Julian Gresser is an international attorney, professional negotiator, inventor, and recognized expert on Japan. As a negotiator his most dramatic success involved helping a San Francisco-based trading company transform its $8 million after-tax branch into a $1 billion Japanese company in seven years. (This transaction originated by Julian Gresser and his colleague, Professor James E. Schrager has come to be called “Going Public Japanese Style” adopting the title of an article they jointly authored in the Wall Street Journal.) From 1976-1983 he was twice Visiting Mitsubishi Professor at the Harvard Law School and also taught courses as a Visiting Professor at MIT on the legal issues of strategic industries. He has been a Visiting Professor at Beijing University, where he taught seminars on Japanese and U.S. environmental law, and also helped the Chinese environmental authorities draft China's Marine Pollution Control Law. He has served as legal advisor to numerous U.S., Japanese, and European companies on a wide array of business issues, including joint ventures, limited (venture capital) partnerships, technology licensing, export controls and customs fraud, antitrust, and intellectual property protection, particularly patent infringement disputes. He has been a senior consultant to the U.S. State Department, The World Bank, The Prime Minister's Office of Japan, The People's Republic of China, and the European Commission (where he trained the Commission's Japanese negotiating teams).
Julian Gresser is the author of four books, Environmental Law in Japan (MIT Press, 1981), Partners in Prosperity: Strategic Industries for the U.S. and Japan (McGraw Hill, 1984; in Japanese, Cho Hanei Sengen), and Piloting Through Chaos: Wise Leadership/Effective Negotiation for the 21st Century ( Five Rings Press, 1996), (in Japanese, Ishi Kettei Isutsu no Hosoku--Koshodo no Gokui, Tokuma Shoten Publishing Company, Tokyo, 1997), in addition to numerous articles in English and Japanese on technology, economics and law. His most recent work is Piloting Through Chaos—The Explorer’s Mind (PTC/EM)(Bridge21 Publications August 2013/www.bridge21.us/www.explorerswheel.com). PTC/EM is the world’s first “smart” book, in other words a Living Adaptive Multi-media Book ™ an invention of the author.
Web site: www.explorerswheel.com
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Joshua Soske is an entrepreneur with extensive senior management and executive experience in high technology product development, strategic planning, program management, engineering management, manufacturing and business development. He has been involved in the founding and development of small companies for over 25 years.
Mr. Soske, President and founder of International Design and Research, works with early stage teams to bring customers, technology, financing and production together into successful ventures. As a founder of VINA Technologies, Mr. Soske served as the company’s CEO and as a member of VINA’s board of directors from inception through their IPO and subsequent sale. Mr. Soske has worked with numerous companies including Rolm, Stratacom, Amiga Computers, Hybrid Networks, British Telecommunications, SoloPoint, Catalina Marketing, ICTV, Hewlett Packard, Italtel Telematica, Software Secure and Packeteer as an advisor, employee, executive and/or consultant.
Luke Ridenhour has a proven track record of success and exemplary accomplishments as both a Navy fighter pilot in high tempo, high threat operations while deployed in foreign theaters of operations and as a business owner developing cutting edge health care, training and compliance related software programs for government and commercial applications, several of which have received the approval of military, judicial and/or governmental authorities.
Mr. Ridenhour is the founder and managing partner of Inventing Futures, a Florida non-profit corporation that seamlessly bridges the gap between the unmet needs of a community’s most vulnerable and at-risk citizens and the myriad non-governmental resources available within a community, including those of faith-based, non-profit and corporate organizations.
Since early 2008, Mr. Ridenhour has been the non-federal principal partner and founder of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with an agency of the U.S. Department of Defense, the goal of which is to leverage the government’s research and development in public health and humanitarian assistance medicine and turn it into practical technology-based solutions for national use in the area of managing and deploying resources related to public health and other natural and man-made disasters, large or small.
Among the organizations that are partners to the CRADA are the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Office of Health Affairs, Homeland Security Institute, Miami-Dade Police Dept., Georgia Tech, Miles College, University of South Alabama Medical Center, Vanderbilt University Medical Center, Alabama Power, Jefferson County (Birmingham), Alabama Emergency Management Agency, plus numerous churches and non-profits.
In 2009, The CRADA was selected by the White House’s Homeland Security Council and the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, Office of Health Affairs to serve as a national model for a Medical and Public Health Information Sharing Environment; Emergency Response and Response Use Case (MPHISE).
