Dr. Thomas Kingsley Brown has been researching ibogaine treatment for substance dependence since 2009, when he began conducting interviews with patients at a treatment center in Playas de Tijuana, Mexico and collected data for the purpose of studying quality of life for those patients.  In 2010 he began working with MAPS (the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) on a Mexico-based observational study of the long-term outcomes for people receiving ibogaine-assisted treatment for opioid dependence.  That study is complete, and the first research article from the study has been published (T.K. Brown and K. Alper, American Journal of Drug and Alcohol Abuse, 2017).  In 2013, he published a review article on ibogaine treatment in Current Drug Abuse Reviews.  Dr. Brown is an academic administrator at the University of California, San Diego.  His academic training is in chemistry (B.S., University of Pittsburgh and M.S., California Institute of Technology) and anthropology (M.A. and PhD, UC San Diego).  

Adam Peters is a British composer and musician. His works include the films Savages, Snowden, Icarus, Oliver Stone’s Untold History Of The Untied States, Paddington, and albums Ocean Rain ( Echo And The Bunnymen ) and Daybreaker (Beth Orton).  

Originally a cellist and keyboard player he began his musical journey playing with the band Echo And The Bunnymen. Their album Ocean Rain is considered to be one of the top twenty most influential British albums of all time. Mixing orchestral arrangements, multi tracked cello and electronics Adam further developed his writing and arranging with bands in London and New York.  During this period he played with The Triffids, The Flowerpot Men, Siouxsie And The Banshees, Mercury Rev and Beth Orton.

Upon a full time move to the USA he began composing uniquely for movies.  He has developed a relationship with the director Olive Stone over several projects Adam’s film music is known for its wide variety of sound and emotions, combining fractured orchestral writing with analogue electronics and electric cello.  

The key to healthy long life may lie in changing a light bulb or deciding when to eat. Dr. Satchin Panda’s circadian rhythm research has discovered that light and meal time have profound health impact. He found a new light sensor in our eye measures blue light to tune brain functions ranging from falling asleep to throbbing migraine pain in a sunny day. This simple discovery has triggered a new field of light therapeutics in which phones have come up with features to flip a button to “night shift”, blue filtering glasses are new sleeping pills, and healthy lights are new antidepressants. Dr. Panda also discovered that the number of hours between our breakfast and dinner may be as important as day’s calorie counts. Just by eating all food within 8-12 h every day can sustain the primordial circadian rhythm and prevent obesity, diabetes, heart diseases, cancer, poor sleep.

Dr. Panda grew up in India, did his doctoral research at The Scripps Research Institute, and postdoctoral training at Novartis before starting his independent research lab at the Salk Institute, La Jolla. He is a Pew Scholar in Biomedical Research, an American Federation of Aging Research mid-career scientist.

Mahalia is a soulful pop singer, songwriter, and ukulele player from Massachusetts. She began with her vibrant sound doing street performances of her original songs and covering popular songs. With family troubles, and a lack of a stable living situation, Mahalia left the east coast for Los Angeles California to pursue music. While recovering from homelessness, she is currently dedicated to her craft, and diligently building the foundation of her musical discography. Her passion is to help others in similar situations, and share her voice across the world. Her career ia taking off like a rocket. She most recently secured an audition for America's Got Talent, and played at the WNBA Finals at the Staples Center! As a motivator and team player she cannot wait to collaborate with the powerhouses of the music industry.

Ed Cooke is the CEO and co-founder of Memrise, a comprehensively un-boring language learning app with 25mm users. Formerly a cognitive scientist and memory champion, his writings have been published in The Times, The Guardian and the Journal of Consciousness Studies. 

The co-founder and President of The Gottman Institute, Dr. Julie Gottman co-created the  international clinical training program in Gottman Method Couples Therapy. A highly respected clinical psychologist, she is sought internationally by media and organizations as an expert advisor on marriage, sexual harassment and rape, PTSD, domestic violence, gay and lesbian adoption, same-sex marriage, and parenting issues. 

The author of five books, Julie is the co-creator of the immensely popular The Art and Science of Love weekend workshops for couples.

