For over 45 years, Reverend Cecil Williams has expanded the limits of spirituality, compassion and diversity as Founder and Minister of Liberation of Glide Memorial United Methodist Church in San Francisco. As minister, author, social activist, lecturer, community leader and spokesperson for the poor and marginalized, Reverend Williams is respected and recognized as a national leader in the struggle for civil and human rights. His vision for the 21st century church can be seen in Glide’s unique and powerful blend of spirituality, principled compassion, and cutting edge programs for those most in need. With a membership of over 11,000, Glide is one of the fastest growing United Methodist churches in North America. People of all races, ethnic backgrounds, cultures, social classes, ages, faiths, and sexual orientations come every Sunday to experience the energy of spiritual liberation coupled with the fusion of jazz, blues and gospel performed by the renowned Glide Ensemble choir and the Change Band. He is married to Janice Mirikitani, Founding President of the Glide Foundation. In 1986, he became the Chairman for the Northern California Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Birthday Observance Committee at the request of Mrs. Coretta Scott King. Reverend Williams was the recipient of the 2008 National Caring Award presented by the Caring Institute in Washington, D.C. This fall, he will receive the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Perkins School of Theology at Southern Methodist University.
Janice Mirikitani, a Sansei (third generation) Japanese American, is recognized as a visionary, community activist, leader, poet, and editor. Mirikitani is San Francisco’s second Poet Laureate, author of four poetry books — AWAKE IN THE RIVER; SHEDDING SILENCE; WE, THE DANGEROUS, and LOVE WORKS — and editor of nine anthologies, the most recent being “WHAT MATTERS,” an anthology of poetry and visual art by young writers and artists. Other anthologies include “I HAVE SOMETHING TO SAY ABOUT THIS BIG TROUBLE, Children of the Tenderloin Speak Out,” edited and compiled by Mirikitani, is the first known collection of children’s writings to come out of the environment of the crack cocaine crisis. Mirikitani has worked with POETRY FOR THE PEOPLE in collaboration with Dr. June Jordan and students from the University of California at Berkeley for over five years, offering poetry workshops at Glide Church to people from all walks of life. She has also inspired poetry programs created to teach poetry to at-risk youth and children from poor communities.
Mirikitani served as the Executive Director of the Glide Foundation for almost four decades, working in partnership with Rev. Cecil Williams, and is continuing her work now as Co-Founder/Founding President in her 43rd year. Together, Mirikitani and Williams have achieved worldwide recognition for their groundbreaking organization which empowers San Francisco’s poor and marginalized communities to make meaningful changes in their lives. Mirikitani’s passion has been to create programs for women and families as they struggle with issues of substance abuse, rape, domestic violence, AIDS, childcare, health, education, and workforce development.
Two individuals from the homeless community will be sharing their stories.
MEET THE CHIC MEN
Jay Nicolas Sario, Fashion Designer on Project Runway
Jay Nicolas Sario was casted as a fashion designer contestant on season 7 of Lifetime’s show Project Runway, which took place in New York. Originally from the Philippines, the 31-year-old Jay works as a visual merchandiser and lead stylist in the kids’ division for Gap, Inc. Sario likes to work with wool, tweed, denim, and leather—anything that can give structure, texture and three-dimensionality. This self-taught fashion illustrator realized his potential in the industry at an early age, and worked hard towards fulfilling his dream. He grew up in Hawaii, but was originally from the Phillippines. He attended Honolulu Community College and held various jobs before focusing on design. His tenacity and ambitious personality demonstrated that no matter how many barriers are placed in front of someone’s path, it’s how much the individual wants to succeed in order to reach that goal. Jay’s life is an inspiration. He will share his life story, as well as his fashion designs, exclusively made for Chic Meets Geek runway show on June 3rd.
