Lara Stein is the co-founder and CEO of Boma Global. Prior to that she was the Executive Director of Women’s March Global. Stein recently acted as the interim Executive Director of MIT ReACT, a new institute-wide organization at MIT dedicated to developing a global educational platform for displaced populations and refugees. Stein also currently sits on the board of Equality Now and Lalela, a non-profit dedicated to education through the arts in South Africa. Recently, Ms. Stein was the Managing Director of Singularity University’s community and global expansion and implementation strategy. Prior to her time at SU, Ms. Stein was the founder and director of the TEDx program at the TED Conferences. In 2007, she lead the effort to bring TED to the world by developing a program that granted free licenses to third parties to organize independent TED-like events. In the first five years of TEDx, Ms. Stein grew the program into a global phenomenon with more than 40,000 talks given at more than 8,000 TEDx events in 1,200 cities in 133 countries. By Dec. 2013, eight TEDx events, on average, were being organized every day in one of 133 countries. Under Stein’s leadership, TED expanded to include TEDxWomen, TED events dedicated to women empowerment, and the inclusion of youth audience with the creation of the TEDYouth and TEDxYouth. Stein also created the TEDx corporate event platform, TEDx in a Box. While leading TEDx Ms. Stein simultaneously held the position of Director of the TED Prize. Ms. Stein has consulted to numerous Media and Technology companies, including, Pangea Day, Worldwide Biggies and JVP. Prior to her consulting roles, Ms. Stein founded the web development firm iXL’s New York office. Stein also held senior level positions at Microsoft’s MSN division, where she ran MSN’s New York office, and spearheaded all broadband programming and business development. Prior to Microsoft, Stein founded and served as Director of Licensing and Interactive Publishing at Nelvana and Marvel Comics. Stein has produced programming for Lifetime Television, Simon and Schuster, WGBH-PBS. Ms. Stein started her career as a documentary filmmaker. She has also produced and directed numerous documentary films. Ms. Stein’s achievements have earned her recognition in several leading industry trade publications. Ms. Stein recently sat on the board of The Lung Cancer Research Foundation