HELENA - Key Persons

Dr. Madden received her BA from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in Biology from Tufts University. She conducted postdoctoral training at the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado Boulder and the Department of Applied Ecology at North Carolina State University. When not conducting research on the microbes around us, she is helping communicate the awe of this microbial world. Dr. Madden has given 5 TED/TEDx talks in three years and has been featured in an award-winning science documentary. She is also founder of the Microbial Hat Project, a project that fuses high fashion with 3D printing technology to create new science communication tools. She recently collaborated with the designer and former TED Fellow Amanda Phingbodhipakkiya to produce a pop-up art and science exhibit that features a colorful and whimsical journey into the microbial communities around us. This exhibit debuts at the Cooper Union Gallery in NYC in October and features a layer of augmented reality technology to provide a portal into the science of these microbes, many of which make our lives better in profound ways. More information about Dr. Madden can be found on twitter, instagram, or at her website.

Job Titles:

• Investor
• Investment Banker
• Investor at Helena Special Investments

Colin Whelan is an Investor at Helena Special Investments. In that role, Colin supports Helena's for-profit investing activities through markets identification, thesis creation, financial due diligence & execution and portfolio company management. Colin has worked as an investment banker across the healthcare, consumer, industrial, and real estate industries and formerly worked as an investor at FTV Capital covering financial software & payments. Colin graduated from Colgate University as a Mathematical Economics Major and Division I Athlete.

Job Titles:

• Project Operations

Eliza's career sits at the intersection of technology, policy, and creative development. Before joining the Helena team she spent the 2020 election working in politics, primarily as the head of creative for paid media on Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign in South Bend, Indiana. Previously Eliza worked at Jigsaw, a NYC-based Google/Alphabet company that asks: how can technology make the world a safer place? Eliza focused on anti-censorship, internet protocols, AI moderation, and DDoS attacks. Eliza graduated from Duke University in 2016, with a major in Political Science, focusing on Middle East politics, and a minor in Arabic. Eliza is passionate about internet equality, democratic development, and international policy. She also loves to cook, ski, run, and watch American football. Eliza lives in London, where she is completing her MBA at London Business School, with an emphasis on entrepreneurship.

Job Titles:

• Director
• Director: Membership
• Is Director of Membership

Erika Yorio is Director of Membership at Helena. Erika's career has straddled journalism and media, technology, design, and the arts. She has spent the last decade in leadership roles at creative studios, building client relationships and strategic partnerships and shepherding ideas from the brainstorming phase through execution. In these capacities, she has produced books, films, and exhibitions while collaborating with brands and institutions including Apple, Inc., Sotheby's, Conde Nast, the Smithsonian, Bono's (RED) Global Fund, and the California Academy of Sciences. Erika takes an operational, systems-based approach to creative initiatives and loves working within small, cross-functional teams to accomplish large-scale goals. A former student of literature and poetry writing, she believes close cultural reading and precision of language are critical to responsible social engagement.

Job Titles:

• Chief Executive Officer
• Co - Founder

Evan Spiegel is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at Snap Inc. Spiegel attended Stanford University where he studied product design. Evan Spiegel is co-founder and Chief Executive Officer at Snap Inc. He also runs The Spiegel Family Fund, which is committed to philanthropy in California and beyond. Through dedication to the arts, education, housing, and human rights, the Fund supports organizations that contribute to human progress. Evan graduated from Stanford University with a BS in Engineering - Product Design. He lives in Los Angeles with his wife Miranda and their two children, Flynn and Hart.

Job Titles:

• President & CEO of BENS

General Norton A. Schwartz is the President & CEO of BENS. He led the United States Air Force as its 19th Chief of Staff from 2008 to 2012. General Schwartz is a command pilot with more than 4,400 flying hours in a variety of aircraft. He participated as a crewmember in the 1975 airlift evacuation of Saigon, and in 1991 served as Chief of Staff of the Joint Special Operations Task Force for Northern Iraq in operations Desert Shield and Desert Storm. In 1997, he led the Joint Task Force that prepared for the noncombatant evacuation of U. General Schwartz is a U.S. Air Force Academy graduate and holds a Master's degree in Business Administration from Central Michigan University. He is an alumnus of the Armed Forces Staff College, the National War College, a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and a 1994 Fellow of Massachusetts Institute of Technology's Seminar XXI.

