Network Voluntours’ mission is to create mutually beneficial experiences for volunteer groups and the community in order to help build capacity of local nonprofits and make volunteering more meaningful. Born in west Texas, Zach Cheney grew up in transition; moving to Louisiana, California and back to Texas before attending LSU in 2005. After graduating, he arrived in New Orleans in 2009 and discovered a place to call home. Working various positions in the hospitality and service industry, he has developed a strong bond with the culture and community that makes New Orleans unique. Cheney met Nathan in 2011 and has since applied his understanding and expertise of New Orleans’ hospitality to improve the impact and experience of volunteers in New Orleans. Originally from outside Philadelphia, Garber moved to Louisiana in 2009 to tutor and mentor students in Baton Rouge with City Year, an AmeriCorps National Service program. She continued her AmeriCorps service with HandsOn New Orleans after falling in love with the city and has since worked for the Covenant House and the Neighborhoods Partnership Network. Garber holds a bachelor’s in journalism from the University of Massachusetts Amherst and has experience in development, volunteer management and communications for the nonprofit community. Teddy Nathan came to New Orleans one year following Hurricane Katrina as a freshman at Tulane and was immediately inspired by the rebuilding effort led by local nonprofits. As a result, Nathan dedicated much of his time to volunteering with different nonprofits, completing an AmeriCorps term with the AmeriCorps Literacy Alliance and receiving the Jim Runsdorf Excellence in Public Service Student Award and the Student Crest Leadership in Service Award his senior year. Upon graduating, he was awarded a mayoral fellowship with Mayor Landrieu’s Office where he first thought of CCC. After the fellowship, Nathan took a position as the Senior Program Coordinator for Campus-Community Partnerships at Tulane’s Center for Public Service (CPS), which has allowed him to continue to work with and support nonprofits in New Orleans. Nathan has used his experience working with and for nonprofits in New Orleans to help create Network Voluntours.

FitLot is dedicated to strengthening communities through the creation of outdoor fitness parks. Adam Mejerson is the Founder and Executive Director of FitLot. Adam graduated from Loyola University, New Orleans, where he studied Sociology, Business Administration, and Disaster Recovery. Over the past 7 years, Adam has managed disaster recovery and community development projects nationally. In New Orleans, Adam worked with the Broadmoor Improvement Association to create programs for evaluating and addressing blighted and vacant property still remaining years after Hurricane Katrina. Adam’s father and partner in FitLot, Vadim Mejerson, has more than 30 years of experience in human performance, physical fitness and wellness, holding a Ph.D. degree in Health Science and Exercise Physiology.

Griffin Law Group, LLC addresses the financial burden families experience while caring for a child with a physical and/or mental disability. GLG handles the time-consuming and overwhelming aspects of the social security benefits process for parents. Robyn R. Griffin started Griffin Law Group LLC in 2012 to ensure every child with mental and/or physical disabilities has the resources s/he needs to lead a happy and healthy life. Before forming Griffin Law Group LLC, Robyn spent two years at Legal Services of North Louisiana helping adults and children to secure SSI and Medicaid benefits. Robyn was an assistant Professor at Grambling State University, where she taught Paralegal Studies and Procedure courses. Robyn comes from a large family filled with dynamic personalities. Robyn’s younger sister, Bianca (who had cerebral palsy) and her nephew, Javier (who is autistic), serve as motivation to ensure that every child has the tools s/he need to manage their medical conditions.