Charlie Ayers, Author of Food 2.0, Executive Chef & Owner of Calafia Cafe
Chef Charlie is most widely known as the former executive chef for Google Inc., a position he won in November of 1999 in a cook-off, judged by the company’s 40 employees. By the time he left Google, Chef Charlie and his team of five sous chefs and 150 employees in 10 cafes across the company’s Mountain View, California, headquarters were serving 4,000 lunches and dinners daily-all of the same quality and variety as in that initial interview. In his six years at Google, Chef Charlie’s contribution to the company attracted media attention around the world. He and his cafes were featured in the New York Times, London Times, France’s Le Capital, the Washington Post, Food Management, Restaurants Institutions, The Food Network, and many others, as well as occupying an entire chapter (“Charlie’s Place”) in David Vise’s book, The Google Story.
While at Google, Chef Charlie established a new standard of “fine food for the fast crowd,” and gained a reputation for innovative, flavorful, and healthful foods that are good not only for you but for the planet. His unique operation was visited by such culinary luminaries as Cat Cora, Mario Batali, Martin Yan, Bruce Aidell, Bradley Ogden, and Michael Chiarello. In addition to nourishing many innovators of Silicon Valley and the high-tech world, Chef Charlie has had the pleasure of cooking for such luminaries as Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Al Gore, Madeleine Albright, Colin Powell, Mikhail Gorbachev, the Sultan of Brunei, Queen Noor of Jordan, Robin Williams, Bono and The Edge, and Cold Play and Gwyneth Paltrow. Currently, Chef Charlie just opened his new Calafia Cafe and Market A Go Go in downtown Palo Alto.
Raul Navalta (aka RJ KoolRaul), Dancer on MTV’s America’s Best Dance Crew “Supreme Soul”
Raul Navalta, a.k.a. RJ KoolRaul, was a dancing member of Supreme Soul, which appeared on the internationally acclaimed MTV show, “America’s Best Dance Crew.” He was born in the Philipines and raised in the United States in a single parent home as the only child. Relying soley on his imagination, determination, and interpersonal skills, RJ KoolRaul achieved his success in pursuing his passion in a career in dance, while still being able to give back to his community.
After gaining popularity from America’s Best Dance Crew, he’s devoted most of his time to teaching dance, performing, and producing educational and inspirational events. He works closely with the non-profit organizations Soulciety.org and All the Way Live Foundation. Through these organizations, he has had the opportunity to impact over 25,000 kids overseas and at home in California. While working alongside these non-profits, his business, “KNOW YOUR RANK,” has grown out of its TV popularity and is moving forward into a different market. “KNOW YOUR RANK” is committed to furthering the education of the youth on the importance of self-expression through art.
Joel Goodrich, San Francisco Philanthropist and Socialite
Joel Goodrich is well recognized for his intense level of civic and philanthropic involvement, which has brought him a certain level of celebrity status in San Francisco and beyond. It’s not uncommon to find his name or visage in one of the local paper’s society columns on a personal and professional level.
Joel is one of the industry’s top producers in residential real estate since 1992. Though it seems Joel was born to excel in his current profession, real estate was not his first career. While a bio-medical science major at the University of California in Berkeley, Joel Goodrich made his living as a piano player. He then took a turn as a professional ice skater, touring with the Ice Follies for a year, and spending several years as a coach. Joel Goodrich has a passion for the visual arts. Joel Goodrich celebrated New Year’s Eve 2001 at the Tzar’s Ball in St. Petersburg’s baroque Winter Palace- home of the Hermitage Art Museum, which houses one of the world’s largest art collections. Catherine the Great once entertained in that palace, and Joel Goodrich cannot contain his enthusiasm for having had the good fortune to spend time in the former residence of the Tzars.
Joel had also been Executive Producer on two independent films (2004′s “Latter Days” with Jacqueline Bisset and 2006′s “adam & Steve” with Parker Posey and Chris Gattan). He has also has a passion for fashion, and has wound up on two Best-Dressed Lists as well as being a regular at Paris and New York Fashion Weeks, and recently appeared in LIFE Magazine on the Red Carpet at the 2010 Grammy Awards.
