Over the past few weeks, we have introduced you to several of the mentors who have been an integral part of the Virtual Incubator portion of the Innovation Challenge. It is with great pleasure that we introduce our next two mentors: Elena Haliczer and Richard Banfield.
Innovation Challenge Mentor: Elena Haliczer
Elena Haliczer leads product development for Social News technology at The Huffington Post Media Group. She is the former founder of Adaptive Semantics, which was acquired by The Huffington Post in 2010. Before starting her first company she was Community and Content Manager at Games for Change under a grant from The MacArthur Foundation. She started out at NIU Outreach, the entrepreneurial branch of Northern Illinois University where she fell in love with the product development cycle. When she’s not thinking product, she’s writing, preferably with a pot of coffee on hand.
Areas of expertise: gamification, metrics & tracking methods, and designing product for social
Follow Elena on Twitter: @elliesemantic
Innovation Challenge Mentor: Richard Banfield
Richard Banfield is CEO of Fresh Tilled Soil, a leading web and user interface design firm based in Boston, MA. Richard’s global experience in web-based technology, design and marketing businesses provides him with the necessary insight into providing high-return UI/UX solutions for Fresh Tilled Soil’s client base. The company has delivered design and marketing solutions to over 300 clients across several industries since the start of 2005. Clients range from Fortune 500 and public companies like Microsoft, GE Healthcare, and EnerNOC, to top brands like Blue Cross Blue Shield, Ritz-Carlton, Viacord, Harvard University, MIT, Boston University, Communispace, Innosight and dozens of startups and emerging businesses like HubSpot, Vertica, BlueLeaf and hundreds more.
Areas of expertise: web product design and marketing
Follow Richard on Twitter: @freshtilledsoil