Land Trust for Louisiana is a 501©(3) non-profit land conservation organization dedicated to preserving valuable natural lands in rural areas and urban communities of Louisiana through donations, purchases and conservation servitudes. In 2013, Bridget Kelly co-founded Greener Bywater to help her neighborhood organize for the preservation of the last remaining open green spaces. Kelly soon discovered that despite 1,700 land trusts operate throughout the United States, New Orleans was without a local land trust to call its own. Kelly, a seventh-generation New Orleanian, has fifteen years of experience working in the public sector primarily in the areas of community health, chronic disease epidemiology, environmental and land use policies, renewable energy, social justice and food security. Kelly has served as board president of the New Orleans Food Coop, as systems expeditor at regional food organization Market Umbrella, as a program officer for the Annenberg Foundation and helped launch the Step Together New Orleans initiative at the Louisiana Public Health Institute. Kelly struggles with saying no to agriculturally related collaborative research and capacity building endeavors with nonprofits, community members and grant makers alike and files those efforts away under “special projects”. Kelly holds a master’s degree in public health from Tulane University and a bachelor’s degree in biology from Randolph-Macon Woman’s College. Marisa Escudero is a licensed attorney and serves as the Development Director at Land Trust for Louisiana. Her experience in partnership development with entities such as government agencies, national and local non-profits, academia and community organizations have played a vital role in expanding Land Trust for Louisiana’s Development Program. In addition to developing and coordinating membership-drives, fundraisers and grant proposals, Escudero continuously researches and analyzes ongoing environmental policy decisions impacting the Gulf Coast Region, submitting written and oral comments to advocate for land conservation, water quality and watershed protection. Escudero is a member of the bar in Maryland and Louisiana and earned her B.A. from the University of Virginia, her J.D. from Loyola University New Orleans College of Law, and her LL.M. from the George Washington School of Law. A self-described “city girl” with a background in water management, Escudero understands that urban conservation in New Orleans is vital to the city’s resilience and long-term sustainability.

Limited Times’ mission is to provide accessible and affordable complex legal research. Their first product, the Durationator® Copyright System, helps customers understand whether a particular work (e.g. poem, song, movie, novel) is in the public domain or under copyright. The Durationator makes the world a better place one search at a time by providing accessible, affordable, unbiased information in a quick and easy manner. Ron Gard is owner and CEO of Limited Times LLC, which is developing the Durationator® technology. He holds both a J.D., with specialization in business enterprise, and a Ph.D., with specialization in economic cultural theory, from the University of Arizona. For over 15 years, at such institutions as Tulane University, the University of New Orleans, the University of Arizona, and the California State University at Northridge, he has taught, studied and written about cultural economics, enterprise, and infrastructure. He is also a non-resident fellow at Stanford Law School’s Center for Internet and Society. Elizabeth Townsend Gard is co-founder and Director of Research and Development at Limited Times LLC. She is a tenured Associate Professor of Law and the Glazer Professor in Social Entrepreneurship at Tulane University, where she specializes in intellectual property with emphasis in matters of copyright. She holds both a J.D. and an LL.M. from the University of Arizona, as well as a Ph.D. in European intellectual history from the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA).

Pelican Bomb is a hybrid arts organization dedicated to increasing New Orleans’ cultural capital and sustainability by cultivating multiple platforms for contemporary art discourse, engagement and education. Amanda Brinkman serves as creative director and CFO of Pelican Bomb. Brinkman received her B.A. in Art History from the University of California, San Diego (magna cum laude) and her M.A. in Visual and Critical Studies from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (highest honors), and she has ten years of professional experience in the contemporary visual arts. She was the director of the arts education nonprofit International House of Blues Foundation San Diego, the symposium manager at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, and has worked in the curatorial departments of the Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego, Spertus Institute of Jewish Studies, and the Sullivan Galleries. Cameron Shaw serves as executive director of Pelican Bomb. Shaw received her B.A. in Art History from Yale University (cum laude with distinction in the major) and has over ten years of professional experience in the contemporary visual arts. Her articles, interviews, and essays have appeared in publications including Artforum.com, East of Borneo, Los Angeles Review of Books, BOMB Magazine, and books on Chris Ofili, Marcel Dzama, and other artists. Shaw was research manager at David Zwirner Gallery, New York, and, in 2009, was awarded a Creative Capital/Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant for Short-Form Writing

