Marketplace Tech Creators & Guests

Molly Kristin Wood is the tech correspondent, business journalist, and host & senior editor for the US public radio program Marketplace.

Ben Brock Johnson is a professional radio, digital and print journalist with extensive experience in news and features reporting for national broadcast organizations and publications. He currently hosts a daily show heard by nearly 2 million people around the US.

David Clinch is the founder of the social media intelligence agency Storyful and co-founder of Media Growth Partners.

Sarah E. Needleman is a reporter who writes about interactive entertainment and social media for The Wall Street Journal. Her coverage centers on Activision Blizzard, Electronic Arts and other big videogame publishers, as well as social-media companies such as Twitter, Reddit and Pinterest.Needleman joined the Wall Street Journal in 2001 and was covering small business and careers. She also wrote the monthly column "Accidental Entrepreneur." Before that, she was a feature writer and paginator for the Home News & Tribune and the Princeton Packet.Needleman received her B.A. in Journalism from Rutgers University.

Mara Zepeda is a systempreneur and serial social entrepreneur. She is a co-founder of Cola Love, a catalytic community and economic development design studio co-created by Nell Fuller of femme x and Julie Tuttle of Styx Properties. She’s also an an Entrepreneur-in-Residence at the Faber Center for Entrepreneurship within the University of South Carolina’s Darla Moore School of Business. In 2022, Mara was named an Omidyar Network Luminary.Most recently, Mara co-founded and was the Founding Managing Director of Zebras Unite, an international and intersectional hybrid cooperative and non-profit creating a more ethical, inclusive, collaborative, and sustainable approach to building businesses. With her leadership and in cooperation with ZU’s 300+ members, Founding Members, boards, extraordinary worker owners and leadership, she helped grow the organization to a combined $3M in revenue and grant funding. She is now a Strategic Advisor.Prior, Mara was the founder of Switchboard, a venture-backed software company that merged in 2019 with its sister company, Hearken. It was through her experience as an entrepreneur of a different stripe that led her to co-found Zebras Unite, along with Jennfier Brandel, Dr. Astrid Scholz, and Aniyia Williams. Their manifesto, “Zebras Fix What Unicorns Break,” launched this timely, necessary, culture-shifting movement that has garnered broad recognition, from The New York Times to Nikkei. It now boasts an online community of 10K+ strong, hundreds of member-owners, and over 25 chapters around the world.During her six years in Portland, Oregon, Mara was also a co-founder and the founding board chair of Business for a Better Portland. Under the leadership of former Founding Executive Director Ashley Henry, BBPDX grew to a 350+ member next-generation business organization that forges public-private collaborations to advance systemic change, shared prosperity, and social justice and equity in Portland. BBPDX’s advocacy efforts helped secure $2B in funding for public education, $500M for an affordable housing bond measure in Portland, $50M for Oregon’s first-ever environmental initiative created and led by communities of color, and $50M in economic development for underrepresented entrepreneurs in Oregon. Concurrently, Mara co-founded and was the founding board chair of Xcelerate. Alongside former Executive Director Amy Jermain, she helped Xcelerate become a transformative community providing business support, education, peer mentorship, and funding to 200+ Oregon women entrepreneurs. In addition, Mara is a renowned calligrapher with her studio Neither Snow, and was one of the early innovators in contemporary calligraphy. She was also an award-winning economic reporter for NPR, Marketplace, Planet Money, The Boston Globe, Philadelphia Inquirer and ran a weekly column for The Philadelphia Weekly for three years.Mara has spent her career at the intersection of community building, economic development, and systems change. Drawing on her experience as an artist, entrepreneur, and child of bohemian and spiritually curious artists, she regularly speaks about and leads workshops on education, trust, time management, social networks, the future of international business, and more esoteric topics like the sacred gift and lifelong journey of working in partnership and collaboration.Mara holds a BA in Russian from Reed College and an MS in Journalism from Columbia University, where she graduated with honors. She grew up in Santa Fe, New Mexico, raised by a Honduran artist father and a cellist mother. Now based in Columbia, South Carolina, she and her husband, Dr. Andrew Berns, are part of a growing movement in the South dedicated to building beloved community.