Job Titles:

• CEO
• Founder

Henry Elkus is Founder and CEO of Helena. He cares immensely about creating systems that can be leveraged to enact global, scalable, and systemic change. Henry dropped out of Yale in his second year to lead Helena full time.

Ilwad Elman is a Somali-Canadian human rights defender and social activist. She was born in Mogadishu, Somalia to two iconic peace activists; Fartuun Adan and Elman Ali Ahmed. Inspired by her father's legacy of building peace and frustrated by the conflict in Somalia that had protracted beyond 2 decades; Ilwad decided to explore what role she plays in the transition out of conflict in her native home of Somalia. In August 2016, Ilwad was appointed by former UN Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon an expert advisor on Youth, Peace & Security and was tasked to counsel a study to develop an implementation strategy on the Security Council resolution. In March 2018, Ilwad was appointed by UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres an advisor to the UN Peace Building Trust Fund; she is the youngest advisor to ever serve on this board since its founding. Ilwad additionally serves as a member on UNICEF's Global Board for the Generation Now Initiative. She is also the chair of the Child Protection Gender-Based Violence Case Management Group in Mogadishu, a founding member of the Advisory Committee for Researching Gender-Based Violence Social Norms in Somalia and South Sudan, a member of the International Practitioners Network for Civilian Casualty Recording, as well as an expert in the Women Waging Peace Network for Inclusive Security.

James S. Fishkin holds the Janet M. Peck Chair in International Communication at Stanford University, where he is Professor of Communication, Professor of Political Science (by courtesy) and Director of the Center for Deliberative Democracy. His work focuses on deliberative democracy and democratic theory in books such as Democracy When the People Are Thinking (Oxford 2018), When the People Speak (Oxford 2009), Deliberation Day (Yale 2004 with Bruce Ackerman) and Democracy and Deliberation (Yale 1991). He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. He has also been a Guggenheim Fellow, a Fellow of the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford, and a Visiting Fellow Commoner at Trinity College, Cambridge. Fishkin was educated at Yale and Cambridge. He holds both a Ph.D. in Political Science from Yale and a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Cambridge. Fishkin first proposed Deliberative Polling® as a method of public consultation in 1988. It has since been applied in more than 28 countries around the world in more than 108 projects on all inhabited continents.

Job Titles:

• Director of Finance and Operations
• Is Director of Finance and Operations at Helena Special Investments

Karam Hirji is Director of Finance and Operations at Helena Special Investments. Karam oversees several operational workstreams including fund operations, investor relations, legal and compliance, portfolio management, human capital management and financial overview. Prior to joining Helena, Karam worked in various industries including manufacturing and telecoms, including as COO/CFO of a plastics alternative solution business. He also currently sits as a Director of Africa's largest plastics recycler. Karam lives in London with his young family. He graduated with an Honours degree in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Bristol and qualified as a Chartered Accountant from the ICAEW.

Job Titles:

