The Creative Vision of Women is Transforming the World

Analisa Balares

Analisa Balares is CEO and founder of Womensphere and the Womensphere Foundation. Prior to Womensphere, Analisa launched her career in the Goldman Sachs High Technology Investment Banking group, where she helped execute over $1.5 billion in IPOs, corporate financings, and mergers and acquisitions for companies like open source software leader Red Hat and communications leader Nokia. Her professional experience includes working for Milestone Capital Management, Morgan Stanley's Energy Investment Banking Group, the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Geneva, and the Japan External Trade Organization.

 Analisa holds an MBA from Harvard Business School; a BA in Economics & Mathematics cum laude from Mount Holyoke College; and an International Baccalaureate Diploma from Lester Pearson United World College of the Pacific in Canada. While at Harvard Business School, Analisa founded and co-led the non-profit Global Entrepreneurship Network (GEN), and served as a President of the HBS Entrepreneurship Club, and Debate Coach/Team Co-Captain of the HBS Debate Team. Following business school, Analisa joined Microsoft as Global Marketing Manager for Microsoft's blogging and social networking service, where she managed the global marketing launch of Windows Live Spaces in over 30 countries, and led the strategy and execution of Spaces projects around branding, partnerships, events, and online community development. She managed Spaces' internal partnerships with MSN Entertainment and XBox, and external partnerships with NGOs (Global Fund for Women, Earth Day Network), media companies (ABC, Sundance Channel), and independent music/film/TV festivals (SXSW, MethodFest Film Festival, New York TV Festival).

Matthew Bishop

Matthew Bishop is the U.S. business editor and New York bureau chief of The Economist. His new book, The Road from Ruin: How to Renew Capitalism and Put America Back on Top, with Michael Green, was published by Crown in February 2010. Philanthrocapitalism, his previous book (also with Mr. Green) was on the global revolution under way in philanthropy. Mr. Bishop is also the author of Essential Economics, The Economist's official layperson's guide to economics. Mr. Bishop is the author of several of The Economist's special report supplements, most recently "A Bigger World," which examines the opportunities and challenges accompanying the rise of emerging economies and firms. Before joining The Economist, Mr. Bishop was on the faculty of London Business School.

Gwen Effgen

Gwen Effgen is a Ph.D. candidate in biomedical engineering at Columbia University and the President of the Columbia Graduate Society of Women Engineers. She earned a BA in Physcisc from Barnard College.

Whitney Greenaway

Whitney Greenaway (Witness) is an Award-winning slam poet. She was born in Hollywood, Florida but she got her early education in the Dominican Republic. She is a member of the 2011 Nuyorican Slam Team, currently ranked second in the nation, placed 6th at the Women of the World Poetry Slam in 2012 and has showcased her work throughout New York City. Greenaway also participated in a worldwide movement 100,000 Poets for Change: The Jamaica Chapter.

Angela Leaney

Angela Leaney is chief marketing officer for the Harlem Globetrotters. She previously worked as Chief Marketing Officer for Newsweek and has been a marketing executive for 20 years with such companies such as Mattel, Unilever, MTVN, Kimberly-Clark, Cadbury,and Washington Post Co.

Sara Potler

Sara Potler, a life-long dancer and previous professional performer, was a Fulbright Scholar in Bogotá, Colombia when she wrote, implemented, and evaluated an innovative peace education, conflict transformation program that would become Dance 4 Peace. Potler was the Chief Operating Officer for Atlas Corps, an international exchange for nonprofit leaders around the world. Potler built and maintained partnerships with organizations such as the UN Foundation, Ashoka, Grameen Foundation and Peace Corps. Portler is a graduate of the University of Virginia.

Lisa Tannebaum

Hailed for her expressive musicality and creativity by The New York Times, Lisa Tannebaum, harpist, has performed solo, chamber and orchestral repertoire at major venues and festivals throughout Europe and the United States. Tannebaum toured Europe with the Broadway show "42nd Street", was the harpist for "The Fantasticks" at the legendary Sullivan Street Theatre in New York, and performed with both the Bialystock Orchestra from Poland and the New England Symphonic Orchestra at Carnegie Hall. Tannebaum's "superb talent" (D.J. Luksetich, The Star) has also been featured in solo performances with the Kansas City Chamber Orchestra, Aspen Music Festival Orchestra, Missouri Chamber Orchestra, and North Jersey Orchestra, among others. She has performed under such conductors as Sergiu Comissiona and James DePreist. Most recently she has appeared in concerts with the Shanghai String Quartet, the Metropolitan Opera String Quintet, the Illinois Philharmonic Orchestra, as well as in a variety of solo recitals. Besides maintaining a growing performance schedule, she teaches at her studio in Stamford, CT. The only Suzuki Method Harp Teacher in the Northeast, she has served on the faculties of the Amadeus School in Chappaqua and the Northern Westchester Center for the Arts in Mount Kisco, in Westchester County, New York. She has also taught at several music camps, including the Vermont Youth Orchestra Camp, and has appeared, both as a performer and as a lecturer on harp history, on a number of television programs. Lisa Tannebaum holds a bachelor's degree in physics from Carleton College and an M.F.A. from the State University of New York in Purchase, NY.

Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic

Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic is a Serbian American engineer and currently a professor of biomedical engineering at Columbia University. She is the director of Columbia's Laboratory for Stem Cells and Tissue Engineering. Vunjak-Novakovic is a highly cited researcher, having published 235 engineering papers, two books, 45 book chapters, and 34 patents. She had also given over 150 lectures across the world. Vunjak-Novakovic is an advisor to the federal government on tissue engineering and regenerative medicine, serving as chair of NIH's tissue engineering section. Vunjak-Novakovic's areas of research include tissue engineering, bioreactors, biophysical regulation, tissue development, and stem cell research. Vunjak received her B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in chemical engineering from the University of Belgrade, in Belgrade, Serbia. After her postgraduate study in Germany, she returned as a faculty to the University of Belgrade in its Chemical Engineering Department. Before arriving at Columbia, Vunjak worked as a Fulbright Fellow at Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Harvard-MIT Division of Health Sciences and Technology from 1986 to 1987. She was an adjunct professor at Tufts University and from 1989 to 1992 a visiting professor in the Netherlands and MIT. Vunjak was elected a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 2002 and a member of the National Academy of Engineering in 2012. In 2007, she became the first woman engineer to receive the distinction of giving the Director's Lecture at the National Institute of Health. In 2008, she was inducted into the Women in Technology International Hall of Fame, and in 2009, she was elected to the New York Academy of Sciences. Vunjak is a recipient of the Clemson Award given by the Biomaterials Society.

Michele Wucker

Michele Wucker is a senior fellow at the World Policy Institute in New York City, where she is co-director of the Immigrant Voting Project and director of the Program on Citizenship and Security. She specializes in immigration and assimilation, transnational political processes, the politics of culture, Latin America and the Caribbean, and international finance and debt crisis.

She is the author of Lockout: Why America Keeps Getting Immigration Wrong When Our Prosperity Depends on Getting It Right, and of Why the Cocks Fight: Dominicans, Haitians, and the Struggle for Hispaniola.