World-renowned for his work on marital stability and divorce prediction, Dr. John Gottman has conducted 40 years of breakthrough research with thousands of couples. He is the author of over 200 published academic articles and author or co-author of more than 40 books, including The New York Times bestseller The Seven Principles for Making Marriage Work. 

Dr. Gottman’s media appearances include Good Morning America, Today, CBS Morning News, and Oprah, as well articles in The New York Times, Redbook, Glamour, Woman’s Day, People, Self, and Psychology Today. Co-founder of The Gottman Institute with his wife, Dr. Julie Schwartz Gottman, John is a Professor Emeritus of Psychology at the University of Washington where he founded ”The Love Lab" at which much of his research on couples interactions was conducted.

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Diane von Furstenberg entered the world of American fashion in the seventies, when she arrived in New York from Europe with a suitcase full of Italian jersey dresses she had designed. Her iconic wrap dress soon became a symbol of power and independence for an entire generation of women. Today, DVF is a global luxury fashion brand celebrated for its creative and chic effortlessness and its bold approach to color and print. 

In 2005, Diane received the Lifetime Achievement Award from the Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA) for her impact on fashion. Now, as the council’s chairman, she dedicates herself to fostering emerging talent and has grown the organization to over 500 members.

Diane’s commitment to empowering women is also expressed through philanthropy and mentorship.  In 2010, with the Diller-von Furstenberg Family Foundation, Diane established the DVF Awards to honor and provide grants to women who have displayed leadership, strength and courage in their commitment to their causes. In 2014, the iconic wrap dress was celebrated with the “Journey of a Dress” exhibition in Los Angeles, and she also published her memoir, The Woman I Wanted to Be, translated in five languages. In 2015, she was named one of TIME’s 100 Most Influential People.

Diane is on the boards of Vital Voices, an organization that supports female leaders and entrepreneurs around the world; the Statue of Liberty–Ellis Island Foundation; and The Shed, the new center for cultural innovation in New York City. And, as a vocal member of the community, she was actively involved in the campaign to save the historic High Line railway and to develop The High Line into what it is today.

Agnès Varda (French: [aɲɛs vaʁda]; born 30 May 1928) is a film director who was born in Belgium, but has spent most of her working life in France. Her films, photographs, and art installations focus on documentary realism, feminist issues, and social commentary with a distinct experimental style.

Film historians have cited Varda's work as central to the development of the French New Wave film movement; her uses of location shooting and non-professional actors were unconventional in the context of 1950s French cinema. 

Her films span decades and genres and both her fiction and nonfiction works are considered seminal. Most notable films include La Pointe Courte (1954), Cléo From 5 to 7 (1961), Vagabond (1984), Jacquot de Nantes (1991), The Gleaners & I (2000) - which is cited as one of the most influential documentaries of recent decades. Her 1981 documentary Murals Murals followed the murals of Los Angeles from Venice to Watts.

Her most recent film Faces Places, a collaboration with JR, won the top prizes at both Cannes (the Oeil d'Or) and Toronto (the Peopl's Choice Award) and is being released in theaters in the US on October 13, the same weekend as this event.

Thomas R. lnsel, M.D., a psychiatrist and neuroscientist, is a co-founder and President of Mindstrong Health.  His career in mental health has been long and non-linear.  After training in psychiatry at UCSF in 1979, Insel did clinical research at the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) in Bethesda, MD where he established the value of serotonergic antidepressants for OCD.  In 1983, he shifted from clinical research to study the molecular and cellular basis of complex social behaviors, helping to create a new field of social neuroscience.  First at NIMH and later at Emory University, he demonstrated the role of oxytocin and vasopressin in maternal and affiliative behaviors in non-human animals.  In 2000, he founded an NSF Center for Behavioral Neuroscience across 8 colleges and universities in Atlanta, GA.   

In 2002, Dr. Insel returned to Bethesda to serve as Director of the NIMH, the component of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) committed to research on mental disorders.  His tenure across the Bush and Obama administrations focused the NIMH on serious mental illness.  He promoted the study of mental disorders as brain disorders.  And riding the revolution in genomics, he funded large scale efforts to identify genetic factors for mental disorders. From 2003 – 2015 he led the government’s coordinating committee for autism (IACC).  From 2012-2015, he co-led (with Story Landis) President Obama’s BRAIN Initiative.  

