Stitch Factory would like to invite you our speaker series |Behind the Seams|! Join us Friday, May 17th @ 5:00pm for a great night of talks by powerhouses of fashion. Please RSVP through ticketcake and show up on time. Talks will start promptly at 5:30 and entry will be shutoff.

Sonny Shar - “The Story of the Pig”
Non-Executive Chairman - Pentland Brands USA

Jake Bronstein – “The VERY LAST TIME I’ll ever talk about Kickstarter. And how to do a $1M in sales by listening up.”
Founder - Flint and Tinder

Joey Galon - “Minister of Fashion”
Minister of Fashion - Runway4Life

Avery Bloom - “Make it here”
Owner - Make It Good

Mor Aframian -  “Art, Perseverance, and the Fabric of Humanity”
Director of Branding and Community Relations - Redress Raleigh

Brad Schmidt - “I don’t have all the answers.”
Owner – CADET

David Kirkpatrick 
‘Managing and innovating effectively during a time of accelerating change?’

David Kirkpatrick, who has covered technology for more than 20 years, will share his observations about how companies are managing and evolving as technologies, platforms, global challengers, and consumer behavior are all shifting quickly. How can you manage and innovate effectively during a time of accelerating change?

Kirkpatrick wrote The Facebook Effect and will share observations gleaned from close acquaintance with Mark Zuckerberg and his team.  Where will social and mobile platforms go next? What will it mean for the shape and management of the companies that live on them? Where are the new insurgents? How can it help you innovate faster?

Founder, host, and CEO of Techonomy, David Kirkpatrick is a journalist, commentator about technology, and author of the bestselling book “The Facebook Effect: The Inside Story of the Company that is Connecting the World,” published in 2010 by Simon & Schuster. He founded and hosted Fortune’s Brainstorm and Brainstorm Tech conferences 2001-2009. In addition to his writing for Techonomy, he writes occasionally for The Daily Beast and Vanity Fair.

Search Inside Yourself

Search Inside Yourself reveals how to calm your mind on demand and return it to a natural state of happiness, deepen self-awareness in a way that fosters self-confidence, harness empathy and compassion into outstanding leadership, and build highly productive collaborations based on trust and transparent communication. In other words, Search Inside Yourself shows you how to grow inner joy while succeeding at your work.

In designing Search Inside Yourself, a popular course at Google, early Google engineer and personal growth pioneer Chade-Meng Tan (Meng) has distilled emotional intelligence into a set of practical and proven tools and skills that anyone can learn and develop. Created in collaboration with a Zen master, a CEO, a Stanford University scientist, and Daniel Goleman (the guy who literally wrote the book on emotional intelligence), this program is grounded in science and expressed in a way that even a skeptical, compulsively pragmatic, engineering-oriented brain like Meng’s can process.

Join us for a Fireside Chat and Q+A with John Mackey, the Co-founder and Co-CEO of Whole Foods Inc. The entire session will be hosted by Zach Ware of Zappos. Zach will lead the first thirty minutes, then follow with thirty minutes of questions submitted from the community. If you have a question for John Mackey, please e-mail [email protected]

John P. Mackey is a Co-Founder, Director, and Co-Chief Executive Officer at Whole Foods Market, Inc. He has been its Co-Chief Executive Officer since May 2010. Mr. Mackey served as President of the firm from June 2001 to October 1, 2004; Chief Executive Officer from 1980 to May 12, 2010; and a Chairman from 1980 to December 2009. He is also a Co-Founder of Whole Foods Market Services, Inc., and serves as its Chairman and Chief Executive Officer. Mr. Mackey is widely credited with helping fuel the rise of organic and natural food in the United States.

Learning Anytime and Anywhere – How Cities are Making Learning Fun and Relevant

The Providence After School Alliance is one of many public-private partnerships created to expand learning opportunities that re-engage students and connect them to learning beyond the classroom.  Hillary Salmons, Executive Director of the Providence After School Alliance will share Providence, Rhode Island’s middle and high school model and describe how the Mayor’s office, School Department and over 100 non-profit after school and youth organizations came together to build a high quality after school and summer learning system that has been engaging youth, getting results and inspiring other cities around the country how to work more efficiently and collectively.  One secret to Providence’s success is Providence considers youth and their families the primary customer!

For nine years Hillary has managed the Providence After School Alliance, a public-private non-profit organization whose mission is to expand and improve quality after school, summer and expanded learning opportunities for the youth of Providence. She is responsible for PASA’s community engagement, management, planning, and long-term development and sustainability. Hillary works closely with Mayor Angel Taveras and School Superintendent Susan Lusi and over 100 community groups to manage a high quality after school system that serves 45% of Providence’s middle school youth, connecting them to real hands-on learning experiences that are steeped in youth development practices.

