I am head of planning and strategy at the barbarian group, purveyors of awesomeness. Prior to that I worked as a strategist at Naked Communications, a creative lead at Renegade Marketing and before that wrote about the impact of cultural, media and demographic trends on the marketing field at American Demographics Magazine.

Steve Larosiliere // Stoked Mentoring
Steve founded the organization after snowboarding in Vancouver, where he recognized how his two passions – mentoring and snowboarding – could be combined. Steve believed that the courage and perseverance needed to learn action sports would be an ideal way to teach those life skills to at –risk and disadvantaged youth. Combining life lessons with the power of mentoring and a supportive community, Stoked Mentoring was born.  Stoked Mentoring is a non-profit youth development program that utilizes action sports to teach life skills to inner city youth in New York City and Los Angeles. Over the past 4 years Stoked has worked with over 300+ youth and over 100% of youth have graduated high school. Stoked has been profiled in the New Yorker, The E! Channel, Huffington Post, and NPR.

Perry Chen // Kickstarter