Sukhinder Singh Cassidy is CEO of Polyvore.com, which she joined in March 2010. Polyvore is redefining how people around the world experience, create and share fashion on the Internet. Polyvore’s easy-to-use virtual styling tool lets people mix and match products from any online store to create their own fashion collections called “sets.” With over 6 million unique visitors and 140 million pageviews per month, Polyvore is the largest fashion community site in the world. Polyvore is backed by leading venture capital firms Benchmark Capital and Matrix Partners and consists of technology industry veterans from Google and Yahoo.
Prior to Polyvore, Sukhinder spent a year as CEO-in-Residence at Accel Partners, a leading venture capital firm whose investments include global consumer internet companies such as Facebook, Glam, and Admob. Ms. Singh Cassidy joined Accel from Google where she served as President for Asia-Pacific & Latin American Operations from 2005 to 2009. Prior to running Asia Pacific and Latin America, Ms. Singh Cassidy joined Google in 2003 as the first General Manager for Google Local & Maps, helping to launch these innovative new services, then expanding her responsibilities to lead the company’s strategic partnerships for Google Books, Scholar, and Video.
For her work in the Internet industry, Ms. Singh Cassidy has been profiled in numerous publications globally, including Fortune, Business Week, Canada Post, India Today, and the book, Innovation Nation, profiling Canada’s most innovative business leaders.
Sukhinder has served as a board member of J. Crew Group Inc. (JCG), and currently serves on the Advisory Board for A Woman’s Nation, a project led by Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress (CAP) in partnership with USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, focused on the economic shift for women in America. She is a graduate of the Ivey School of Business Administration at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. She is married with three children.
Lily Kanter, Co-Founder & CEO of Serena and Lily
Lily Kanter spent 18 years in business and technology, primarily in management positions at Microsoft, Deloitte & Touche, and IBM. She created the first Microsoft flagship store in downtown San Francisco earning her the Chairman’s Award from Bill Gates in July 1999. She left Microsoft in late 2000 to focus her time and energy on philanthropic causes and starting a family. Lily was featured on the cover of Time Magazine in July 2000 for the story “The New Philanthropists.” She founded Social Venture Partners in the Bay area and the Serena & Lily Foundation-devoted to the mission of inspiring kids to change the world. She also co-founded the Sarosi-Kanter Charitable Foundation with her husband Marc. Lily attended the Executive M.B.A. program at Pepperdine and the Pepperdine Asia Business Program in Hong Kong, and she holds a B.A. in Accounting from Arizona State University. Lily lives in Mill Valley and has 3 boys ages 4, 6 and 8.
Victoria Ransom, Co-Founder & CEO of WildFire App
Victoria Ransom has been an entrepreneur since her early twenties and has developed three companies, all of which are successfully operating today. At Wildfire Interactive, Inc., Victoria oversees the strategic development and general management of the company while also collaborating with her team across the full spectrum of business levers. As CEO, Victoria has led Wildfire to profitability in just one year and has built a client list that includes major brands and agencies including Facebook, Pepsi, Unilever, Sony, AT&T, Ogilvy, Publicis and Fleishman Hillard. Thousands of small and medium-size businesses all use Wildfire’s turnkey marketing solutions. Wildfire is a two-time winner of the fbFund; investors include Facebook, Accel Partners and the Founder’s Fund.
Prior to founding Wildfire Interactive, Inc. in the summer of 2008, Victoria was a student at Harvard Business School where she obtained an MBA. During her time at Harvard, Victoria helped to develop a distributed booking system for small and medium size travel companies and was selected to spend a summer at Highland Capital Partners as an entrepreneur-in-residence. Prior to business school, Victoria co-founded a global adventure travel company, Access Travel, Ltd., that operates today in 16 countries. She also spent two years as an investment banking analyst at Morgan Stanley in New York.
