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CEO/Founder of Quirky.com

Ben is the 24-year-old founder and CEO of Quirky. His entrepreneurial journey started during his senior year of high school with a second mortgage on his parent’s house and the founding of an iPod accessory company called mophie. Shortly after mophie won “Best in Show” at MacWorld 2006, Ben discovered his passion for involving people around the world in the development of new consumer products. The rapid growth of the mophie brand led to its acquisition in August of 2007, which allowed Ben to focus his efforts on bringing his idea of ‘social product development’ to the next level.

After two years of research and development on the unique technology platform that became the foundation of his future work, Ben publicly launched Quirky in June of 2009. A passionate and opinionated speaker, Ben talks Quirky, products and design to audiences around the world. His work has landed him in hundreds of newspapers (New York Times, USA Today, New York Observer), magazines (Business Week, Entrepreneur, WIRED) and TV networks (CNBC, FOX Business News, The Today Show). In 2007, Inc Magazine named Ben the top entrepreneur in the country under the age of 30. He was 20 at the time. Other than participating in the development of awesome new products, Ben’s favorite things include his niece Lily, Jay-Z, cool kicks and black t-shirts.

Developer of Park51, the Planned Muslim Cultural Center at Ground Zero

Sharif El‐Gamal is a New York City real estate developer. He is the founder & CEO of Soho Properties, a Manhattan‐based real estate company. Sharif has a broad array of experience in real estate investment and has been involved in the acquisition and disposition of over 20 Manhattan buildings containing in excess of 2 Million square feet of space including the management of multi‐family, office, retail and residential developments. Soho Properties was launched to invest and develop residential and commercial real estate projects and form a Capital Markets Group. Sharif is responsible for overseeing the complete operations of the company, including identification, evaluation and execution of investments and the formulation of polices and strategies for the ongoing asset management and disposition of investments.

Prior to Soho Properties, Sharif built a firm to oversee the asset management of a residential portfolio of mixed use buildings and retail stores in New York City. Additionally, he advised international and institutional investors in the acquisition and sales of office and residential properties in New York City with an aggregate transaction value in excess of $500 Million.

Sharif incorporates a variety of philanthropic activities into his life, including helping non‐profit organizations find and purchase properties in addition to assisting them with investment advice and equity sourcing. He is a member of the Real Estate Board of New York (REBNY). He was recently honored by NBC and Matt Lauer as one of the People of the Year for 2010.

A charismatic and sought after public speaker, Sharif has appeared in national and international media such as NBC, BBC, CBS, CNN, NPR, MSNBC, NY1 and BBC. He has been quoted in the New York Times, New York Post, Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal, New York Daily News, The Real Deal, Financial Times, ABC This Week, USA Today, BBC News Radio and Associated Press.
Sharif was born in Brooklyn, NY and is of Polish and Egyptian descent. He lives in New York City with his wife and two daughters.

Raghava KK is a self-taught artist, born in Bangalore, India in 1980. His work has spanned genres as widely disparate as painting, sculpture, installation, film, performance, and even his own wedding.

He started his career in 1997, originally as a cartoonist with Indian national dailies, and over the next 10 years, would reinvent himself to use several different mediums. Raghava’s works have been auctioned by the Queens Museum and Christie’s NY (in an auction curated by the Indo American Arts Council). He has been extensively featured by the Indian and international media and supported and endorsed by numerous celebrities and significant figures in the international art scene.

Recipient of grants such as one from the Robin Hood Foundation to create a permanent exhibition of his works in the Bronx, New York and another from the American India Foundation to premier his performance art piece Anthropomorphism in California, Raghava was most recently invited as a guest by the city of Nimes, France to exhibit his works at the Carre d’Art Musee d’Art Contemporain.

He has lectured and taught at several art institutes, including the Ecole des Beaux-Arts (Nimes, France) and the New Hampshire Institute of Art (Manchester, NH, USA).

He lives and works both in the US and India.

Brian Schechter secretly wants to be a theorist for the new Humanism. Starting a business seemed like an essential first step. Shcechter grew up in Newton, MA., down the street from Aaron Schildkrout – the other Co-Founder of HowAboutWe. Between 16 and 20, he became passionate about urban education, theology and all-things fun. From 20-30, he dove in to these passions, leaving all-things fun to the side more often than not. At 31, he started working on HowAboutWe with Aaron. And now, to his constant surprise, he is passionate about getting people to know about HowAboutWe – the only dating site out there he’d want to use.