Michael Strong is the founder of Expanse as well as Radical Social Entrepreneurs and the lead author of Be the Solution: How Entrepreneurs and Conscious Capitalists Can Solve All the World's Problems, co-authored with John Mackey, Muhammad Yunus, 2006 Nobel Peace Prize Laureate, Hernando de Soto, Co-Chair of the U.N. Commission on the Legal Empowerment of the Poor, and others. Michael's work has been featured in academic journals (The Journal of Business Ethics, Economic Affairs, Critical Review), specialty publications (Microfinance Insights, Policy Innovations, Carnegie Ethics) and media reaching popular audiences (The New York Times, Bloomberg, The Huffington Post, RealClearPolitics, Barron's).

Expanse, Michael’s latest venture, is designed to bring high quality education at increasingly lower prices than similar brick-and-mortar institutions. Michael previously founded The Academy of Thought and Industry, the high school model for the largest Montessori network in the United States, and earlier created a charter school named the 36th best public school in the United States on the Washington Post's Challenge Index. The author of The Habit of Thought: From Socratic Seminars to Socratic Practice, Michael has consulted to hundreds of schools around the world. He has also delivered many TEDx talks and has spoken at Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Dartmouth, Cornell, MIT, University of Chicago and dozens of other universities around the world. Michael was educated at Harvard, St. John's College and UChicago.

Magatte Wade is the founder and CEO of SkinIsSkin, “the lip balm with a mission,” and is dedicated to reducing racial discrimination while creating jobs and prosperity in her home country of Senegal. Throughout her career, Magatte has created successful high-end retail brands inspired by diverse African traditions. She is a Forbes “20 Youngest Power Women in Africa,” a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum at Davos, a TED Global Africa Fellow and "Leading Woman in Wellness” award winner by the Global Wellness Summit. In 2014, she was featured on the cover of Forbes Afrique as the person in Francophone Africa having the greatest positive impact on the future.

Magatte serves as the Director of the Atlas Network's Center for African Prosperity and is a member of the board of Directors of Conscious Capitalism Inc. She also serves on the Advisory Board of the Whole Planet Foundation of Whole Foods Market. Her written work has appeared in The Guardian, HuffingtonPost.com and Barron’s and has been profiled by the New York Times. She has spoken at numerous high profile venues, including the United Nations, the Clinton Global Initiative, the Aspen Institute, TED and Conscious Capitalism, along with dozens of universities, including Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Cornell, MIT, UC Berkeley, Dartmouth and the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. Magatte’s work was recently profiled in a FEE documentary, Made in Meckhe. She is also featured in the film Poverty, Inc. 

Paul Zak is the founding director of the Center for Neuroeconomics Studies and Professor of Economics, Psychology and Management at Claremont Graduate University. He has degrees in mathematics and economics from San Diego State University, a Ph.D. in economics from University of Pennsylvania and post-doctoral training in neuroimaging from Harvard. Paul’s academic lab is the first Neuroscience as a Service (NaaS) platform. He also serves as a senior advisor to Finsbury, a global leader in strategic communications that advises many of the world’s most successful companies.

Paul’s research on oxytocin and relationships has earned him the nickname "Dr. Love." His two decades of research have taken him from the Pentagon to Fortune 50 boardrooms to the rainforest of Papua New Guinea—all in a quest to understand the neuroscience of human connection, human happiness and effective teamwork. 

Paul’s latest book, Trust Factor: The Science of Creating High Performance Companies, uses neuroscience to measure and manage organizational cultures to inspire teamwork and accelerate business outcomes. His 2012 book, The Moral Molecule: The Source of Love and Prosperity, recounted his unlikely discovery of the neurochemical oxytocin as the key driver of trust, love, and morality that distinguish our humanity. Paul’s group uses neuroscience to quantify the impact of movies, advertising, stories and consumer experiences. Along the way, he has helped start several transdisciplinary fields, including neuroeconomics, neuromanagement, and neuromarketing.

John Hagel III has 40 years of experience as a management consultant, author, speaker and entrepreneur. John has founded a new company, Beyond Our Edge, LLC, that works with organizations and people seeking to anticipate the future and achieve much greater impact. Previously, John was the founder and chairman of the Silicon Valley-based Deloitte Center for the Edge, an independent consultant and writer and principal at McKinsey & Company and senior vice president of strategy at Atari, Inc. He founded two Silicon Valley startups.

