Speakers
New Speakers Added Daily.
Producer, The Chainsmokers & Partner and Co-Founder, MANTIS Venture Capital
Chair and CEO, General Motors
Founder & CEO, Rocket Lab
Co-Founder and CEO, Wiz
Chief Executive Officer, Slack from Salesforce
Founder and Partner, Khosla Ventures
Co-Founder and CEO, Anduril Industries
CEO & Founding Partner, Fearless Fund
Co-Founder, Sierra
Founder & CEO, Center of Countering Digital Hate
Partner, Accel
CEO & Co-Founder, Harness
Co-Founder & General Partner, Footwork
General Partner, NFX
Chief Software Officer, Rivian
Section Chief, Open Source Security, U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency
Co-Founder and CEO, Vanta
General Partner, Andreessen Horowitz
Co-Founder & CEO, Unit
Partner, Index Ventures
Partner, People & Talent, SignalFire
CEO, Pie
Co-Founder and Managing Partner, FPV Ventures
CEO, Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2)
CEO, Fivetran
CEO, Astranis
Head of Trust, MongoDB
Managing Partner, Dcode Capital
Co-founder & Managing Partner, Construct Capital
Co-Founder and CEO, Albedo
Principal, Seraphim Space
Chief Operating Officer, Stoke Space
Founding Partner, Seven Seven Six
Co-Founder, Glacier
Talent Partner, CapitalG
CEO, Luma AI
CEO, Docker, Inc.
Chairman and CEO, DataStax
Founder + CEO, Biofire
Founder & CEO, Quilt
Partner, NEA
Family Office Principle, Elle Family Office
President and Co-Founder, Remote
CEO & Founder, Keebeck Wealth Management
CEO, Comprehensive.io
Co Founder & CEO, Chainguard
CEO, Northwood Space
Executive Director, AI Now Institute
CEO, Furno Materials
Co-Founder, Embedded Ventures
General Partner, Ventures, Galaxy
Managing Partner, RA Capital
General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer, Treasury Prime
Creator of Base, Base
Managing Director, Slingshot Aerospace Ltd.
Co-Founder and Managing Director, Renegade Partners
Managing Partner, Dragonfly
Vice President, Generative AI, Databricks
CEO and Co-Founder, Gusto
Partner, Greylock
Partner, Bessemer Venture Partners
CEO and Co-Founder, True Anomaly
CEO and Co-Founder, Mill
Board Member, Oversight Board
Founder and Managing Partner, Glasswing Ventures
Co-Founder and CEO, Suno
Head of Data Clean Rooms, Snowflake
CEO and Co-Founder, Amplitude
Head of Global Policy, Hugging Face
Director, Bullish
Co-Founder & CEO, Perplexity
General Partner, SkyRiver Ventures
Producer, The Chainsmokers & Partner and Co-Founder, MANTIS Venture Capital
CEO, Redis
Managing Director, Adverb
General Counsel and Co-Founder, Tidelift
CEO, Vibrant Planet
President of Product and Technology, Glean
Co-Founder & General Partner, Hustle Fund
Founder & CEO, Cara
Professor of Computer Science, University of Chicago
Alex Pall
Producer, The Chainsmokers & Partner and Co-Founder, MANTIS Venture CapitalGrammy® Award-winning and Billboard Chart topping artist/producer duo, The Chainsmokers, have evolved into a dominating musical force with a diverse repertoire of songs that have led them to become one of music’s hottest recording artists.
Comprised of Alex Pall and Drew Taggart, their signature sound deftly reaches across indie, progressive and pop realms and has seen them develop some of the biggest breakthrough songs over the course of the last few years. Now in 2020,
The Chainsmokers are currently working on their next chapter of music for their fourth full length album while simultaneously focusing on charitable and business ventures. From donating 20,000 N95 masks to hospitals in New York City and Las Vegas at the peak need for PPE during the pandemic to donations for charities aiding in wildfire relief in Australia and fighting for equal rights across the globe, Alex and Drew are always looking for ways to give back to causes that hit close to home.
Most recently, The Chainsmokers were featured on the cover of Forbes for their entrepreneurial achievements as well as being named by Forbes as the highest paid DJs in the world. Using their ability to identify trends, Drew and Alex have built a track record as seasoned angel investors.
Following their passion for supporting other brilliant entrepreneurs, they joined forces with a seasoned investment team, led by tech investors and entrepreneurs Milan Koch and Jeffrey Evans, to form a new venture capital firm called Mantis. Mantis Venture Capital invests in Seed & Series A consumer companies within the industries of Media & Entertainment, Fintech, and Health & Wellness that focuses on the Gen Z and Millennial population.
Mary Barra is Chair and Chief Executive Officer of General Motors. She was elected Chair of the GM Board of Directors in 2016 and has served as CEO of GM since 2014.
Under Barra’s leadership, GM envisions a world with zero crashes, to save lives; zero emissions, so future generations can inherit a healthier planet; and zero congestion, so customers get back a precious commodity – time.
She is focused on creating the best customer experience and strengthening GM’s core vehicle and services business, while also working to deliver transformative technologies such as electrification, autonomous driving and software.
Prior to becoming CEO, Barra served as GM executive vice president, Global Product Development, Purchasing and Supply Chain, and as senior vice president, Global Product Development. In these roles, Barra and her teams were responsible for the design, engineering and quality of GM vehicle launches worldwide.
Previously, she served as vice president, Global Human Resources; vice president, Global Manufacturing Engineering; plant manager, Detroit-Hamtramck Assembly; and in several other executive engineering and staff positions.
Barra began her career with GM in 1980 as a General Motors Institute (Kettering University) co-op student at the Pontiac Motor Division. She graduated with a Bachelor of Science degree in electrical engineering in 1985, followed by a Master of Business Administration from the Stanford Graduate School of Business in 1990.
Barra serves on the Board of Directors of the Walt Disney Company, the Duke University Board of Trustees and the Detroit Economic Club.
Peter Beck
Founder & CEO, Rocket LabPeter Beck is the founder, Chief Executive Officer, and Chief Engineer of Rocket Lab, a Nasdaq-listed leading launch and space systems company opening access to space to improve life on Earth. Rocket Lab’s capabilities span the space economy, including satellite design and manufacture, industry-leading spacecraft software and components, and reliable launch services. Under Mr. Beck’s leadership, Rocket Lab’s Electron launch vehicle has become the most successful small launch vehicle globally and Rocket Lab satellite subsystems have featured on more than 1,700 missions. Rocket Lab technology enables some of humanity’s most ambitious space missions, including complex interplanetary science missions, national security programs, and vast commercial constellations.
Since founding the company in 2006, Mr. Beck has grown Rocket Lab into a global organization of 1,800 people across the United States, Canada and New Zealand. Today, Rocket Lab’s launch vehicles, satellites and space systems are relied upon by a range of global mission partners including NASA, the United States Space Force, DARPA, the National Reconnaissance Office, and a broad range of commercial satellite and constellation operators.
Assaf Rappaport
Co-Founder and CEO, WizAssaf Rappaport is the Co-Founder and CEO of Wiz, the world’s fastest-growing startup securing everything organizations build and run in the cloud. Wiz serves over 40% of the Fortune 100 and has raised over $1.9 billion at a $12 billion valuation in just four years, with investors including Andreessen Horowitz, Index Ventures, Sequoia Capital, Cyberstarts, Howard Schultz, and others. Before founding Wiz, Assaf was the founder and CEO of the security company Adallom, which was acquired by Microsoft for $320 million in 2015. He then served as Microsoft’s youngest-ever General Manager, overseeing the company’s Cloud Security Group and Israeli R&D Center.