• CEO
• Founder
• Co - Founder and CEO of Citadel

Ken is co-founder and CEO of Citadel, one of the most respected and successful investment firms in the world, which manages over $28 billion in capital for its partners. In 1987, Ken Griffin, a then-19-year-old sophomore at Harvard University, started trading from his dorm room with a fax machine, a personal computer, and a telephone. From this modest but ambitious beginning, Ken caught the attention of hedge fund pioneer and co-founder of Chicago-based Glenwood Partners, Frank Meyer, earning him the opportunity to establish what would one day become Citadel. Ken founded Citadel in 1990 and has since served as the firm's Chief Executive Officer. Today, Citadel is recognized as one of the most respected and successful investment firms in the world, and manages over $28 billion in capital for its partners. Ken is a passionate philanthropist, supporting educational and cultural causes that drive community engagement and improvement. He has given over $700 million to numerous organizations including the University of Chicago, the Ann & Robert Lurie Children's Hospital, the Field Museum of Natural History, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Modern Art, and the American Museum of Natural History. As a leader within the Chicago community, Ken actively participates in civic and cultural institutions, serving on the Board of Directors of the Chicago Public Education Fund, the Board of Trustees for the Art Institute of Chicago, the Museum of Contemporary Art Chicago, the Whitney Museum of American Art, and the University of Chicago. He is also a member of numerous business organizations, including G100, the Civic Committee of the Commercial Club of Chicago, and the Economic Club of Chicago. Ken earned his bachelor's degree from Harvard University and is a proud supporter of his alma mater. In 2014 he donated $150 million to support need-based financial aid at Harvard, the largest gift in school history at the time.

Job Titles:

• Principal

Matt Saunders is Principal at Helena Special Investments. Matt leads the firm's private investing activities from New York City where he is responsible for deal sourcing, negotiating, and execution, in addition to macro investment thesis origination and investment management. Prior to Helena, Matt was an Associate at Global Infrastructure Partners where he worked across the Oil and Gas, Power, and Transportation verticals with the Equity and Credit teams. Matt started his career as an Analyst at Barclays in the Global Natural Resources Group. Matt also served as the Special Assistant to the Special Representative for International Negotiations at the White House, where he focused on Middle East peace negotiations and trade agreement negotiations.

Michael Tubbs is the first African-American Mayor of Stockton, California, and the youngest mayor in American history of a city of more than 100,000 people. On November 8, 2016, Michael Tubbs was elected to serve as the mayor of the City of Stockton, California. Upon taking office in January 2017, Michael Tubbs became both Stockton's youngest mayor and the city's first African-American mayor. Michael Tubbs is also the youngest mayor in the history of the country representing a city with a population of over 100,000 residents. Included in Forbes' 2018 list of the "30 Under 30", Tubbs' leadership paired with an ambitious progressive agenda has received national recognition. In his first year, Mayor Michael Tubbs secured $20,000,000 to launch the Stockton Scholars, a place-based scholarship that aims to triple the number of Stockton students entering and graduating from college. Tubbs also brought Advance Peace to Stockton, a data-driven program that works to reduce gun violence in communities. With an innovative public-private partnership supported by a $1,000,000 grant, Tubbs launched the nation's first-ever municipal level basic income pilot. Before becoming mayor, Michael Tubbs served as Stockton's District 6 City Councilmember. Elected at age 22 in 2013, he became one of the youngest City Council members in the country. As a council member, Tubbs created the Reinvent South Stockton Coalition, championed the creation of the City's Office of Violence Prevention and was part of the council that led the city out of bankruptcy as Chair of the Audit and Legislative Committee. Mayor Tubbs graduated in 2012 from Stanford University with a Bachelor's and Master's degree with honors. Mayor Tubbs is focused on poverty reduction, public safety, workforce development, community engagement and organizing, and collective impact strategies. Tubbs has been a college course instructor for Aspire Public Schools and a Fellow at the Stanford Institute of Design and the Emerson Collective.

Job Titles:

• Co - Founder
• Managing Director
• Co - Founder and Managing Partner of WestExec Advisors