TrueSchool Studio is a research and design team partnering with schools, districts, and organizations to enable frontline educators to design innovative models, tools, and strategies. Together, we hypothesize, research, and imagine ‘true’ or fully realized schools—places of limitless potential for people and learning. Amy Vreeland’s experiences to date have been grounded in social entrepreneurship, including building programming to develop the leadership skills of first-generation college students at a nonprofit start-up in Boulder, Colorado; working as a founding high school math teacher and Teach for America corps member in the unprecedented charter school movement in New Orleans, Louisiana; and advising undergraduates in the design of human-centered social enterprises in rural South Africa. Realizing the potential of applying a design-thinking, entrepreneurial approach to education and recognizing the need for the development and retention of high-impact, high-potential teachers, Vreeland founded TrueSchool and serves as the company’s CEO.

WERKLY is a website and mobile app marketplace allowing users to find WERKERS for every job imaginable. WERKLY uses an advanced search and filter system that incorporates social connections, user ratings and reviews, performance indicators, and advanced profiles. This will enable users to quickly hire people they know, in their town, who have the skills to do the job at a reasonable and competitive rate. Eric Bernstein is a project manager from Brooklyn, with over 10 years experience in fabrication and design for fashion, music and art events. In 2012, he realized that there was no modern web solution for his community of workers (i.e., craftsmen, artists, builders, movers, stylists, engineers, etc) and Werkly was born—a website dedicated to creating a labor marketplace for the emerging DIY/Maker community. With an education in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan and a Degree in Medical Science from SUNY Downstate, Eric has studied technology and the way in which it affects us. He is most interested in how we use technology in order to work with each other offline to build stronger communities. Currently, Eric has left Brooklyn to explore cities with greater economic growth needs, such as Detroit and New Orleans. Alix Keller knows how to build technology. Having played in many fields from science, startup incubation, cosmetics, fashion, oil & gas, technology, television, to rock-n-roll, Alix is positioned to understand client needs across disciplines and industries with a creatively scientific approach to products, projects, and business development. Kristie Weatherford brings more than 10 years of user experience design to the Werkly team, having worked with organizations as diverse as CNN, Cartoon Network, the US Supreme Court, major Investment Banks (confidential clients), and numerous startups. In 2012, she partnered to start a design studio, Kmona, that specializes in bootstrapped and fast-to-market solutions. Kristie currently calls New York City, where she is the Head of User Experience in North America for a global financial consultancy, her home. She enjoys being active in the design community while undertaking passion projects.

Where Y’Art is a digital platform designed to empower local art communities. They connect artists with each other, galleries, art organizations and a global market of art lovers. Where Y’Art is fundamentally changing the sustainability of local art communities across city, state and country lines. Cat Todd is co-founder of Whereyart.net. Her goal is to build an online digital gallery in support of local independent artists, focusing on driving sales and opportunities to keep artists working and in New Orleans. She is a practicing graphic designer with twelve years of experience, in both a corporate environment and as an independent artist. A native of the city, she holds a BFA in Graphic Design from Auburn University. In addition to co-founding Where Y’Art, Cat owns and operates Mama Roux Studio, a self-sustaining, full-service graphic design studio specializing in custom creative integrated branding and design for print and web media. Cat was a recipient of a AIGA award for design excellence. Collin Ferguson is a co-founder of Where Y’Art, LLC. In 2000 she moved from Alexander City, Alabama to New Orleans to attend Tulane University AB Freeman School of Business, where she received a BSM in marketing. From 2005-2011, she traveled to twelve countries, teaching English and learning Spanish and Thai before returning home to New Orleans. She founded Birds of a Feather NOLA in 2011, focusing on feather hair pieces, adornments, encaustic painting, and photography. Within a year of launching Birds of a Feather NOLA, she become a self-sustaining artist. She realized that her true place in being a part of rebuilding New Orleans involved providing artists with access to entrepreneurial training and the resources necessary to build and sustain a successful business.