Denise Dresser is the CEO of Slack. For over 20 years, Denise has spearheaded business transformations within many of the world’s largest and most innovative companies. At Slack and as a part of Salesforce, Denise leads the team of Slack technologists, product innovators, marketers, communicators, and customer success professionals who are grounded in Slack’s mission to make people’s working lives simpler, more pleasant, and more productive. Denise previously served as President of Accelerated Industries Sales at Salesforce, leading the distribution and go-to-market strategy for some of Salesforce’s most strategic accounts and for the company’s industry-leading cloud solutions. Prior to Salesforce, she was a sales leader at Oracle. Denise graduated from the University of Massachusetts Amherst. She is a member of the Ad Council Board of Directors, a passionate mentor to future women leaders and top talent, and the executive sponsor for ALSForce, a Salesforce equality group focused on raising awareness about ALS. Denise is based in San Francisco and is the mom to two amazing teenage boys.
Vinod Khosla is an entrepreneur, investor, and technology fan. He is the founder of Khosla Ventures, focused on impactful technology investments in software, AI, robotics, 3D printing, healthcare and more. Mr. Khosla was a co-founder of Daisy systems and founding CEO of Sun Microsystems where he pioneered open systems and commercial RISC processors. One of Mr. Khosla’s greatest passions is being a mentor to entrepreneurs, assisting entrepreneurs and helping them build technology-based businesses. Mr. Khosla is driven by the desire to make a positive impact through technology to reinvent societal infrastructure and multiply resources. He is also passionate about Social Entrepreneurship. Vinod holds a Bachelor of Technology in Electrical Engineering from IIT, New Delhi, a Master’s in Biomedical Engineering from Carnegie Mellon University and an MBA from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Brian Schimpf is Co-Founder and Chief Executive Officer of Anduril Industries where he drives the strategic direction and product roadmap of the defense technology company.
Prior to Anduril, Brian was an early hire at Palantir Technologies, where he built the Foundry product that is now deployed worldwide, and led the engineering and product organizations as Director of Engineering. He served numerous domestic and international government organizations across the intelligence, defense, and law enforcement sectors.
Previously, Brian was the Founder and Lead of Cornell University’s autonomous vehicle research program where his teams competed in the DARPA Grand Challenge and Urban Challenge. Based on this work, he published several technical papers on autonomous vehicles. Brian graduated from Cornell University with a Bachelor of Science in Operations Research and Industrial Engineering. He also serves as a senior advisor and board member for several government technology companies providing solutions to governments, and has previously served on federal advisory councils.
Arian Simone is a Queen, venture capitalist, philanthropist, entrepreneur, best-selling author, and highly sought-after international speaker. She is widely recognized as a trailblazer in her industry, making significant contributions in the area of economic freedom for all and empowering others along the way.
Arian is the CEO and Founding Partner of the Fearless Fund, a groundbreaking venture capital fund that is the first Venture Capital Fund built for WOC by WOC with a focus on investing in pre-seed, seed level, and series A financing which includes institutional investors such as J.P. Morgan Chase, Bank of America, Mastercard, Ally Bank, and more.
With an MBA from Florida A&M University, Arian has demonstrated her expertise and acumen in strategic business management. She established a highly successful public relations and marketing firm, boasting an impressive portfolio of billion-dollar corporate clients including Sony Pictures, Walt Disney, Universal, and other renowned Hollywood studios.
Recognized for her exceptional ability to guide strategic growth and increase company value, Arian’s remarkable resilience and achievements led to her appointment to the Board of Directors for the esteemed Steve Madden Company. Her invaluable insights also extend to the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, where she actively serves on the board, as well as advisory roles for Amazon and Mastercard.
Beyond her professional endeavors, Arian has embraced a regal role as the Queen of Dawa Grand Bereby in Côte D’Ivoire. In this capacity, she collaborates closely with Ivorian government officials to improve the welfare and uplift the lives of the people in her region.
Arian’s impact and influence have garnered widespread recognition, with Entrepreneur Magazine naming her as one of the “”100 Women of Impact.”” Her unwavering commitment to creating opportunities for women of color and her exceptional achievements in various fields truly set her apart as a dynamic and inspiring leader.
Bret is Co-Founder of Sierra. Most recently, he served as Co-CEO of Salesforce. Prior to Salesforce, Bret founded Quip and was CTO of Facebook. He started his career at Google, where he co-created Google Maps. Bret serves on the board of OpenAI.
Imran Ahmed
Founder & CEO, Center of Countering Digital HateImran Ahmed is the founder and CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate US/UK. He is an authority on social and psychological malignancies on social media, such as identity-based hate, extremism, disinformation, and conspiracy theories. He regularly appears on the media and in documentaries as an expert in how bad actors use digital spaces to harm others and benefit themselves, as well as how and why bad platforms allow them to do so. He advises politicians around the world on policy and legislation. Imran was inspired to start the Center after seeing the rise of antisemitism on the left in the United Kingdom and the murder of his colleague, Jo Cox MP, by a white supremacist, who had been radicalized in part online, during the EU Referendum in 2016. He holds an MA in Social and Political Sciences from the University of Cambridge. Imran lives in Washington DC, and tweets at @Imi_Ahmed.
Casey Aylward joined Accel in 2022 and focuses on early-stage investments in cloud-native infrastructure, open-source software, and security companies. Prior to joining Accel, Casey worked at Costanoa Ventures, an early-stage enterprise fund, where she led and incubated several investments in developer tools, data infrastructure, and security. Before investing, Casey was a software engineer at Pinterest where she worked on commerce, collaboration, and core products. Casey joined Pinterest via an acquisition of a former Accel portfolio company, URX, where she was also a software engineer. Casey graduated from Dartmouth College and is from Palm Beach, FL.
Jyoti Bansal is a serial entrepreneur who believes passionately in software’s ability to change the world for the better. He co-founded Harness in 2017 to automate and simplify all software delivery processes and serves as CEO. In 2018, he co-founded Traceable, the leading API security platform, and venture capital firm Unusual Ventures. In 2008, Jyoti founded application intelligence company AppDynamics, which he led to a $3.7B acquisition by Cisco in 2017.
The recipient of multiple leadership awards, Jyoti has been named Forbes’ “Best Cloud Computing CEO to Work for,” San Francisco Business Times’ “Best CEO,” Ernst & Young’s “Entrepreneur of the Year™ for Northern California,” and more.
Jyoti received his B.S. in Computer Science from the Indian Institute of Technology, Delhi. Prior to founding AppDynamics, he worked at several Silicon Valley startups as a software engineer and architect. Jyoti is the lead inventor on over 20 U.S. patents.
Nikhil Basu Trivedi is Co-Founder & General Partner at Footwork, an early-stage focused venture firm in San Francisco investing its first $175M fund. Nikhil was previously a Managing Director at Shasta Ventures, where he led the firm’s investments in Athelas, Canva, ClassDojo, Color, Frame.io, Imperfect Foods, Lattice, and The Farmer’s Dog. He started his career on the investing team at Insight Partners and on the founding team at Artsy. Nikhil graduated from Princeton University with a degree in molecular biology, and serves on the board of trustees of his high school alma mater, Menlo School.
