I pioneered the use of social networking in education by creating the Classroom 2.0 social network in 2007, and supported and encouraged the development of thousands of other education networks, particularly for professional development. I blog, speak, and consult on educational technology, and I run several virtual and physical events to build community and connections in education, with over 100,000 participants annually.

I am co-host of the annual Edublog Awards, and I have been the Emerging Technologies Chair for ISTE, the author of “Educational Networking: The Important Role Web 2.0 Will Play in Education,” and  was the recipient of the 2010 Technology in Learning Leadership Award (CUE).  I have consulted for PBS, Intel, Ning, Blackboard, Microsoft, KnowledgeWorks Foundation, CoSN, MERLOT, the U.S. State Department, the U.S. Department of Education, and others on educational technology and specifically on social networking. You can find a full list of my projects at the Web 2.0 Labs.

Disclosures:  I am currently doing consulting work for Mightybell (Gina Bianchini’s new start-up) and often have consulting contracts around educational technology, and when I do I work hard to make those associations clear in any related public discussions. Links to books on my blog or websites frequently are associated with an Amazon affiliate account and I receive modest fees from Amazon for book sales.

Personal Information:  I have the skin condition Vitiligo, and run the world’s largest social network for those with Vitiligo at http://www.VitiligoFriends.org. I also run a network for members of the extended Hargadon family–Hargadon is an Irish name, and all Hargadons come from Sligo. My wife and I have four children and our individual activities can be seen at http://www.hargadon.com. We are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (Mormons).

Previously, WuDunn has been vice president, in the role of investment advisor for private clients, in the investment management division at Goldman, Sachs & Co. and a commercial loan officer at Bankers Trust. She also worked at The New York Times as both an executive and journalist: in management roles in both the Strategic Planning and Circulation Sales departments at The Times; as editor for international markets, energy and industry; as The Times’s first anchor of an evening news headlines program for a digital cable TV channel, the Discovery-Times; and as a foreign correspondent for The Times in Tokyo and Beijing, where she wrote about economic, financial, political and social issues.

She is co-author of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, a New York Times best-selling book about the challenges facing women around the globe, published in 2009 by Knopf and featured on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Colbert Report and other network television shows. Ms. WuDunn also helped launch the development of the Half the Sky multi-media effort – creating a thoughtful, effective philanthropic strategy that includes an online social media game and a documentary series.

With her husband, Nicholas D. Kristof, she has co-authored two other best-selling books about Asia: Thunder from the East and China Wakes. Ms. WuDunn won a Pulitzer Prize with her husband for covering China, along with the Dayton Literary Peace Prize for Lifetime Achievement. She has also won other journalism prizes, including the George Polk Award and Overseas Press Club awards. WuDunn has also won a White House Project EPIC award, and she has been a judge for the State Department “Secretary’s Innovation Award for Women’s and Girls’ Empowerment.” She has won other awards, including the Asia Women in Business Corporate Leadership Award, the Pearl S. Buck Woman of the Year Award, the Harriet Beecher Stowe Prize, among numerous other awards. In 2011, Newsweek cited WuDunn as one of the “150 Women Who Shake the World.” In 2012, WuDunn was selected as one of 60 notable members of the League of Extraordinary Women by Fast Company magazine.

She graduated from Cornell University, where she is a member of the Board of Trustees, a member of the Board’s Finance Committee, a former co-chair of the Board’s Academic Affairs Committee and former member of the $4 billion endowment’s Investment Committee. She earned an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School and an M.P.A. from Princeton University’s Woodrow Wilson School, where she was a member of its Advisory Council. Ms. WuDunn received an honorary doctorate from the University of Pennsylvania and Middlebury College. Ms. WuDunn lectures around the United States and abroad on economic, political and social topics related to women in the developing world, the global economy, China and the emerging markets. Ms. WuDunn has discussed China economic issues on television and radio programs, such as Fox Business News, The Colbert Report, Charlie Rose and NPR, and she has discussed philanthropic issues on programs such as NBC’s Dateline.