He is the author of a series of best-selling business books, including The Power of Pull, Net Gain, Net Worth, Out of the Box and The Only Sustainable Edge. He is widely published and quoted in major business publications, including The Economist, Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, Financial Times, and Wall Street Journal, as well as The New York Times, NBC and BBC. John has won two awards from Harvard Business Review for best articles.

John holds a BA from Wesleyan University, a B.Phil. from Oxford University, and a JD and MBA from Harvard University. He serves on the faculty at Singularity University and the board of trustees at the Santa Fe Institute, an organization that conducts leading-edge research on complex adaptive systems.

John Lobell addresses the role of creativity and new technology in imagining a more equitable world that future entrepreneurs will bring us. John received degrees from the University of Pennsylvania and is a professor of architecture at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York.

He has lectured throughout the world and is the author of several books, including Visionary Creativity: How New Worlds are Born in which he addresses the moral and creative center in the heart of each individual and its role in unfolding new worlds. Some of Lobell's other books include The Little Green Book on ecology and the environment; Between Silence and Light: Spirit in the Architecture of Louis I. Kahn, which looks at the spiritual thought of one of the great minds of the 20th century; and Joseph Campbell: The Man and His Ideas, which summarizes the work of the great mythologist and his influence on film and literature. Lobell has worked or studied with leading creative and cultural figures, including: mythologist Joseph Campbell; architects Louis Kahn and Robert Venturi; Buddhist masters Chogyam Trungpa, Robert Thurman and the Dalai Lama; and Tai Chi master Cheng Man-Ch’ing. 

Kevin Koym has engaged with more than 6500 entrepreneurs in numerous countries since 2016, focusing on how we organize as entrepreneurial ecosystems and work for a greater outcome for all, driven by entrepreneurial leaders. He brings a blend of his martial art (Aikido) background and innovation in technology and business models to help entrepreneurs prepare themselves as pioneers to bring about change in the world.

As a technology entrepreneur early in his career, Kevin was responsible for disrupting six different markets but after a personal tragedy decided to launch Tech Ranch, Austin’s first privately funded venture accelerator and coworking location. Tech Ranch subsequently was named among the Top Three Social Incubators by UBI Global. Kevin has led Tech Ranch’s initiatives with Mexico, Italy, and Russia. Through these connections to other countries, entrepreneurs have tackled pernicious problems using business models, including taking on a disease called Leishmaniasis by organizing global teams. Kevin and these entrepreneurs continue to show that it is possible to change the world for the better, using business to drive change.

Author of Recession Proof Graduate, Play for a Living, and Play It Away. He is also the founder of Dream Jobs On Demand, where over the past decade, he has coached hundreds of people on how to successfully pursue fulfilling and meaningful work opportunities. Charlie is a four-time TEDx speaker, and his methods have been featured on NPR’s TED Radio Hour, Harvard Business Review, Forbes, Fast Company, The Tim Ferriss Show, Financial Times, CBS News and Tony Robbins’ blogs. Previously, Charlie was Tim Ferriss' Director of Special Projects (during the recession of 2008 when he was just 23 years old). Currently, he is the Head of Multimedia for Scribe, which was ranked the #1 company culture in America by Entrepreneur magazine. 

Zak Slayback, author of McGraw Hill's How to Get Ahead and principal at 1517 Fund, is a career and communications expert whose content has been highlighted or featured in Fast Company, Business Insider, The Muse, Newsweek, and the New York Observer. He was an early team member at the startup apprenticeship company Praxis, where he was charged with recruiting new business partners and placing apprentices. He left the University of Pennsylvania in 2014 after pursuing a major in Philosophy. He writes at ZakSlayback.com.

Michael Gibson is a cofounder and general partner of 1517. Previously, he was vice president for grants at the Thiel Foundation and a principal at Thiel Capital. Working nearly five years for Peter Thiel, he contributed research to Peter’s global macro hedge fund, assisted in teaching a course at Stanford Law School on sovereignty and technological change and helped run the Thiel Fellowship. He serves on the board of the Seasteading Institute. Before his academic apostasy, he was working towards a doctorate in philosophy at the University of Oxford. He has written on innovation and technology for MIT’s Technology Review, the Atlantic, and Forbes.

Danielle Strachman is a cofounder and general partner of 1517. She has worked with young entrepreneurs for about a decade. In 2010, during the founding of the Thiel Fellowship, Danielle joined to lead the design and operations. She's worked with some of the most prestigious founders. for example, Vitalik Buterin and Ritesh Agarwal. Prior to working with Peter Thiel, Danielle founded and directed Innovations Academy in San Diego, a K-8 charter school serving 400 students, with a focus on student-led project based learning and other alternative programs.