In addition to her MBA, Victoria has a bachelor of arts degree from Macalester College where she graduated Suma Cum Laude. In her capacity as an entrepreneur, Victoria has been featured in several publications including The New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine and Dow Jones VentureWire. In her spare time she is an avid snowboarder and surfer and a passionate adventure traveler who once spent six weeks living with a remote Amazonian tribe and five months living in a favela in Brazil!
Wendy Lea, CEO of Get Satisfaction
Wendy Lea is the CEO of Get Satisfaction, a community-based platform that helps companies engage their customers through open and transparent conversations that increase customer satisfaction and enhance customer loyalty.
She is also the founder of The Chatham Group, where she currently serves as an angel investor, strategic advisor and board member for a long list of startup companies including UStream, Duarte Design, Sustainable Minds and Aegis Analytics. She serves as a mentor to TechStars, a start up incubator based in Boulder, Colorado. Wendy chairs the board of directors for The Forum of Women Entrepreneurs & Executives (FWE&E.org) and serves on the board of Silicon Valley Social Venture Capital (SV2.org). Wendy was recently recognized as a Top 100 Woman of Influence in Silicon Valley.
Previously, she was a co-founder of The Sales Consultancy, where she developed sales methodologies that were adopted as global standards by IBM, Hewlett Packard, Cisco, Microsoft and Oracle. Her company was acquired by Siebel Systems in 1999 at which time she established Siebel’s eBusiness Consulting unit.
Amy Muller, Co-Founder of Get Satisfaction
With over a decade of project management, front-end development, and entrepreneurial experience Amy Muller co-founded Get Satisfaction with partners Thor Muller and Lane Becker. Prior to Get Satisfaction, she co-founded Rubyred Labs, a web application consultancy, with partners Thor Muller and Jonathan Grubb where she served as Lead Project Manager and Director of Operations. Before founding her freelance consultancy, Muller Consulting, she worked at Brightwire and throughout the ’90s at Prophet Communications and frog design. As Site Producer for the first incarnation of the stylish gift boutique Violet.com, an early e-commerce company, she managed Web design and production efforts. During it’s brief lifetime she also managed the vibrant and passionate Valleyschwag community.
Amy now oversees customer education efforts at Get Satisfaction while also overseeing the life-education of her children, Quinn (8 years old) and Tesla (2 years old).
Past Events
February 4, 2010
Kai Huang, Founder of Guitar Hero
Sumaya Kazi, Founder of CulturalConnnect
Dave McClure, Venture Capitalist/Investor at Founder’s Fund
Jessica Mah, Founder of Indinero
Annette Jordan, Miss California Pageant Candidate 2010
Tim Galida, Keyboard Player & Singer of the Pop Rocks
Maria Kochetkova, Principal Ballet Dancer of the San Francisco Ballet
Steve Wharton, Actor on NBC’s Trauma TV Show
Suzanne McKechnie Klahr, CEO & Founder of BUILD
Elizabeth Gardner, Director of Individual Giving at BUILD
Jahvita Rastafari, BUILD 2006 Graduate
Carol Tran, Founder of ChicMeetsGeek
November 5, 2009
Randi Zuckerberg, Consumer Marketing at Facebook
Matt Mullenweg, Founder of WordPress
Daniel Kraft, Physician/Stem Cell Scientist, TED speaker, F-16 Squadron Flight Surgeon, & NASA Astronaut Selection Finalist
David Weekly, Founder of PBWorks & Founding Director of Hacker Dojo
Edith Yeung, Founder of BizTechDay
Terry Disley, Legendary Jazz Musician
Damon Dunn, Former NFL Football Player of the Dallas Cowboys
Mattin Noblia, Reality Star of Top Chef Las Vegas
Irina Blok, Reality Star of Shark Tank & Google’s Android Logo Designer
Maurice Ramirez, Chief Photographer of MTV Networks
Speakers
MEET THE GLIDE FOUNDATION
Website: http://www.glide.org
Mirikitani served as the Executive Director of the Glide Foundation for almost four decades, working in partnership with Rev. Cecil Williams, and is continuing her work now as Co-Founder/Founding President in her 43rd year. Together, Mirikitani and Williams have achieved worldwide recognition for their groundbreaking organization which empowers San Francisco’s poor and marginalized communities to make meaningful changes in their lives. Mirikitani’s passion has been to create programs for women and families as they struggle with issues of substance abuse, rape, domestic violence, AIDS, childcare, health, education, and workforce development.
