New Bridges: California

Patrick M. Byrne is an American entrepreneur, e-commerce pioneer, and Founder/CEO of Overstock.com, with 2016 revenues of 1.8 billion. Forbes has named Dr. Byrne the CEO with the highest employee approval rating (92%) and ranked Overstock.com as the 9th Best U.S. Company to Work For. Overstock.com was also the first major retailer to accept Bitcoins.

In 2011, Dr. Byrne was named Ernst & Young’s National Entrepreneur of the Year, and in 2014, Overstock.com was named one of the Most Trustworthy Companies in America by Forbes/MSCI ESG Research. With a Ph.D. in philosophy from Stanford University, he has served as a Teaching Fellow at Stanford; Chairman, President and CEO of Centricut, LLC; and Chairman, President and CEO at Fechheimer Brothers, Inc., a Berkshire Hathaway company. Believing that success depends on educational and entrepreneurial freedom, he is also Chair of EdChoice (founded by Milton and Rose Friedman). He is Founder of Medici Ventures, a subsidiary of Overstock, created to build solutions leveraging and servicing blockchain technologies. Medici project companies include: t0, focused on the development of financial technology (fintech) based on cryptographically-secured, decentralized ledgers. Since its inception, t0 has pioneered the effort to bring greater efficiency and transparency to capital markets through the integration of blockchain technology.

Senior Vice President of the Independent Institute and a columnist for The Huffington Post, Ms. Theroux received her A.B. in economics from Stanford University. She is Managing Director of Lightning Ventures, L.P., a San Francisco Bay Area investment firm, and Vice President of the C.S. Lewis Society of California.

Having been a director of nine corporations and three foundations, Ms. Theroux was also Chairman of Garvey International, Inc., and Co-Founder, President, and CEO of San Francisco Grocery Express, Ltd. Articles on her have appeared in Business Week, Forbes, Savvy, Los Angeles Times, San Francisco Chronicle, and other publications. She is former Chairman of the Advisory Board for the Alameda County Salvation Army; former Chairman and current member of the San Francisco Salvation Army Advisory Board, and also serves on the National Advisory Board of The Salvation Army.

John Hagel III is Co-Chairman and Co-Founder of the Center for the Edge at Deloitte & Touche, USA, LLP. Mr. Hagel holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School, J.D. from Harvard Law School, B.Phil. from Oxford University, and B.A. from Wesleyan University. He is a member of the Board of Directors at the Santa Fe Institute, and he has been a Principal at McKinsey & Company where he founded and led McKinsey’s Electronic Commerce Practice, Senior Vice President of Strategy at Atari Inc., Consultant at Boston Consulting Group, and the Founder of two Silicon Valley startups.

Among his bestselling books are The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion (with John Seely Brown and Lang Davison); The Only Sustainable Edge: Why Business Strategy Depends on Productive Friction and Dynamic Specialization (with John Seely Brown); Out of the Box: Strategies for Achieving Profits Today and Growth Tomorrow Through Web Services (with John Seely Brown); Net Worth: Shaping Markets When Customers Make the Rules (with Marc Singer); and Net Gain: Expanding Markets through Virtual Communities (with Arthur Armstrong).

Widely published and cited in The Economist, Fortune, Forbes, Business Week, Financial Times, Wall Street Journal, and New York Times, he has won two awards from the Harvard Business Review for best articles there.

Founder and Managing Partner of Accelerator Ventures, Alexander Lloyd was previously Venture Partner at Rustic Canyon Partners where he oversaw the development of their seed-stage investment strategy, and Business Development Manager in Microsoft's Silicon Valley office responsible for Microsoft's relationships with the West Coast venture capital and startup community. He has also worked as a Product Manager in SGI's workstation division and has held marketing positions at Activision and Apple Computer. Mr. Lloyd began his career at Goldman Sachs, where he spent three years as a financial analyst. He received his B.A. in international relations and M.B.A. in entrepreneurial management from the University of Pennsylvania.

A member of the board of directors of SlideLuck and the Human Rights Foundation, he previously sat on the boards of SF Camerawork, Junior Achievement of San Francisco, and the Contemporary Extension of the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art. In 1998, he founded the San Francisco Media Arts Council, and for 3 years he served as a Commissioner for the San Francisco Art Commission.

Research Fellow, Independent Institute; author, Crossroads for Liberty: Recovering the Anti-Federalist Values of America’s First Constitution.

“In the compelling book Crossroads for Liberty, William J. Watkins, Jr. recounts the rarely examined history of lost liberty in America’s infancy. . . . If you yearn, as I do, for minimal government and maximum individual liberty, you need to understand how the monster federal government came about. Crossroads for Liberty is that well-told but sad story.”
—Judge Andrew Napolitano, Senior Judicial Analyst, Fox News Channel; Distinguished Professor, Brooklyn Law School

“At a time in our history when most people take it as an article of faith that the federal government must provide a solution to every major problem, from education to terrorism to economic downturn, the indispensable book Crossroads for Liberty advances the notion that our massive federal government is the problem, and that the solution lies in ideas that have lain dormant for over two centuries."
—Alex A. Kozinski, Judge, U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit

Research Fellow, Independent Institute; author, Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise and Human Action; Research Assistant Professor, Free Market Institute, Rawls College of Business, Texas Tech University.

“Choice is great . . . much needed.”
—Gene Epstein, Economics Editor, Barron’s

“No one working today rivals Robert Murphy in his superb book, Choice: Cooperation, Enterprise and Human Action, with an all-too-rare, lively writing that engages as well as instructs the general public. . . . Choice is something quite unique. . . . Any reader of this book will learn both the important basic truths about the science of economics and the crucial value of individual choice, entrepreneurship, and free markets.”
—Donald J. Boudreaux, Professor of Economics; Senior Fellow with the F.A. Hayek Program for Advanced Study in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics; George Mason University

Senior Fellow, Director of the Center on Entrepreneurial Innovation, and Director of the California Golden Fleece Awards, Independent Institute.

“Strategic thinking requires understanding of the impact and implications of our present decisions, and predictions for the next fifty years can be a valuable way to critique the state of our world today. The fascinating book Future: Economic Peril or Prosperity? succeeds admirably in provoking and informing about the directions our choices may take us. Those who fail to think about the future are destined to repeat the mistakes of the past!"
—Garry Kasparov, 13th World Chess Champion; Chairman, Human Rights Foundation

"Future provides a roadmap for adopting the essential measures of liberty, entrepreneurship, and innovation. I highly recommend everyone read this pioneering book.”
—Rand Paul, M.D., U. S. Senator