2026 Experts
Keynote Speaker
Innovation isn’t about getting it right. It’s about getting it less wrong, over and over, until something works.
In her talk “Congratulations, you failed,” Ajuna Kyaruzi ’17 shares stories from her path since Grinnell, from Google to leading a team at Datadog, and the (many) failures that shaped it. She’ll talk about the ones she hid from, the ones she learned from, and why the shame of falling behind was always more dangerous than the failure itself. You’ll leave with skills that turn “fail fast” from a platitude into a practice: empathy, community, and perseverance.
“You’re building something this week. Some of it won’t work. Good. That’s the point.”
Mentors & Coaches
Gemma Sala
Gemma Sala is an Associate Professor in the Department of Political Science at Grinnell College. She is also involved in the European Studies and the Peace and Conflict Studies concentrations, and she is currently serving on the advisory board for the Institute for Global Engagement.
Emily Kolbe ’07
Emily Kolbe is a shareholder with Ahlers & Cooney, P.C. in Des Moines, Iowa and practices in the firm’s public finance and education groups. Currently, Emily works with school districts on the issuance of governmental bonds, serving as bond and disclosure counsel to assist clients with compliance related to federal tax and securities obligations. Her previous experience as a litigator included defending public and private sector clients in state and federal court against various claims.
Emily grew up in Grinnell and attended Grinnell College, majoring in History. She then attended the University of Iowa College of Law, where she was Editor-in-Chief of the Iowa Law Review. After law school, Emily served for two years as a judicial law clerk for the Honorable Linda Reade, United States District Court for the Northern District of Iowa. Emily and her family have lived in Grinnell since 2020.
Jeanne Pinder ’75
Jeanne Pinder is founder and CEO of ClearHealthCosts, a journalism no-longer-startup bringing transparency to healthcare by telling people what things cost. The company works to build equitable access to healthcare by revealing prices and helping people deal with the complexities of the system.
ClearHealthCosts has partnered with big media organizations and others, bringing deep community engagement and winning multiple prizes. Their work was instrumental in getting consumer protection legislation passed in Louisiana and Texas, and in winning regulatory changes for the New York State surprise billing protections.
Pinder worked at The New York Times as an editor and reporter for nearly 25 years. She took a buyout in 2009, and a year later won a shark-tank-type pitch contest to found ClearHealthCosts.
Her recent TED talk about health costs surpassed 2 million views.
She started in journalism at the age of 13 at her family’s newspaper, The Grinnell Herald-Register. She graduated from Grinnell College with a major in Russian, then did graduate work, eventually living for a time in the U.S.S.R., a place almost as opaque as the healthcare marketplace.
Judges
Joe Bagnoli
Joe Bagnoli is the Vice President for Enrollment and Dean of Admission and Financial Aid at Grinnell College. In his leadership roles he is committed to ethical practices, diversity, access, and social responsibility.
Robert Gehorsam ’76
Robert Gehorsam was a contributing author to the recent best-selling book The Carbon Almanac and continues to work in the climate area, advising venture funds and development organizations in the sector. He is an experienced senior executive, start-up founder, and advisor to early- stage companies and non-profits. He has also served as Executive Director for an educational non-profit and been an advisor to several government agencies in the national security arena on technology, education, and digital media.
Ajuna Kyaruzi’17
Ajuna Kyaruzi manages the SRE & Platform Advocacy team at Datadog, focusing on incident response, service reliability, and helping teams sustainably run large-scale systems. At Grinnell College she majored in computer science and was a leader in the African Caribbean Student Union, Grinnell AppDev, and Women in Computing, among other groups. Ajuna began her career at Google, working on Google Maps and later as a Site Reliability Engineer for Google Cloud. Beyond her technical work, Ajuna is passionate about mentorship and expanding access to tech careers. She serves on the board of Africode and is a member of the Wilson Leadership Council, continuing her commitment to building strong, global communities in and beyond tech.