Autumn 2016 Seminar Speakers
Tilly Chang serves as Executive Director of the San Francisco County Transportation Authority. As the Congestion Management Agency and transportation sales tax administrator for San Francisco, the Transportation Authority collaborates with public agencies and the private sector to improve transportation options for residents, commuters and visitors alike. Ms. Chang has two decades of experience,including serving previously as theTransportationAuthority’s Deputy Director for Planning. Ms. Chang has also held posts with the World Bank, Metropolitan Transportation Commission, and a technology startup. She serves on the boards of the California Transportation Foundation, SPUR and the UC Transportation Centers.
Tiffany Chu is the Co-founder and Chief Design Officer at Remix. She is passionate about improving cities through design. She's mapped 100+ street vendors in Vietnam, crafted 3D models at Pixar Animation Studios, written for Dwell Magazine, worked for the City of New Orleans post-Katrina, was an innovation consultant at Continuum, and studied architecture and urban planning at MIT. She was the first UX hire at Zipcar, working with the product team to research and shape the experience of car sharing and urban mobility. In 2014, she moved from Cambridge, Massachusetts to San Francisco to be a Fellow at Code for America, working with local governments to improve technology in the public sector. By day, she is currently a cofounder at Remix, building software to help cities plan better public transit. By night, she bicycles, dances, cooks, flows through a few vinyasas, and plays on the internet.
Sean Dasey is a data analyst at Roundhouse One. He has worked with multiple clients in Hawaii, focusing on research related to energy efficiency and thermal comfort in both traditional, existing masonry structures and modern, net zero energy buildings. He is part of a team collaborating with the Hawaii Department of Education to collect and analyze thermal comfort data from public schools across the state, as part of an effort to advance heat abatement strategies for classrooms which lack air conditioning.
Caroline Judy is the Director for the County of Sonoma General Services Department. Caroline has operational and strategic leadership responsibilities for GSD 119 employees and $39 million operating department budget, and the $42 million capital program. Her areas of focus include building organizational capacity, developing performance metrics, improving disaster preparedness, and sponsoring innovative initiatives within sustainability, energy efficiency and renewable energy. Notably in her prior service with Santa Clara County, she helped to launch the Silicon Valley Renewable Energy Procurement. While at Alameda County, she led the County of Alameda’s team delivering the Regional Renewable Energy Procurement. Caroline holds a Master's degree in Political Science from Stanford University and a baccalaureate in Economics from Reed College. Caroline lives in Santa Rosa, California.
Dr. Julie Kim is P3 FLIPS Program Developer at the Stanford Global Projects Center and is working to develop sustainable business models for public-private partnerships (P3) in the U.S. market, drawing upon 30-year P3 experiences and best practices globally and developing new and innovative approaches where needed. Recently, her research focus has been on P3 political risks and infrastructure banking cooperative. She is currently leading GPC’s P3 Financial Literacy in Public Sector (P3 FLIPS) Initiative. Julie has over 25 years of experience in large-scale infrastructure projects in the U.S. and Asia, with a special expertise in transportation sector. She is a founder and CEO of BeneTellus, a consulting firm specializing in infrastructure privatization and financing. Dr. Kim was Senior Researcher and Director of Asia-Pacific Infrastructure Initiative at RAND Corporation. Prior to RAND, she was a senior executive with AECOM and URS Corporation where her experience encompassed all phases of large-scale infrastructure development projects from initial planning phase through design, construction, and operations phases. Dr. Kim was also the founding Executive Director of Collaboratory of Research in Global Projects (CRGP), a predecessor to GPC. Dr. Kim holds a B.S. in Civil Engineering from M.I.T. as well as a M.S. and Ph.D. in Civil Engineering from Stanford University.
Dr. David Lallemant is a research engineer at Stanford University. His research focuses on understanding and quantifying the evolution of extreme risk in today’s growing cities. He uses earthquake sciences and engineering, urban analytics, predictive modeling and spatial statistics for application in natural disaster risk analysis as well as urban analytics more broadly. The multi-disciplinary and policy-oriented nature of his work has led him to build collaborations with the World Bank, the Red Cross, Google, USGS and others. He holds a PhD from Stanford (2015), a master’s degree from UC Berkeley (2010) and bachelor’s degree from MIT (2007). David is also active in post-disaster response and recovery, which forms the basis for his research on post-disaster assessment and community resilience. He worked for two years in Haiti following the 2010 earthquake and has been involved with the response and recovery following the 2011 earthquake in Christchurch and the 2015 earthquake in Nepal.
