Rigby graduated from Stanford University with Honors, Distinction, and Phi Beta Kappa. He went on to co-found Akimbo Design, a web design firm that created and managed the consumer Web sites for The North Face, Beringer Vineyards, California Pizza Kitchen and completed award-winning projects for Nokia, Sony Pictures, MGM, Calvin Klein, and Macromedia. His company produced three Web design books, won dozens of awards, and had work featured in major media publications such as Newsweek, the New York Times, Washington Post, and USA Today.
In 2002, Rigby took a position as CTO of DFILM - a youth entertainment company creating web and mobile applications. At DFILM, he managed the launch of a youth-focused communication platform in partnership with KPN, the largest wireless operator in the Netherlands. He also launched a viral application called the MovieMaker that is consistently used by 300,000 unique users per month and has been licensed by Yahoo!, Sam Adams, IBM, the Sierra Club, and Old Navy.
In 2004, he founded Mobile Voter, which was the first organization in the U.S. to engage young voters via text messaging (SMS). With grants from Pew Charitable Trusts and MacArthur Foundation, Mobile Voter registered tens of thousands of voters in 2006. In 2007, Rigby wrote the well reviewed book “Mobilizing Generation 2.0: a handbook for using Web2.0 Technologies to recruit, organize, and engage youth.”
And in 2008, Rigby made the transition from 2D to 3D - diving deep into the world of immersive media. He's currently exploring the intersection of social change, immersive interfaces, and mobile technology. COCO Studios, a San Francisco startup dedicated to making the web a visual and collaborative experience. This project often intersects with another project he co-founded in 2008 called The Extraordinaries, which allows people to volunteer on-demand and on-the-spot by mobile phone.
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