(Kenna)

There are lots of articles on how to get selected to speak at conferences such as these by Core77 and GEL, but nothing on why conferences select  their speakers, so we’ve decided to lift our hood and let you take a look at our engine (gasp)!  We’ll also be revealing some of our other secrets behind The Feast Conference (held on October 1st at The Times Center in New York City).

Why did you pick the speakers for The Feast?

1.  Cindy Gallop is an internationally experienced ad-guru who launched BBH US (1998), which won clients such as Levi’s, Johnnie Walker and Axe.  She’s also an entrepreneur who has launched If We Ran The World and Make Love Not Porn (which was the topic of her recent talk at TED).  And it doesn’t hurt that we chose a host with a British accent.

2.  While Kenna’s (Grammy Nominated musician) not making hits like “Say Goodbye to Love“, he has his eyes set on climbing Mt. Kilminajaro with Justin Timberlake and Lupe Fiasco to raise awareness for the worldwide water crisis, launching marketing campaigns with HP, and having an entire chapter in Blink (by Malcolm Gladwell) devoted to him summarizing “Kenna’s Dilemma.“  At The Feast, Kenna will be speaking about “leveraging your creative skills to create things that touch lives in a positive way.”

3.  Annie Duke is one of the world’s top professional poker players who has won over $3,600,000 in live tournaments.  Annie is also the co-founder of Ante Up for Africa, which is a non-profit organization that combines poker and raising awareness and money for Africans in need.  You might have seen her on the last season of Celebrity Apprentice, but we chose Annie because of her ability to make crucial decisions under enormous pressure.  She’ll be speaking on “decision making, negotiations and ultimatums between positions of power, inferiority and peers.”

4.  Brian Bordainick is an all-star social entrepreneur who at only 22 was hired as the youngest athletic director in the history of the state of Louisiana.  He’s currently working on building a $1.85 million state-of-the-art football field and track in post-Katrina New Orleans (with the help of Nike).  His project, 9th Ward Field of Dreams, has been written up in everything from CBS News to ESPN. We chose Brian because his story will make you cry, laugh, and feel inspired (but mostly because it’ll make you cry).

5.  Elizabeth Scharpf is the Founder of she: sustainable health enterprises, which uses market focused principles to address the world’s most pressing social health problems.  She beat out 1,500 other applicants to win the Echoing Green fellowship, and Harvard Business School recently named Elizabeth as their first Social Enterprise Fellow.  Pretty impressive right?  Elizabeth will be speaking on “system solutions.”

6.  There wouldn’t be enough space to explain why we chose Rod Arnold (COO) and Becky Straw (Director of Water Programs) of charity: water.  Over the last 15+ years, Rod’s outreach work has taken him to 25+ countries around the world.  His ability to develop solutions out of complex problems and his contagious passion made him an easy pick.  Becky’s responsible for building a diversified portfolio of water projects in some of the most water-scarce countries in the world.  We chose charity: water because they are “helping people re-engage with charity in a way that’s never been done before.”

There will be many other speakers at The Feast covering many other industries.  For a full speaker list, please visit http://feastongood.com/conference/speakers, and we hope to see you on October 1st at The Times Center in NYC.  Don’t forget to register if you haven’t already!