Theme: SHIFT

Shift...

Shifting perspectives is uncomfortable too. In fact, it’s one of the hardest things we can attempt.

Progress doesn’t just appear from thin air. It’s not inventing new things. Most often, it spawns from seeing standard perceptions differently and having the wonder necessary to open yourself to ridicule.

That’s our mission – not to provide you with agreeable, mainstream ideas, but instead with experiences that challenge your perspectives both of what the world is, and what our local area and those within it are capable of.

We invite you to our 2015 conference with the hopes of developing those capabilities within yourself, our area, and our world.

We’ll provide the experience; you provide the progress. Prepare to shift.

Yellow Box
1635 Emerson Ln
Naperville, Illinois, 60540
United States

Arden Warner

Arden was born in the West Indies on the island of Barbados. After immigrating to the USA as a teen, he followed his already established interest in science. Arden now has a doctorate, working by day as an Accelerator physicist at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory and after hours as a tinkerer, attempting to solve problems he finds interesting and for which he thinks the solutions may be simpler to harness on shorter time scales.

Eileen Dougharty

Also a writer, performer, and storyteller, Eileen Dougharty enjoys fictional writing and sharing true and hilarious stories with other Chicagoans.

George Carey

George began his career in youth and family marketing with his childhood love of Bugs Bunny cartoons (ask him to do his imitation of Foghorn Leghorn). Since then he has become one of the world’s leading authorities on youth and families. He began his career in the youth and family advertising space where he led global accounts like Procter & Gamble and General Mills. He then founded Just Kid Inc., a research, strategy, and innovation agency that ultimately evolved into The Family Room. George has been a policy advisor to the Department of Health and Human Services and a Tween Segment Specialist for the White House Office of Drug Control Policy. He’s also a Kid Power and Golden Marble Award Winner. On a good day he also gets the “Great Dad” award from his 2 teenage daughters.

Jack Gilbert

Jack Gilbert is the group leader for Microbial Ecology in the Biosciences Division at Argonne National Laboratory, whose ongoing research is focused on exploring how microbial communities assemble themselves in natural and man-made environments. Jack develops predictive models that help capture our understanding of ecosystem function mediated by microorganisms, as well as manages the Earth Microbiome Project, which is an ongoing effort to characterize the microbial diversity of our planet and the Hospital Microbiome Project, which is examining how adding patients and staff into a hospital building effects the development of microbial communities and important pathogens. Jack is also an Associate Professor in the Department of Ecology and Evolution and Department of Surgery at the University of Chicago, and the Associate Director of the Institute for Genomic and Systems Biology. Finally, he has a joint appointment at the Marine Biological laboratory in Woods Hole.

Jeff Wallace

Jeff has spent most of his life studying the effects of the policy and procedures followed by the criminal justice system on at-risk youth – first, as one of those youths and then, through his undergraduate and graduate degrees in Criminal Justice. At work, he’s a Group Care Manager who guides a team at a non-profit organization, working to strengthen children, families and individuals by providing quality services that engage community resources to create effective solutions. He is also a Youth Counselor at a county detention center in Iowa and a Crisis Interventionist for the Davenport police department and local hospitals. He is driven to change the way youthful offenders are sentenced, so there will be more cases of these youngsters being able to find their true path in life.

Jill Howe

Jill Howe co-produces Story Sessions, a monthly live lit event featuring true stories connected through a theme, live music and real-time story-inspired artwork at the beautiful City Winery in Chicago’s West Loop. When not producing, she performs her own true stories at Essay Fiesta, Story Club, Mortified, That’s All She Wrote, and many more. Her work has been featured in Story Club Magazine, You’re Being Ridiculous Blog and on Vocalo Public Radio featured on NPR. Jill has also coached new storytellers for Fear Experiment at the Park West and organizes her own writing groups and retreats throughout the city and suburbs.

Kurt Melcher

Kurt is the Associate Athletic Director and eSports Coordinator at Robert Morris University. A soccer goalie for the University of Illinois at Chicago in the early 1990s, he has also been the women’s soccer coach at Robert Morris since 1995. Kurt first fell in love with video games after playing video game versions of soccer following actual soccer practices at UIC, holding tournaments between his friends that lasted all night. He turned that passion into a profession by launching the first collegiate-level electronic sports department in the United States, allowing students to train, develop, and practice video games at national and international levels alongside other, more physical college sports.

Lewis Achenbach

Originally a film/animation major out of NYU, Lewis Achenbach has been documenting, curating, and commissioning the music scene in Chicagoland for the past 4 years, capturing the “frequency in the room” and imagining “sonido sólido” (solid sound). This discipline has become the Jazz Occurrence project, a fusion of art and sound which has held performances/exhibitions at the Aurora Public Art Commission and Constellation Chicago. There, Lewis produces and paints on canvases surrounded by the curated walls of his Jazz Occurrence Art Exhibition, as well as world-class musicians and artists, including Ari Brown, Alison Brady, Jeff Schlanger, Harrison Bankhead, Mars Williams, Vincent Davis, Douglas Ewart, and Renee Baker, among others.

Marta Wilmes

Marta Wilmes is a writer, performer, and storyteller in Chicago who is passionate about sharing private experiences in public forums.

Meryl Davis

National, World, and Olympic Champion Ice Dancer, World Record Holder & Winner of the 18th Season of Dancing with the Stars Born and raised in Michigan, Meryl began skating at age five on a local lake in the winter, eventually leading to a highly successful career in ice dancing. Davis and her partner, Charlie White, teamed up in 1997 and are currently the longest lasting dance team in the United States. They are the first American ice dancers to win the National, World, and Olympic Champion Ice Dancer, World Record Holder & Winner of the 18th Season of Dancing with the Stars

Michelle Drouin

A developmental psychologist, Dr. Michelle Drouin studies the effects of technology on literacy, communication, and relationships. She also studies the roles of technology in teaching and learning. Dr. Drouin’s research on sexting and mobile phone addiction has attracted international attention, and she regularly does interviews for television, radio, newspapers, and magazines. Her research has been cited in a number of prominent news sources including CNN, NPR, MSNBC, CBS News, The New York Times, Huffington Post, Reuters, Men’s Health, Parenting Magazine, and Psychology Today.

Rook Nelson

Rook jumped out of his first plane at the age of 4. Since then, he’s accomplished more than 20,000 jumps, won 3 world championships and 12 national championships with medals in nearly every event, achieved 7 world records, and performed stunt work for motion pictures. In the air, he’s a jack-of-all-trades. On the ground, he’s CEO of Skydive Chicago, founding the organization at the age of 23 and growing it to international scale, now hosting a variety of major national and world competitions, including the 2016 IPC World Championships and Mondial.

Trisha Prabhu

Trisha is an innovator, STEM advocate, social entrepreneur, and creator of software product ReThink, designed to stop cyberbullying at the source. The success of her product lead her to become a global finalist at the 2014 Google Science Fair and she was awarded the Global Anti-bullying Hero Award and Anti-bullying Champion Award from Princess Diana Awards, UK. Trisha was recognized with an Upstander award by the Tyler Clementi Foundation. She has presented internationally to raise awareness of cyberbullying and promote positivity and tolerance around the world, being featured on ABC Good Morning America, MSNBC, Business Insider, International Business Times, Huffington Post, and several other media outlets. Trisha is also a published author of four books and recently named Chicago’s Financial Literacy Ambassador by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago.