Leland Pillsbury is a venture capitalist with a special focus on the hospitality industry. He is the Founder, Co-Chairman and CEO of Thayer Lodging Group, a privately held hotel real estate investment firm which ranks among the top 5% of top performers among all private real estate firms. He is also the cofounder and chairman of TIG Global, an internet marketing company serving over 1,500 hotels around the world, cofounder and chairman of EMC Venues, the largest resort and conference center marketing representation firm in the country, cofounder and chairman of Thayer Insurance Group, providing specialized insurance coverages to hotel and hospitality firms, cofounder of HUBS1, providing the only Global Distribution System and central reservations systems to the domestic Chinese hotel and airline industries, and cofounder of HQuant, a financial and analytical firm serving the hospitality industry and publisher of the HQuant Lodging Real Estate Index. He is a principal and director in several other companies both inside and outside the hospitality industry.
Pillsbury launched Grande Heritage Hotels in 1989 and sold the company in 1991, after serving 20 years at Marriott International, where he was Marriott's youngest Executive Vice President and corporate officer. Mr. Pillsbury served as the head of Strategic Planning for the lodging business, participated in the acquisition of a time sharing business, led the venture team that developed and launched Fairfield Inns, acquired the Residence Inns Company, and introduced several brand extensions. During this period, Marriott experienced a four fold increase in sales, a five fold increase in profits, and an eight fold increase in its market capitalization. At the time of his departure, he was responsible for $1 billion in annual capital development projects and over 18,000 employees. After his departure, he participated in the acquisition of the Ritz Carlton Hotel Company by Marriott International. In 1991 he founded Thayer Lodging Group.
Leland Pillsbury received his BS degree from Cornell's School of Hotel Administration and an Executive MBA from Northwestern University's J. L. Kellogg Graduate School of Management.
Howard Morgan has been President of Arca Group, Inc. since 1989 and also serves as a Director of Idealab. Arca Group, Inc. is a consulting and venture capital investment management firm specializing in the area of computer and communications technologies. In 2005, he confounded First Round Capital, an early stage venture fund based outside of Philadelphia, PA
Morgan served as Professor of Decision Sciences at The Wharton School, and Professor of Computer and Information Sciences at The Moore School of the University of Pennsylvania from 1972 through 1985. He has been a Visiting Professor at the California Institute of Technology and the Harvard Business School.
Howard Morgan received a Ph.D. in Operations Research from Cornell University and a B.S. in physics from City College of the City University of New York.
Paul Polman was appointed an Executive Director of Unilever in October 2008. He assumed the role of Chief Executive Officer on 1st January 2009.
Paul began his career at Procter & Gamble in 1979 and was group president Europe and officer of the Procter & Gamble Company until 2001.
Prior to joining Unilever, Paul was chief financial officer of Nestlé S.A. from January 2006 as well as executive vice president for the Americas from February 2008.
Paul serves as President of the Kilimanjaro Blind Trust and Chairman of Perkins International Advisory Board. He is a member of the Executive Committee of the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, the European Round Table, the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum and the Swiss American Chamber of Commerce. He is on the Board of the Consumer Goods Forum where he co-chairs the Board Strategy and the Sustainability Committees. He is a Trustee of both the Leverhulme Trust and Asia House, a former board member of Alcon and, since February 2010, a non-executive director of the Dow Chemical Company.
Married with three children, Paul enjoys reading, marathon running, and mountaineering, but his main passion is for his role in running the Kilimanjaro Blind Trust.
Paul earned a BBA/BA from the University of Groningen, Netherlands, in 1977 and an MA in economics and MBA in finance/international marketing from the University of Cincinnati in 1979. He has honorary degrees from the Universities of Northumbria, Newcastle, UK (2000) and the University of Cincinnati, US (2009).
David Cohn is Director, Business Informatics at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Center. He supervises a research team focused on modeling, transforming and integrating information and business structures for on demand solutions. He directs IBM's worldwide research strategy in support of on Business Design & Implementation.
Prior to his current position, Dr. Cohn was Director of IBM's Austin Research Laboratory which focuses on exploratory VLSI design, electronic CAD tools and high-productivity system design and is home of IBM's Low-Power Initiative. He also served as Director, Strategic Projects at Armonk assisting the Chairman and corporate executives in formulating and assessing IBM's worldwide business strategy. Before joining IBM, he was Professor of Computer Science & Engineering and Professor of Electrical Engineering at Notre Dame.