Morgan is the co-founder of Libra and was Head of Strategy for Novi, Facebook’s digital wallet for the Libra payment system. She originally joined Facebook as part of the Corporate Development team in 2017 where she worked on defining Facebook’s strategy around blockchain, cryptocurrencies, and decentralized technology. Prior to Facebook, Morgan ran Corporate Development at Medium where she led the Embedly acquisition and played a key role in developing Medium’s subscription strategy. She began her career on the Deal Team at Andreessen Horowitz. Morgan joined NFX in 2020 to invest in networks and marketplaces across a wide spectrum of sectors, most actively in web3. She loves working with technical Founders who are creating new markets.
Wassym is driving the creation of a vertically integrated software stack at Rivian. He oversees the design of Rivian’s network architecture, security, data and analytics, battery management system and vehicle controls. In Rivian vehicles and in the cloud, these are the systems that make our products smart, safe and intuitive to use. Since joining Rivian in 2019, he’s been building a multi-disciplinary and cross-functional team to meet the complex challenge and unique opportunity of building new vehicles from scratch.
Wassym is a leader in software and systems engineering with rich experience in consumer, semiconductor, internet of things and automotive industries. He started his career in wireless with NXP Semiconductors and Motorola and led the execution of research and development programs at Freescale and Intel. Most recently, Wassym held senior engineering leadership positions at Intel and Silver Spring Networks, which was acquired by Itron.
Aeva Black
Section Chief, Open Source Security, U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security AgencyAeva Black is the Section Chief for Open Source Security at the U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, and an open source hacker and international public speaker with 25 years of experience building digital infrastructure and leading open source projects at technology companies. She has previously served on the OpenSSF Technical Advisory Committee, OpenStack Technical Committee, Kubernetes Code of Conduct Committee, and led open source security strategy within the Microsoft Azure Office of the CTO. In her spare time, Aeva serves on the Board of the Open Source Initiative and enjoys riding motorcycles and supporting her local LGBTQ+ community.
Christina Cacioppo is the CEO and co-founder of Vanta, a leading security and compliance Trust Management platform backed by Sequoia Capital, Craft Ventures, Goldman Sachs Ventures, J.P. Morgan Ventures, Y Combinator, and the venture arms of Atlassian, CrowdStrike, HubSpot and Workday. Over 8,000 companies, including Intercom, Icelandair, Miro and ZoomInfo rely on Vanta to build, maintain and demonstrate their trust—all in a way that’s real-time and transparent. Prior to founding Vanta, Christina led product management for Dropbox Paper and was a member of the investment team for Union Square Ventures. Christina received her B.A. in Economics and M.S. in Management Science and Engineering from Stanford University.
Martin Casado is a general partner at Andreessen Horowitz, where he leads the firm’s $1.25 billion infrastructure practice. He first joined the firm in 2016 and currently serves on the boards of ActionIQ, Ambient.ai, Astranis, Coactive, Convex, dbt Labs, DeepMap.ai, Defined Networking, Distributional, Fivetran, Ideogram, Imply, Isovalent, Kong, Material Security, Metronome, Netlify, Orbit, Parsec Gaming, Pindrop Security, Preset, Rasa, Tabular, Tackle, Tecton, and Truffle.
Martin was previously the cofounder and chief technology officer at Nicira, which was acquired by VMware for $1.26 billion in 2012. While at VMware, Martin was a fellow and served as a senior vice president and general manager of the networking and security business unit, which he scaled to a $600 million run-rate business by the time he left VMware in 2016.
Martin started his career at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory where he worked on large-scale simulations for the Department of Defense before moving over to work with the intelligence community on networking and cybersecurity. These experiences inspired his work at Stanford where he created the software-defined networking (SDN) movement, leading to a new paradigm of network virtualization. While at Stanford he also cofounded Illuminics Systems, an IP analytics company, which was acquired by Quova Inc. in 2006.
For his work, Martin was awarded both the ACM Grace Murray Hopper award and the NEC C&C award, and he’s an inductee of the Lawrence Livermore Lab’s Entrepreneur’s Hall of Fame. He holds both a PhD and Masters degree in Computer Science from Stanford University.
Itai is the CEO and co-founder of Unit with over 10+ years of experience as a fintech operator. Prior to Unit, he was the co-founder and VP of Product at Leverate where he led the company’s international expansion. In 2017, Itai joined 500 Startups as Fintech Entrepreneur in Residence and worked closely with 10+ startups in payments, investing, lending, banking infrastructure & more. He also served as Entrepreneur in Residence at HAX, the world’s most active hardware VC and a mentor at Barclays Techstars (Israel), Founder Institute (Hong Kong), and Yodlee / Envestnet (US). Itai is also a Special Advisor to Ion Pacific, a Hong Kong based investment bank, alongside Mr. David Adelman (formerly the 15th US Ambassador to Singapore) and Mr. John Tsang (formerly the longest-serving Financial Secretary of HK).
Sofia partners with founders who leverage their unique perspective, and personal understanding of a problem, to create businesses that lead to behavioural shifts, powerful network effects, and the reshaping of entire industries, from grocery and ecommerce, to financial services and healthcare.
Sofia is also one of Index’s gaming leads, working with some of the top gaming companies in Europe, creating the next generation of iconic gaming titles. She spends most of her time in the Nordics, but works with entrepreneurs across the continent.
Before joining Index in 2018, Sofia worked as an investor at EQT Ventures in Stockholm and a consultant at EY-Parthenon in London and Paris. She also took part in the European Union Delegation to the OECD. Sofia is a graduate of the London School of Economics (M.Sc. Management) and of the University of Edinburgh (M.A.), where she graduated at the top of her class.
Heather Doshay
Partner, People & Talent, SignalFireDr. Heather Doshay is Partner, People + Talent at SignalFire, the first venture capital firm built like a technology company to better solve for the needs of founders. In this role, she uses nearly 20 years of operating and teaching experience to expertly guide startups to success. Prior to SignalFire, Heather held executive operator roles such as VP People at Webflow and RainforestQA, led Candidate Marketplace at Hired, and taught Organizational Leadership at the University of San Francisco.
Andy Dunn is an entrepreneur, author, and investor. Dunn co-founded the menswear ecommerce brand Bonobos in 2007, and served as the company’s CEO for its first ten years, pioneering the digitally native brand movement. Bonobos was the first American brand launched to scale using e-commerce. The company’s inventory-free store model, called guideshops, redefined what an offline retail experience can be in the digital era. A decade after its founding, Bonobos was acquired for $310 million. In 2022, Dunn published a memoir. In it, he lifts the veil on the mental health demons he’d been privately battling as he built Bonobos. Burn Rate: Launching a Startup and Losing My Mind chronicles his journey at the intersection of entrepreneurship and bipolar disorder. Published by Penguin Random House, the book was named one of the most anticipated books of the year by Forbes and was an Amazon Editor’s Choice in 2022. Dunn’s latest venture is called Pie. Currently in beta, the mantra of the company is “more social, less media.” As an angel investor and a founder of Red Swan, a seed stage venture capital fund, Dunn has backed over 100 startups, including Warby Parker, Coinbase and Hinge. Dunn chairs the board of Monica + Andy, an organic baby apparel brand, and serves on the board of RaisedBy.Us, a social giving not-for-profit. Dunn received his B.A. at Northwestern University and M.B.A. from the Stanford Graduate School of Business. He lives between Chicago and Rio de Janeiro with his wife and their son. He is a Cubs fan.
