Rhodes Klement, Chair
Over the last 15 years, Rhodes has developed and refined a unique vision for the art and science of brand. Borrowing from his formal training in such divergent fields as organic chemistry, classical ballet, and teaching sign language to the mentally handicapped, Rhodes perceives and abstracts meaning from seemingly random data to reveal new business opportunities and identify patterns that inhibit or promote positive brand perception.

He is the co-founder of Branditecture, an agency that helps organizations build strong brands with strategy, identity and reputation management services.

Before starting Branditecure, Rhodes led global Brand and Advertising for Sun Microsystems where he drove efforts to revitalize and build the end-to-end brand experience for the Sun and Java brand families. With his passion for social change, Rhodes led the development of live audience participation campaigns using Sun technology at Live8 concerts and U2's recent Vertigo tour — where 500,000 people in 17 countries joined Bono's ONE campaign to raise awareness for HIV/AIDS, poverty and debt in Africa. Rhodes also produced similar events with ColdPlay and CurrentTV.

Rhodes offers brand strategy and brand experience consulting. He speaks internationally on brand experience, product design, usability and emerging marketing technologies and has been quoted in such publications as CMO Magazine, AdWeek, BrandWeek and CNet.

Andrew was recently named one of the fellows of the National Geographic Society and has served as futurist-in-residence at both Popular Science and American Demographics magazines, as well as Public Radio’s Marketplace.

Andrew is a network member of the Global Business Network, and serves as a visiting fellow of the Woodrow Wilson Foundation. In early 2005 he was named to Fast Company’s Fast 50, the magazine’s annual compilation of emerging business leaders. In the same year, he was named one of Red Herring’s “20 Under 35.”

Rich Frankel, Director
Rich is the founder of RFD Productions and is an active producer and creator of integrated Web, DVD and TV content for corporate and entertainment industry clients. Rich recently produced two multiple Emmy Award–winning programs, featuring the work of rock icon Sting, which were simultaneously released across Web and DVD platforms as well. Rich previously served as the managing director of the Los Angeles office of THINK New Ideas. THINK developed integrated online and offline advertising for technology clients and software companies. Among its LA clients were Oracle, Network Associates, PreviewTravel.com, Miramax Films and CarsDirect.com.

Before joining THINK, Rich ran the Creative Services Group at A&M Records, where he developed the visual imaging of The Police, Suzanne Vega, Joe Jackson, Sting, Janet Jackson, Sheryl Crow, Amy Grant, Supertramp and Soundgarden. At A&M, he produced award-winning short and long-form music videos. Two were awarded Grammys: “Janet Jackson’s Rhythm Nation” in 1989 and Sting’s “Ten Summoner’s Tales” in 1993. Before his decade at A&M, Rich was Warner Amex Satellite’s corporate creative director on the team that launched MTV, Nickelodeon and The Movie Channel.

Her firm, Heller Communication Design, has developed a process through which corporations can play a leading role in alleviating the social and environmental issues facing the world, through programs that are both easy and profitable for them.

Cheryl has written articles for Communication Arts, ID Magazine, Graphis Magazine and The Design Management Journal. She wrote a book for the AIGA on the best process for preserving innovation within corporations. Recently she wrote the lead story on creative strategy for Adobe’s online magazine, Proxy.

She has been profiled in articles in the New York Times, Boston Globe, Graphis magazine, Communication Arts, ID magazine, How magazine, Print and PDN.

Andrew Rasiej, Director
Andrew is the founder and current chairman of MOUSE (Making Opportunities for Upgrading Schools and Education). He has also served on the New York City Board of Education's task force on technology and has spearheaded several innovative projects that support efforts to bridge the “Digital Divide” in public education.

Andrew is the chairman and co-founder of the Digital Club Network (DCN), the Internet's largest live music channel. DCN broadcasts concerts of established and emerging artists from premier music venues around the world and makes archived recordings of these performances available for free over the Internet. Concurrent with his involvement in music and technology,He is also co-founder of the world's largest annual digital music conference, “Plug In,” which is attended by executives from major record labels and technology companies.

Advisory Board Members

Malcolm Gladwell
Author and New Yorker magazine journalist Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference, has been a tremendous bestseller for three years and counting. Malcolm has the uncanny ability to interpret research findings and tantalizing theories in sociology and other fields and apply them to business and organizational problems to generate value.

