Judging

Marc Andreessen

Co-Founder and General Partner of Andreessen Horowitz

Marc Andreessen is a noted investor in information technology. He previously developed the web browser Mosaic and co-founded the company Netscape; he is an investor in numerous technology startups including Digg and Twitter; and he serves on the boards of Facebook, eBay and Hewlett-Packard (among others).

Charles Best

Founder and CEO of DonorsChoose.org

DonorsChoose.org is a website that allows people to donate directly to specific projects in schools and classrooms. It was started in 2000 by Charles Best, when he was a teacher at a public high school in the Bronx. Since then, it has grown to serve all the public schools throughout the United States. As of August 2010, more than $55 million dollars had been donated to over 138,000 projects, helping more than 3,400,000 students in need.

Brad Feld

Managing Director of Foundry Group

Brad Feld has been an early stage investor and entrepreneur for over twenty years. Prior to co-founding Foundry Group—which focuses on investing in early-stage IT companies—he co-founded Mobius Venture Capital and, prior to that, founded Intensity Ventures, a company that helped launch and operate software companies. Brad currently serves on the board of directors of several companies for Foundry Group. In addition to his investing efforts, Brad has been active with several non-profit organizations and currently is chairman of the National Center for Women & Information Technology. 

Tom Lee

Director of Sunlight Labs

Tom Lee is the Director of Sunlight Labs; prior to assuming leadership of the labs, he managed Sunlight's Subsidyscope project, an effort to explore the level of federal involvement in various sectors of the economy. His writing on technical policy has appeared in the American Prospect, Techdirt, Progressive Fix, and various impassioned Slashdot threads.

Jennifer Pahlka

Founder, Executive Director and Board Chair of Code for America

Jennifer Pahlka is the Founder, Executive Director and Board Chair of Code for America, and has spent the past 15 years in the company of the technology elite. She spent eight years at CMP Media where she led the Game Group, overseeing GDC, Game Developer magazine, and Gamasutra.com; there she also launched the Independent Games Festival and served as Executive Director of the International Game Developers Association. Recently, she ran the Web 2.0 and Gov 2.0 events for TechWeb, in conjunction with O’Reilly Media, and co-chaired the successful Web 2.0 Expo.

Cory Booker

Mayor of Newark, New Jersey

Mayor Booker has a history of organizing and social justice work. His parents successfully fought against racial discrimination and shattered corporate ceilings, inspiring him to pursue a life of breaking barriers and working for change. On May 9, 2006, Cory Booker was elected Mayor of Newark, with a landslide victory.