Stacy Pagos Haller is President and CEO of BrightFocus Foundation. She joined the organization (then known as American Health Assistance Foundation) in 2010, bringing more than 25 years of executive experience in the nonprofit sector.

With her extensive background and unique perspective, Haller has compiled an impressive record of moving organizations to the next level of success.

Before coming to BrightFocus, Haller served as Executive Director of CureSearch National Childhood Cancer Foundation, the world’s largest children’s cancer research organization.

For ten years prior, Haller was a consultant to a broad range of nonprofits, helping institutions achieve their strategic goals. Clients included the American Red Cross, Baltimore Symphony Orchestra, Community Housing Foundation International, Gallaudet University, LaSalle University, Mercy Hospital Fairfield, The National AIDS Fund, YMCA of Metropolitan Los Angeles, and the National Rehabilitation Hospital.

Haller helped create one of the first outcomes measurement training programs for nonprofits. She team-taught best practices for measuring program effectiveness to hundreds of professionals and organizations.

She launched her career at Georgetown University, where she held increasingly responsible jobs, culminating in the position of Executive Director for Regional Advancement.  In that capacity, she led efforts to coordinate and integrate alumni affairs, development, and university relations nationally and internationally.

A graduate of Mount Holyoke College, Haller is a Board member of America’s Charities.

Danette Gerald Howard is Vice President for Policy and Mobilization at Lumina Foundation, the nation’s largest private foundation focused solely on increasing student access and success in postsecondary education.  Dr. Howard oversees several of Lumina’s key strategies to increase Americans’ attainment of high-quality postsecondary degrees and credentials, including strategic work in both state and federal policy and the Foundation’s growing national convening function.

Prior to joining Lumina, Howard served as Secretary of Higher Education in Maryland, leading the state’s postsecondary education coordinating agency, the Maryland Higher Education Commission. 

A nationally regarded analyst and thought leader, Howard previously served as director of research and policy analysis at the Maryland Higher Education Commission.  She also held positions as the assistant director of higher education policy at the Education Trust in Washington, D.C., and as a researcher at the University of Maryland, College Park.

Dr. Howard earned her bachelor’s degree, summa cum laude, from Howard University. She also received her master’s degree from the Harvard University Graduate School of Education, and her Ph.D. in higher education policy from the University of Maryland, College Park.  In 2015, she was honored for her outstanding success and national distinction in the fields of education and policy with Howard University’s Distinguished Alumni Achievement Award.

Danette resides in Indianapolis with her husband, William II, and their son, William III.

Carol Thompson Cole is President & CEO of Venture Philanthropy Partners (VPP), a philanthropic investment organization that helps great leaders build strong, high-performing nonprofit institutions. Cole brings to VPP over thirty years of management experience in the public and private sectors.  She served as Special Advisor to President Clinton on the District of Columbia and Executive Director of the DC Inter-Agency Task Force and in the Executive Office of the President.  

She is a member of numerous boards, including the Washington Regional Association of Grantmakers Board of Directors.  Honors and awards include Most Powerful Women of 2011 and 2009 by Washingtonian Magazine, 2010 Sophisticated Lady by Arena Stage; 10 People to Watch in 2009 by the Washington Business Journal; Phenomenal Women of 2008, by the Thurgood Marshall Center Trust; and Washingtonian of the Year in 1990 - Washingtonian Magazine.

Cole earned a BA from Smith College and a master’s in public administration with a concentration in urban public policy studies from the Robert F. Wagner School of Public Service, New York University. She also attended the Senior Executives in State and Local Government Program at Harvard University’s Kennedy School of Government.

Patrick Gaston is President of the Western Union Foundation, the philanthropic arm of the Western Union Company. In this position, he is responsible for the development of a global Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Philanthropic strategy with impact throughout the globe. Since its inception in 2001, the Foundation has committed more than $86.9 million in grants and other giving to more than 2,627 nongovernmental organizations in more than 130 countries and territories, through a variety of grantmaking programs including:

Business Partner Engagements, enabling Western Union employees, Agents and others to pool funds for greater social and economic impactEducation, Entrepreneurship, Financial Literacy and Economic developmentCorporate/Community Employee Engagement  

Before joining the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, Patrick Gaston was President of the Verizon Foundation, one of the 15 largest corporate foundations in America, overseeing an annual budget of $75 million and a corpus of approximately $600 million. He was responsible for philanthropic strategy, grant making and initiatives in the foundation's areas of education and literacy, family safety and health and employee volunteerism. 

Patrick also serves on a number of national non-profit boards including the NAACP Board of Trustees, Intersections International, America's Charities, and The World Institute on Disability's Center on Economic Growth.

Patrick was raised in Haiti, Montreal, Canada and Boston, Massachusetts. He holds a B.A. in management from the University of Massachusetts and an M.B.A. from Northeastern University. Additionally, he earned an International Certificate in Business from Ecole Superieure de Commerce in Reims, France.

Andy Hines, PhD - Academic Futurist

Assistant Professor & Program Coordinator, University of Houston Foresight Program

Dr. Andy Hines is Assistant Program Coordinator of the University of Houston’s Graduate Program in Foresight, bringing together the experience he earned as an organizational, consulting, and academic futurist. He is also speaking, workshopping, and consulting through his firm Hinesight.

Before that, he was Managing Director of Social Technologies/Innovaro, and served as an Adjunct Professor with the university since 2004. Hines enjoyed earlier careers as a consulting and organizational futurist. He was a partner with Coates & Jarratt, Inc., a think tank and consulting firm that specialized in the study of the future. He was also Futurist & Senior Ideation Leader at Dow Chemical with a mission of using futures tools and knowledge to turn ideas into new business opportunities. Before that, Hines established and ran the Global Trends Program for the Kellogg Company.

