Lawrence (Larry) Brilliant
Born	(1944-05-05) May 5, 1944 (age 68) Detroit, Michigan, USA
Residence	USA
Fields	medical doctor, epidemiologist, technologist, author and philanthropist
Alma mater	MPH - University of Michigan M.D. - Wayne State University School of Medicine
Known for	one of the leaders of the successful World Health Organization (WHO) smallpox eradication program.

Lawrence "Larry" Brilliant is an American physician, epidemiologist, technologist, author, and the former director of Google's philanthropic arm Google.org.^[1] Brilliant, a technology patent holder, has been CEO of two public companies and other venture backed start ups. From 1973 to 1976, he participated in the successful World Health Organization (WHO) smallpox eradication program. In April 2009, he was chosen to oversee the "Skoll Global Threats Fund" established by eBay co-founder Jeff Skoll.^[2]

Early life[link]

Born in Detroit, Michigan (May 5, 1944), he received his undergraduate training as well as his MPH degree (Masters in Public Health) from the University of Michigan, where he worked on the staff of the Gargoyle Humor Magazine, and his M.D. from Wayne State University School of Medicine. He moved to California for his internship at the California Pacific Medical Center, and developed thyroid cancer from which he recovered. Brilliant is board certified in preventive medicine and public health.

In 1969, a group of American Indians from many different tribes, calling themselves Indians of All Tribes, occupied the Alcatraz island in San Francisco. A call went out for doctors to help a pregnant woman there give birth and Brilliant joined their occupation as unofficial doctor.^[3]

Career[link]

After the US government forced the Indians of All Tribes off Alcatraz, Brilliant became a media darling which led to a movie company casting him in Medicine Ball Caravan—a sequel to the hit Woodstock Nation—playing a doctor in a film about a tribe of hippies who follow the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, Jethro Tull, and Joni Mitchell.^[4] The cast was paid with airline tickets to India. Brilliant and some others cashed their tickets in and rented a bus to drive around Europe, which then turned into a relief convoy to help victims of the 1970 Bhola cyclone in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan).

Civil unrest stopped the relief caravan so he spent several years in India studying at a Himalayan ashram with Neem Karoli Baba (a Hindu sage) from whom he received the name Subramanyum. After about a year Neem Karoli Baba told Brilliant to eradicate smallpox on which he would spend the next several years. He participated, as a medical officer, in the World Health Organization (WHO) smallpox eradication program that in 1980 certified the global eradication of smallpox.^[5]

When he returned to the United States, he became a professor of international health at the University of Michigan as well as starting numerous charitable and business ventures. He spent the first half of 2005 as a volunteer helping out in the tsunami in Sri Lanka and working in India with WHO in the campaign to eradicate polio.

• December, 1978 – Co-founder and chairman of Seva, an International, non-profit, health foundation. Seva's projects in Tibet, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Tanzania, Mexico and Guatemala have given back sight to more than 2 million blind people through surgery, self sufficient eye care systems, and low cost manufacturing of intraocular lenses. One important contribution of his was his helping to set up the Aravind Eye Hospital in Madurai, India.
• 1985 – He co-founded, with Stewart Brand, The Well, a prototypic online community that has been the subject of multiple books and studies. Time magazine said, "Well was a huge hit, a precursor of every online business from Amazon.com to eBay."^[6]
• July 2006 – He was awarded the TED Prize, granting him $100,000 and 'One Wish to Change the World'^[7] which he presented at TED in July 2006. As his prize nominator summed up, "'Dr. Brilliant' is a name to live up to, and he has."^[8] His one wish that he presented at the conference was, "To build a powerful new early warning system to protect our world from some of its worst nightmares."^[9]
• 22 February 2006 – Google Inc. appointed him as the Executive Director of Google.org, the philanthropic arm of Google,^[10] a position which he held until April, 2009.^[11]

Personal life[link]

Brilliant is married to Girija (formerly Elaine) and has three children: Joe, Jon, and Iris. Girija holds a PhD in public health administration and is an equal partner in many of her husband's enterprises. Co-founder of Seva Foundation,^[12] she was instrumental in the World Health Organization's smallpox eradication program.

