Fellows Advisors

Jim Koch

Jim is founding director of the Center for Science, Technology, and Society, director of the Global Social Benefit Incubator, and professor of management at Santa Clara University. He served as Dean of the Business School and Interim Dean of Engineering, was founding director of Organization Planning and Development at PG&E, and serves on the editorial board for Health Care Management Review. His research and consulting focus is on socio-technical systems and high performance organizations. His current work examines the emergence of social entrepreneurship as a transformational force in business and economic development, technology and business model innovations that serve the unmet needs of humanity, and the adaptation of Silicon Valley models for scaling innovation to serve the base of the pyramid.

Sarah Laskin

Sarah serves as the Vice President and Chief Operating Officer for mission programs at the National Geographic Society. Prior to joining National Geographic, Sarah spent 5 years working on ocean coastal and fishery policy issues in the Clinton Administration. Through a collaborative relationship between National Geographic and Pop!Tech, Sarah has been deeply involved in many Pop!Tech initiatives including the development of the Pop!Tech Accelerator, Project Masiluleke - our current Accelerator project, and the National Geographic Society Photo Camp that takes place at Pop!Tech each year.

Ory Okolloh

Ory is our hybrid Fellow of 2008! Ory will be a Fellow in the Class of 2008 and she is serving as an advisor to the program. Ory first came to Pop!Tech in 2005 as part of a group of 12 young social innovators from the African continent. She is the founder of Ushahidi, which means "evidence" in Swahili. Ushahidi was just honored as a winner of the NetSquared:Year 3 Mashup Challenge.

Kevin Starr

Kevin runs the Mulago Foundation and is the founder and director of the Rainer Arnhold Fellows Program. Mulago works like a social impact venture fund to seed and grow the most promising solutions in health, development and conservation in the Third World. The Rainer Arnhold Fellows Program is an outgrowth of the Foundation's work and recruits some of the best social entrepreneurs working in the Third World to maximize their impact through a systematic process of design and evolution.