How Cat Videos Are Changing the World

Global platforms such as YouTube are, for the first time, allowing people across the world to experience media together. The result goes way beyond just the phenomena of viral videos but a rapid increase in the spread of information and feeling of connectedness. I’ll share some thoughts developed during my time as YouTube’s product lead as to why citizenship itself is being changed by social media.

Hunter Walk most recently was a Product Management Director at YouTube where led consumer product management, delivering billions of playbacks a day to the world’s largest video community. After joining Google in 2003, he has also managed product and sales efforts for Google’s contextual advertising business.
 
Prior to this, Walk was a founding member of the product and marketing team at Linden Lab, the creators of online virtual world Second Life. Earlier, he was a management consultant and also spent a year at Late Night with Conan O’Brien, broadcasting to an audience of insomniacs, truckers and college students. Hunter has a BA in History from Vassar and an MBA from Stanford University.

3D printing & the Democratization of Production

What is 3D printing and why is it so relevant for many people? What can we do today and how will 3D printing disrupt manufacturing and supply chains?

Peter Weijmarshausen is the CEO and Co-Founder of Shapeways, the world’s leading 3D printing marketplace and community.  Prior to Shapeways, Peter was the CTO of Sangine, where he and his team designed and developed satellite broadband modems and Director of Engineering at Aramiska, where he was responsible for delivering a business broadband service via satellite. Earlier in his career, Peter worked as ICT manager for Not a Number where he facilitated the adoption of the widely successful open source 3D software Blender. Peter was born and raised in the Netherlands and moved to New York in 2010.

Unleashing Your Super Brain – How to Boost Your Memory & Learn Faster

Jim Kwik (pronounced quick, his real name) of Kwik Learning, has taught speed-reading, memory improvement, and accelerated learning for over 18 years. In this workshop-style talk, Jim will share some of his amazing techniques to unleashing your super brain.

Jim has shared the speaking stage with global leaders, from Sir Richard Branson to the Dalai Lama. He has a passion for teaching others how to maximize their superpower brain, navigate information overload and unlock their true genius. His upcoming book, The Art of WARMTH, is a sustainable success framework for caring commerce for businesses committed to doing well by doing good.

The Four Methods to Get Anyone to Do Anything

In today’s socially connected world, turning everyday consumers into opinion-sharing advocates is a key to success.  Join BzzAgent CEO, Dave Balter, as he shares the secrets learned from motivating real people to generate hundreds of millions of opinions about products and services.

Dave Balter is an innovation-obsessed builder of companies, often as a Founder/CEO but occasionally as a Board Member, advisor or investor. He is currently the CEO of BzzAgent, Inc., which he founded in 2001 and sold in 2011 to dunnhumby, a division of Tesco PLC (LSE: TSCO). In addition to his BzzAgent CEO duties, Dave now serves on the Global Executive Team for dunnhumby. Dave is Executive Chair of Smarterer, which assesses digital, social and technical skills, and is an active investor and advisor individually and as part of Boston Seed. Dave helped launch Intelligent.ly, a classroom space that helps professionals learn what they need to win from people who have done it before, is a mentor with Tech Stars, and sits on the advisory board of the Massachusetts Innovation & Technology Exchange.

The Power of Purpose: How Superheroes, Gardening, and Toilets can make you a Billionaire

John W. Kluge will tell an inspiring story of how his unique upbringing contributed to a passion for finding purpose in everything he does, ultimately leading him to redefine not only what it means to be a billionaire, but more importantly a human being in the 21st century. 

John is the Co-founder and Managing Partner of Eirene, a private equity and business development firm that combines entrepreneurship and philanthropy to drive radical change in the fields of sanitation, caregiving and education.

John holds a B.A. from Columbia University and he serves on a number of non-profit and for profit boards, including UNICEF, Pencils of Promise, GivingWater and Fonderie47. He is the author of the book John Kluge: Stories, published by Columbia University Press and co-author of the book Charity and Philanthropy for Dummies, to be published by Wiley in 2013.

Create Peace of Mind

Jeff’s talk will detail his personal story, going from a college athlete to being diagnosed with mental illness and how art changed his life, providing him the peace of mind he had desperately longed for.

These experiences would transform Jeff’s life work, leading him to discover a passion and talent for teaching and communicating a message of hope. His newfound purpose would lead to recreate my personal art studio experience and build PeaceLove Studios: an inclusive community space designed to bring people together to experience and celebrate the healing power of art.

