Gerard Cox

I am principal partner and founder of Second Line. Second Line is an Impact Venture Capital Fund and Accelerator headquartered in New Orleans, Louisiana. Second Line is the first regionally based Impact Investment fund in the United States. It is a $10M fund investing in ideas in the areas of environment/water, bio-innovation/health, disaster planning, food/beverage, and economic development. I also run a consulting firm, Human Networks. Human Networks is strategy and management consulting firm aligning and innovating organizations by embedding design and human factors best practices. Human Networks is headquartered in New Orleans and serves a variety of public and private clients. In 2011, I produced the Second Line conference in New Orleans. The Second Line conference promotes the intersection of innovation, strategy, and design. The conference was produced in partnership with New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Foundation. Our goal is to produce another even in 2014 in partnership with an international design conference. I am currently producing the Second Line ( www.secondline.com ) Disruptive Innovation Conference. The conference is scheduled between concert weekends during the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. The Second Line event, developed in partnership with the Jazz and Heritage Festival, will be an annual conference focusing on promoting innovation with business, education, technology, social services, environment reform, sustainability, and public/private partnerships. I also produced TEDxNOLA ( www.tedxnola.com ) in Fall 2010 in New Orleans. We celebrated the triumph of creativity over crisis in New Orleans with the likes of James Carville, EPA Director Lisa Jackson, and Chef John Besh. I also spearheaded the Declaration of Innovation and promotional activities associated with the Gulf Aid Relief Concert. My company Creole was the primary sponsor for TEDxOilSpill ( www.tedxoilspill.com ). I’ve also worked with several TED Fellows (Cesar Harada, Naomi Natale, Marcin Jacubowski, Suzanne Lee, Colleen Flanigan, Candy Chang, and Adital Ela) through the TED Fellows SupporTED program. Prior to Second Line and Human Networks, I was President of Human Networks, VP Product Development of NetByTel, CTO of Streamline Medical, VP Technology of iBooks.com and Consulting Manager for Trilogy Software. I am active in entrepreneurship having consulted for two Venture Capital firms and been instrumental in raising over $100 million dollars of funding for 3 high profile startups. I am a member New Orleans Regional Leadership Institute, Aspen Institute Society of Fellows, and several professional organizations.

positive social deviance, strategy, growing value, sailing, restaurants, understanding everyone's life story, Making the World a better place, live music, travel, social entrepreneurship, design,

- Let's ensure people who can make positive change have the resources to do so - Business should understand they are large biological systems (e.g., brain, conscience, life cycle, soul, etc.) - We need an effective model for public/private partnership to grow social ventures to meet social needs but reduce overall tax burden - I truly believe in the 'Perfect Storm' of democracy, freedom, capitalism, and social good - In business, I believe we people focus too much on the ends of the spectrum - starting new organizations and taking care of large corporations. The heart of business are small businesses and organizations with a history and story to tell. BTW... Entrepreneurship is my passion - Governments can improve social services and education if they make prudent choices and stay aligned to objectives - I wish I lived in a functioning democracy - Too many of us allow ourselves to default to short term needs instead of taking the long road

Building Sustainable Green Enterprises, Business Execution, Change Management (Organization Development), Culture Transformation, government reform, Growth and Value Generation, Portfolio Managment, Public/Private Partnerships, Strategy, Virtualization

Have been passion about TED for years. I have always dreamed of having TED/TED Global in New Orleans since we are at the intersection of all things TED members value. I sponsored TEDxOilSpill because I wanted New Orleans to have a voice on resolving the BP OilSpill and future disasters..I also produced TEDxNOLA event to celebrate the resiliency of the New Orleans community and to test the viability of TED here. It was an incredible success we introduced thousands to the ideas spread through TED. I assisted Tulane with there inaugural TEDxTU event on Social Entrepreneurship.

Sailing, Cooking, I am actually kinda smarter than I sound