Meet the Gerald Huff
Fund for Humanity
Board
Since its creation in 2019, the Board of the Gerald Huff Fund for Humanity has led the organization to launch a long list of successful projects with always a goal of raising awareness of Universal Basic Income (UBI) and promoting its understanding, acceptance and implementation.
Dr. Gisèle Huff, is president of the Gerald Huff Fund for Humanity. The loss of her son Gerald to pancreatic cancer in 2018 spurred Dr. Huff to apply her talents and energy to a cause they both shared – concern about technological unemployment, the growing economic divide and the potential of UBI to help address these challenges on a broad scale. Dr. Huff served as San Francisco University High School’s director of development for twelve years, and the Executive Director for the Jaquelin Hume Foundation for twenty-two years where her return on investment for launching blended learning is legendary. During her tenure funding initiatives and raising awareness for education reform, she has held numerous board positions, including founding member and chairman of the Board of Directors of The Learning Accelerator and the Clayton Christensen Institute for Disruptive Innovation, member of the Board of Directors of iNACOL and the Advisory Board of Education Reimagined. She currently serves on the board of Income Movement. Her substantial policy proficiency includes the Advisory Board for Harvard University’s Program on Education Policy, the advisory committee for the National Charter School Research Project at the Center on Reinventing Public Education, and the Executive Committee of the Digital Learning Council. She is the recipient of the Thomas A. Roe Award and the iNACOL Huff Lifetime Achievement Award. She earned a Ph.D. in political science, with a concentration in political philosophy, at Columbia University.
Michèle Huff, Esq. is Gerald Huff’s sister. She has practiced intellectual property and licensing law for the past 30 years. She is currently the Director of the Office of Business Contracts and Brand Protection at U.C. Berkeley where she negotiates revenue-generating agreements and protects and promotes the Berkeley brand. She has a multi-location appointment to assist the Office of the President on trademark matters for the entire UC system. Ms. Huff is the author of The Transformative Negotiator: Changing the Way We Come to Agreement from the Inside Out. Ms. Huff presents workshops nationally to women’s executive groups, managers, and entrepreneurs. She has taught the principles of Transformative Negotiation to Colorado College economics students, University of New Mexico’s Continuing Ed Mediation Certification and EOD ULead staff programs, and mediators at the ADR Institute. She received her BA from Colorado College and her JD from Sandra Day O’Connor College of Law at Arizona State University. She is a member of the California Bar.
Stephen Kuhn met Gerald Huff in their freshman year of high school and together co-founded their first technology company in 1984. He is a strategic thinker and experienced entrepreneur with 40 years of experience in US, Europe, and Asia and is currently a founding partner at Advantary, a San Francisco-based CxO consulting firm helping early- and middle-stage companies grow and achieve their objectives through hands-on executive and board management. His areas of emphasis include strategic relationships, business development, M&A and corporate finance and he has an extensive international network of contacts and relationships in the technology, financial services, conservation, and wine sectors. Stephen has founded or co-founded nine technology companies, and as an engineer in his early career created numerous successful software products. He is currently an advisor to several companies, including KOFA Public Affairs, a national public affairs and advocacy firm. Stephen graduated from UC Berkeley with a degree in the Classics and studied managerial finance at Harvard University.
Scott Santens and Gerald Huff were frequent collaborators on universal basic income and technological unemployment related work. Often described as “by far, the most effective basic income activist out there,” he has lived with a crowdfunded monthly basic income since January of 2016 and has been a moderator of the Basic Income community on Reddit since 2013. As a writer and blogger, his pieces advocating basic income have appeared in The Huffington Post, The Boston Globe, TechCrunch, Vox, the World Economic Forum, Politico, Business Insider, and Futurism among others. As a public speaker, he has presented at the first World Summit on Technological Unemployment and has given keynotes and participated as a panelist at conferences across the United States and the world. He is also on the board of directors of USBIG, Inc., and serves as an advisor to the Economic Security Project and Universal Income Project. He holds a Bachelor of Science in psychology from the University of Washington. He is the editor of the community-building website, Basic Income Today.
Scott Smith is a managing member of C Squared Funds and the director of the foundation he created, the Foundation for a Better Economy, which supports new solutions for revamping the nation’s tax and banking system on the eve of the fourth industrial revolution. He has seeded and nurtured several technology companies and is focused on addressing the ripple effects automation will have in the job market. Scott was a pioneer of structured finance and advised the Mandella administration on the financing of South Africa’s redevelopment program for affordable housing. He is the author of The New Operating System For the American Economy and his latest book, The Bill You Want Congress to Pass, will be out by the end of 2019. It outlines his proposal to replace income, sales, and property taxes with a 0.2% payments tax, which would balance the budget and provide universal basic income, free healthcare, and free college. Scott is a graduate of Northwestern University and the University of South Florida.
Scott Ellis is the founder and CEO of MasteryTrack, and a national expert in catalyzing mastery learning at scale. He has more than 20 years of experience as an executive and consultant in technology and nonprofits, and deep expertise in strategy, operations, finance, measurement of impact, and management coaching. Previously Scott was the founding CEO of The Learning Accelerator, Executive Chairman of Open Up Resources, and Chief Strategy Officer and Chief Operating Officer of New Teacher Center. He has also served on the boards of directors of multiple non-profits and provided consulting support to dozens of others. Earlier in his career Scott spent eight years at Hewlett Packard and was a management consultant at McKinsey & Company. He has an MBA from Stanford and an undergraduate degree in government and economics from Harvard.
