Speakers

Sam Kabert is an Emotional Fitness Trainer helping leaders regulate pressure, think clearly, and lead effectively under sustained demand.

His work is grounded in neuroscience, including the 90-Second Rule, which shows that emotions move through the body in roughly 90 seconds. Most leaders try to think their way out of stress, which often keeps them stuck in mental loops. Sam has helped thousands interrupt the stress cycle in real time using the B.R.E.A.T.H. Method and NLP-based regulation techniques, preventing reactivity, burnout, and poor decision-making before they take hold.

A former Silicon Valley entrepreneur, 40 Under 40 honoree, and 3× bestselling author, Sam is leading a shift in the future of work … moving organizations from reactive mental health conversations toward proactive emotional fitness. He also certifies leaders and facilitators to embed emotional fitness as a core workplace capability, strengthening resilience, culture, and performance at scale.

Cuong Nguyen's ability to highlight the beauty in the world around him informs his art and his perspective. One might say he represents the opposite of the tortured-artist cliché: despite formative years in Vietnam marked by significant hardship, his sometimes romantic and sometimes mysterious portraits and still lifes reflect his positive outlook and determination to persevere.

Growing up in poverty after the fall of Saigon, Cuong's greatest pleasure was finding time to draw. At a young age, he earned extra money for his family by doing street portraits, and he was accepted to Saigon's Academy of Art while in high school. Even as a child, Cuong was fascinated by the human face, and his single-minded practice of drawing eyes and other features rewards us today with portraits that have a spark of life.

His studies at the Academy of Art in Saigon were interrupted when he had the opportunity to emigrate to the U.S. in 1991, and the challenge of establishing himself in a new country and culture temporarily distracted him from his love of fine art. He earned a degree in illustration from San Jose State University and established a successful career as an icon designer with a prominent Silicon Valley Web company.

Ultimately, though, his passion for fine art resurfaced. It began first as a new hobby—participating as an artist at public street painting festivals, creating ephemeral artworks as large as 16' x 24'. Cuong soon established a reputation for painting amazingly lifelike portraits on asphalt, and he was invited to participate in festivals around the world. More importantly, though, this activity brought him back to painting, and he soon returned to his studio, endlessly refining his technique with more traditional media.

Cuong is a member of the Oil Painters of America and the International Guild of Realism, as well as having been awarded the distinction of Distinguished Pastellist with the Pastel Society of the West Coast. His work has appeared at the Triton Museum in Santa Clara, California, and the Haggin Museum in Stockton, California, as well as in both national and international competitions, exhibiting from coast to coast.

Today, Cuong works in both oil paints and pastels, though casual viewers may at first have trouble distinguishing the two media in Cuong's hands. Though he almost never blends his strokes, Cuong achieves a level of detail and smooth gradations unusual in pastel paintings. In oils, he aims for a realism that never crosses into the photographic, so the viewer always senses how the image formed from its raw materials. Regardless of media, however, Cuong Nguyen's paintings always reveal a fundamentally optimistic view of the world and a sense of wonder towards the beauty that surrounds us.

Yvonne “Bonnie” Maldonado, MD, is Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement at Stanford University and the Taube Endowed Professor of Global Health and Infectious Diseases at Stanford University School of Medicine. She is also Professor of Pediatrics, specializing in Infectious Diseases, and Professor of Epidemiology and Population Health, and is an attending physician at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford.

Dr. Maldonado is a pediatric infectious disease physician and epidemiologist whose research has focused on vaccine-preventable diseases, global health, pediatric HIV, polio eradication, health disparities, and infectious disease prevention. She has led domestic and international research supported by organizations including the National Institutes of Health, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and World Health Organization. During the COVID-19 pandemic, she played a major leadership role in Stanford’s response, leading university-wide task forces and helping guide pandemic policy and planning.

Dr. Maldonado received her medical degree from Stanford University School of Medicine and completed her pediatric residency and pediatric infectious diseases fellowship at Johns Hopkins University. Before joining the Stanford faculty, she served as an Epidemic Intelligence Service Officer with the CDC. She has authored more than 250 peer-reviewed publications and has served in national leadership roles in pediatric infectious diseases and immunization policy. She is an elected member of both the National Academy of Medicine and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

In addition to her clinical and research work, Dr. Maldonado has been deeply involved in faculty development and academic leadership at Stanford. Before becoming Vice Provost for Faculty Advancement, she spent 11 years as Senior Associate Dean for Faculty Development and Engagement at Stanford Medicine.

James M. Glaser joined Santa Clara University in July 2024 after serving over 33 years as a faculty member and 10 years as Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Tufts University. As the chief academic officer at SCU, he oversees a broad portfolio including the College and all the schools, two centers of distinction, libraries, academic support programs, student life and wellness programs, global engagement, and enrollment management. Working closely with President Sullivan, he strategizes on how best to move the institution forward as it pursues its critical educational mission and its quest to be a place of significant knowledge creation.

Glaser received his B.A. from Stanford University and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley. A noted scholar of electoral politics and American political behavior, he is the co-author (with Jeffrey M. Berry and Deborah J. Schildkraut) of the forthcoming book Everyday Democracy: Liberals, Conservatives, and Their Routine Political Lives (University of Chicago Press), which looks at how the habits and attitudes of ordinary liberals and conservatives shape the health of American democracy. His previous books include Changing Minds, if Not Hearts: Political Remedies to Racial Issues (2013, University of Pennsylvania Press, with Timothy J. Ryan), The Hand of the Past in Contemporary Southern Politics (2005, Yale University Press), and Race, Campaign Politics, and the Realignment in the South (1996, Yale University Press). The latter two each received the Southern Political Science Association’s V.O. Key Prize awarded to the year’s best book on Southern politics. Both books were also named among the year's “Outstanding Academic Titles” by Choice, a publishing unit of the Association of College & Research Libraries.  His work has also appeared in journals such as the American Journal of Political Science, The Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, and Political Science Quarterly.

Captain Tom Spink, USN (Ret.) is Chairman of the Board of the Moffett Field Historical Society and Museum and a longtime naval aviator with a personal connection to Moffett Field extending back more than five decades.

A native of Kansas City, Missouri, Captain Spink graduated from the University of Kansas in 1968 and earned his Naval Flight Officer Wings of Gold in 1970. He served with Patrol Squadron 46, flying P-3 Orion anti-submarine patrol missions throughout the Pacific, and later returned to Moffett Field as an instructor with Patrol Squadron 31. After leaving active duty in 1977, he joined Reserve Patrol Squadron 91 at Moffett Field and served as its Commanding Officer from 1986 to 1988. He subsequently held a variety of Navy Reserve command and staff assignments in California, Hawaii, and Virginia.

Captain Spink earned a Master of Science in Systems Management from the University of Southern California. His civilian career included work with Singer-Link, Watkins-Johnson, Precision Echo, and Lockheed Martin, where he worked on MILSTAR, the highly secure U.S. military satellite communications system.

He has been actively involved in preserving and interpreting Moffett Field's history for many years and became Chairman of the Museum's board in 2022. His perspective combines historical research with firsthand experience: he first arrived at Moffett Field in 1970 at age 25 and served during the height of the base's Cold War naval aviation operations.