Co-Founder & Managing Director: WestExec Advisors | Co-Founder & Former CEO: Center for a New American Security Michèle Flournoy is Co-Founder and Managing Partner of WestExec Advisors, and the Co-Founder and former Chief Executive Officer of the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). Michèle served as the Under Secretary of Defense for Policy from February 2009 to February 2012. She was the principal adviser to the Secretary of Defense in the formulation of national security and defense policy, oversight of military plans and operations, and in National Security Council deliberations. She led the development of the Department of Defense's 2012 Strategic Guidance and represented the Department in dozens of foreign engagements, in the media and before Congress. Prior to confirmation, Michèle co-led President Obama's transition team at the Defense Department. In January 2007, Michèle co-founded CNAS, a bipartisan think tank dedicated to developing strong, pragmatic and principled national security policies. She served as CNAS' President until 2009, and returned as CEO in 2014. In 2017, she co-founded WestExec Advisors, a strategic advisory firm. Previously, she was senior adviser at the Center for Strategic and International Studies for several years and, prior to that, a distinguished research professor at the Institute for National Strategic Studies at the National Defense University (NDU). In the mid-1990s, she served as Principal Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy and Threat Reduction and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Strategy. Michèle is the recipient of numerous honors and awards, including: the American Red Cross Exceptional Service Award in 2016; the Department of Defense Medal for Distinguished Public Service in 1998, 2011, and 2012; the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff's Joint Distinguished Civilian Service Award in 2000 and 2012; the Secretary of Defense Medal for Outstanding Public Service in 1996; and CARE's 2019 Global Peace, Development and Security Award. She has edited several books and authored dozens of reports and articles on a broad range of defense and national security issues. Michèle appears frequently in national and international media, including CNN's State of the Union, ABC's This Week, NBC's Meet the Press, BBC News, NPR's Morning Edition and All Things Considered and PBS' News Hour, and is frequently quoted in top tier newspapers. Michèle serves on the boards of Booz Allen Hamilton, Amida Technology Solutions, The Mission Continues, Spirit of America, The U.S. Naval Academy Foundation, CARE, and sits on the Honorary Advisory Committee of The Leadership Council for Women in National Security. Michèle is also a former member of the President's Intelligence Advisory Board, the CIA Director's External Advisory Board, and the Defense Policy Board, and is currently a member of the Council on Foreign Relations and the Aspen Strategy Group, and is a Senior Fellow at Harvard's Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Michèle earned a bachelor's degree in social studies from Harvard University and a master's degree in international relations from Balliol College, Oxford University, where she was a Newton-Tatum scholar.

Job Titles:

• Secretary
• President and CEO of SICPA North America
• Special Coordinator

Jane Holl Lute is the UN Secretary-General's Special Coordinator on improving the United Nations response to sexual exploitation and abuse, as well as the United Nations Special Envoy for Cyprus. Ms. Jane Holl Lute is the President and CEO of SICPA North America, a company that specializes in providing solutions to protect the integrity and value of products, processes, and documents. Ms. Lute also serves as Special Advisor to the Secretary-General of the United Nations, where she has held several positions in peacekeeping and peace building. Previously, Ms. Lute served as Deputy Secretary for the United States Department of Homeland Security from 2009 - 2013. She also served as Chief Executive Officer of the Center for Internet Security (CIS), an operating not-for-profit organization and home of the Multi-State Information Sharing and Analysis Center (MS-ISAC) providing cybersecurity services for state, local, tribal and territorial governments. Ms. Lute began her distinguished career in the United States Army and served on the National Security Council staff under both Presidents George H.W. Bush and William Jefferson Clinton. Ms. Lute holds a Ph.D. in political science from Stanford University and a J.D. from Georgetown University. She is a member of the Virginia bar.

Job Titles:

• Director
• Director: Written Content

Peter Schiavelli is the Written Content Director at Helena. Peter creates and edits written content for the organization and focuses on longer-form pieces for the Helena Magazine. Peter is interested in the future of the climate, food security, artificial intelligence, and genetic engineering. Existential in scope and apolitical in nature, these contemporary issues threaten to crystalize existing social inequalities while efforts to address these threats are vulnerable to misinformation and political obfuscation. Peter believes that as technology continues to advance at an unprecedented rate, foundational elements need to be laid out so that societal well-being can keep pace. Peter strives for Helena's written content to address these problems on a factual, aesthetic, and perhaps most of all, human level. Peter believes that a story lies behind every project and a narrative lies behind every need. Peter has written and edited for a number of organizations, including Senator Dianne Feinstein's office, Harvard-Westlake School, Windward School, and the online publication TheRumpus.net. Peter received his BA with Honors in English from Stanford University, where he graduated Phi Beta Kappa and had one of his manuscripts awarded a Levinthal Tutorial in Fiction Writing.

