Brings 30 years of experience in nonprofit leadership, social entrepreneurship, and policy development to his role as Principal at Public Purpose Strategies. In 1988, Michael co-founded City Year, a leading national service organization that served as an inspiration for AmeriCorps, the federal initiative through which more than one million Americans have served their country. Michael is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School, where he was a member of the Harvard Law Review.

Maggie Steffens is a 2x Olympic Gold Medalist and Captain of the USA Women’s Water Polo team. She is a dedicated leader not only to her team, but also to the sport of water polo and the growth of women in sport. This passion for growth is complimented by her entrepreneurial route with her company, 6-8 Sports, which she co-founded with fellow Olympian, Tony Azevedo. At 6-8 Sports, she focuses on business development & strategy and raising funds for the company to fulfill its mission. Maggie holds a Bachelor in Science in Science, Technology, and Society as well as a Master in Science in Management & Engineering from Stanford University.

Mark Longstreth has over 15 years of experience in the private equity and investment banking industries. He is currently a Partner at Newlight Partners, where he focuses on investments in power and infrastructure. Prior to joining Newlight he worked as Managing Director to its predecessor, the Strategic Investments Group of Soros Fund Management, as an Investment Banking Analyst for Bear Stearns, and as an Analyst for the Royal Bank of Scotland. Mark holds a Bachelor in Science and Foreign Service in International Economics from Georgetown University.

Expert in organizational strategy and design. Katie currently works at the intersection of strategy and job quality at Amazon. Previously, she was a director of strategy at Starbucks and a consultant at McKinsey & Company. Katie is also a nonresident fellow at the Brookings Institution, where she has recently focused on the economic impact of LongCovid. She has served on the leadership teams at two nonprofits. Katie has an MBA from MIT Sloan, a Master’s Degree from the London School of Economics, and a BA from the University of Oxford.

Dr. Charlotte A. Mao, MD, MPH, is a leading physician in pediatric infectious diseases with a special interest in HIV and Lyme/vector-borne illnesses.

Marcelo Fiere, DDS, PhD, DMSc, is a leading researcher in infection-associated host response, inflammation biology, transcriptomics, antibody engineering, and the oral microbiome.

William Eimer, PhD, is a leading researcher in neuroscience, molecular biology, microbiology, neurodegeneration, immunohistochemistry, and microscopy.

Lena Pernas, PhD, is a leading researcher in the metabolism of infection, mitochondrial dynamics, parasite biology, and microbiology. Lena holds a PhD in microbiology & immunology from Stanford University and completed postoctoral research on the biology and at the University of Padua, Italy.

David Paez-Espino obtained a Ph.D. in synthetic and molecular biology and biochemistry techniques at the CNB-CSIC in Madrid, Spain, and gained a postdoctoral position at UC Berkeley, USA, for expanding skills in metagenomics, virus-host dynamics, and acquiring programming ability. This work included a collaboration with Danisco USA Inc. (now Dupont), that was attractive to collaborate with the biotech industry.

David also has a strong wet-lab background in molecular biology for bioremediation of contaminated soils and synthetic biology complemented with bio-computational analysis for the last 10 years.

David’s top scientific interests are:

(1) Discovery of New CRISPR-Cas systems. Focusing in Class2 (for gene/genome-editing applications)

(2) Discovery of novel viral genes and genomes.

(3) Establishment of a rational linkage between host-virus interactions revealed in metagenomes of environmental samples.

(4) Global distribution of the microbial viral-defence systems based on CRISPR-Cas.

(5) Discovery of novel protein functions in bacteria and archaea.

(6) Improvement of the binning and annotation of metagenomes.

(7) Deep microbial community analyses of unusual environments.

Instructor, Division of Neurotherapeutics/Neuroimmunologist and expert in persistent central nervous system consequences. Mike uses functional and structural  imaging techniques to identify abnormal patterns in brain inflammation and metabolism in patients with infection-associated chronic disease. He received a master’s degree in behavioral neuroscience at the University of Colorado and a PhD in experimental clinical psychology at Tufts University.