Lisa Rowland teaches improvisation in the Theater Department at Stanford University, runs improv-based workshops and training for professionals, and performs with BATS Improv, Improv Playhouse of San Francisco, and Awkward Dinner Party. She has traveled the globe teaching and performing. She is also the co-host of a podcast, Monster Baby: A Curious Romp Through The Worlds of Mindfulness and Improvisation.

Maura Church is a data science manager at Patreon. She’s fascinated by the deep intersections between art and technology, so she feels right at home alongside her Patreon teammates. Maura’s focus at Patreon is on understanding what drives growth, improving product through analytics, and supporting a data-rich company strategy. Maura joined Patreon November, 2015, after working for the Google anti-abuse team. When she’s not at work, you can find her singing classical choral music, riding her bike up very big hills, or trying the newest IPA at Toronado in San Francisco.

Laura Chernikoff has been working with YouTube creators since 2010 when she helped organize the first VidCon in Century City, California. For years, as Guest Manager, she was in charge of making VidCon as great as possible for creators, understanding their needs, and advocating on their behalf inside the company. As Executive Director of the Internet Creators Guild, she’s continuing this work to connect, educate, represent, and support professional online creators.

James Higa has had a long and storied career reporting directly to Steve Jobs for decades at Apple & NeXT. He ran Special Ops for Steve to change the face of technology as we know it. Whether negotiating the landmark agreements with the record labels to launch iTunes worldwide or working on everything from the Macintosh computer to iPhone, he has stood at the intersection of technology and culture to transform our world.

James is currently a Mentor-in-Residence at Index Ventures, whose investments include Patreon, Dropbox, Etsy, Supercell, and Slack. He mentors scores of CEO’s to think differently about their products, services, brands, and teams. He is an advisor to iconic global brands like Airbnb and UNIQLO.

James is also the Executive Director of Philanthropic Ventures Foundation. PVF is a community foundation known for its rapid response where the average grant cycle is 48 hours. PVF pioneers a new kind of philanthropy based on radical collaboration to tackle our biggest problems in unimagined ways.

Tyler Palmer is Patreon’s VP of Operations. He works with the business teams to ensure Patreon is funding the creative class. Before Patreon, Tyler held a similar general management role as Stageit’s VP of Operations. Tyler received his Bachelors of Science, Music Industry from USC’s Thornton School of Music. Outside of the office, he enjoys hockey, tennis, and favoriting clever tweets

Chris Paik is a partner at Thrive Capital, a New York-based venture capital firm, where he invests in tech companies. In his time at Thrive, Paik has served on the boards of ClassPass, Flatiron School, Grailed, MM.LaFleur, Patreon, Tictail, Twitch (acquired by Amazon), and Unity. He graduated from Harvard University, studying economics and psychology.

Philip DeFranco has spent over a decade making his name known on YouTube. He is most widely recognized for ‘The Philip DeFranco Show’, a 5 day-a-week news and culture show that reaches an audience of almost 6 million daily, and has garnered over 2 billion lifetime views. His signature satirical take on how he presents the news, current events, and pop culture to his audience and the conversations his show has started over the years, has brought vital information and important discussion to an entirely new generation and many more to come.

Hank Green has been making YouTube videos with his brother, John, since 2007. The love of this community caused him to start a number of projects, including VidCon (a conference), which he founded with John in 2010. He and John also make educational videos on several YouTube channels including Crash Course and SciShow. In 2013, Hank and John created Subbable as a way for viewers to support creators. Subbable was acquired by Patreon in 2015.

Danika Massey and Tyson Wheeler’s combined powers form 19 Productions. They are the creative force behind The Comic Book Girl 19 Show on YouTube. Since 2012 they have independently produced over 300 episodes with over 47 million views exploring the meaning of Art through the lens of pop-culture; discussing comics, movies, television shows, and books with the Internet at large. 19 Productions has gone on to produce other new media content such as their Epic History: X-Men documentary series for Vimeo, their biography series Greater Creators for Go90, and Dune Club, an interactive book club on Twitch.

Erin Boyle is a product manager at Patreon. Prior to joining Patreon, she spent 4.5 years as a product manager on the support product at Zendesk. Erin owns the vision and roadmap for making and receiving payments, analytics within Patreon’s product, and creator tools to manage their patron relationships. When she’s not deep in product, you’ll probably find her wearing headphones listening to a podcast.

Jack Conte is a musician, filmmaker, half of Pomplamoose, and a co-founder at Patreon, the membership platform that makes it easy for creators to earn salaries directly from their biggest fans. Patreon, which is on-track to pay more than $150 million to creators in 2017 alone, has raised over $47 million to date from a series of venture capital firms and angels. As a musician and filmmaker, Jack spent his days in a converted dog kennel-turned-recording studio in Sonoma County, making YouTube videos that have amassed over 120 million views. Now, he’s in full-time CEO mode at Patreon HQ in San Francisco where the company is paying millions of dollars to creators every month around the world. Jack also loves working with robots.