The Disruptors

Andrew Hessel (@andrewhessel) is the CEO of Humane Genomics Inc., a seed-stage company developing virus-based therapies for cancer, starting with dogs and also co-founded the Genome Project-write, an international scientific effort working to engineer large genomes, including the human genome. Andy has been Singularity University faculty since 2009 and from 2012-2017 was the Distinguished Research...

David Heinemeier Hansson (@dhh) is the creator of Ruby on Rails, co-founder and CTO at Basecamp (formerly 37Signals), and the best-selling co-author of Rework and Remote: Office Not Required. He's blogged the past two decades at Signal v Noise, been featured on the Tim Ferriss Show, and if that wasn't enough, DHH is a Le Mans & WEC class-winning racing driver. In today's episode we discuss: - Why...

Moriba Jah (@moribajah) is a space scientist, aerospace engineer and Associate Professor at the University of Texas at Austin. He previously worked as a spacecraft navigator at the NASA JPL, where he was a navigator for the Mars Global Surveyor, Mars Odyssey, Mars Express, Mars Exploration Rover, and his last mission was the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Moriba is a Fellow of multiple organizations...

Gerald Kutney (@geraldkutney) is a climate scientist, professor, journalist/speaker, author and founder/consultant of 6esm, a C-level consulting firm focused on the bio-economy, renewable energy and the politics of the Kyoto Protocol and others like it. Gerald's a frequent contributor to the HuffingtonPost, Canada's National Observer and is the author of the peer-reviewed: Carbon Politics and the...

Polina Chebotareva is a co-founder of Cambridge Companies SPG, a social mission-oriented VC firm on fixing nutrition, farming, and health worldwide. Prior to Cambridge, Polina was an Executive VP and Partner at a real estate investment firm with $350M Equity AUM. She is a Board Member for The Laguna Art Museum, helps raise awareness and funding for environmental issues and has devoted her time and...

Howard Bloom (@howardXbloom) is a bestselling polymath, author, ex-music publicist for Styx, Prince and Billy Joel and the Founder of the Space Development Steering Committee, a group focused on space new deal of colonizing the Moon and space-based solar power, among many other things. Howard is the author of seven books, incl: The Lucifer Principle: A Scientific Expedition Into the Forces of Hist...

John Danaher (@johndanaher) is an author, podcaster and academic and lecturer at the National University of Ireland (NUI) focused on ethical, social and legal implications of emerging technologies, and other philosophical topics. His book, Automation and Utopia: Human Flourishing in a World Without Work cuts through some of the hype and pessimism about automation and work, making a rigorous case f...

Scott Young (@ScottHYoung) is a blogger, traveler, author, self-experimenter and ultra-learner that took MIT’s entire 4-year programming curriculum in a year. He’s the author of Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career and runs a podcast looking at career advice, learning, growth, productivity, philosophy and more. In today’s episode we discuss: - How...

Sean Gourley (@sgourley) is a physicist, founder and CEO of AI company, Primer, an expert on the mathematics of war, TED Fellow, speaker and political advisor. Before that, he was CTO and co-founder of Quid, an augmented-intelligence company and also worked on self-repairing nano-circuits at NASA. Sean was a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford focused on complex systems and the mathematical patterns underlyi...

Geoff Colvin is FortuneMagazine’s Senior Editor-at-Large, an award-winning thinker, author, broadcaster, and speaker on the most significant trends and issues impacting business, politics and the economy. Geoff’s work has earned him millions of loyal fans and 7M weekly listeners on CBS Radio Network He’s the author of four books including groundbreaking bestsellers Talent Is Overrated: What Really...

August Bradley (@augustbradley) is a futurist business consultant, founder/host of the Mind & Machine podcast and former COO of the pioneering virtual reality company Kite & Lightning. August’s worked with brands including Coke, Xbox, Kia, Gap, J.Crew, Banana Republic, Fisker Automotive, and many more. He is also a Board Member & Director of the AI & Machine Learning Society, Chairman of the Techn...

Jarrett Walker (@humantransit) is an international public transit network design and policy consultant and the author of popular public transit blog HumanTransit.org, and the book Human Transit: How Clearer Thinking about Public Transit Can Enrich Our Communities and Our Lives. This book is a friendly, non-technical introduction to transit’s underlying geometry and the real value judgments that mu...

Cindy Cohn is the Executive Director of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (@eff) and was the Outside Lead Attorney in Bernstein v. Dept. of Justice, the successful First Amendment challenge to the US export restrictions on cryptography. The National Law Journal named Cohn one of 100 most influential lawyers in America in 2013, noting: “If Big Brother is watching, he better look out for Cindy Cohn...

