Executive Director

Megan Palmer’s work focuses on the responsible development of synthetic biology and biotechnology more broadly. She is the William J. Perry fellow in International Security at the Stanford Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC) and a Research Fellow at the California Institute for Quantitative Biosciences (QB3) at the University of California Berkeley. Concurrently, she is an investigator and serves as Deputy Director of Policy & Practices for the multi-university NSF Synthetic Biology Engineering Research Center (Synberc). Megan previously was a postdoctoral scholar in the Department of Bioengineering at Stanford. She received a PhD from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in Biological Engineering in 2010, and a B.Sc.E. in Engineering Chemistry from Queen’s University in Ontario, Canada in 2004.

Community Director

Rachel has spent her career supporting the development and growth of organizations looking to change the world. Most recently, through her work at FURTHER by Design, she has focused on creating ‘systems change’ through collaborative innovation. She has been instrumental in the development of tools and programs to facilitate collaboration across sectors, and she brings this systems perspective to the organizations she supports.

Prior to FURTHER, Rachel served as Vice Consul for Trade & Investment for the British Consulate in San Francisco, leading healthcare/life sciences economic development initiatives for the British Government in Northern California, Montana, Wyoming, Alaska and Idaho. Rachel started her career with Origo, a social enterprise consultancy, and has spent over a decade supporting non-profit, for-profit and social enterprise organizations with business development and new market strategies, as well as creative approaches to organizational structure and partnerships. She received her B.S. in Psychology from Lancaster University in the United Kingdom.

Special Projects

Jeff Hamaoui is an expert in collaborative innovation and a master facilitator. Fascinated with open innovation, systems collaborations and the intersection between the two, Jeff has spent twenty years building partnerships around the world. He has worked with fortune 500 companies, governments, investors and NGOs trying to understand the strategies, technologies, financial tools and narratives to effectively get groups of people to design together, invest together and work together. Jeff was co-founder of LAUNCH, a global sustainability innovations program supported by NASA, USAID, Department of State and NIKE, and sits on the board of TechSoup Global, which focuses on technology for social change. Jeff received his MA in Education from London University (1993) and BA in Philosophy and Literature from Swansea University (1992). He is fluent in French and Spanish.