 In The Tipping Point, Malcolm explains the dynamics of trends and helps organizations apply this knowledge to their own business strategies. He shows how ideas and trends start and spread, and offers tools for igniting, steering and/or sustaining trends that matter, whether in business, society, politics, technology or consumer behavior. He also helps organizations identify the types of people who are crucial to the trend process and deploy their talents strategically.

His latest release, Blink – “about rapid cognition, about the kind of thinking that happens in a blink of an eye,” and the powerful conclusions we draw in those moments – appeared on the bestseller charts as soon as it was published in 2005.

In 2001 Juan wrote “Transforming Life, Transforming Business: The Life Science Revolution” (co-authored with Ray Goldberg) in The Digital Enterprise (HBS Press), for which he won a McKinsey Prize. He also wrote “Technology, Gene Research and National Competitiveness” in Globalization and the Rural Environment (DRCLAS/Harvard University Press). He has authored more than a dozen Harvard Business School case studies, as well as articles for such  publications  as Science, Foreign Policy, The New York Times, and Trends in Biotechnology. He is contributing editor of The Journal of Biolaw and Business.

In 2000, Ethan founded Geekcorps, a nonprofit technology volunteer corps. Geekcorps pairs skilled volunteers from US and European high-tech companies with businesses in emerging nations for one- to four-month volunteer tours. More than 3,500 technical experts have shared their talents and experience in more than a dozen developing nations, including Ghana, Senegal, Mali, Vietnam and Morocco. Geekcorps became a division of the International Executive Service Corps in 2001, where Ethan served as a vice president from 2001–2004.

Chris Jordan
Chris Jordan is an internationally acclaimed photographic artist and social activist whose work explores the detritus of American mass culture. His newest series, titled “Running the Numbers,” depicts the staggering statistics that define our mass behaviors, in huge, intricately detailed panels as large as thirty feet wide.

These astonishing works invite the viewer to walk up close and see every detail as a metaphor for the role of the individual in our hypermodern society. Chris’s work is exhibited widely in the US and Europe, and has been featured in magazines, newspapers, weblogs, documentary films and television programs all over the globe.

In the Spring of 2008, Chris served as an international spokesperson for National Geographic in their global campaign for Earth Day 2008. A sought-after speaker on the subject of mass culture, Chris has appeared on several national television programs recently. He lives in Seattle with his wife the poet Victoria Sloan Jordan, and his son Emerson.

Carolyn Porco
Carolyn is the leader of the Imaging Science Team on the Cassini mission presently orbiting Saturn, and a lead imaging scientist on the New Horizons Pluto/Kuiper Belt mission, which launched in January, 2006. She is a veteran imaging scientist of the Voyager mission to the outer solar system in the 1980s. She received her PhD in 1983 from the California Institute of Technology.

Carolyn is the director of the Cassini Imaging Central Laboratory for Operations (CICLOPS) at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, where Cassini images are collected, processed and released to the public, and an adjunct professor at both the University of Colorado and the University of Arizona. She is also the CEO of Diamond Sky Productions, a small company devoted to the scientific, as well as artful, use of planetary images and computer graphics for the presentation of science to the public.

Carolyn has been an active participant in guiding the American planetary exploration program over the last 15 years through membership on a host of NASA advisory committees, and in 2001/2002 was the vice chairperson for the steering group of the Solar System Decadal Survey, sponsored by the National Academy of Sciences and NASA.

Her contributions to the exploration of the outer solar system have been recognized with the naming of Asteroid (7231) Porco.

Jakob Trollbäck
Jakob is a self-taught DJ-turned-designer, founder and creative director of Trollbäck + Company.

Trollbäck + Company is a bicoastal creative studio committed to generating innovative visual and branding solutions. The company works across a variety of media, from film titles and trailers to TV commercials, environmental and architectural installations, branding, advertising and magazine and book design. 

Stephen Hand
Steve is President and CTO of Know Technology, the IT solutions and support company that he founded in 1998. Steve has 22 years of IT experience in a variety of industries including retail, finance and telecommunications throughout the US and in the Middle East. Dedicated to Maine’s IT community, Steve sits on the MESDA board of directors and serves as the chairman of the Maine Technology Institute IT board.  Steve is among the few who have been involved in the production of Pop!Tech since its beginning in 1997.