Benjamin found his way into entrepreneurship at a very early age and has continued to invest in and develop businesses ever since. Benjamin is the founder of a software development and consulting company, currently headquartered in Tennessee, and another company focusing on mobile application development, headquartered in Washington, DC. He is an active advisor and investor in early stage technology companies. Benjamin attended Babson College to pursue an education in entrepreneurship and strategic management.

In 2008, Benjamin and his business partner were named two of Business Week’s Top 25 Young Entrepreneurs after securing over $5 million in seed capital for their company building online education software. Benjamin has experience with the roller-coaster highs and sleepless nights of building companies, facilitating private equity raises from seed to series and with his company the process ending with the signature page of an acquisition agreement.

Benjamin has been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine, BusinessWeek, AOL Money & Finance, Inside HigherEd, WDEF News and CNET Live. Benjamin and his companies have also been featured in various articles on sites such as CollegeMogul.com, KillerStartups.com, WeeklyGeek.com, Iddictive.com and eSchoolNews.com.

Dr. Kraft has over 20 years of experience in clinical practice, biomedical research and healthcare innovation. Daniel chairs the Medicine track for Singularity University and is Executive Director for FutureMed, a program which explores convergent, exponentially developing technologies and their potential in biomedicine and healthcare.
Following undergraduate degrees at Brown and medical school at Stanford, Dr. Kraft was board certified in the Harvard combined Internal Medicine and Pediatrics residency program at the Massachusetts General Hospital and Boston Children’s Hospital. He went on to complete Stanford fellowships in hematology/oncology & bone marrow transplantation, and extensive research in stem cell biology and regenerative medicine. He has multiple scientific publications (including in Nature and Science), medical device, immunology and stem cell related patents through faculty positions with Stanford University School of Medicine and as clinical faculty for the pediatric bone marrow transplantation service at UCSF.

Dr. Kraft recently founded IntelliMedicine, focused on enabling connected, data driven, and integrated personalized medicine. He is also the inventor of the MarrowMiner, an FDA approved device for the minimally invasive harvest of bone marrow, and founded RegenMed Systems, a company developing technologies to enable adult stem cell based regenerative therapies.
Daniel is an avid pilot and serves in the California Air National guard as an officer and flight surgeon with an F-16 fighter Squadron. He has conducted research on aerospace medicine that was published with NASA, with whom he was a finalist for astronaut selection.

Born in Ohio, Slayton now resides in Hanover, New Hampshire with his wife and children. After graduating from Dartmouth College magna cum laude in 1981 Slayton was a Fulbright Scholar to Asia – earning a Masters in Asia Studies in 1982 from the University of the Philippines. He then ran regional programs in Asia, Africa and Latin America for international non-profits such as World Vision International. In 1990 he graduated with honors from the Harvard Business School and then worked for McKinsey and Company for five years. Hired out of McKinsey to help run Paramount’s Technology Group in Palo Alto, California – Slayton remained in Silicon Valley for 10 years as a public and private company CEO and then a venture capitalist. As a CEO he was responsible for a number of successful turnarounds such as Paragraph International and MySoftware. As the Managing Director of Slayton Capital he was on the Board of Advisors of Google and Salesforce.com as well as Bloom Energy. Slayton was appointed as the United States Chief of Mission and Consul General to Bermuda by President George W. Bush. His term was extended twice by President Obama. Slayton continues to work as a venture capitalist through his firm Slayton Capital and is the lead US Director for BioMass Capital (www.BMCM.us). He is also a Distinguished Visiting Professor of Leadership at UIBE Business School in Beijing. He also teaches on occasion at the Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College as well as the Harvard Business School and Stanford’s GSB. His most recent book “Be A Better Dad Today!” was published by Regal Publishing for Father’s Day 2012 (www.BeABetterDadToday.com) and has been a national best-seller with over 40,000 sales since its debut May 7th. The book is going into its third printing this fall. Slayton is apparently giving all his royalties from the book to fatherhood and family charities

I enjoy bringing together partnerships that create amazing results!