Pegah Ebrahimi is an advisor to or investor in many category defining startups, including Snyk, Canva, Guild, Applyboard, PsiQuantum and DataRobot. Founders want to work with Pegah because of her world class go-to-market expertise, which she developed during her tenure as COO of Morgan Stanley’s Technology Investment Banking, COO of Cisco’s multi-billion dollar Collaboration business, and the youngest global CIO of Morgan Stanley Bank.
Ali Farhadi
CEO, Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2)Ali Farhadi is the CEO of the Allen Institute for AI (AI2) and a Professor at the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. Ali has been a professor at the UW Allen School since 2012. He first joined AI2 in 2015 to lead the institute’s computer vision research team with a focus on visual common-sense reasoning and the role of actions and interactions in visual understanding. While at AI2, he co-founded Xnor.ai, the first on-device deep learning startup that was acquired by Apple in 2020. Ali led Apple’s next-generation machine learning efforts until 2023 when he rejoined AI2 as CEO in July. Ali’s research impact has been globally recognized with several best paper awards at CVPR, NeruIPS, AAAI, NSF Career Award, and the Sloan Fellowship, and he was named one of Forbes’s Top 5 AI Entrepreneurs in 2018.e
George Fraser is the CEO and co-founder of Fivetran. George founded the company with COO Taylor Brown in 2012 after completing the prestigious Y-Combinator accelerator program. Now trusted by more than 5,000 customers, Fivetran enables data teams to centralize and transform data from hundreds of SaaS and on-prem data sources into cloud destinations. Fast-moving startups and the world’s largest companies use Fivetran to improve operations and accelerate analytics.
John Gedmark is CEO & Cofounder of Astranis and an aerospace engineer. Astranis builds and operates small, low-cost telecommunications satellites for high orbits, starting with geostationary orbit (GEO). Astranis is deploying satellites on contract for enterprise and government customers around the world, bringing low-cost broadband internet to remote and underserved areas. The company has raised over $750 million to date with rounds led by Andreessen Horowitz, Venrock, and Blackrock, and has a team of 300 based out of their San Francisco Bay Area headquarters.
John cofounded and served as Executive Director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation, the industry association for new space companies including SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Virgin Galactic. John reported to a CEO-level board of directors and led the commercial space industry’s efforts to privatize flights of NASA astronauts to low Earth orbit, a historic shift worth more than $10 billion to the commercial space industry.
Previously John served as the Director of Rocket Flight Operations for the X Prize Foundation. John holds a Bachelor of Science degree from Purdue University and a Master of Science degree from Stanford University, both in aerospace engineering, with a focus on rocket propulsion.
George Gerchow is currently Head of Trust at MongDB and was formerly Sumo Logic’s Chief Security Officer & SVP of IT. Gerchow brings over 20 years of information technology and systems management expertise to the application of IT processes and disciplines. His background includes the security, compliance, and cloud computing disciplines. Gerchow has years of practical experience in building agile security, compliance and, IT teams in rapid development organizations.
George has been on the bleeding edge of public cloud security, privacy and modernizing IT systems since being a co-founder of the VMware Center for Policy & Compliance. He is a Faculty Member for IANS – Institute of Applied Network Security and sits on several industry advisory boards. Gerchow is also a known philanthropist and CEO of a nonprofit corporation, XFoundation.
Rebecca Gevalt
Managing Partner, Dcode CapitalRebecca Gevalt is Managing Partner at Dcode Capital which invests alongside leading venture firms in commercially-successful, high-growth technology companies that can dramatically improve the US government. The venture fund launched from Dcode, the partners’ affiliated advisory firm based in Washington, DC, that aims to create a technologically superior federal government. Previously as Dcode’s tech Managing Director, Rebecca built and operated the stage-agnostic accelerator program, scaling venture-backed tech into the federal market. She also launched Dcode’s government business to teach government stakeholders how to find and contract with nontraditional tech companies. Prior to Dcode, Rebecca worked at the CIA for more than a decade, and for some of those years, she worked with In-Q-Tel to bring novel tech startups into the national security space. She holds a BS from Tulane University.
Dayna Grayson is Co-founder and General Partner of Construct Capital, an early stage venture firm that invests in extraordinary founders building technology to transform the most foundational industries of our economy from manufacturing to mobility. Dayna was one of the first venture capitalists to turn her attention to transforming these sectors of our economy through software based models. She backed companies creating new advances in manufacturing, automation, and vertically integrated consumer brands. During her time as a partner at NEA (2012-2020), she was the lead investor from the earliest stages and was on the board of companies including Desktop Metal (2015 – today), Tulip (2017 – 2020), Onshape (acqd by PTC) (2013-2019), and Framebridge (acqd by Graham Holdings) (2014-2020) among others. She also led investments in Guideline, Formlabs, Evenly and Neuralmagic. At Construct, along with her co-founder Rachel Holt, Dayna is exclusively focused on early stage investments and investing behind the accelerating changes in foundational industries that together make up half our economy’s GDP are failing to meet customer expectations. Some of their investments include Copia, Veho, Hadrian, The Rounds, and Verve Motion. Dayna started her career in product development and led design efforts at Blackbaud [BLKB], the leading global provider of software to nonprofit organizations, as the company grew to over $130 million in revenue and completed a successful public offering and was an investor at North Bridge Venture Partners from 2007-2012. She is a graduate of the University of Virginia (Systems Engineering) and Harvard Business School, where she serves as a venture partner today.
Topher is the cofounder/CEO of Albedo, the first space company to commercialize the new orbit regime of VLEO (very low earth orbit). Albedo’s satellites will capture imagery at a resolution that today can only be obtained by planes/drones, enabling applications across defense/intelligence, utilities, agriculture, insurance, and energy industries. Prior to Albedo, Topher was an engineer at Lockheed Martin working on national security space programs.
Maureen is a deep-tech venture capitalist based in London, focusing on space. She joined Seraphim Space in 2022, a multi-stage, space specialist investor, investing globally from pre-seed to pre-IPO. Maureen has led investments in Voyager Space and Atmos Space Cargo and serves as a board observer for D-Orbit, Edgybees, and Atmos. Maureen has an operator background in space as COO of Apollo Fusion, acquired by Astra Space for $145m. Maureen holds a PhD in Nuclear Engineering from The University of Manchester.
Kelly Hennig, COO, Stoke Space
Before joining Stoke as COO, Kelly Hennig held both executive and engineering roles at Raytheon, as well as multiple engineering, program management and strategy roles at Northrop Grumman. Kelly’s rich experience leading development programs, including proposing, capturing and executing major contracts, has earned her a clear and respected reputation in aerospace. Kelly has been awarded 10 Patents and 5 Trade Secrets as well as multiple awards and distinctions for innovation and engineering.
She holds a BS in Electrical Engineering from Rutgers as well as a MS in Electrical Engineering from the University of Michigan. As COO of Stoke, Kelly strategically guides the company creating efficiency and process while preparing to scale.
Katelin is Founding Partner at Alexis Ohanian’s venture capital firm Seven Seven Six, managing the firm’s operations and actively investing in early stage tech companies. Having spent her early career at Pixar Animation Studios, she parlayed her culture-building skills to tech, dedicating over a decade to developing teams as a senior executive at some of the internet’s most influential startups, including Klout and Reddit. As an investor, Katelin is committed to helping founders and the broader venture ecosystem evolve their diversity, equity, inclusion & belonging practices. She is passionate about funding and supporting the people-first companies that will shape the next chapter of technology, with a keen eye on Web3, HealthTech, ClimateTech, and the delicate balance that enables us to thrive.