Job Titles:

• Investor
• Investor at Helena Special Investments

Rheanna Henney is an Investor at Helena Special Investments. In that role, Rheanna supports Helena's for-profit investing activities through macro thesis creation, sourcing, financial analysis, due diligence, transaction execution, and portfolio company management. In addition to her full-time role at Helena, Rheanna is currently completing an M.S. degree in Sustainability Management from Columbia University. Previously, Rheanna was an Analyst in Bank of Montreal's Leveraged Finance Group. Rheanna graduated with honors from the University of Michigan's Mathematics program. As a University of Michigan Graham Sustainability Scholar, Rheanna received funding to spend time in the Ecuadorian Amazon researching the oppression of Indigenous communities by oil and mining corporations.

Swan has served as Special Envoy to the UNESCO Director General and as a UN Goodwill Ambassador for Youth. In recognition of his work, Her Majesty the Queen awarded him the high distinction of OBE, Officer of the Order of the British Empire and the Polar Medal.

Job Titles:

• Chief Operating Officer
• Executive Director

Sam Feinburg is the Chief Operating Officer and Executive Director of Helena. He cares deeply about building a fairer and stronger civilization for all in the presence of growing catastrophic and existential risks. Outside of Helena, Sam serves as Social Entrepreneur in Residence at The Boston Consulting Group, and sits on the Board of Directors of the Civilization Research Institute. In 2014, Sam won the World Schools Debating Championships as a member of the England Debate Team. Sam attended Yale University for two years, and left in 2016 to operate Helena full time.

Job Titles:

• Senior Advisor
• Senior Advisor for Diligence and Operations
• Senior Advisor: Diligence and Operations

Sean Roche serves as Senior Advisor for Diligence and Operations at Helena. Prior to Helena, Sean was the Associate Deputy Director of CIA for Digital Innovation serving as the second-in-command of CIA's first new directorate in more than 50 years. The Directorate of Digital Innovation (DDI) was created to accelerate the integration of advanced digital capability across all of CIA's mission areas and is responsible for a wide range of espionage missions including cyber intelligence, open source collection, secure global communications, worldwide mission information systems, data curation, and data science. He successfully executed programs totaling more than $3B while overhauling the legacy personnel systems and practices to create CIA's first digital workforce. Prior to this position, he served as the Deputy Director of CIA for Science and Technology where he held senior executive roles across a wide range of missions, technical disciplines, and tradecraft, ranging from research and development to clandestine operations. He led teams that developed, delivered, and deployed satellite and airborne reconnaissance systems, next generation collection platforms, clandestine technical collection systems, and advanced targeting tools and methodologies. His direct, actionable contributions to high profile counterterrorism interdiction efforts were personally recognized by multiple Presidents, Congress and foreign heads of state. Mr. Roche also held senior positions across the IC and the Department of Defense. During his career at CIA he also served concurrently in the US Air Force Reserve, retiring in the rank of Colonel after 25 years of continuous service. He has been the recipient of multiple Presidential, IC, CIA and DOD individual and unit awards, decorations and citations. He was recognized with CIA's highest award for leading and advancing a diverse and inclusive workforce. He resides in California with his family.

Job Titles:

• Director: Written Content
• Project Lead

Will Jack leads the development of The COVID Network. As an engineer and entrepreneur, he focuses on tackling problems where technology enables totally new kinds of solutions - e.g. cars rather than faster horses. Will previously founded Remedy Health to develop machine learning models to guide care of at-risk patients, conducted early research and development at SpaceX's Starlink Internet Satellite Project, including patented technology to enable secure geolocation. At age 16, Will developed particle accelerators capable of carrying our nuclear fusion reactions, using those reactions generated by his basement particle collider to investigate novel methods of medical imaging. He also worked at the Princeton Plasma Physics Lab on its lithium tokamak experiment, before attending MIT. In his free time he enjoys making music, angel investing, and serving as a technology advisor to films and TV show, including HBO's Silicon Valley. Give me a lever long enough, and a place to stand, and I will move the earth.