PeaceLove Co -Founder Jeffrey Sparr is a father, husband, advocate, successful entrepreneur, and an acclaimed artist, who has suffered much of his life with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). Following his diagnosis he began treatment and continued on with his life, launching a profitable textile company, getting married and starting a family; however, through it all he continued to wage a daily war against his illness.

Bridging the Divide: Digital and Analog

Google vet Alex Abelin will cover the need to blank the planet with web access, share an opportunity to create a more healthy internet consumer, and muse on the increasingly important topic of offline interaction. The online and offline chasm is growing, and its time to roll up our sleeves and address it.

Alex Abelin is the External Affairs Manager for Google Northeast. Alex’s duties include building relationships with local and state level government officials, managing a large investment fund for nonprofit entities, acting as the intermediary between external membership organizations and schools, and producing Google focused seminars and events for key stakeholders. He has served as the chief architect in developing seven Google sponsored outdoor WiFi networks; the most recent includes the Chelsea WiFi network, the largest contiguous NYC WiFi network ever created. Prior to serving time on the Policy team, Alex worked on Google’s Sales team, working with Fortune 500 companies under the Financial Services vertical. His duties included developing digital marketing strategies across Google’s many products, optimizing his clients investment to maximize ROI, and educating potential and existing clients on the power of online advertising. His quarterly quota tended to exceed $10M, where he regularly exceed his goals. Alex has a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration from the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley.

The Call to Adventure is All Around Us

Bobby Bailey will walk through his own personal calls out, to jump first and fear later , and the importance of allowing others into that story. The call to adventure often is accompanied with not only a disruption of ones own life, but the often controversial risk of removing the veil of normality for others. He will draw from stories of two organizations he helped found,  1. Invisible Children and the challenge to end the longest running war in Africa, by stopping a mad man 4,000 miles away. 2. Global Poverty Project USA whose goal is to end extreme poverty world wide.

Bobby Bailey is a Social Entrepreneur and the Co-Founder of Invisible Children, an organization that seeks to end the longest running war in Africa, a civil war in Northern Uganda. Bobby has spoken at large conference and film festivals around the world, notable colleges and organizations, including the UN, Passion Conferences, Summit Series, The Carter Center, The West Wing, Senate and House Hearings. Bobby’s expertise includes millennial leadership, grassroots movements, new media markets, Brand Love marks, distribution principals, new platforms of development, and politics in the global system.

(WTF) What’s The Formula?! Celebrity + Charity = Social Change??

What really happens – and what’s still missing – when fame, media and Madison Avenue conspire… to convince us to tackle the world’s biggest problems?  Find out how Hollywood can rewrite the celebrity-driven script of catastrophe-inspired philanthropy and cause marketing.   An entertainment industry veteran shares a decade of candid lessons on how our good intentions can have the greatest impact, from 9/11 to Haiti.

Michael J. Balaoing, Esq. trains and coaches professionals around the world, including Fortune 500 CEO’s, senior executives, managers, teachers, lawyers, and leaders in business, government, media, entertainment, technology and industry.

Patent Trolls

Dan Fredinburg’s talk about the Arthur Pryor Foundation will brief you on the state of the US software patent system, highlight how it is stifling innovation in Silicon Valley, and provide some potential solutions. It will not focus on law, domestic policy, or other failed approaches. Instead, the proposed path forward will draw upon the engagement of rebellious engineers, free thought, and activists of all varieties.

Dan Fredinburg is an adventurer, inventor, and energetic engineer. Dan works as the Head of Privacy Strategy for Google, where he leads a product management team and sets the vision across Google to put users in control of their internet experience. Among other things, he works on ideation, strategy-setting, and the facilitation of an innovative culture at Google. Previously, Dan helped YouTube become profitable, managed a software consultancy startup and worked as a software architect in the defense industry. Always inventing and creating has earned Dan 50-100 patents pending; however, he is heavily involved in the Arthur Pryor art foundation, an anti-patent organization that stresses the importance of Free Thought. Arthur Pryor creates tangible art to publicly disclose software inventions, which prevents companies from exercising patent assertion and stifling innovation. To gather inspiration for his professional activities, Dan is the Chief Adventure Officer for an adventure tourism company, Seamless Planet, and is a cultural explorer that organizes expeditions to summit the world’s tallest mountains.

Radically Reinventing Community Development

The Mama Hope story began in 2006 when founder Nyla Rodgers suffered the sudden loss of her mother, Stephanie Moore, to cancer. In an effort to heal from her terrible loss, Nyla traveled to Kenya to meet a young man whose education her mother had sponsored since 2001. To her surprise, she was greeted by hundreds of others whom her mom had also helped. Nyla describes that day as the day that her work found her … and Mama Hope was born.