Rashad Robinson is a civil rights leader. Currently, he is president of the nonprofit organization Color of Change.Prior to joining Color of Change, Robinson was a board member of RaceForward, Demos, State Voices, and the Hazen Foundation.Robinson became the president of Color Of Change in 2011. The organization's mission is to strengthen political and cultural power for Black communities in America. With CoC, he has expanded the organization's membership, organized a campaign to pull funding from the American Legislative Exchange Council, helped to protect the principle of net neutrality by pushing the FCC to reclassify broadband as a common carrier service, and pressured prosecutors to reduce the mass incarceration of black people, persuaded businesses like Mastercard and PayPal to stop accepting payments from white nationalist groups, and pressured business leaders to refrain from sitting on President Trump's Business Council.Prior to joining Color of Change, Robinson was Senior Director of Media Programs at GLAAD, where he led the organization's Right to Vote Campaign, and FairVote.Robinson has appeared on NPR, MSNBC, CNN, PBS, and BET. He has a monthly column in US edition of The Guardian, and his work has appeared in New York Times, Huffington Post, The Washington Post, and USA Today.

Dr. Cassandra Crifasi is an injury epidemiologist. Her work focuses on policies and practices that improve safety and prevent injury, with a focus on firearms.Crifasi is an Associate Professor at Johns Hopkins University, and the Deputy Director of its Center for Gun Policy and Research. Her research interests include violence prevention; firearm policies and gun violence; underground gun markets; attitudes and behaviors of gun owners including safe storage and public opinion on gun policy; and the evaluation of policies that impact public safety and first responders.Crifasi received her B.S. from Central Washington University, her M.P.H. from the Drexel University School of Public Health, and her Ph.D. from the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

Scott Kelly is an engineer, retired astronaut, and U.S. Navy captain. He has been on four space flights, and commanded the International Space Station.Kelly's first spaceflight was on the Space Shuttle Discovery in 1999. In 2012, he and Mikhail Korniyenko spent an entire year on the International Space Station. In 2017, Kelly published his first book, "A Year in Space." T

Professor of Marketing and Economics at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Margaret O'Mara (born 1970) is an American historian and professor at the University of Washington. She writes and teaches about the growth of the high-tech economy, and connections between high-tech and the history of U.S. politics.O'Mara's writing on technology, politics, and society has appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, WIRED, MIT Technology Review, and The American Prospect. Her first book, "Cities of Knowledge: Cold War Science and the Search For The Next Silicon Valley," was published in 2005. Her second book, "Pivotal Tuesdays: Four Elections that Shaped the Twentieth Century," was published in 2015. Her third book, "The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America," was published in 2019. O'Mara has also appeared on major broadcast television and radio outlets, including CNN, MSNBC, PBS, BBC, CBC, and NPR. She is a public speaker, regularly lecturing before general and academic audiences about Silicon Valley's evolution and the impact of its people, companies, and politics on the United States and the world and about the past, present, and future of the American presidency.Prior to her academic career, O'Mara served in the Clinton Administration, working on economic and social policy in the White House and in the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.O'Mara received her B.A. from Northwestern University, and her M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.

Alex Heath is an editor at The Verge.

Before launching Tradeoffs, Dan was the senior reporter for Marketplace’s Health Desk, covering the business of healthcare, and before that, he spent more than 11 years at New Hampshire Public Radio. He got his start in journalism at the Chicago Reporter, an investigative journal that examines race and class disparities in the Chicago area. He’s won numerous national and local awards, including the Society of Professional Journalist Sigma Delta Chi investigative reporting award.

Lily Jamali is a co-host of the KQED's The California Report podcast.