Film[link]

Brilliant acted as an extra in the 1971 Bollywood movie Hare Rama Hare Krishna, which depicts hippie culture. He said, "When shooting for the song sequence 'Dum Maro Dum' (which glorifies smoking marijuana), Dev Anand was looking for certain types of foreigners..."^[13] Brilliant is a featured interviewee in the 2009 feature length documentary, Saint Misbehavin': The Wavy Gravy Movie, as the social activist's real-life physician.

References[link]

External links[link]

• Are Social Entrepreneurs Heroes? Larry Brilliant on BBC The Forum
• Larry Brilliant on Twitter
• TED Prize Wish: Larry Brilliant wants to stop pandemics at TED in 2006
• TED Talks: Larry Brilliant makes the case for optimism at TED in 2007
• The Seva Foundation, Founded by Larry Brilliant
• Video on the founding of the Seva Foundation.

John Battelle
Born	1965[1] Pasadena, California
Occupation	entrpreneur, author, journalist
Spouse	Michelle Battelle
Website
http://battellemedia.com/

John Linwood Battelle (born November 4, 1965^[1]) is an entrepreneur, author and journalist. Best known for his work creating media properties, Battelle helped launch Wired in the 1990s and launched The Industry Standard during the dot-com boom. In 2005, he founded the online advertising network Federated Media Publishing, which now ranks as one of the top properties on the Web.^[2][3]

His 2005 book, The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, described the history and impact of search engines and the late emergence of Google from a field of competitors.^[4][5][6]

Battelle also co-founded and co-hosts the annual Web 2.0 Summit.

Career[link]

Born in Pasadena, California, Battelle studied at Chandler School, Polytechnic School and the University of California, Berkeley,^[1] earning both a Bachelor of Arts in anthropology in 1987 and a master's degree in journalism in 1992. He went on to become chairman and CEO of Standard Media International, which launched The Industry Standard and its website, TheStandard.com, and was a co-founding editor of Wired magazine and its entrepreneurial arm, Wired Ventures.^[5]

Battelle was a visiting professor of journalism 2001-2004 at the University of California, Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism^[7] where he chaired the Bloomberg Chair on Business Reporting and co-chaired the Magazine Publishing program. His projects included The Big Story, an online magazine examining how the media covers major events^[8] and China Digital Times, a bilingual news website aggregating news about China^[9].

In 2003, Battelle and publisher Tim O'Reilly founded what is now known as the Web 2.0 Summit. Battelle called "this grandfather of Internet conferences" among his "proudest editorial works". He is now the conference's executive producer and program chair, and with O'Reilly, its co-moderator.^[10][11]

In 2005, Battelle began focusing on how popular blogs could earn steady advertising revenue for their work. After testing his ideas with the BoingBoing technology blog, Battelle founded Federated Media Publishing, which sells advertising space in a network of online properties, keeping a percentage and giving the rest to the site owners. Battelle likened the company to a music label, "except we don't control their intellectual property and tell them what to sing".^[2] The following year, an Ad Age reporter wrote that some 85 high-profile blogs, including BoingBoing and Digg, had become affiliated with the company, "giving up a slice of their ad dollars for the exposure to the bigger advertisers and better rates that a bit of scale gets them".^[12] In 2011, comScore ranked the company among the top 20 United States Web properties^[3] and the Wall Street Journal named Federated one of the top 50 venture-funded companies.^[13]

Battelle is on the board of the International Advertising Bureau^[14] and has become a spokesman for what he calls "the Independent Web": blogs and other semi-professional websites beyond Facebook, Twitter, and Google. He has argued that that marketers are themselves content creators, and their marketing campaigns should be rooted in "their own domain, independent from any platform other than the Internet itself".^[15]

Writings[link]

Battelle's 2005 book The Search: How Google and Its Rivals Rewrote the Rules of Business and Transformed Our Culture, chronicled the rise of search engines. The book was an international best seller and finalist for the Financial Times and Goldman Sachs Business Book of the Year Award. The book has been translated into more than 25 languages.^[16][5]

His second book, What We Hath Wrought, will envision how the interconnected world will look in 2040, then work backwards to explore how we got there. The book will be based on Battelle's own analysis, as well as extensive interviews with other observers. Publication is scheduled for early 2013.^[17]

Batttelle maintains Searchblog, an ongoing daily site which covers the intersection of media, technology, and culture, with archives dating back to October 2003.