Rebecca Hu
Co-Founder, GlacierRebecca is the founder and CEO of Glacier, a recycling startup building AI and robotics to help recyclers, brands, producers, and government agencies measure and improve recovery rates for their highest-priority recycled commodities. Rebecca is a Waste360 40 Under 40 winner and a mentor for the Google Circular Economy Accelerator. She has spoken at several leading industry conferences, including the Plastics Recycling Conference, the National Recycling Congress, the Sustainable Packaging Coalition conference, and the Near Future Summit. Prior to founding Glacier, Rebecca was a consultant at Bain & Company and advisor to several early- and growth-stage startups. Glacier works with several recyclers across the US, major brands including Amazon and Colgate-Palmolive, and government agencies including the City of Phoenix and Michigan Department of Environment. Glacier’s circularity work has been featured in several leading publications, including CBS, NBC, Inc., Axios, and TechCrunch.
Lauren Illovsky leads Talent at CapitalG. She partners with portfolio companies on all aspects of their talent strategy from executive recruiting and organizational development to hiring independent board directors. She was formerly at Accel and Andreessen Horowitz.
Lauren holds a BA in Economics from Pomona College. She lives in the East Bay with her husband and two kids.
Amit Jain is the CEO and Co-Founder of Luma AI, a startup pursuing visual intelligence through multi-modal foundation models. Luma is working on natively combining the next generation of AI with delightful products, and most recently released Dream Machine, a market leading Video Generation model that garnered 1MM users in 4 days. Amit founded Luma from Apple, where he worked as a Systems and Machine Learning Engineer, leading work on the Passthrough feature for the Apple Vision Pro and before that on the integration of the first LIDAR sensors for the iPhone. Amit also has experience in multiple startups, and studied Mathematics and Physics at university.
Scott Johnston leads Docker, the company behind the open-source Docker project and the global container ecosystem of people, products, platforms, and partners revolutionizing how modern apps are built, shared, tested, and run.
Scott joined Docker in 2014 as its first product manager and went on to serve as COO and CPO before being named CEO in November 2019. Scott began his career as a software engineer and subsequently served in operational and leadership roles in product, business development, operations, and marketing with industry-leading companies such as Sun Microsystems, Cisco, Netscape, Puppet, and Loudcloud (parent of Opsware).
Scott lives in Palo Alto with his wife and three children and holds degrees in engineering and business from Stanford University.
Chet Kapoor is Chairman and CEO of DataStax, the real-time AI company. He has more than two decades of leadership across tech giants like Google, IBM, and BEA Systems, Chet has always thought about infusing AI into businesses at scale. With his roots at Steve Jobs’ company NeXT, Chet learned the power of working with incredible people who want to change the world. This insight helped fuel his career and he ultimately took the helm of Apigee as CEO in 2007 where he saw APIs as a platform for bringing AI to the enterprise.
After a successful IPO and eventual acquisition of Apigee by Google, Chet dug in and recognized the solution to deeply enabling AI at scale was to start with data. His journey culminated when he became the CEO of DataStax in October 2019. With a focus on strategy, operations, and people, the company launched Astra DB—a pioneering DBaaS powered by Apache Cassandra. Now, with vector capabilities, enterprises and developers can get powerful generative AI applications into production fast.
Kai Kloepfer is the Founder & CEO of Biofire, a leading defense technology company dedicated to building the future of firearms. Biofire is the first company to successfully integrate software and hardware to create a next-generation firearm with potential applications well beyond personal security. Biofire’s unique technology has a vast amount of applications, not only for consumers in the US, but also for security services, law enforcement and defense agencies in service of America and its allies.
Paul founded Quilt after committing himself to designing a company that he could spend the rest of his life on. A breakthrough came in 2022 when he realized the answer was working on whatever problem was most threatening to the next generation of humans; that the problem today is climate change. Paul built his first internet business as a teenager, founded Learndot, an education platform, and was a Partner at Google’s Area 120. He prefers to sleep at a cool 65F.
Vanessa joined NEA as a Partner in 2016 and focuses on enterprise and consumer investing. She has led investments in Assembled, Kindred, Rewind AI, Cleo, Evernow, Rocket.Chat, and Mejuri, among others. She is also a board observer at Forethought, SafeBase, Orby AI, Granica, Modyfi, and HEAVY.AI. She was a board observer at Robinhood until its IPO in 2021. Prior to Venture, she led product teams at Box, Twilio, Disney, and Xbox.
Eti Lazarian
Family Office Principle, Elle Family OfficeEti Lazarian learned leadership skills early in life completing her mandatory service in the Israel Defense Forces where she rose to become a Staff Sergeant in the Givati Brigade, an elite infantry unit. She followed that by completing both her BA (in finance) and her MBA at the University of Derby in the United Kingdom.
Several years later, Eti moved to the United States to become a G.O.D.- General Operations Director for insignia, LLC where she oversees a variety of real estate projects that the firm handles.
As well as being involved in Insignia, Eti, as a family office principle, overseas family investments in other asset categories. One of her interests is the evolution of EV technologies and she directs investments into various projects around that space.
One of her deepest passions in life is philanthropy, a passion she has passed on to her daughters involving them in projects from food distribution during the Covid crises to arranging small suitcases for children in shelters, a passion that continues with new projects each and every day under a simple philosophy of “Be Kind”.
Marcelo is the co-founder and President of Remote. Marcelo was previously VP of Engineering at Unbabel and has held several CTO positions. He frequently speaks at events about leadership and managing remote teams. Marcelo is also a startup advisor and mentor to entrepreneurs. He is a passionate engineer, proud dad, and sci-fi nerd.
Bruce Lee
CEO & Founder, Keebeck Wealth ManagementBruce is the Founder of Keebeck Wealth Management, and the source of its namesake. Keebeck, Bruce’s given name by his first-generation US immigrant parents, means “to ascend.”
As a Wealth Advisor, Bruce draws on his extensive knowledge of multi-generational wealth creators to determine the role an advisor can serve in a client relationship. With 35 years of investment experience alongside some of the world’s largest financial institutions. Bruce leads Keebeck Wealth Management with a vision of empowering clients through a transition of being the CEO of their company to becoming CEO of their capital.
In the past, Bruce was named to the Barron’s “Top 100 Financial Advisors” list every year since 2007, the Barron’s “Top 1,200 Financial Advisors” list in 2015, 2016, 2017, and 2018 and the Financial Times’ “Top 400 Financial Advisors” in 2014. While working with Credit Suisse from 2004 through 2011, Bruce also served as a member and participant on the Global Products and Services Committee representing the Americas.
“Roger is the CEO of Comprehensive.io, a compensation management startup. He is also the creator of Layoffs.fyi.
Previously, Roger co-founded Human Interest, a digital 401(k) provider used by over 20,000 businesses.”
Dan Lorenc is co-founder and CEO of Chainguard, a leading software supply chain security company. Dan has been working on and worrying about containers since 2015 as an engineer and manager at Google. He started projects like Minikube, Skaffold, and Kaniko to make containers easy and fun, then got so worried about the state of OSS supply-chains he helped found the Tekton and Sigstore projects to make it easier to build and use containers securely; as well as SLSA a leading framework for software security and supply chain integrity. He has been involved with the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, chaired the Continuous Delivery Foundation technical oversight committee, and sits on the governing board for the Open Source Security Foundation.
