Building for the Future

Damian Fagan
Founder & CEO, Almanac Beer

Damian Fagan is the founder and CEO of Almanac Beer Company in Alameda, California. Since 2011, he has pioneered “farm to barrel” brewing — building a portfolio of award-winning beers around local, sustainably grown ingredients. Almanac has since grown into a significant regional brewery producing more than 15,000 barrels annually, and earlier this year became the first brewery in the world to carbonate and package beer using CO2 captured directly from ambient air on site.

Darlene Damm
Faculty and former Vice President of Community and Impact, Singularity University

Darlene Damm has over two decades of experience working at the intersection of social impact, innovation and technology. She co-founded two of the world’s first impact technology companies in aerospace and drone transport, and as Faculty Chair and Vice President of Community and Impact at Singularity University, taught and mentored thousands of founders and executives who went on to build impact technology companies in every industry including Ag Tech, Food Tech, Ed Tech, Climate Tech, Gov Tech, Health Tech, and more.

Darlene served in leadership, strategy, operational, and expert roles with Singularity University, Ashoka, Matternet, the World Bank, nonprofits in Vietnam and Myanmar, and has spoken about impact technology at the United Nations, the World Food Programme, SXSW, Google, Salesforce, Intuit, WalMart, Sony, Aramco and delivered TedX talks in Vilnius and Budapest. She has written articles for Harvard Business Review, Forbes, the St. Louis Post Dispatch, Spiceworks, the OECD Forum, the Qatar Foundation and GRIT Daily. A number of news outlets including TechCrunch, Fast Company, Venture Beat, Wired, Popular Science, Aviation Week, NPR, Gigacom, Forbes, MoonandBack, engadget, The Denver Post, Le Monde and 60 Minutes have covered her work in drones, rocketry and Singularity University impact technology projects.

Darlene received her bachelor’s degree from Stanford University, her master’s degree from Johns Hopkins University’s Paul H. Nitze School for Advanced International Studies (SAIS), was a fellow with Japan-US Community Education and Exchange, is an advisor to the UN World Food Programme Innovation Accelerator, was a mentor with Google’s impact accelerator, a judge for Stanford BASES, and served on the Biden Administration’s Working Group on Cross Border Trade. She holds patents in drone technology and Authority Magazine featured her as a social impact hero. She currently teaches social innovation at Singularity University and Santa Clara University and consults with impact organizations and companies solving systemic problems.

Holly Ruxin
Founder & CEO, Montcalm TCR

Holly Ruxin is a money shaman and capital markets veteran who has spent her career at the intersection of financial mastery and human transformation. She began on Wall Street in fixed income derivatives at Goldman Sachs, then trading and managing assets at Morgan Stanley, Montgomery Securities, and Bank of America before founding Montcalm TCR, a San Francisco-based impact wealth management firm she has led for over a decade. But the deeper current running beneath all of it has always been this: money is not a spreadsheet, it is a mirror. It reflects our wounds, our worth, our conditioning, and our capacity to claim what we truly deserve. Holly brings both the rigorous analytical precision of a seasoned capital markets professional and the grounded, intuitive presence of a spiritual guide; creating a rare and potent space where people can face their financial lives with honesty, courage, and sovereignty. She is also the Founder of Trevor TCR, a philanthropic foundation rooted in unconditional love and dedicated to supporting health, education, enterprise, and the arts. Holly holds an MBA in Finance from Columbia University and a BA in Economics from the University of Michigan, and she has been recognized as a World Changing Woman in Conscious Business.

Marina Gorbis
Strategy in the Age of Chaos, Institute for the Future

Sandra Osborne Kartt
Deputy Chief Investment Officer, ImpactAssets Capital Partners

Sandra Osborne Kartt is Deputy Chief Investment Officer at ImpactAssets Capital Partners, where she leads the Investments team, overseeing investment research and portfolio management. Her team is responsible for investment sourcing, due diligence and investment selection of impact investment opportunities that seek to generate both financial and social or environmental returns. Most recently, Sandra worked for Developing World Markets, where she spearheaded their initial private equity valuation work before focusing on private debt investments in financial inclusion-focused businesses throughout Asia, Africa & Latin America. Sandra began her career as a sell-side equity research analyst at Keefe Bruyette & Woods, a boutique investment bank, covering the U.S. banking industry. Sandra received an MA in Economics from New York University, a BS in Economics from Louisiana State University and holds the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA®) designation.