Website: http://www.glide.org
MEET THE CHIC MEN
Jay Nicolas Sario was casted as a fashion designer contestant on season 7 of Lifetime’s show Project Runway, which took place in New York. Originally from the Philippines, the 31-year-old Jay works as a visual merchandiser and lead stylist in the kids’ division for Gap, Inc. Sario likes to work with wool, tweed, denim, and leather—anything that can give structure, texture and three-dimensionality. This self-taught fashion illustrator realized his potential in the industry at an early age, and worked hard towards fulfilling his dream. He grew up in Hawaii, but was originally from the Phillippines. He attended Honolulu Community College and held various jobs before focusing on design. His tenacity and ambitious personality demonstrated that no matter how many barriers are placed in front of someone’s path, it’s how much the individual wants to succeed in order to reach that goal. Jay’s life is an inspiration. He will share his life story, as well as his fashion designs, exclusively made for Chic Meets Geek runway show on June 3rd.
Chef Charlie is most widely known as the former executive chef for Google Inc., a position he won in November of 1999 in a cook-off, judged by the company’s 40 employees. By the time he left Google, Chef Charlie and his team of five sous chefs and 150 employees in 10 cafes across the company’s Mountain View, California, headquarters were serving 4,000 lunches and dinners daily-all of the same quality and variety as in that initial interview. In his six years at Google, Chef Charlie’s contribution to the company attracted media attention around the world. He and his cafes were featured in the New York Times, London Times, France’s Le Capital, the Washington Post, Food Management, Restaurants Institutions, The Food Network, and many others, as well as occupying an entire chapter (“Charlie’s Place”) in David Vise’s book, The Google Story.
After gaining popularity from America’s Best Dance Crew, he’s devoted most of his time to teaching dance, performing, and producing educational and inspirational events. He works closely with the non-profit organizations Soulciety.org and All the Way Live Foundation. Through these organizations, he has had the opportunity to impact over 25,000 kids overseas and at home in California. While working alongside these non-profits, his business, “KNOW YOUR RANK,” has grown out of its TV popularity and is moving forward into a different market. “KNOW YOUR RANK” is committed to furthering the education of the youth on the importance of self-expression through art.
Joel Goodrich is well recognized for his intense level of civic and philanthropic involvement, which has brought him a certain level of celebrity status in San Francisco and beyond. It’s not uncommon to find his name or visage in one of the local paper’s society columns on a personal and professional level.
Joel had also been Executive Producer on two independent films (2004′s “Latter Days” with Jacqueline Bisset and 2006′s “adam & Steve” with Parker Posey and Chris Gattan). He has also has a passion for fashion, and has wound up on two Best-Dressed Lists as well as being a regular at Paris and New York Fashion Weeks, and recently appeared in LIFE Magazine on the Red Carpet at the 2010 Grammy Awards.
Website: www.joelgoodrich.com
MEET THE GEEKY WOMEN
Sukhinder Singh Cassidy is CEO of Polyvore.com, which she joined in March 2010. Polyvore is redefining how people around the world experience, create and share fashion on the Internet. Polyvore’s easy-to-use virtual styling tool lets people mix and match products from any online store to create their own fashion collections called “sets.” With over 6 million unique visitors and 140 million pageviews per month, Polyvore is the largest fashion community site in the world. Polyvore is backed by leading venture capital firms Benchmark Capital and Matrix Partners and consists of technology industry veterans from Google and Yahoo.For her work in the Internet industry, Ms. Singh Cassidy has been profiled in numerous publications globally, including Fortune, Business Week, Canada Post, India Today, and the book, Innovation Nation, profiling Canada’s most innovative business leaders.
