Laurie Racine

As an entrepreneur and strategist, Laurie Racine operates from a perspective of 'change' — defining and implementing the mission and objectives of profit and non-profit corporations in digital technology, media, and learning — when the best approach is one that has not yet been considered.

Last year, Laurie co-founded Startl, a 'hothouse for innovation.' Startl is a social enterprise with substantial seed funding from the Gates, MacArthur, Hewlett, Kellogg and Lumina Foundations. Startl's mission is to identify new talent, and accelerate new products and services that have the potential to change the future of learning. She is a founder of dotSUB, a technology driven media company. dotSUB is a digital platform that eliminates language as a barrier to video communication and makes it possible to offer radically low cost, highly flexible video content in multiple languages. dotSUB is often known for powering the TED Conference Open Translation Project.

Laurie was also a principal and Senior Vice President of Strategy and Business Development for the early market leader in browser based video mixing and distribution, Eyespot. She built strategic partnerships, with Lucas Films, NBA, MTV, Paramount, College Humor, Participant Productions, and Demand Media. Prior to Eyespot, Laurie was President of a private venture and foundation, endowed by the founders of Red Hat Inc. During her tenure she launched Lulu Press, invested the seed funding in Creative Commons and co-founded Public Knowledge, the leading public interest group in Washington DC, focusing on issues of the digital age.

She has been a Senior Fellow at the Norman Lear Center of the Annenberg School of Communications, University of Southern California and was the President of Doc Arts, the corporation that produces the Full Frame Documentary Film Festival.

At present, Laurie is Chair of Teachers Without Borders and Public Knowledge. She also serves as a director on the boards of the Tribeca Film Institute, Open Road Media, Creative Commons and the University of California Humanities Research Council. Laurie sits on the Advisory Boards of Road Trip Nation and Fractor. She holds a BA from New York University and did coursework for a PhD in Human Genetics at University of California, Berkeley. She did not complete her dissertation.