Rich Lechner is a Managing Partner at The INSIGHT Group where he is a seasoned marketing and business development executive with a track record for successfully shaping and capturing markets. He spent 30 years at IBM where his career spanned multiple disciplines including product & services development, strategy, sales and marketing at both a regional and global level. Most recently, Rich was chief marketing officer for the IBM Global Services infrastructure and business process outsourcing business tasked with addressing a rapidly shifting market and reversing declines in customer satisfaction, signings, and market share. He architected the transformation of the client experience with an emphasis on committing to business outcomes, driving rapid cloud adoption, and a more client-centric service delivery model. Rich also led cloud marketing and helped establish the foundation for what has grown to be a $4.4B business with 69% revenue growth. Rich holds a Bachelors’ Degree in Computer Science from University of California, Los Angeles. He is an adjunct professor at Columbia University’s Earth Institute for Environmental Sustainability where he teaches courses on Sustainability on a Smarter Planet.
Dr. Paolo Parigi is the Associate Director of Computational Social Science at the Institute for Research in the Social Sciences at Stanford University and a Lead Trust Scientist at Uber. He has studied the relationship between risk and trust in the sharing economy for several years. In 2013, Paolo received funding from the National Science Foundation to explore the multifaceted nature of the relationship between risk, trust and reputation. Paolo’s more theoretical work has touched on the impact of technology on relationships. Paolo has an MA in Quantitative Methods and a PhD in Sociology from Columbia University. Prior to his current positions, Paolo had an appointment in the Sociology department at Stanford as an assistant professor.
Zahraa Saiyed is a research associate with MIT’s Urban Risk Lab, a structural designer at Mar Structural Design and co-founder of Scyma Design + Consulting for resilient and sustainable built environments. Zahraa’s work in disaster risk reduction includes projects with the Urban Risk Lab and the World Bank in Peru, Haiti and San Francisco. In addition, she works with the City of San Francisco’s Earthquake Safety Implementation Program on shelter-in-place and building safety for post-disaster scenarios in San Francisco and the greater Bay Area. Zahraa’s research interests include projective analysis of operations and resource management in city-wide disaster response and recovery, including aspects of disaster debris management and sheltering provisions. She has most recently lectured at Stanford University in the Geophysics department for a multi-disciplinary course, Disasters, Decisions and Development, focused on tsunami risk reduction in Indonesia. Zahraa holds a B.A. in Architecture from UC Berkeley, an M.S. in Building Technology and an M.Eng in Structural Engineering from M.I.T.
Aekta Sha is the Co-founder and Chief Operating Officer of Streetwyze: a mobile, mapping, and SMS platform that uses the power of local knowledge to help residents find goods and services, take action on important issues, and serves as a connection hub for community transformation. Streetwyze has recently been recognized by President Obama, The White House, Rockefeller Foundation, Knight News Challenge, Echoing Green and others. Aekta is also currently pursuing her Ph.D in Technology Design at Stanford University and is the recipient of the prestigious Stanford Graduate Fellowship. At Stanford her research and work range from running Design-thinking workshops at the Stanford d.School to developing new social impact technology and community engaged design ideas to catalyze equitable economic development in low-income communities and communities of color in collaboration with the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Aekta’s areas of expertise include research and development on issues of participatory technology, GIS mapping, and sustainable community development. Aekta holds a Ed.M from Harvard University and a B.A. from Dartmouth College.
Michael Steep is a Visiting Scholar at the Stanford Global Projects Center and Senior Vice President of Global Business Operations for the PARC innovation center in Palo Alto, California. He has over two decades of operating experience managing global P&L's, sales, digital marketing, strategy, business development, and strategic alliances for Microsoft, Lexmark (IBM), Apple, and HP. Mr. Steep’s team at Apple launched the first digital camera. Today, he works with commercial clients on transforming their industry and company business models by leveraging emerging technologies - big data, predictive analytics, cloud, mobile, and privacy. He also serves on the Smart City London Board and is Contributing Editor for Forbes writing articles on digital cities, disruptive technologies, and executive leadership. Mr. Steep’s passion is corporate transformation through effective leadership and practical approaches to innovation. He has worked extensively at Microsoft and PARC with executives from companies crossing multiple industries including Aerospace, Healthcare, Pharma, and Automotive. He works with the top Innovation and R&D executives from companies including Airbus, BMW, Google, Merck, BP, and Booz Allen. Mr. Steep’s MBA is from the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, and he has a BA from the University of Pennsylvania. He also serves as an Adjunct Professor of Digital Business at Imperial College London.