David Cohn received his undergraduate and PhD degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
Douglas Lasdon founded the Urban Justice Center as a one-person operation in a burned-out building in East Harlem, to provide badly needed legal services to one of New York City's most underserved populations - single, homeless adults. To make his services accessible to his clients, he conducted outreach legal clinics directly in soup kitchens, making us the first organization in the country to use this approach.
Since then, Lasdon has greatly expanded the agency's size, scope, and influence, while still holding fast to its core mission - helping those at the farthest margins of society, both one at a time and collectively. In addition to leading the agency, he continues to represent individual clients and to engage in impact litigation.
Prior to founding the Urban Justice Center, Lasdon was a Fellow and Staff Attorney at Covenant House in New York City. He has been an adjunct faculty member at New York University since 1985, and has also served as a consultant to the World Bank, and as a Wasserstein Fellow at Harvard Law School.
Douglas Lasdon graduated from the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania and received his law degree from Cornell University Law School.
Jim Lyons is the CTO of Novus Energy Partners. He recently took this position after a 30 year career with General Electric. At GE, he was the corporate champion behind GE's 2002 entry into the wind energy business - the company's most successful startup with estimated 2008 revenues of $6B.
Jim Lyons received his BS in Electrical Engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, his Masters in Electrical Engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and his PhD from Cornell University.
Steve Leveen is the co-founder and CEO of Levenger, known for its catalog of "tools for serious readers." Levenger (an amalgam of Leveen and his wife's last name, Granger), started out as a purveyor of state-of-the-art halogen book reading lights and grew to become a highly successful Internet and retail company, touting tools for serious readers, writers and thinkers. Today, Levenger is a multimillion dollar company with 225 employees and stores in Delray Beach, Fla., Boston and Chicago. The Levenger catalog is distributed to 24 million households annually.
Prior to starting Levenger with his wife in 1987, Leveen worked in marketing for a software firm in Boston, as a survey researcher for a firm in Washington, D.C. and as a journalist for McGraw-Hill in New York City.
Steve Leveen holds a B.A. in Biology from University of California, San Diego and a Master's in PhD in Sociology from Cornell University.
Ken Dryden holds a degree in history from Cornell University and a law degree from McGill University. He also has received honorary doctoral degrees from the universities of Ottawa, Windsor, York, McMaster, St. Mary�[TM]s, Niagara and British Columbia.
At Cornell, Dryden led the Cornell Big Red to the 1967 National Collegiate Athletic Association hockey championship and three consecutive ECAC tournament championships. He was a member of the Sigma Phi Society and vice-president of the Quill and Dagger society.
Dryden was goaltender for the Montreal Canadiens hockey team from 1971 to 1979, during which time the team went on to win six Stanley cups. Mr. Dryden is a proud member of the Hockey Hall of Fame, the Canadian Sports Hall of Fame and the International Scholar-Athlete Hall of Fame and his jersey number 29 was retired by the Canadiens in Jan. 2007.
Dryden was first elected to the House of Commons as the Member of Parliament for York Centre in 2004 and was re-elected in 2006 and 2008. From 2004 to 2006, he served as Minister of Social Development. He is the author of four best-selling books: The Game, Home Game, The Moved and the Shaken, and In School. In 1984, he was appointed Ontario's first Youth Commissioner. Before entering politics, Dryden served as president of the Toronto Maple Leafs.
Michael Harney has served for 22 years as vice president of products for Harney & Sons Teas, the company started and still run by his father, John.
Harney spends much of his time in Asia, seeking out the exquisite blends that have made Harney teas among the most celebrated in the world. He also oversees the company's financial operations. More recently, Harney has led the firm's move into the consumer market, highlighted by an engaging and interactive web presence. He has also spearheaded the firm's export business, which now produces 10 percent of sales.
Earlier, Harney was general manager of the Richmont Hotel in Chicago.
Michael Harney received his B.S. degree from the Cornell School of Hotel Administration and his Master's in Management degree from the Kellogg School of Management at Northwestern University.