events
(9)Hanz Panther
Hanz Panther is listed as Co-Founder and CEO of NewCo, a business-event production company built around an 'inside-out' festival format that swaps the convention-hall stage for the open doors of working companies. Operating at the intersection of media, publishing, and live events, NewCo turns cities into temporary campuses where the public walks into real offices instead of watching keynotes. Panther's public footprint is thin, but the role places him inside one of the more distinctive experiments in how modern business gatherings are produced.
Jacob Cohen Donnelly
Jacob Cohen Donnelly is the founder of A Media Operator, a subscription publication, podcast, and conference for the people who run digital media companies. He started it in August 2019 as a weekend Substack while holding down full-time roles at CoinDesk and then Morning Brew, where he became Publisher. In 2024 he went all-in, rebuilt AMO into a five-person media business doing roughly $1 million in revenue, and turned the annual AMO Summit into the room media executives consider essential to be inside.
Patricia Smith
Patricia Smith is listed as a Group Chief Executive Officer associated with Smith, the Asbury Park hospitality collective behind Porta, Pascal & Sabine, Homesick, and Lovesick. Her public footprint is thin; her affiliation places her inside one of New Jersey's most recognizable restaurant groups, an operation that helped re-light Asbury Park's main streets after 2006.
Dale Dougherty
Dale Dougherty is the founder of Make: magazine and Maker Faire, and widely credited as the father of the Maker Movement. A co-founder of O'Reilly Media, he launched the internet's first commercial web portal (GNN) in 1993, helped popularize the term 'Web 2.0' in 2004, and coined the word 'makers' to describe hands-on creators and tinkerers. Today he leads Make: Community LLC, an organization that inspires millions through DIY technology, education, and events spanning 40+ countries.
Eric Faurot
Eric Faurot is the long-serving CEO of Trellis Group (formerly GreenBiz Group), a B2B media company headquartered in Oakland, California that runs flagship sustainability conferences including VERGE, BLOOM, GreenFin, and Circularity. Over 14 years at the helm, he built GreenBiz into a leading platform for sustainability professionals - combining editorial media, peer networks, and live events - before transitioning to a Growth Leader role in July 2024 when Hana Kajimura succeeded him as CEO. His career traces an arc from tech media event production (COMDEX, INTEROP, Black Hat) to climate and sustainability, making him a rare figure who bridged Silicon Valley-era conference culture with the emerging sustainability economy.
Pete May
Pete May is President and Co-Founder of Trellis Group (formerly GreenBiz Group), the leading media, events, and peer-network platform for corporate sustainability professionals. In 2006, he and Joel Makower purchased GreenBiz.com and built it from a niche newsletter into a global sustainability intelligence brand with flagship conferences, digital media, and professional communities. Drawing on over two decades of B2B publishing leadership at Primedia, CMP, and Miller Freeman, May brought seasoned media-industry discipline to a space that desperately needed it — transforming green business from fringe conversation to boardroom imperative.
Brent Fulfer
Brent Fulfer is the Co-Founder and General Partner of TBV, an early-stage Web3 venture firm built around deal flow, advisory, and the now-infamous 'The Best Event' party series. He has helped raise over $110M for early-stage startups across deep tech and crypto, and previously ran investor relations at Asymmetry Ventures and the venture program at Blockchain Founders Fund.
Susan Hobbs
Susan Hobbs is the Global Operations Chief of Staff to the CEO at Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, and a portfolio of open-source web infrastructure. A veteran Silicon Valley operator who started as a public school teacher, she has spent two decades at the intersection of technology, media, and startups - as first hire at acquired companies (Codian, CoTweet), programming architect behind TechCrunch Disrupt, a partner at CrunchFund, and an operations leader at Cloudflare before landing at Automattic. An active angel investor, board member, and arts patron, she brings rare cross-functional range to high-stakes organizational roles.
Krystal Wu
Krystal Wu is a Boston-based community and marketing program manager known for building engaged B2B communities at HubSpot, Shopify, and Common Room. She spent nearly five years at HubSpot growing their social media community before moving into senior roles at Shopify and ZoomInfo. At Common Room, she built an events engine from scratch that generated $1M+ in pipeline in a single quarter, earning her a reputation as one of the more results-oriented voices in the community-led growth space.