Luke Ridenhour is a 1978 graduate of the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. He is a designated Navy Aviator, Naval Parachutist and a U.S. Navy Proven Subspecialist in Education and Training. He is also a graduate of the U.S. Army Airborne Parachutist Course in Fort Benning, Ga.
During his naval career, Mr. Ridenhour was selected from over 1,200 flight instructors as the recipient of the 1989 David S. Ingalls Award, presented annually to the number one flight instructor in the U.S. Navy. In addition, he earned numerous awards for his aviation skills, including recognition for safely piloting a jet aircraft with frozen flight controls over 100 miles to a safe landing.
Mr. Ridenhour has logged over 5,000 accident-free flight hours as a Navy pilot, the majority in tactical jet aircraft. He has logged over 425 carrier landings, including 125 at night. He is a centurion (100+ landings) on the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal and a double centurion (200+ landings) on the aircraft carrier USS Midway. He has landed on ten different aircraft carriers.
As a naval officer, Mr. Ridenhour served as a tactical jet pilot and made multiple deployments to the Indian Ocean, South China Sea, Sea of Japan and Mediterranean, including contingency support of the Iranian Hostage Crisis in 1979-1980 and the 1986 attack on Libya.
He was commanding officer of Naval Reserve Center San Juan and Naval Reserve Center Roosevelt Roads, both based in Puerto Rico, overseeing the training and management of over 600 Naval Reservists in the Caribbean region, which included providing direct support to northern Caribbean drug interdiction operations, Guantanamo Bay and other area governmental and military facilities.
In other tours of duty, he served as air operations officer at Naval Station Roosevelt Roads, Puerto Rico, department head in Attack Squadron 176 (Virginia Beach, VA.) and Attack Squadron 304 (Alameda, CA.), operations officer and advanced strike flight instructor in Training Squadron Seven, (Meridian, MS) officer in charge of the midshipman flight cadre at VT-10 in Pensacola, Florida and a junior officer in Attack Squadron 115, homeported in Yokosuka, Japan.
Mr. Ridenhour has been a business owner since 1996. His first company developed an orthopedic rehabilitation product that was utilized by the U.S. Winter Olympic Ski Team and the Steadman-Hawkins Clinic in Colorado, whose clients utilizing the product included two Olympians, skier Picabo Street and skater Scott Hamilton. After the product was licensed to a global health care company in 1998, his company merged with an Internet health care company and ultimately partnered with numerous prestigious hospitals, including Duke University, Yale University, New York Presbyterian and Henry Ford Health System, in providing Internet-based health-related information and e-commerce services.
In late 1999, Mr. Ridenhour started a company to apply emerging technologies to compliance and information management. The first product, Woundcare.MD, was a pure Internet-based program developed for the nursing home industry that integrated software-based algorithms for standardized patient diagnoses, interventions and observations with telemedicine, instant messaging and alert communications. Marriott Senior Living Services utilized the program in all its facilities, and the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services recognized the program for its data integrity. The product was ultimately acquired by Tempur-Medical, a division of Tempur Pedic.
Mr. Ridenhour’s company created and deployed WorkNETT, a web-based, scenario-driven harassment and discrimination program training program, whose clients included American Express. WorkNETT was endorsed by a federal court in 2004 and acquired by an insurance company in late 2005. He also created a web-based medical-legal compliance training and evaluation program for two medical schools that has been used continuously since 2005 and was acquired by a technology provider in 2011. This program has enabled the two medical schools to validate and/or refine their credentialing and standardization of medical-legal compliance issues and training and track the compliance performance of their students through the school and beyond to residency and internship.
From 2003 to 2011, Mr. Ridenhour’s company developed and deployed numerous other proprietary web-based programs related to information, security and compliance management, three of which were acquired by large public corporations, including one related to telemedicine and public health that received ‘safe harbor’ status by DHHS in 2002. An incident reporting system acquired by an NYSE-listed senior living provider is still in daily use and has had over 150,000 incidents successfully inputted and analyzed. M-CAST, a medical capabilities assessment and status tool developed for the U.S. Navy Bureau of Medicine, was approved in 2007 for worldwide use in the U.S. Department of Defense’s Military Health System.
Mr. Allen was born in Norco, California. Bob Allen began his career in the entertainment industry as a musician at the age of 16. He taught guitar and toured Europe as a singer and accompanist. Based on their performing and song writing experience in the early seventies, he and a partner formed a successful concert production company, producing over 100 commercial and benefit events in the Southwest. After graduating from the University of Colorado in 1976 with a degree in communication, he accepted a position with Disneyland's live entertainment division.
