Speaker // Margarita Quihuis
Margarita Quihuis co-directs the Peace Innovation Lab at Stanford. For the last ten years, her team has looked to re-imagine technology innovation and how it can positively influence society, politics and the economy. In this 30 minute talk, she will draw on PIL’s work and discuss the need for a new peace tech industry, and how engineers, business and investors can work together to create the world we want to live in.
A behavior designer, social entrepreneur and mentor capitalist, Margarita Quihuis now serves as the Co-Director of the Peace Innovation Lab (PIL). Quihuis formerly served as the first Director of Astia—a technology incubator for women entrepreneurs where her portfolio companies raised $67 million in venture funding. At PIL, Quihuis’ research focuses on how entrepreneurs can leverage innovation, mass collaboration, persuasive technology and social networks to change society for the better.
Her projects have included the study of collaboration and citizen engagement to foster government innovation – Manor Labs, bottoms-up post-disaster response and recovery – Relief 2.0 and advisory roles in citizen psy-op efforts such as the ‘Israel Loves Iran’ and ‘Romancing the Border’ social media campaigns. A recognized thought leader and public speaker in the areas of innovation, technology, access to capital and entrepreneurship, and emergent social behavior, and Quihuis has advised, mentored, and addressed numerous start-ups, corporations, academic institutions on the power of persuasive technology.