Leadership Team
Saul Kaplan
Saul Kaplan is the founder and Chief Catalyst of the Business Innovation Factory. He also is the chair of the non-profit’s Board of Directors. Kaplan started BIF in 2005 with a mission to enable collaborative innovation. The non-profit is creating a real world laboratory for innovators to explore and test new business models and system level solutions in areas of high social importance including health care, education, energy independence, public safety, and quality of life.
Melissa Withers
Melissa Withers is the Executive Director of the Business Innovation Factory. In addition to her work overseeing day-to-day operations at BIF, Melissa plays an active role in projects conducted in the BIF experience labs.
Tori Drew
As BIF's operations manager, Tori Drew plays a key role in several BIF activities, including the coordination of our annual Collaborative Innovation Summits. A logistics wiz kid with more than 15 years experience managing big budget, high visibility projects, Drew returned to Rhode Island in 2003 after ten years at Sony Music, where she served as Director of Production for Columbia Records' Online and Emerging Technologies team. An early player in the world of web-based music, Drew developed production procedures for emerging technologies, including multimedia content on CD's, music downloads, wireless content, e-postcards and flash videos.
Christine Flanagan
Christine Flanagan directs the research initiatives at the Business Innovation Factory. She works closely with BIF’s research advisory council to provide our community with the latest thinking and research on innovation and its related fields and practices. She also blogs regularly on the BIFSpeak weblog. In addition to her BIF activities, Chris is a partner in Senjiva, a business strategy consulting firm in Providence, R.I. Her current projects are focused on researching and developing new markets for technology companies, professional services firms and patent holders.
Chris Finlay
Chris Finlay oversees work in the BIF Student Experience Lab. Chris came to BIF from New York City, where he most recently served as a managing partner at DMD Experience Design, a boutique innovation consultancy that works with organizational leadership on user-driven product and service development. For most of his career, Chris has focused his work on creating meaningful change in the world by leveraging the power of people, business and design to create innovative products and services.
Extended Team
Jeff Drury
Jeff is responsible for all aspects of BIF's online identity. His work includes interactive design, development and strategy for the main – as well as all related – BIF websites, including the Nursing Home of the Future and Student Experience Lab project websites, BIF's monthly online correspondence and BIF social networking sites. In addition to his work at BIF, Jeff is an adjunct professor in both the FAV department at the Rhode Island School of Design and the film studies department at Rhode Island College.
James Hamar
James Hamar manages BIF’s digital media assets, he creates audio and video pieces for BIF’s Innovation Story Studio and helps tell the stories of the participants in our BIF Experience Labs. Additionally, James serves as a research assistant for BIF's Student Experience Lab. James got his start as a producer with APC and advocated 3d modeling technology to replace traditional photography for product display to enable use of media-rich web tools and applications.
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2010 BIF Events
Social Entrepreneurship that Really Works…Meet-up with Cat Lainé and the AIDG
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