Bridgit Mendler is the Co-Founder and CEO of Northwood. Northwood is building shared infrastructure to address fundamental data transmission bottlenecks impacting the space industry. Designed from the ground up, Northwood’s ground network is built to rapidly scale capacity for satellite communication. Prior to founding Northwood, Bridgit ran two companies in television and music. She served as leading actress on multiple series including Disney’s Good Luck Charlie and she was a platinum songwriter and recording artist. Bridgit worked at the FCC on satellite licensing and regulation while attending Harvard Law School. She has earned a Masters from MIT and a JD from Harvard.
Sarah has spent the last fifteen years interrogating the role of technology companies and their emergence as powerful political actors on the front lines of international governance. Sarah brings this depth of expertise to policymaking in her current role co-directing AI Now, with a focus on addressing the market incentives and infrastructures that shape tech’s role in society at large and ensuring it serves the interests of the public. Her forthcoming book, Tracing Code (University of California Press) draws on years of historical and social science research to examine the origins of data capitalism and commercial surveillance.
Sarah’s award-winning research is featured in leading academic journals and prominent media platforms including the Washington Post, the Atlantic, the Financial Times, Nature and the Wall Street Journal. She regularly advises members of Congress, the White House, European Commission, UK Government, Consumer Financial Protection Board and other US and international regulatory agencies and the City of New York, and has testified before Congress on issues including artificial intelligence, competition and data privacy.
She recently completed a term as a Senior Advisor on AI at the Federal Trade Commission, where she advised the Agency on the role of artificial intelligence in shaping the economy by working on competition and consumer protection matters. She currently serves on the OECD’s AI Futures Working Group, and has affiliations as a Visiting Research Scientist at the Network Science Institute at Northeastern University and at Cornell University’s Citizens and Technology Lab. She holds Doctoral and Masters Degrees from the University of Southern California, where she was the Wallis Annenberg Graduate Research Fellow, and has received Google Policy and New America Cybersecurity Fellowships, as well as a Foreign Language and Area Studies Scholarship.
As founder & CEO of Furno Materials, Gurinder and his colleagues are working to re-envision energy-efficient and zero-emission cement production by leveraging novel combustion to re-designing the cement plant to be compact and modular. Born in India and raised in rural Australia, Gurinder received a Bachelor of Advanced Science from University of New South Wales, Sydney and a Master of Science in Earth System Science from Stanford University. He expresses himself by devoting his full efforts taking on big, audacious mental and physical challenges.
Jordan Noone is the Co-Founder, CTO, and General Partner at Embedded Ventures, the skunkworks of deep tech venture capital. Launched with his Co-Founder Jenna Bryant. Jordan is Relativity’s Co-Founder and founding CTO – as of 2020, Relativity is the world’s second most valuable private space company. As Relativity’s CTO, Jordan focused on technical direction and engineering design, including: developing printing technology, launch vehicle design, propulsion design, software development, infrastructure development, and government affairs. Jordan also led many Relativity initiatives including: expansion of Relativity’s Stargate Factory into the rest of aerospace manufacturing, Relativity’s strategy for expanding printing technology off-planet; and the ability of Relativity’s factory flexibly scale to a wide range of rocket sizes. Jordan has had a lifelong interest in aerospace, including the design and build of spaceflight hardware at the age of 18 while at the University of Southern California, and becoming the first student and youngest individual in the world to get Federal Aviation Administration clearance to fly a rocket to space (150 kilometer altitude) while leading USC’s Rocket Propulsion Lab. In 2015 he started Relativity when 22 years old. He has been chosen for “30 Under 30” by Forbes, Business Insider, and Inc. Magazine. He received a BS in Aerospace Engineering, and dropped out of a BS in Biophysics, both from University of Southern California. Outside of Relativity, Jordan is active in promoting STEM education worldwide with the US Department of State.
Will focuses on early-stage investments in protocol layer infrastructure, DeFi applications, and software products. Before leading investments, Will supported the firm’s research function and built quantitative risk software for the trading business. Prior to joining the firm, he worked on data science for the Ethereum protocol FOAM. He holds a B.S. in Mathematics and Architecture from Stanford University. Will has led several investments for Galaxy since 2019, including Aleo, Axelar, Celestia, Centrifuge, Gensyn, and Risc Zero.
Brigid O'Brien
Managing Partner, RA CapitalBrigid O’Brien joins RA Capital as a Managing Partner, Planetary Health. Brigid’s primary responsibility at RA is to lead investments in private companies that are developing innovative solutions to address climate change and environmental sustainability. Prior to joining RA, Brigid was the Head of Venture Investments for BHP Ventures, the internal venture capital unit within the world’s largest mining company, where her investment mandate was to help the decarbonization of BHP’s operations and to improve the sustainability of resource extraction. Brigid was responsible for starting the venture fund and led investments in multiple sectors, including advanced analytics platforms, biomining and bioremediation, novel chemical leaching, long-duration energy storage, traceability of products, carbon removal, and green steel. Prior to BHP, Brigid was at In-Q-Tel (IQT), the strategic investment arm of the CIA and the US Intelligence Community; she co-founded IQT’s Australian subsidiary, served as its Managing Director, and built an international program to support a global innovation initiative through investing in the Asian-Pacific region. Brigid holds a BS in Chemistry (Hons) from the Commonwealth Honors College at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst (2002) and a PhD in Materials Science and Engineering from Johns Hopkins University (2009).
Sheetal Parikh
General Counsel, Chief Compliance Officer, Treasury PrimeWith over 19 years experience practicing law in the financial services regulatory landscape, Sheetal works with Treasury Prime’s bank and fintech clients on product development, commercial negotiations and to develop compliance solutions and support them on regulatory compliance matters. Prior to joining Treasury Prime, Sheetal led the Legal and Compliance teams at Synapse where she oversaw legal analysis on new product development and product construct, commercial and vendor agreements and regulatory compliance. Previously, she served as Senior Director of Compliance and Regulatory Counsel for PLS Financial Services, as Vice President of Legal & Compliance for Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, and as part of the Securities and Commodities litigation group at Neal, Gerber & Eisenberg LLP. Sheetal has a B.A. in South Asian languages from the University of Chicago, and a J.D. from the Case Western Reserve School of Law.
Jesse Pollak is the creator of Base and a VP of Engineering at Coinbase, where he aims to bring a billion people onchain. Prior to Base, Jesse led Coinbase’s consumer-facing engineering from early 2017 to middle 2021, including leading teams that worked on building Coinbase, Coinbase Pro, and Coinbase Wallet.
Melissa Quinn is the General Manager of Slingshot Aerospace Ltd. Melissa leads the international business unit to empower global organizations with comprehensive and actionable insight, supporting the responsible uses of space. Melissa is driving the international expansion of Slingshot Aerospace to deliver the acceleration of space sustainability, creating a safer, more connected world.
Renata is a venture capitalist, futurist, and co-founder of Renegade Partners. Over the past 15 years, she has invested in founding teams transforming the trajectory of humanity through technology. Prior to launching Renegade with Roseanne Wincek in 2020, Renata specialized in early-stage deep technology investments as a Partner at Lux Capital. She previously served as General Partner at Felicis Ventures, where she worked closely with companies unlocking new markets and business models, including Dollar Shave Club ($1B acquisition by Unilever), Bonobos (acquired by Walmart), Planet (micro satellites), and Cruise Automation ($1B acquisition by GM). Before becoming a venture capitalist, Renata helped manage Stanford University’s endowment, investing in both private equity and venture capital funds. She earned her MBA and LL.M (Master of Law in Law, Science, and Technology) degrees from Stanford University, and her JD law degree from Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro. She is a CFA charterholder. Renata is also a three-time state champion black belt in karate, Bossa Nova guitar player, and Brazilian immigrant.
