Ryan Allis – San Francisco, CA

Ryan is a technology entrepreneur and investor from San Francisco, CA.

Ryan was the co-founder and CEO of iContact from its start in 2003 through its acquisition in February 2012 by Vocus (NASDAQ:VOCS) for $169M. iContact grew to 300 employees, 70,000 customers, and 1 million users, reaching the INC 500 list three times. Today Ryan is the CEO of Connect.

Ryan is an active angel investor through his investment firm Connect Ventures with investments in Spacex, LendingClub, Ark, Change.org, Close.com, Soma, Hydros, ThinkImpact, Bold Academy, SpringMetrics and East African firms Off-Grid Electric, Pengo Loans, and VillageEnergy. Ryan has a particular interest in investing in clean energy, software, and the intersection of natural user interfaces and consumer technology.

Ryan is also the author of a 2008 book on entrepreneurship called Zero to One Million (McGraw-Hill). He is currently finishing The Startup Guide: Creating a Better World Through Entrepreneurship.

Ryan served as Board Chairman of Nourish.org from 2008-2012, as an inaugural member of the UN Foundation Global Entrepreneurs Council from 2011-2013, and during the 2012 Presidential Election served as a National Co-Chairperson for Technology for Obama. Ryan also worked with the U.S. Department of State teaching entrepreneurship in Cairo following the 2011 Egyptian Revolution. Ryan completed the EO/MIT Entrepreneurial Masters Program in 2011 and the Singularity University Executive Program in 2012.

Ryan attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and completed the first half of the MBA program Harvard Business School where he was a fellow of the Harvard Graduate School Leadership Institute before leaving to build Connect and Connect Ventures.

Ellen Daly – Oakland, CA

Ellen Daly is a publishing consultant and writer who founded CoCreative Writing to help authors navigate the journey from inspiration to publication. Combining a writer’s sensitivity with an editor’s business-sense, she collaborates with thought leaders to creatively develop their messages and brands; write their book proposals or books; and strategically position them to appeal to agents, publishers, and readers.

Ellen has a passion for collaboration, and a rare ability to get inside the heads of her clients, developing a written voice and style that many remark “sounds more like me than when I write myself.” She empowers her clients to communicate through the written word with the same confidence, authority, and transmission that they feel when they teach, lecture, or coach.

Ellen specializes in non-fiction, focusing on the fields of Business and Spirituality and the increasingly fertile ground where the two are beginning to meet. Her clients include business leaders, visionary entrepreneurs, spiritual teachers, integrative health pioneers, nutritionists, and memoirists. Her book proposals are consistently praised by agents and publishers for their flair, professionalism, and market-awareness, and recent client success stories include publishing deals with William Morrow, St. Martin’s Press, and Harper Perennial.

Having spent almost a decade working at the award-winning spiritual and cultural magazine EnlightenNext, Ellen has an unusual grasp of emerging perspectives at the leading edge of contemporary thought. She is passionate about creating books that make a difference, and helping ideas that matter find their way on to the page, the bookshelf, and the bestseller lists.

Ellen was born and raised in the United Kingdom, and got her degree in Literature from University College London. After graduating, she worked in magazine publishing in London for a number of years before moving the the United States to work for EnlightenNext. She began editing books in 2001, and started her consulting business in 2003. Ellen lives in Oakland, California, with her husband, Carter Phipps, and their beloved cat. She is a dedicated spiritual practitioner who in her spare time enjoys competing in local triathlons, wine-tasting, and reading philosophy.