Nyla Rodgers is the founding director of Mama Hope. She received her undergraduate degree at the University of California, Santa Barbara, in Global and International Studies. During her senior year Nyla interned at the International Peace Bureau and UNESCO’s International Bureau of Education in Geneva, Switzerland where she conducted an independent research project, “Children as Emissaries of Change: Peace Education in Post Conflict Societies.” Nyla then completed a Master’s Degree at the European University of Peace Studies in Austria, where she held a graduate research position at Education for Peace International in Sarajevo, Bosnia. Later, Nyla was employed as the Program Director of the Pacific Rim Foundation (PRF) in San Francisco. At PRF she directed day-to-day operations and worked with diplomatic organizations from five continents to secure participation in international peace events. In 2007, Nyla was the Africa Program Coordinator for the UN Environment Program’s San Francisco Delegation to Kenya. It was during this trip that Nyla decided to create her own organization to provide resources to community based organizations in the developing world.

Career in Beta

The nature of work has shifted at a fundamental level. Our generation’s concept of career is vastly different than any other generation in history. Those of us who will thrive in this new paradigm must be willing to take risks, experiment with a variety of meaningful projects while seeking continual, iterative improvement. Come learn how to create your own Career in Beta.

Kyle believes in the power of the market to create a positive social and environmental change. He is a cofounder of Biographe - a sustainable style brand that employs and empowers survivors of the commercial sex trade – and Founding Partner of Westaway Law - an innovative Brooklyn law firm that counsels social entrepreneurs. Kyle is a Lecturer on Law at Harvard Law School.

Successes and Failures in International Development

Christina has had the diverse and incredibly rewarding experience of starting education initiatives in Southeastern China; the West Bank; Nairobi, Kenya; and in her home state of Georgia. (Go Dawgs!) Her field experience combined with a bird’s-eye view of over 2000 development projects, or “Commitments to Action,” at The Clinton Global Initiative has taught Christina a very distinct lesson: We have the tools to solve global poverty, but it is the international will and the way we attempt to address problems that hold us back. Christina will talk through examples of the successes and failures in international development, and propose ways for people to connect with and support efforts that are effectively addressing global poverty.

Morgan will speak about his experience as a documentary filmmaker and what inspired him to enter the field.

Morgan Spurlock is a New York based writer, director and producer. His first film, Super Size Me, premiered at the Sundance Film Festival in 2004 and won him Best Directing honors. The film went on to win the inaugural Writers Guild of America best documentary screenplay award as well as garner an Academy Award nomination for best feature doc. Since then he has directed, produced and distributed multiple film and TV projects, including the critically acclaimed FX television series, “30 Days,” and the films Where in the World is Osama Bin Laden, Confessions of a Superhero, Czech Dream, Chalk, The Future of Food, What Would Jesus Buy?, and Freakonomics.

From Homo economicus to Homo duplex: Harnessing human nature to create flourishing teams, communities, and societies

Jesse’s academic work integrates principles and methods from neuroscience, evolution, and moral psychology to answer a fundamental question: how do human groups (from entire societies to communities to organizations, militaries, or sports teams) flourish?

His more recent work has focused on how to make people more creative, eat fewer calories, become more trusting (and trustworthy), become better at “reading” people, tolerate more physical pain, become more resilient, and turn their own genes on and off (and pass those turned on or off genes on to their children).

X PRIZE Design

Kacy Qua attempts to predict the future and incentivize entrepreneurs to bring that vision to life. She does this via the X PRIZE Foundation’s Prize Development team*, where she leads Education Prize Design and masterminded a $10 Million X PRIZE for Global Literacy.

Prior to joining the X PRIZE Foundation in 2009, she worked and consulted for The Man at various industry leading companies including Lockheed Martin Space Systems, Cisco Systems, Deloitte Consulting, and Participant Media.   She holds a BS from Cornell University, and an MBA from the Anderson School of Management at UCLA. In her spare time she enjoys contorting into strange yoga positions, making things occur simply by focusing intensely on them, and attempting to communicate telepathically. She has found marginal and limited success, respectively, with the latter two.

*Kacy was so inspired by the Downtown Project Vision and team that she has since left the X PRIZE Foundation to come build her own tech company in Downtown Las Vegas.  Stay tuned for details…

For self-described writer and raconteur Cathy Brooks of Other Than That, facilitating those connections between people requires a willingness to use a very simple modern tool: the off switch.

“There’s a lot of noise in the world today—technological noise. We’re all in such a hurry to communicate, but what we need to do is stop or pause,” she says. Brooks asserts that the world of hyper-connectedness in which we live, a world where we are all constantly “sharing” through a plethora of social media platforms, is actually leading us to be disconnected from those around us and to our true selves.