Russell Gold (@russellgold) is an author and award-winning investigative journalist and energy reporter at The Wall Street Journal best known for covering the Deepwater Horizon explosion and oil spill. They were awarded the Gerald Loeb Award for best business story of the year and were finalists for the Pulitzer. He’s the author of The Boom: How Fracking Ignited the American Energy Revolution and...

Rob Biederman (@biedermanrob) is the co-founder and CEO of Catalant, a company that connects companies to talent and knowledge in real-time and is focused on rewriting the future of work and helping Fortune 100 keep up with the pace of innovation. Prior to Catalant, Rob focused on venture capital and financial markets. In today’s episode we discuss: - How the gig economy is affecting corporations...

Andy Rachleff (@arachleff) is the co-founder and Executive Chairman (prev CEO) of Wealthfront, an automated investment service startup to provide wealth advisor-like management to everyday folks. Andy co-founded Benchmark Capital in 1995 (one of the most successful venture capital firms of all time) and was a general partner until 2004. Prior to Benchmark, he was a GP with Merrill, Pickard, Anders...

Alex Spinelli (@liveperson) is an AI expert, the former head of Alexa OS for Amazon and current CTO of LivePerson and Maven, an AI-powered conversational commerce company, helping brands like Delta, HSBC, and Home Depot leverage AI bots Before joining Amazon, Alex served as CTO of McCann Worldgroup — one of the world’s largest marketing organizations with 24,000 employees across more than 100 coun...

Anne Madden (@AnneAMadden) is a microbiologist, inventor, science communicator and CSO and founder of Lachancea, an innovative foodtech company focused on the science of microorganisms. Anne’s a public speaker (three-time TED/TEDx speaker), frequently consults as an innovation and engagement strategist for various industries and has been mentioned by various media outlets including The Wall Street...

Andrew Winston (@andrewwinston) is the founder of Winston Eco-Strategies, author of The Big Pivot and Green Recovery, and coauthored Green to Gold, the best-selling guide to what works — and what doesn’t — when companies go green. He’s a globally recognized expert on green business and has appeared in WSJ, Time, BusinessWeek, NYTimes, and CNBC. His clients have included Bank of America, Bayer, HP,...

Dr. Tessa Lau (@tessalau) is the founder and CEO of Dusty Robotics, a startup whose mission is to address construction industry labor shortages by introducing robotic automation on the jobsite. Prior to Dusty, she was CTO/co-founder at Savioke, where she orchestrated the deployment of 75+ delivery robots into hotels and high-rises and she’s spent an impressive career (including 11 years at IBM) fo...

Paul Shapiro (@paulhshapiro) is the bestselling author of Clean Meat: How Growing Meat Without Animals Will Revolutionize Dinner and the World, the CEO and co-founder of The Better Meat Co., a four-time TEDx speaker, the co-host of the Business for Good Podcast, and a long-time leader in food sustainability. He’s been interviewed by hundreds of news outlets from CNN to StarTalk Radio with Neil deG...

Sara Seager (@profsaraseager) is an astronomer, planetary scientist and professor at the MIT best known for her work on extrasolar planets and their atmospheres. Seager was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 2013 citing her theoretical work on detecting chemical signatures on exoplanet atmospheres and developing low-cost space observatories to observe planetary transits and developed a parallel ver...

Neal Gorenflo (@gorenflo) is the co-founder of Shareable, an award-winning news, action, connection hub for the grassroots sharing transformation. Neal’s worked with startups like P2P asset sharing platform Moogul.com, an online DVD exchange, a spinout of Cisco’s corporate asset sharing platform, and Divvy.com. He co-organized The Abundance League monthly salons in SF between 2005 and 2010, consul...

Jim Pugh (@dr_pugh) is a co-founder of the Universal Income Project, a fiscally sponsored organization focused on raising awareness and support for UBI. Jim’s also the founder and CEO of ShareProgress, a social-good startup that helps progressive organizations use the power of data and technology to grow their base and win their campaigns. He previously served as the Director of Analytics and Deve...

Robin Chase (@rmchase) is the founder and former CEO of Zipcar, the largest carsharing company in the world; Buzzcar, a carsharing marketplace in France; and GoLoco, an online ridesharing community as well as co-founder of Veniam, a company that moves TBs of data between vehicles and cloud. Her recent book is Peers Inc: How People and Platforms are Inventing the Collaborative Economy and Reinventi...