From 1976 to 1978, Allen held a variety of positions in the park's Entertainment Division including responsibility for lighting and sound design, stage management and talent booking. In 1977, he produced an experimental Jazz fusion show incorporating film, video and magic techniques. Other highlights were stage management of several spectaculars, including the Super Bowl XI Half Time, and design and creative development work on Disneyland's Main Street Electrical Parade.
In 1978, with the advent of the Tokyo Disneyland project, Allen formed a production unit within the Disneyland International Division. This group conceived, developed, and produced numerous film, tape, and multi-media materials focused on orientation, training and marketing for the Tokyo park. In tandem with this assignment, Bob also began work as an Imagineer with Walt Disney Imagineering on several attractions that would become part of EPCOT including The American Express TravelPort, The Future Choice Theater, Spaceship Earth and The American Adventure.
When EPCOT opened in 1982 Bob relocated his team from Disneyland to Walt Disney World. Allen spent the next three years as manager of this production company within the Walt Disney World Marketing division. It grew to over forty full time staff and increased in scope to a full-fledged teleproduction company. During this period he both directed and produced in addition to his management duties. Notable among the projects were a very successful series of live, holiday television specials beginning with "Walt Disney World's Very Merry Christmas Parade" on ABC in 1983 that still airs today.
With the announcement in 1985 of the Disney-MGM Studios project, Bob became the Florida anchor for the production focus of the operation. In August of 1987, he was promoted to Director of Film and Tape Production, overseeing the operation of the Disney-MGM Studios facilities and production groups. In 1991 he became Vice President of Disney Production Services Inc. incorporating both he studio operations and the WDW Resort Entertainment division.
As a veteran of 9 high-tech startups, Ric has deep roots in building a business from innovative ideas. Ric’s creative nature and technical background combined with his expertise in business development has provided many Seattle area startups with the expertise required to jump-start each business. As the first employee at GroundTruth, Ric created the initial data partner relationships that created the industry first mobile analytics company using data-mining techniques on mobile operator Internet server logs. The company then reported on what smartphone users were actually doing on the mobile Internet, providing insights of immense value to mobile publishers and marketers. Ric managed the majority of customer relationships for GroundTruth while providing deep analytical support for key clients such as Amazon, 1-800-Flowers, Autotrader, Progressive Insurance, NPR, Google, Millennial Media, Mojiva and several other leading publishers and mobile ad networks. Ric also supported the technical and business relationship with Thinkvine, one of the advertising industries more innovative multi-channel ad campaign modeling engines.
Prior to GroundTruth (name changed to Zettics), Ric was with Medio Systems, responsible for the content that surfaced from Verizon mobile search , (“Get it now”) and also for both national and local mobile search content at T-Mobile. By working with Medio’s internal advertising and development teams to define what smartphone users want from mobile search, Ric helped form a content strategy, then built relationships with companies like Fox News, Yellowpages, Flightstats, Yelp, Accuweather and a variety of other well known publishers to ensure that smartphone users had the best search results on their smartphones. Ric also utilized his extensive relationships with technology firms to find partners enabling multimodal input, speech to text conversion & with mobile publishers to help Medio start the industry first search-based mobile advertising business with Fox News & Amped Mobile.
When “Smartphones” were first introduced to the market, Ric helped Qualcomm and Sprint create the industry first “Animated Ringtones” – leveraging his company’s global “Star Trek” mobile content license, he created and delivered many of the top selling ringtones for Sprint, T-mobile and Verizon. As VP Business Development, Ric went back to his entertainment roots, obtaining fun and interesting content from many successful musicians and artists. Ric also created over 50 distribution channels for mobile content – Ric’s efforts were a direct result to Sir Mix-A-Lot receiving a gold record for “Pick Up The Phone”, a best selling ringtone across mobile networks selling in excess of 100,000 downloads a week, month over month. Ric also formed and managed the content relationship with Lee Oskar (Founding member, WAR; Low Rider, Cisco Kid, Why Can’t We Be Friends, etc) who then created many of the top selling ringtones on Sprint and T-Mobile. In order to build a mobile content business, Ric returned many times to his early career days as a musician leveraging his relationships from the “Summer of Love” music business to provide many great ringtones and featured wallpaper products for all major carriers from Stanley Mouse (Grateful Dead artwork), Tower of Power, Flora Purim, Lee Oskar, Sir Mix-A-Lot and many others.
