, Advisory Board Member, is the Co-founder and Executive Director of RiOS Institute, a partnership organization of the United Nations Global Alliance for ICT and Development. Mr. Braund began his career in design and technology development with a leading international consulting group in Silicon Valley, Europe and Asia, and worked for 20 years with startups, multinationals and government agencies. He is a lecturer at the University of California at Berkeley, focusing on ICT and Development and Social Entrepreneurship, and is head of the the USA World Summit Awards initiative and an adviser to the World Bank Institute. Mr. Braund has an MPhil from the Royal College, Industrial Design Engineering London and a BA (Hons)in Design Engineering from the University of Birmingham, England.
Edward J. “Ted” Costa, Advisory Board Member, is C.E.O. of People’s Advocate, Inc., a grassroots voice for individual liberty and government by the people. People’s Advocate educates the public on issues of taxation, government spending, financing, and local, state, and national government structures. Ted has qualified four initiatives for the California ballot, including the recall of Governor Davis in 2003. He has a deep interest in fair redistricting of legislative districts and was the Proponent for the redistricting initiative that appeared on the November 2005 California ballot. Ted is also an elected member of his local water board in Citrus Heights, California.
Christian Crumlish, Advisory Board Member, is the author of The Power of Many: How the Living Web is Transforming Politics, Business, and Everyday Life and curator of Yahoo!‘s design pattern library. Christian was among the first credentialed bloggers at the Democratic Party’s National Convention in Boston in 2004 and covered the Republican convention from the streets of New York in September of that same year. Christian received his bachelor of arts in philosophy from Princeton University.
Thomas R. Miller, Advisory Board Member, is senior partner in the law firm of Miller & Ngo. Miller serves as General Counsel to Global Exchange, the San Francisco human rights organization, and is on the advisory board of the first Afghan-run microlending fund, Parwaz. He also serves as board chairperson of the Nautilus Institute. During the Vietnam War he established the world’s largest plastic and reconstructive surgery center to treat war-injured children. Miller has also served as a consultant for the late Senator Robert Kennedy, UNICEF, the Peace Corps, and various public interest research organizations. He is a graduate of Yale University, Stanford Law School, and Columbia University’s Parker School of Foreign & Comparative Law.
Jeni Sall, Advisory Board Member, is President of Genesis Research Associates, a marketing research consultancy serving the information needs of a wide range of technology, consumer goods, and services firms. Jeni’s research helped guide the development of the Macintosh computer, Quicken and QuickBooks software programs, and the Weight Watchers line of frozen desserts. Her clients include Fortune 500 firms like Apple Computer, HP, Intuit, Microsoft, IBM, Xerox, Motorola, Ore-Ida Foods, Nestle, Wells Fargo Bank, and Nissan Motor Corporation. Jeni received her BA in Psychology from Hofstra University and her MA in Psychology from the University of Hawaii.