Maker City Heroes

Peter Hirshberg serves as an innovation advisor to cities and companies. He has created two centers of urban innovation from scratch: City Innovate Foundation, formed with The San Francisco Mayor’s office, UC Berkeley, and the MIT Media Lab; and Gray Area Foundation for the Arts. He is CEO and founder of the Re:Imagine Group. He is co-author of The Maker City: A Practical Guide To the Reinvention of our Cities.

Eric is CEO & founder of the award-winning data visualization design studio Stamen Design. He's a Board Member of the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, bringing innovation to medicine, education & the arts. He founded & is a Board Member of CAST, which provides affordable space for artists in San Francisco by buying downtown buildings for arts groups.

Carol Pepper-Kittredge is the statewide project manager for CCC Maker, an initiative funded by the California Community College Chancellor’s Office, Workforce & Economic Development Division. Housed at Sierra College, the initiative is building a community of makerspaces to support the integration of Making into instruction and produce innovation-ready graduates. Carol previously served as the Director for the Center for Applied Competitive Technologies and as the Deputy Sector Navigator of Advanced Manufacturing for the Sacramento Region. Carol earned degrees in Environmental Planning and Management (UC Davis), and Human Resources and Organization Development (University of San Francisco).

Simon Wachira is an innovator and maker, with a background in Control Engineering. He is the head of engineering at Gearbox and the founder of Proteq Automation. He is part of the Fablab foundation and has been involved in setting up Fablabs in Nairobi and South Africa. He is an authority and an evangelist in Digital fabrication for Africa's production growth. He has designed and produced the first industrial grade commercial CNC machines for Fabrication industry in Kenya. He has designed and produced electronics and control software for industrial automation such as supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) software and programmable controllers. He has provided manufacturing solutions to manufacturing firms and the military in Kenya. He has been involved in developing the curriculum for training the next generation Kenyan Maker which will be launched at Gearbox.

Kate Sofis' career spans manufacturing, urban economic development, and the intersection of cities, jobs, and making. She is the co-founder and CEO of SFMade, a nationally-recognized public-private partnership launched in 2010 that has helped catalyze a resurgence in local manufacturing in one of the most expensive cities in the US: the San Francisco Bay Area. She is also co-founder of the Urban Manufacturing Alliance, a national initiative of more than 150 US cities, all working to connect major urban centers to each other and promoting the replication of successful models for inclusive urban maker-based economies.