During the technology years of B2B Marketplaces, Ric managed sales for two globalization consulting companies. Ric’s customer list included MetalSite, Purchase Pro, Ventro, Vitria and for many of the leading B2B marketplaces. Before moving from the SF bay area to the Northwest, Ric managed Asia and Latin America for Mindscape, a leading multimedia company. Licensing over 50 software products into most countries in Asia and Latin America, Ric built one of Mindscapes most profitable divisions from international software licensing revenue. Most of the early CD-Rom kits had Mindscape software as a direct result of Ric’s innovation and persistent efforts in Hong Kong and Singapore. While at Mindscape, Ric also wrote 1,186 lessons for the “Miracle Piano Teaching System”, the industry first AI based teaching system that was then licensed into Japan, Korea, and many international markets.
After many years as a touring musician, Ric returned to college taking computer science then entered the technology industry as a programmer for Reynolds + Reynolds working on general ledger, payroll and amortization system. Ric soon felt the entrepreneur spirit leaving R+R to form a software company providing custom software products and factory automation services. Ric’s Crop Management System was written in conjunction with the UC Coop Extension offices and used by many counties in California for crop analysis. As a systems integrator, the company provided automation and data collection services for Johnson Wax, Lever Brothers, San Gabriel Dam, Clorox, Allied Chemical, defense contractors and Tosco Refinery and Chemical plants.
Before moving into technology, Ric was a successful recording artist in the SF bay area during the 60’s – playing through the famous “Summer of Love”, Ric made close friendships with many successful musicians that remain in place to this day. During the emerging mobile content business around 2001, Ric leveraged his relationships to introduce mobile technology to fellow musicians, creating significant income for his many friends in the entertainment industry.
Over the years Ric has served local communities as a radio operator, primarily for emergency communications. In 1989 Ric volunteered with the California Office of Emergency Services participating in a number of drills involving joint exercises with USAF simulating a C5 crash near Travis AFB, search and rescue and other emergency situations. Ric also was deployed to Oakland, CA the night of the Lome Prieta earthquake as a base station radio operator to assist setting up shelters and dispatching workers around the city.
As the founding President of the Snoqualmie Valley Amateur Radio Club, Ric assisted the regional Citizens Corp form an amateur radio communciation group to assist local medical, fire and police departments during emergency situations and community events. Served as President for the first year and later managed the emergency communications sub-committee. Ric is the lead grant writer for SNOVARC securing funding for a field repeater system facilitating broad-based communications throughout the Snoqualmie Valley and is trained under the FEMA CERT program; participating in numerous emergency drills as team leader, radio operator and remote field station manager.
Certifications and training
(http://www.linkedin.com/in/williammoulton)
Bill grew up in Kenya where his father was a zoologist. He is a very experienced systems designer with special experience in social media, crowd sourcing, collaborative innovation, and advanced search technologies. He is the founder of several start up companies, including Navagent and Energy Voyager and is a Board member of Alliances for Discovery a 501© 3 non-profit established to foster collaborative invention and innovations to address the current challenges facing humanity.
Norie has written seven published books (three best-sellers) on environmental issues and on transforming humanity. Highly acclaimed, her books are translated into several major languages.
Growing up in the woods of Virginia, in the USA, Norie's background is eclectic and international. Graduating a year early from high school, she went to Italy for a year as an AFS exchange student. She graduated from Brown University as a Russian major in 1966, and then worked two years as a Peace Corps Volunteer in Colombia, S.A., where she was trained in an exceptionally effective holistic systems methodology (the KEEPRAH Holistic Approach to Community Development).
In 1970, Norie "retired" to do only what made absolute sense to her for the rest of her life. From 1971-75, she lived in Japan, where she worked closely with the Japanese environmental movement and wrote (with Michael Reich) her first book, Island of Dreams: Environmental Crisis in Japan, a holistic analysis of Japan's environmental crisis and what this means for humanity. Island of Dreams, which has a Foreword by Dr. Paul Ehrlich and an Afterword by Ralph Nader, is still highly relevant in 2013.
