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Scott Doggett, Chief Executive Scott and his wife Susan Englen created Kind Visitor after encountering many opportunities to act kindly during an extended trip abroad in 2014. A graduate of U.C. Berkeley, Scott has had a long career as a journalist, reporting on crime and foreign conflict for United Press International and business, cars and outdoors activities for the Los Angeles Times. He was a content producer for LATimes.com for three years, and for four years he covered the electric-vehicle industry for Edmunds.com. The Manhattan native has authored eight travel guides for Lonely Planet and contributed to others for National Geographic, Travelers Tales and TripBuilder. His green credentials include growing thousands of hardwood trees in Panama and founding American Friends of Tropical Forests, a U.S. nonprofit that helped fund a 13,000-acre wildlife preserve in Costa Rica. He has visited 121 countries. -
Stephen Myers, CMO/CTO Stephen is a Silicon Valley professional specializing in product marketing and product management. His career includes leadership positions at Cisco Systems, Americast-Disney, MCI and various startups, among them European software maker Atlantech Technologies, where Stephen played a key role in the company’s $410-million acquisition by Cisco. Stephen has been instrumental in the release of numerous enterprise products, most notably Cisco TelePresence, a multi-billion-dollar range of products for video conferencing. Stephen has also lead multiple business acquisition-integration efforts. Stephen has long history of pro-bono work to help underprivileged strangers. These kind acts include photographing special-needs children for their parents, volunteering at a food bank, and leading a team of 15 volunteers who raised over 2,000 toys during a Christmas drive. -
Bob Sipchen, Chief Creative Officer Bob is a two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, an online pioneer, and an author. Since December 2014, Bob has been a senior editor for the Los Angeles Times. From 2007 through 2014, Bob was Communications Director of the Sierra Club, America’s largest environmental organization, and Editor-in-Chief of Sierra magazine. From 1984 to 2007, Bob was a reporter or editor for the newspaper. He and colleague Alex Raskin shared the 2002 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing. Bob was also a member of the Times team that covered the 1992 Los Angeles riots and won the Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Reporting in 1993. The U.C. Santa Barbara graduate and Chicago native teaches news writing, narrative non-fiction and communications at Occidental College in Los Angeles. He has visited all fifty states and traveled extensively outside the U.S. -
Susan Englen, Spiritual Leader As a registered nurse, Susan has a long history of performing acts of kindness. She has been an operating-room nurse at hospitals or surgical centers in San Francisco, Reno or Aspen the past 15 years, assisting on surgeries ranging from rebuilding the knees of ski-accident victims to emergency Caesarian sections. When not performing acts of kindness, Susan volunteers for such activities as tree reforestation or shoreline cleanup at Lake Tahoe. As a Kind Visitor co-founder, her ideas helped shape the website and she contributed three of the first eight Acts of Kindness following her extended travels with co-founder Scott Doggett. The Chicago native graduated from the University of Hawaii at Manoa. -
Michael Lenert, Content Strategist Michael teaches media law at the University of San Francisco as an adjunct professor in the Department of Media Studies. He recently completed a five-year term as a professor at the Reynolds School of Journalism at the University of Nevada at Reno and has been a consultant on Internet and telecommunications issues for the Ford Foundation, The Asia Foundation, and the cities of San Francisco and New York. Michael is past president of the New York State Communication Association and former co-chairman of World Wide Web Artists Consortium, a digital broadcasting special interest group. He graduated magna cum laude from U.C. Berkeley and earned a doctorate from the University of Texas at Austin. He holds a law degree from Georgetown University and is licensed to practice law in California. -
Michael Austin, Advisor Michael is a three-time Emmy Award-winning TV producer and journalist. From 1991 to 2013, Michael reported national stories as an NBC News producer and writer for the Today Show, NBC Nightly News and the prime-time magazine NOW with Tom Brokaw and Katie Couric. Michael’s news media expertise and talent as a video and web storyteller have earned him recognition for coverage of breaking news, crime, politics, investigative, entertainment and feature stories. In 2014, The Humane Society of the United States honored him with a Genesis Award for outstanding reporting. Michael earned a bachelors degree in journalism from the University of Missouri School of Journalism. Michael’s travel in the United States, Mexico, Asia and Europe has given him real world experiences that help him understand the vital need for Kind Visitor. -
Andrea Bloom, Advisor Andrea is a trailblazing wellness entrepreneur, having combined her business savvy and passion for healthy living to found ConnectWell. ConnectWell brings wellness programming that engages employees and their families in wellness practices to contain healthcare costs, boost productivity and enhance overall well-being. Andrea’s focus on disease prevention stems from her background working for Johnson & Johnson, Roche, medical device startups and health-related nonprofits. While at Johnson & Johnson, she helped bring to market life-saving diabetes monitoring devices to people in developing countries. Andrea regularly travels off the beaten track with her family, helping her three children gain perspective on life in other parts of the world. Andrea received her MBA from Harvard Business School and her BA in Economics from U.C. Berkeley. -
Gideon F. For-mukwai, Advisor Gideon is an American author, educator and entrepreneur. He is the founder of XtraMile Solutions, a training and development company that has delivered training and development programs in 17 countries in Europe, Africa, Middle East, Asia and North America. XtraMile has conducted programs for executives from organizations such as the U.S. Social Security Administration, Department of Veterans Administration, Siemens, Gillette and the Singapore Armed Forces. Prior to his entrepreneurship journey, Gideon served as a commissioned fire officer with the Singapore Civil Defense Force in Singapore, leading a team of 35 HazMat specialists. He obtained a BA in economics from the University of Buea and masters in journalism from the University of Nevada in Reno. Gideon hails from Cameroon, in Central Africa.