At the end of 2015, Insel finally returned to the Bay Area, coming full circle after 36 years of self-imposed (and foolish) exile. Until recently, he led the Mental Health Team at Verily (formerly Google Life Sciences) in South San Francisco, CA.  Earlier this year he left Verily to co-found (with Paul Dagum and Rick Klausner) Mindstrong Health, a start-up pioneering the use of “digital phenotyping” to help people with serious mental illness.   Insel is a member of the National Academy of Medicine and has received numerous national and international awards including honorary degrees in the U.S. and Europe. 

Born and raised in Los Angeles, CA, Ruben Rojas is an artist, social impact entrepreneur, and co-founder of Beautify Earth. 

Beautify Earth (BE) is a 501(c)3 non-profit organization with the mission of eliminating urban blight, by “painting the world in color,” and reimagining every bland wall into a canvas for inspiring urban creations. BE empowers artists, businesses, communities, and municipalities through action. The transformative power of art further inspires, motivates and instills pride in the community. Increased business revenue, massive community participation, and the “stop-and-look” effect of murals help to stimulate the local economy. BE continues to show that when art becomes the norm in place of urban blight, the world is a happier, more colorful, and peaceful place.

Ruben is influenced by media and the urban landscape surrounding him.

He has painted in New York, Los Angeles, Florida, Mississippi and for many private clients. 

Apart from his custom work he has been previously commissioned by Zappos, American Express, Heineken, Lululemon, Reebok, Westfield Malls, the city of Santa Monica and various other organizations. 

Through his work he hopes to inspire the communities he paints in, reshape the conversations people have and beautify the typical boring bland walls into something unique and inspiring. 

Friends for over a decade actor/director Josh Radnor and indie-troubadour Ben Lee have formed a new indie-pop duo by the name of Radnor & Lee. Combining their shared interest in spirituality and philosophy, the two sat down to write a song together, which subsequently turned into ten, and their musical partnership was born. Their debut album, out November 10, is a set of dynamically uplifting, spiritual folk-pop tunes that instill the feeling of pure joy in the listener’s core via the infectious melody, sweet violin, heavenly harmonies, and foot-stomping choruses. It's enlightening, charming and perfectly delightful. 

For more than two decades, Nicole has been an advocate for environmental and human health as her mission is to guide the next generation into meaningful action.  Nicole is the Co-Founder of a non-profit that launched in Venice, Community Healing Gardens (CHG). The mission of CHG is fostering community through urban gardening while educating on planetary and human health and growing local food systems.  CHG focuses on underserved and diverse communities as well as the next generation living in these areas of Los Angeles.  Nicole is a recent graduate from the Sustainability Certificate Program at UCLA as well as a trained Climate Reality Leader under VP Al Gore’s Climate Reality Leadership Corp. Residing in Venice Beach with her fiancé, and two fur babies she loves yoga, stand up paddle, shopping at farmers markets, cooking, eating locally and watching movies.  

Max Lugavere is a filmmaker, author, and TV personality. He is the director of the upcoming film BREAD HEAD, the first-ever documentary about dementia prevention through diet and lifestyle, and is publishing his first book in early 2018 documenting his findings on how to optimize focus, productivity, mood, and long-term brain health with food. Lugavere is a regularly-appearing "core expert" on The Dr. Oz Show, has been featured on NBC Nightly News, in the Wall Street Journal, and has contributed as a health journalist to Medscape, Vice/Munchies, the Daily Beast, and others. He is a highly sought-after speaker and has been invited to keynote events such as the Biohacker Summit in Stockholm Sweden, and esteemed academic institutions like the New York Academy of Sciences.

Richard Melville Hall (born September 11, 1965),better known by his stage name Moby, is an American DJ, record producer, singer, songwriter, musician, photographer and animal rights activist. He is well known for his electronic music, veganism, and support of animal rights. Moby has sold over 20 million records worldwide. AllMusic considers him "one of the most important dance music figures of the early 1990s, helping bring the music to a mainstream audience both in the UK and in America".

