Rhubarb Fund Advisory Team
Rhubarb’s advisory team is a diverse group of distinguished innovators and practitioners in law, dispute resolution, FinTech, communications, and allied fields, whose experience informs the project's direction and applications.

Federica Carugati, PhD

Advisor – Legal Institutions

Federica is a program director at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University. Her work focuses on political, legal, and economic institutions in pre-modern, citizen-centered, open-access governments; and on the lessons that such institutions’ emergence, configuration, and breakdown may hold for rethinking institution-building in the developing world.

Wilfried De Wever

Advisor – Justice Innovation Investment

Head of the Justice Accelerator initiative and coordinator of the Justice Investment Program at The Hague Institute for Innovation of Law (HiilL), Wilfried guides innovation scale-up processes and connects investors with top justice innovators. The HiiL investor network ranges from private individuals such as lawyers or judges who want to invest in justice initiatives, to professional venture capitalists and institutional investors.

Steven Druker, JD

Advisor – Public Interest Law

Public interest attorney and Executive Director of the Alliance for Bio-Integrity, Steven is an advocate for environmental health and food safety. His 2015 book, Altered Genes, Twisted Truth, was hailed by Jane Goodall in her foreword as "one of the most important books of the last 50 years." In 2017 he received the Luxembourg Peace Prize for exceptional achievement on behalf of the environment. He's been a featured speaker at the Commonwealth Club of California, the City Club of Cleveland, the Silicon Valley Health Institute, Harvard, Columbia, Cornell, and numerous other organizations worldwide.

Gillian Hadfield, JD, PhD Economics

Advisor – Innovation in Law and Dispute Resolution

Director of the USC Center for Law and Social Science, Gillian is in the forefront of the movement to adapt legal systems to a world being rapidly transformed by globalization and technology. She is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council on the Future of Technology, Values and Policy; the World Justice Project’s Research Consortium; and is advisor to a variety of justice organizations and legal-tech ventures. Her book Rules for a Flat World has become essential reading for anyone concerned with legal institutions, innovation, and technology.

Anwar Kashif Mumtaz

Advisor – Emerging Economies

A practicing advocate in corporate and tax law, Anwar is immediate past president of the Pakistan Mediators Association; has been vice president of the Public Interest Law Association of Pakistan, a member of Pakistan’s business delegation to the Republic of China, delegate to JCI World Congresses, etc. Anwar is a member of the International Bar Association, IBA.

Giovanni Rodriguez

Advisor – Communications Strategy

An innovator in branding and communications, Giovanni is a founding partner of The Silicon Valley Story Lab, a media and content-strategy consulting firm dedicated to advancing the art and science of storytelling for the purpose-driven enterprise. He has advised dozens of start-ups—from market entry to exit—and organizations as diverse as The White House (the Obama years), the AARP, Intel, Microsoft, Google, SAP, Stanford University, and Singularity University (which he helped to launch in 2009). He writes what he learns in his business and his travels for Forbes, where he has been a regular contributor since 2011.

Ana Sambold, Esq.

Advisor – Mediation and Arbitration

Ana is co-chair of the California Lawyers Association's Civil Litigation Section ADR Committee and a board member of the Southern California Mediation Association; is active in the American Bar Association’s ADR Section; and teaches conflict resolution and intercultural diversity with the National Conflict Resolution Center. She has mediated more than 700 civil cases, including complex business matters and disputes between culturally diverse parties.

John Sorflaten, PhD

Advisor – Human Factors, UX, Predictive Markets

John is an innovator in usability assessment and optimization for information systems of all kinds. For nearly three decades his work has helped “institutionalize” usability best-practices within some of the largest and most significant organizations in the world. He has taught and applied human-factors and usability principles for a wide variety of clients, including Volkswagen, Sprint, Northrop Grumman, McKesson-HBOC, Pershing, Allen-Bradley (Rockwell Collins), Reuters, Avery Dennison, the U.S. Social Security Administration, and the U.S. Department of Defense, among others.

Tom Stipanowich, JD

Advisor – Dispute Resolution Law

Tom holds the William Webster Chair at Pepperdine Law School where he heads the famed Straus Institute for Dispute Resolution, top-ranked by U.S. News in thirteen of the last fourteen years. He is a much-cited, award-winning author of many books and articles on arbitration and dispute resolution; an arbitrator and mediator of large and complex commercial disputes in the U.S. and internationally; and a recognized expert on dispute resolution law and practice with affiliations to leading law schools and institutions worldwide.

Alex Tudorache

Advisor – ICO Marketing

With a sales/marketing background, Alex has helped guide marketing programs in a wide range of industries, including telecom and high-risk payment processing. His experience in affiliate marketing is extensive, beginning as an Amazon affiliate and ultimately heading ActionPay's multinational affiliate program for two years. A blockchain enthusiast and cryptocurrency investor himself, Alex currently applies his marketing expertise advising high-performing ICOs.