Accolades[link]

Battelle was named a “Global Leader for Tomorrow” by the World Economic Forum, and was a finalist in Ernst & Young's “Entrepreneur of the Year” competition. Ad Age named him one of 10 best marketers in the business. PC World listed Battelle as one of "The Most Important People on The Web”.^[18]

Personal life[link]

In a brief biographical entry, Battelle summarized his personal life as: "Father of three. Drums, mountain biking, yoga, drinking with friends, taking pictures, cursing at closed systems".^[10] He lives in Ross, California.^[1]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Searchblog

Brij Kothari
Brij Kothari (left) speaks to a group of children
Born	(1964-06-09) 9 June 1964 (age 48) Nanded, India
Nationality	Indian
Occupation	Academic and Social Entrepreneur

Dr. Brij Kothari (born June 9, 1964) is an Indian academic and a social entrepreneur. He invented Same Language Subtitling on TV for mass literacy in India.

Early life[link]

Brij Kothari was born to a business entrepreneur. His parents were particular about education and sent him to Sri Aurobindo International Centre of Education (SAICE) in Pondicherry. He is an alumnus of IIT Kanpur.,^[1] and did his Ph.d from Cornell University. He is a Schwab Social Entrepreneur, an Ashoka Fellow^[2] and a Stanford/Reuters Digital Vision Fellow.

Career[link]

After completion of his academic pursuits Kothari returned to India. In 1996 he joined the faculty of the Indian Institute of Management in Ahmedabad. While continuing to teach communication to MBA students, he started work on SLS at IIM. He has been on the Faculty of IIM Ahmedabad, as Associate and Adjunct Professor, since 1996.

Same-Language Subtitling[link]

In 1999, in an effort to improve functional literacy rates in India, he experimented with subtitles on Chitrageet, a Gujarati television program. In 2002, the Doordarshan network subtitled their national program Chitrahaar. Since 2006, SLS has been implemented on one weekly program each in Hindi, Bengali, Gujarati, Punjabi, Kannada, Telugu, Tamil, and Marathi. The main goal is to persuade broadcasting policy in India to immplement SLS on all songs on TV, in all languages.^[3]

Kothari is the president of PlanetRead, a non-profit involved in furthering Same Language Subtitling throughout the world. He is also the founder of BookBox, a social venture funded by First Light Ventures that produces animated, read-along stories for children in languages such as English, Spanish, Mandarin, Hindi, and over 21 others.

His work was also selected by the Google.org as one of the projects for funding.^[4]

Personal life[link]

Brij Kothari is married. He has two sons and a daughter.

Awards[link]

• NASSCOM, Social Innovation Honour, 2011 ^[5]
• Indian Social Entrepreneur of the Year, 2009, Schwab Foundation and UNDP ^[6]
• Clinton Global Initiative, 2009, Feature ^[7]
• Winner, Development Marketplace, Global innovation competition - World Bank ^[8]
• Tech Laureate (Education), The Tech Awards - 2003 ^[9]

References[link]

External links[link]

• Bill Clinton on Same Language Subtitling, Clinton Global Initiative, 2009
• Deutsche Welle TV Documentary, 2012
• Boston Globe, September 19, 2010
• National Geographic, February 22, 2012
• The Guardian, May 9, 2012
• Huffington Post, February 8, 2011
• New York Times, October 30, 2010
• Outlook, December 20, 2010
• Tehelka, May 7, 2011
• The Hindu, April 6, 2011
• Gurcharan Das Op-Ed, Times of India, April 7, 2008
• Davos, Interview by OneWorld, January 29, 2011
• Run in with Bill Clinton in Davos, January 27, 2011
• Interview, Financial Times, Clinton Global Initiative, 2009
• Interview, Frankfurt Bookfair, LitCam, 2009
• Reading Out of the "Idiot Box": Same-Language Subtitling on Television in India By Brij Kothari
• Articles written by Brij Kothari
• planetread.org
• Podcast Interview with Brij Kothari Social Innovation Conversations, April 4, 2008
• Brij Kothari's columns on Social Entrepreneurship, Financial Chronicle