Haseeb is Managing Partner at Dragonfly and is a longtime technology-focused crypto investor. Haseeb was previously a General Partner at Metastable Capital (now acquired by Dragonfly). Prior, Haseeb founded a stablecoin startup, was a blockchain engineer at Earn.com (acquired by Coinbase), an anti-fraud engineer at Airbnb, and was previously a top 10 globally ranked professional poker player. He has taught a class on web3 Entrepreneurship at UC Berkeley and is widely recognized for his technical expertise in crypto.
Naveen Rao, PhD is the Vice President of Generative AI at Databricks and a recognized leader in the generative AI field. Naveen was formerly the CEO and co-founder of MosaicML, an AI company acquired by Databricks in 2023 that enables organizations to develop state-of-the-art large AI models with their own data. Before founding MosaicML, Naveen was the CEO and co-founder of Nervana Systems, the first hardware startup for modern deep learning. After Nervana was acquired by Intel Corporation in 2016, Naveen became Intel’s Head of AI and led Intel’s AI program, which he then grew into its own division. Prior to Nervana, Naveen held various AI research, design, and architecture roles. He holds a PhD in Computational Neuroscience from Brown University and a BSEE in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science from Duke University.
Josh Reeves is the chief executive officer and co-founder of Gusto. He leads the company on its mission to create a world where work empowers a better life, and building Gusto to its full potential is a multi-decade mission for him. Gusto exists at the connection between employer and employee, helping over 300,000 companies across America with payroll, health insurance, compliance, employee onboarding, HR, and more. He holds bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Stanford University, where he was a Mayfield Fellow and a recipient of the Terman Engineering award.
Corinne partners with early-stage founders who are creating data and AI products at the infrastructure and application layers. She works with companies like Adept, Baseten, Braintrust, Common Room, Opal, and WarpStream.
Corinne built Greylock’s Edge program, which is a company-building program where we seek out promising founders and ideas at the earliest stages, and work with them to get those ideas off the ground. She also launched Greylock’s Scout program, through which we invite top angel investors to form a special relationship with Greylock.
Elliott Robinson is a Partner at Bessemer Venture Partners where he leads the growth investment practice and is primarily focused on cloud software investments. He is currently a board member for Coactive AI, Databook, Hinge Health, Hyperscience, Imply Data, Netlify and Render.
Even establishes True Anomaly’s strategic objectives and aligns resources for their execution. Prior to co-founding True Anomaly, Even served as an Air Force officer, leading interdisciplinary teams of space operators, scientists, and engineers to develop and evaluate the performance of military systems and tactics designed to protect U.S. and allied space assets. Even is the author of six seminal texts that serve as foundational doctrine and training for U.S. military space operations. He was a major contributing author of the U.S. Space Force’s inaugural Spacepower: Doctrine for Space Forces. He has held leadership positions in space system developmental and operational test, training, spacecraft operations, and joint fires. In these roles, he provided key insights into the practices needed to successfully deploy space security satellites and supporting infrastructure.
Matt Rogers is the CEO and co-founder of Mill. Mill has built an entirely new system to prevent waste, starting with food. The company has created a practical and impactful way to take steps at home that are good for your kitchen and our planet.
Matt is also the co-founder of Incite.org, a values-based investor that provides catalytic capital and guidance for world positive start-ups, non-profits, and activists. Heeding the call to address the climate crisis, Matt leads Incite.org’s investments in climate solutions as well as nonprofits and advocacy groups advancing climate policy.
Prior to Incite, Matt was the co-founder of Nest, where he built the team that created the first machine learning thermostat and the leading brand for the connected home. Before Nest, Matt started his career at Apple, building the software team for 10 generations of the iPod. He was one of the first engineers on the original iPhone and was involved in the development of 5 iPhone generations, and the first iPad. Matt earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Carnegie Mellon University.
Pamela San Martín is a member of Meta’s Oversight Board, which reviews content policy decisions for Facebook, Instagram and Threads. She is lawyer from Mexico City who has dedicated her career to advancing human rights, freedom of expression and democratic institutions. Between 2014 and 2020, she served as one of 11 Electoral Councilors at Mexico’s National Electoral Institute – the highest position in the country’s electoral management body. There, she worked on organizing peaceful elections and managing key issues of campaign regulation and freedom of speech and information. As Electoral Councilor, she played a central role in developing policies to guarantee minority rights in democratic processes including trans and disability rights and quotas for indigenous people. She has also sat on the editorial board of one of Mexico’s most widely circulated newspapers. Prior to her time at the Electoral Institute, San Martin worked at Mexico City’s Human Rights Commission for almost a decade. She is currently an international consultant on elections, democracy, and human rights, particularly in countries facing polarization and violence, and has participated as an expert in international observation missions.
Rudina Seseri is Founder and Managing Partner of Glasswing Ventures, leading the firm’s investments in Artificial Intelligence (AI) enabled enterprise software as a service (SaaS), cloud, Information Technology (IT) software, and vertical markets. Rudina has led investments and/or served on the Board of Directors of Reprise, Verusen, ChaosSearch, Basetwo, Inrupt, FeatureByte, Plannuh (acquired by Planful), Zylotech (acquired by Terminus), Celtra (acquired by STG), CrowdTwist (acquired by Oracle), and Navigant Consulting (acquired by Veritas), among others.
Rudina has 19 years of investing and operational experience in high-growth AI and Frontier Technology companies. Before venture capital, She was a Senior Manager in the Corporate Development Group at Microsoft Corporation, where she led several successful transactions and investments.
Rudina was appointed as an Executive Fellow within the faculty and staff at Harvard Business School (HBS) following four consecutive years of being chosen by the Dean of HBS to serve as the Entrepreneur-In-Residence for the Business School. Rudina was honored as a member of the inaugural group of Rock Venture Capital Partners at HBS and appointed to the Board of Directors of the New England Venture Capital Association. Rudina serves on the boards of M&T Bank and MSC Industrial Supply and is a member of the Governor of Massachusetts’ Artificial Intelligence Strategic Task Force. Recognized by Business Insider as a 2024 Top Woman Early-Stage Investor and one of the most important VCs in Boston, she has also been featured in Entrepreneur Magazine’s Top 100 Women Entrepreneurs and Venture Capital Journal’s Women of Influence.
Rudina graduated magna cum laude from Wellesley College with a BA in Economics and International Relations and holds an MBA from HBS.
Mikey Shulman is the cofounder and CEO of Suno, the leading music AI company. Prior to founding Suno Mikey was the first machine learning engineer and head of machine learning at Kensho technologies, which was acquired by S&P Global for over $500 million. Mikey received a Bachelor of Science in Applied Physics and Applied Mathematics from Columbia University and a PhD in Physics from Harvard university. In his spare time Mikey is a lecturer at MIT’s Sloan School of Management and an aspiring mediocre musician and athlete.
Kamakshi Sivaramakrishnan serves as Snowflake’s Head of Data Clean Rooms where she leads the vision and strategy for Snowflake’s clean room initiatives. She is the co-founder and former CEO of Samooha, a data collaboration company that was acquired by Snowflake in 2023. A repeat founder, her previous company Drawbridge was acquired by LinkedIn in 2019 where she led the integration and identity charter for LinkedIn Marketing Solutions until 2021. Prior to founding Drawbridge, Kamakshi was a Senior Research Scientist at AdMob, which was acquired by Google in 2010. She serves on the Board of Overseers at Boston University and has served on the Board of Directors at iHeartMedia since 2018. She received her Ph.D. in Information Theory and Algorithms from Stanford University.