Sukhinder has served as a board member of J. Crew Group Inc. (JCG), and currently serves on the Advisory Board for A Woman’s Nation, a project led by Maria Shriver and the Center for American Progress (CAP) in partnership with USC Annenberg Center on Communication Leadership and Policy, focused on the economic shift for women in America. She is a graduate of the Ivey School of Business Administration at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. She is married with three children.
Lily Kanter spent 18 years in business and technology, primarily in management positions at Microsoft, Deloitte & Touche, and IBM. She created the first Microsoft flagship store in downtown San Francisco earning her the Chairman’s Award from Bill Gates in July 1999. She left Microsoft in late 2000 to focus her time and energy on philanthropic causes and starting a family. Lily was featured on the cover of Time Magazine in July 2000 for the story “The New Philanthropists.” She founded Social Venture Partners in the Bay area and the Serena & Lily Foundation-devoted to the mission of inspiring kids to change the world. She also co-founded the Sarosi-Kanter Charitable Foundation with her husband Marc. Lily attended the Executive M.B.A. program at Pepperdine and the Pepperdine Asia Business Program in Hong Kong, and she holds a B.A. in Accounting from Arizona State University. Lily lives in Mill Valley and has 3 boys ages 4, 6 and 8.
Victoria Ransom has been an entrepreneur since her early twenties and has developed three companies, all of which are successfully operating today. At Wildfire Interactive, Inc., Victoria oversees the strategic development and general management of the company while also collaborating with her team across the full spectrum of business levers. As CEO, Victoria has led Wildfire to profitability in just one year and has built a client list that includes major brands and agencies including Facebook, Pepsi, Unilever, Sony, AT&T, Ogilvy, Publicis and Fleishman Hillard. Thousands of small and medium-size businesses all use Wildfire’s turnkey marketing solutions. Wildfire is a two-time winner of the fbFund; investors include Facebook, Accel Partners and the Founder’s Fund.In addition to her MBA, Victoria has a bachelor of arts degree from Macalester College where she graduated Suma Cum Laude. In her capacity as an entrepreneur, Victoria has been featured in several publications including The New York Times, Entrepreneur Magazine and Dow Jones VentureWire. In her spare time she is an avid snowboarder and surfer and a passionate adventure traveler who once spent six weeks living with a remote Amazonian tribe and five months living in a favela in Brazil!
Wendy Lea is the CEO of Get Satisfaction, a community-based platform that helps companies engage their customers through open and transparent conversations that increase customer satisfaction and enhance customer loyalty.Previously, she was a co-founder of The Sales Consultancy, where she developed sales methodologies that were adopted as global standards by IBM, Hewlett Packard, Cisco, Microsoft and Oracle. Her company was acquired by Siebel Systems in 1999 at which time she established Siebel’s eBusiness Consulting unit.
With over a decade of project management, front-end development, and entrepreneurial experience Amy Muller co-founded Get Satisfaction with partners Thor Muller and Lane Becker. Prior to Get Satisfaction, she co-founded Rubyred Labs, a web application consultancy, with partners Thor Muller and Jonathan Grubb where she served as Lead Project Manager and Director of Operations. Before founding her freelance consultancy, Muller Consulting, she worked at Brightwire and throughout the ’90s at Prophet Communications and frog design. As Site Producer for the first incarnation of the stylish gift boutique Violet.com, an early e-commerce company, she managed Web design and production efforts. During it’s brief lifetime she also managed the vibrant and passionate Valleyschwag community.Past Events
February 4, 2010
Kai Huang, Founder of Guitar Hero
November 5, 2009