Returning to the USA in 1975, Norie celebrated America’s bicentennial by rediscovering America. To do this, she organized Project America 1976, a group of Americans and Japanese who bicycled a 5,000 miles zigzag route across America over a 9-month period. During the bicycle trip, Norie interviewed dozens of Americans about their hopes and fears for the future and wrote a book, Kiboo to no Tabi (Travels with Hope) about this epic adventure. This book became a bestseller in Japan. Shortly after completing the trip, Norie was one of 1414 people arrested in a nonviolent civil disobedience demonstration at Seabrook, NH, and was then hired to help kick off the anti-nuclear movement in the US, through a coalition called Mobilization for Survival. After a year, she realized that "anti" movements would not transform society and began to focus her attention and skills on developing a new kind of positive and practical visionary movement for transforming society. To facilitate this new direction, in 1979, Norie founded the Center for New National Security (CNNS) in Washington, D.C., with the mission, "To look for new directions in national and global security, broadly defined." CNNS is still in operation as a (501)(c)(3) and has sponsored a number of projects and books since its inception.
Convinced by the early 1980s that humanity was entering a period of profound transformation, Norie designed a "global experiment in democracy and sustainability" that she calls "The Best Game on Earth". In 1984, Norie's book, Surviving: The Best Game on Earth, became a New York Times bestseller; Library Journal selected it as one of the top 100 books in science in technology for 1984. The book is a compendium of 30 interviews selected from over 400 interviews conducted, on the topic of concrete ideas for how to make America and the world more secure. Surviving is still highly relevant today.
During the 1980s, Norie also made numerous "citizen diplomat" trips to the former USSR, where she and a colleague facilitated the introduction of Xerox machines into the USSR (1988-89). On one of these trips, she was one of 30 Social Inventors for the Third Millennium who met with Soviet Social Inventors in a Citizens Summit Conference in Moscow. Norie's social invention was The Best Game on Earth (www.bestgame.org), which subsequently had an impact on the Soviet democracy movement. During this time, in the US, Norie was also doing executive coaching and consulting, team-building, public speaking, facilitating seminars and workshops on issues related to personal and planetary transformation and running The Washington Breakfast Group for two and a half years. As a public speaker, Norie has spoken to live audiences up to 10,000, TV-radio audiences up to about 50 million. Her print articles and interviews have reached tens of millions (primarily in Japan and the former USSR). She speaks fluent Spanish, Italian, Japanese, good Russian, some German and a little French and Chinese.
In the 1990s, Norie fulfilled a life-long dream of physically building her own home on 12 acres of land in a lovely part of West Virginia. She wrote her classic book Butterfly that has now become a global "meme" and is used by many spiritual and new thought leaders around the world, including Deepak Chopra, Barbara Marx Hubbard, Lynne Twist, Dr. Bruce Lipton and many more. She also became trained as an Advanced Practitioner in the Voice Dialogue Process and has worked with clients on four continents.
Since 2007, Norie lives half-time in Ecuador where she and her husband, Richard Wheeler, are building The Garden of Paradise (www.gardenofparadise.net), a healing and retreat center, on 350 acres of beautiful land in the famed Valley of Longevity in south-central Ecuador. She and Richard recently won world’s first (and, thus far, only) lawsuit defending the Rights of Nature, a breakthrough legal right first guaranteed by Ecuador's revised 2008 Constitution. This lawsuit is considered by legal experts to be on a par with the ending of slavery as a legitimate institution and with the implementation of voting rights for women. Norie's most recent book, Return To The Garden (http://www.amazon.com/dp/B0098OC3LI), provides the outline for how global transformation is taking place. This book is the first in "The Eleanor Chronicles" in which Norie is laying strategies for transforming major systems of society (monetary, economic, national security, education, healthcare, political). Her most recent article (to be published in November in Kosmos Journal) describes how she and Richard won world's first successful Rights of Nature lawsuit and the implications of this legal breakthrough for humanity today.
Norie believes strongly that humanity now has the opportunity and the imperative to come together quickly to build a global civilization that is peaceful, sustainable and benefits everyone. For almost 45 years, this conviction has guided her work in using her systems training and spiritual grounding to find and design "root" solutions to major global problems. To share the "Good News", she continues to write, does public speaking, consults to various organizations and continues her studies and systems design of ingenious solutions to pressing problems.
On May 19, 2013, Norie completed drawing and coloring 1001 original butterflies, one each day, in a "Butterfly Countdown to Global Transformation." (www.butterflyblessings.net) The butterflies have many interesting applications in her future work.
Mayumi Oda was born into a Buddhist family in Tokyo. A practitioner of Soto Zen, she teaches Every Day Zen. She is a graduate of Tokyo University Art, and she has been creating Goddesses, strong images of feminine, for decades,exhibiting internationally. She founded Plutonium Free Future in Berkery and Tokyo, and works for peace and environmental justice worldwide. Mayumi lives on the Big Island of Hawai'i, where she is establishing an organic farm.
