Doreen Lorenzo is a successful leader of global creative firms and has advised Fortune 100 companies on design and innovation issues for decades. In August 2017, she was named Assistant Dean of the newly founded School of Design and Creative Technologies, a collaboration between the Department of Design and Center for Arts and Entertainment Technologies.

Previously, Lorenzo served as Director of the Center for Integrated Design at the University of Texas at Austin. She is a co-founder of mobile video insights firm Vidlet, as well as a board member and advisor of several other startups, and a columnist for Fast Co. Design and Medium. …

Jessica Shortall is an advocate, author, and speaker, focusing on the economic and human case for people being able to bring their whole selves to work and their communities.

She runs Texas Competes, a coalition of more than 1,450 Texas employers making the economic case for Texas to be welcoming to LGBTQ people, and America Competes, a national coalition in the same vein.

Shortall keynoted at SXSW 2017 on the story of Texas Competes, the Texas bathroom bill, and building unexpected bridges in a divided time.

Her 2015 book, Work. Pump. Repeat., is a survival guide for breastfeeding and going back to work, and her TED talk that same year on the moral and economic case for paid family leave was a TED “Talk of the Day” and has 1.5 million views. …

Danielle Barnes is the CEO of Women Talk Design, where she works with hundreds of speakers and event organizers to get a more diverse group of speakers on stage and to inspire more women and nonbinary folks to raise their hands to speak.

She also co-founded and co-organizes Austin Design Week, a week-long event celebrating the design community in Austin through free community-hosted talks, workshops, and events. This year’s edition of Austin Design Week runs November 9–13.

Previously, Barnes worked at the education company General Assembly where she founded and led the Austin campus, launched the San Francisco campus, and championed the first full-time User Experience Design Immersive program. …

U.S. Representative Lloyd Doggett represents communities from San Antonio to Austin. He serves as Chairman of the Heath Subcommittee on the House Ways & Means Committee, the oldest committee of the US Congress. Doggett is also a member of the Ways and Means Select Revenue Measures Subcommittee, the Joint Committee on Taxation, and the House Budget Committee.

Since he was first elected to the U.S. House of Representatives in 1994, Doggett has served as a strong defender of Social Security, Medicare, health care, immigration reform, the environment, our veterans, small business and entrepreneurs, and public education. …

Sharron Rush is the award-winning co-founder and Executive Director of the Austin-based nonprofit advocacy, consulting, and training company Knowbility.

Since 1998, Sharron has been a leader in raising awareness and skills around the issue of access to technology for people with disabilities. Her work at Knowbility includes policy review, performance analysis, technical consultation, and training development for private and public companies, government agencies, and schools.

Her technical expertise, understanding of the barriers faced by people with disabilities, and strong communication and training skills have contributed to her leadership position in the field.

Rush has served as an Invited Expert at the W3C since 2007, developing and applying global accessibility standards for their Web Accessibility Initiative (WAI). In 2014 she became co-chair of the Education and Outreach Working Group at WAI. …

Since 2017, Brad King has worked as the Editorial Director of Carnegie Mellon University’s ETC Press, an open access publishing press that specializes in trade and peer-reviewed books, academic journals, conference proceedings, and editorial content for the general public.

He earned his Masters in Journalism from the University of California at Berkeley’s Graduate School of Journalism, where he won the Wired magazine excellence in technology journalism award. He then went on to become a reporter, editor, multimedia storyteller, and senior producer for Wired magazine, Wired.com, and MIT’s Technology Review.

He has co-authored three books (“Dungeon & Dreamers,” “Frankenstein’s Legacy,” and “Learn Work Play”), edited several books and journals, and founded a small literary collective that published two books and four literary journals.

King , who lived in Austin from 1995 to 1998, is a member of PEN America and the Association of Writers and Writing Programs. …

Gerald Youngblood is the Founder of Tankee, Inc., an award-winning media company dedicated to the future of family-friendly digital entertainment.

He is also the Head of Brand, Consumer & Creative Services for NSF International, an organization dedicated to protecting and improving global health since 1944. Additionally, Youngblood is a Mentor-in-Residence at the University of Texas at Austin Longhorn Startup Lab.

Most importantly, he is a proud husband and father who games with his son purely for research purposes.

Asked to list his favorite things about Austin, Youngblood replies: “This is the city where I looked into the eyes of my wife and my son for the first time. It’s a place where I got to be a full-time poet and started three businesses. …

Dr. Oksana Malysheva is an Austin-based investor, entrepreneur and business executive. She is the Managing Partner and CEO of Sputnik ATX, an accelerator that funds and mentors early-stage startup companies. She is also the Managing Partner and President of Linden Venture Fund.

She was born and raised in Ukraine and the Soviet Union. On an academic scholarship, Malysheva moved to the United States with her husband and only $100 to their name. She earned her PhD in physics from the University of Pennsylvania, and soon after, pivoted her focus to business and marketing.

Asked about her favorite reads, Malysheva replies: “Master and Margarita for fiction, Tools of Titans by Tim Ferris for non fiction, and The Culture Code: The Secrets of Highly Successful Groups for my most recent favorite book. I read a lot, and I hoard books but these three would be my standouts.” …