Hines is motivated by a professional hunger to make foresight practical and useful, and he believes that foresight can help deliver the insight that is so needed in today’s organizations and the world. His goal, he says, is to infect as many change agents as possible with this message. 

In this pursuit, In this pursuit, he has authored five books: Teaching about the Future: The Basics of Foresight Education (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012), which won the Association of Professional Futurists Most Significant Futures Works Award in 2014; ConsumerShift: How Changing Values Are Reshaping the Consumer Landscape (No Limits Publishing, 2011); He has appeared on several radio and television programs, CNBC, NBC Nightly News, PBS Houston, KRIV-26 News, and the CBS “Early Show.” He also co-founded and is former Chair of the Association of Professional Futurists.

Dara Richardson-Heron, M.D. is the CEO of the YWCA USA, leading one of the nation’s oldest and largest multicultural organizations promoting solutions to enhance the lives of women, girls and families. For more than 150 years, the YWCA has dedicated its efforts to eliminating racism and empowering women focusing on economic empowerment, racial justice and health and safety. The YWCA is also the largest provider of domestic violence services and women’s shelters in the nation, serving 500,000 women and children annually.

Richardson-Heron joined the YWCA USA in December 2012 with more than 20 years of leadership and management experience in the healthcare, corporate and nonprofit sectors.  With her teams, she works to develop and implement innovative and value added supports for the 229 YWCA local associations throughout the country that offer community-based services in over 1,300 locations.

In May 2013, she was named one of the “21 Leaders for the 21st Century” by Women’s eNews and in August 2013, she was listed on The Nonprofit Times “Power & Influence Top 50” list.

Richardson-Heron received a Doctorate in Medicine from New York University School of Medicine and a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Biology at Barnard College of Columbia University. She also completed a Human Resources Executive Program at the University of Michigan.

Kent Bradley 

Senior Vice President, Chief Medical Officer, Safeway Inc.

Kent Bradley is senior vice president and chief medical officer of Safeway Inc. Since joining Safeway in 2011, he has led the company's health-care initiatives, including employee and consumer wellness programs. Bradley came to Safeway from the U.S. Army, where his assignments included duty in Iraq in 2003 as deputy commander of the 30th Medical Brigade, which consisted of nearly 2,500 personnel, four hospitals, and air and ground ambulance units, and chief medical officer/executive director of TRICARE Europe. Earlier, Bradley led health teams supporting humanitarian and peacekeeping efforts in Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Panama, Thailand and Rwanda. After retiring from the military in 2008, Bradley became a partner with Martin, Blanck & Associates, a health services consulting firm, and earned his M.B.A. at the University of Denver. He received his undergraduate degree from West Point, a master of public health from the University of Minnesota and a medical degree from the Uniformed Services University of Health Sciences.

Jane Oates

Jane Oates is currently the Vice President for External Affairs at the Apollo Group.  Prior to joining the Apollo Group in June, 2013, Ms. Oates served as the Assistant Secretary for Employment and Training at the U.S. Department of Labor.  Immediately before joining the Obama Administration, Ms. Oates served as the Executive Director of the New Jersey Commission on Higher Education under Governor Jon Corzine.

For the preceding decade Ms. Oates worked as senior advisor to Massachusetts Senator Edward M. Kennedy.  Her portfolio for the Senator included higher education, teacher preparation, research, workforce and training issues, national service and special populations.  She was the lead staff on reauthorizations of the Higher Education Act, the Office of Educational Research, the National Science Foundation, the Carl Perkins Career and Technical Education Act and the Workforce Investment Act.

Earlier in her career Ms. Oates was the Director of Field Services at the Temple University Center for Research in Human Development and Education where she was engaged in research on inclusion, community schools, charter schools, and the work of the federally funded Mid-Atlantic Regional Educational Laboratory.

Ms. Oates began her career as a special education teacher in the Boston and Philadelphia public schools.  She holds a BA in Special Education from Boston College and an M.ED in Reading from Arcadia University.

Annette Richardson is a Senior Advisor and Acting Chief of Office of the United Nations Office for Partnerships (UNOP).

In that capacity, Ms. Richardson focuses on building strategic activities and facilitates the establishment of linkages and development of long-term relationships with private sector partners, high net-worth individuals, social investors and foundations.  Responsible for public affairs and external relations, Ms. Richardson implements global multi-stakeholder advocacy and outreach campaigns in support of the UN Secretary General global development priorities and the Millennium Development Goals, toward 2015 and beyond.

In 2005, Ms. Richardson founded Richardson Rogers and Associates LLC, a New York and Washington, DC based consulting firm which counsels clients on public-private partnerships, cause marketing campaigns and resource mobilization.  Prior to launching her venture, Ms. Richardson was Director of International Relations for the New York City 2012 Olympic Bid Committee.  She also served as Chief of Staff to the Chairman and CEO of Vivendi Universal (1999-2002).

Ms. Richardson is an Honorary Ambassador of the University for Peace (UPeace).  She was awarded the 2010 Global Citizen Award and the 2010 Professional Woman of the Year Award by the National Association of Professional Women (NAPW).

Ruth Ellen Riley is a retired professional bascketball player (center) playing most recently for the Alanta Dream in the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA).  Her Notre Dame team won the NCAA women's championship in 2001 and her Detroit Shock team won the WNBA championship series  in 2001 and 2003 becoming the first person to win the MVP awards in both the NCAA and WNBA championships.  

Ruth has also played on teams that won the National Women's Basketball League (NWBL) championship, the gold medal at the 2004 Athens Olympic Games and the 2010 EuroCup Championship.