Ben is a computer graphics researcher at Google, with a focus on image processing and machine intelligence. He is also the principal developer of the app Frax, a tool to bring the beauty of interactive fractal geometry to a worldwide audience. Ben is a former competitive freediver, with a 7-minute breath-hold, and has been a member of the US Freediving Team in multiple world championships. His career has included stints at Apple, Microsoft, and MetaCreations, where in the 90’s he was the co-developer of the Kai’s Power Tools suite of graphics apps. He currently lives happily on the Venice Canals.

Dan Buczaczer is responsible for getting attention for Quid through a mixture of storytelling, growth marketing, press relationships and experiences – all designed to demonstrate the power of understanding text-based data at scale. Prior to Quid, he was EVP of Creative Partnerships at Publicis Groupe where he built strategic collaborations between digital startups and advertising agencies. While at Publicis Groupe, Buczaczer also co-founded an innovation practice called Denuo and started Reverb, a division of Starcom Mediavest Group focused on social media and word-of-mouth. He has also led advertising at Taco Bell and worked at BBDO. The z’s in his name are pronounced like h’s.

Franklin Leonard is the founder of the Black List, the yearly publication highlighting Hollywood’s most popular unproduced screenplays and the company birthed to continue its mission of identifying and celebrating great screenwriting.  Over 325 Black List scripts have been produced as feature films earning 275 Academy Award nominations and 50 wins including four of the last nine Best Pictures and ten of the last twenty screenwriting Oscars. Franklin has worked in development at Universal Pictures and the production companies of Will Smith, Leonardo DiCaprio, and Sydney Pollack and Anthony Minghella. He has been a juror at the Sundance, Toronto and Guanajuato Film Festivals and for the PEN Center Literary Awards. He was also a delegate and speaker at the White House’s 2015 Global Entrepreneurship Summit in Nairobi, Kenya, one of Hollywood Reporter’s 35 Under 35, Black Enterprisemagazine’s “40 Emerging Leaders for Our Future,” The Root’s 100 Most Influential African-Americans, Fast Company’s “100 Most Creative People in Business” and was awarded the 2015 African-American Film Critics Association (AAFCA)’s Special Achievement Award for career excellence. He is a member of the Associates Branch of the Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences and a fellow of the Los Angeles Institute of the Humanities.

Jen left her career as a psyhosocial counselor in her mid twenties to pursue her true calling: writing.  She spent the next several years in New York City, diligently studying the crafts of screenwriting, journalism, and creative non-fiction.  Soon, her words started to find homes in a variety of magazines and book anthologies.  At 30, Jen placed international travel at the top of her priority list, as she felt that the best way to be a good writer was to experience novelty, and the best way to experience novelty was to immerse herself in unfamiliar cultures.  In 2006, Jen moved to Busan, South Korea to teach English, with the intention of completing a one-year contract and then traveling around the world. Eight years later, she found herself still in Busan, teaching conversation, film appreciation, and composition at a university; food and culture editor of one of the largest English language publications in Korea; a guitarist/singer in a rock-n-roll band; and with 26 additional stamps in her passport and over 70 scuba dives logged.  

When Jen was diagnosed with metastatic melanoma in late 2014, she opted to return to New York to seek treatment, and committed to living her cancer in the public eye. She started her blog, jenvscancer.wordpress.com, both to keep loved ones informed and to help her process the mental, physical, and emotional aspects of living with stage 4 cancer. She has also been making a documentary about her journey with cancer. Jen has found writing about cancer to be the most fulfilling and important work she’s ever done, and has become a regular contributor to Cure Magazine. Jen continues to do battle with the beast, and embraces each day as a gift. 

Luis J. Rodriguez is an award-winning author of poetry, fiction, nonfiction, and children's literature, including the bestselling memoir, "Always Running, La Vida Loca, Gang Days in L.A." He's also a Native American and Native Mexican spiritual practitioner, having been taught by elders among the Lakota, Dine (Navajo), Mexica (Mexico), Ki'che (Guatemala), Pibil (El Salvador), and Quechua (Peru). His mother has roots among the Raramuri people of Chihuahua, Mexico, also known as the Tarahumara. Luis and his wife Trini founded Tia Chucha's Centro Cultural & Bookstore in this area, and they produce a podcast for iTunes and SoundCloud called "The Hummingbird Cricket Hour."