Spenser Skates is the CEO and co-founder of digital analytics leader Amplitude (Nasdaq: AMPL). He co-founded the company in 2012 to help organizations build better products through data, taking the company public via a direct listing in September 2021. Skates previously worked as an algorithmic trader at DRW Trading Group and graduated with a B.S. in Bioengineering from MIT where he was the back-to-back champion of Battlecode, MIT’s largest programming competition.
Irene Solaiman is the Head of Global Policy at AI company Hugging Face, where she leads public policy and conducts social impact research. She serves on the Partnership on AI’s Policy Steering Committee and the Center for Democracy and Technology’s AI Governance Lab Advisory Committee. Irene also advises responsible AI initiatives at OECD and IEEE. Irene formerly initiated and led bias and social impact research at OpenAI, where she also led public policy. She also previously built AI policy at Zillow Group. Irene’s research includes release strategies, value alignment, social impact, and combating misuse and malicious use. She was recently named one of MIT Tech Review’s 35 Innovators Under 35 in Artificial Intelligence in 2023 for her research.
Natalie Sportelli is a Director at Bullish, an early-stage consumer venture capital firm and brand consultancy based in New York. Before investing at Bullish, she was employee number four at Thingtesting, a discovery and review platform for consumer brands backed by Forerunner Ventures. She has worked in journalism as an Associate Editor at Forbes editing the Under 30 franchise, and also served as a Director at early-stage venture capital firm Lerer Hippeau.
Aravind Srinivas is the CEO of Perplexity, the conversational “answer engine” that provides precise, user-focused answers to queries — with in-line citations. Aravind co-founded the company in 2022 after working as a research scientist at OpenAI, Google, and DeepMind. To date, Perplexity has raised over $165 million from investors including Jeff Bezos, Nat Friedman, Elad Gil, and Susan Wojciki. He has a PhD in computer science from UC Berkeley and a Bachelors and Masters in Electrical Engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras. You can find him on Twitter/X and LinkedIn.
Hyuk-Jeen Suh is the General Partner of SkyRiver Ventures, a deep tech and digital health focused venture capital fund investing in frontier technologies. He is the cofounder of ven^x, a collaborative VC hub in Boston to foster cooperation, syndication, and knowledge sharing among deeptech VCs. He brings 25 years of experience in the consumer electronics, biotech, finance and semiconductor industries.
Prior to SkyRiver Ventures, Hyuk-Jeen created and was the Head of Samsung Ventures America East Coast office. Before joining Samsung, he worked at J.P. Morgan investment banking in the Technology, Media, and Telecom group. Prior to J.P. Morgan, he was the global Senior Business Development and Marketing Manager at MEMSIC, a semiconductor startup. Before MEMSIC, Hyuk-Jeen was a Senior Research Engineer at Sequenom, a biotech startup, where he designed DNA biochips. He began his career at Intel Corporation as a process engineer.
Hyuk-Jeen advises startup companies and is a mentor at various startup accelerators in the U.S., Canada, and Asia. He serves as Entrepreneur-in-Residence at Yale University, startup mentor for the Blackstone Launchpad at Cornell University, and National Science Foundation i-Corp venture mentor at Northeastern University.
Hyuk-Jeen earned his Ph.D. in electrical engineering from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He earned his MBA from Yale School of Management. He holds a BS in mechanical engineering, BA in economics, and ME in electrical engineering, all from Cornell University.
Drew Taggart
Producer, The Chainsmokers & Partner and Co-Founder, MANTIS Venture CapitalGrammy® Award-winning and Billboard Chart topping artist/producer duo, The Chainsmokers, have evolved into a dominating musical force with a diverse repertoire of songs that have led them to become one of music’s hottest recording artists.
Comprised of Alex Pall and Drew Taggart, their signature sound deftly reaches across indie, progressive and pop realms and has seen them develop some of the biggest breakthrough songs over the course of the last few years. Now in 2020,
The Chainsmokers are currently working on their next chapter of music for their fourth full length album while simultaneously focusing on charitable and business ventures. From donating 20,000 N95 masks to hospitals in New York City and Las Vegas at the peak need for PPE during the pandemic to donations for charities aiding in wildfire relief in Australia and fighting for equal rights across the globe, Alex and Drew are always looking for ways to give back to causes that hit close to home.
Most recently, The Chainsmokers were featured on the cover of Forbes for their entrepreneurial achievements as well as being named by Forbes as the highest paid DJs in the world. Using their ability to identify trends, Drew and Alex have built a track record as seasoned angel investors.
Following their passion for supporting other brilliant entrepreneurs, they joined forces with a seasoned investment team, led by tech investors and entrepreneurs Milan Koch and Jeffrey Evans, to form a new venture capital firm called Mantis. Mantis Venture Capital invests in Seed & Series A consumer companies within the industries of Media & Entertainment, Fintech, and Health & Wellness that focuses on the Gen Z and Millennial population.
Rowan is a recognized Silicon Valley leader and has a depth of experience in software development and cloud innovation. He began his career building software in both the consumer and enterprise spaces in the 1990s, and holds a number of patents in computer security and operating systems.
Rowan became Redis CEO in February 2023 after serving for four and a half years as CEO of Five9, Inc. (NASDAQ:FIVN). As CEO, Rowan built Five9 into a billion dollar business, and quadrupled revenue while expanding the company’s profitability.
Prior to joining Five9 he was SVP and General Manager of Cisco’s Applications Group and an executive leadership team member. Previously Rowan developed and built Symantec’s SaaS strategy as Group President of sales, marketing, and product development.
In addition to being a CEO and industry leader, Rowan remains an active software developer having taught himself to code on a Commodore 64 when he was 11 years old.
April Underwood
Managing Director, AdverbApril Underwood is co-founder and Managing Director of Adverb Ventures, a venture capital firm investing in early-stage technology startups launched in 2023. In addition, April is a member of the boards of directors for Zillow Group and Eventbrite, and a co-founder of the #ANGELS angel investing collective through which she backed over 50 companies as an angel investor.
April brings 20 years of experience building software to her role as an investor. Until 2019, April was the first Chief Product Officer at Slack Technologies, Inc, where she led Product, Platform, Design, and Research as the company scaled 10X to IPO-ready in less than 4 years. Prior to joining Slack in 2015, April was director of product at Twitter from 2010 to 2015 from through its IPO. Previously, April has held product, partnerships, and engineering roles at Google, Travelocity, and Intel. April has also been a founder: in 2020, She founded Nearby, an e-commerce marketplace composed of local retailers backed by GV, Obvious Ventures, Redpoint, and many prominent operator angel investors, and her team was acquired by Twitter in 2021.
April holds a B.B.A. in Management Information Systems and Business Honors from The University of Texas at Austin (2001), and an M.B.A. from The University of California at Berkeley (2007).
Luis Villa
General Counsel and Co-Founder, TideliftLuis Villa is co-founder at Tidelift and board member at Creative Commons and OpenET. During his career, he has been a top open source lawyer, a programmer, and a community leader. In previous roles, he has worked in the legal departments at the Wikimedia Foundation and Mozilla, and served on community-elected boards at the Open Source Initiative and GNOME Foundation.
Allison worked with eBay, Google, and Meta for 20 years on corporate and product strategy, customer experience design, marketing, and movement building focused on sustainability, climate change solutions, and social impact. With growing concern about the rapid increase in catastrophic wildfire and its impact on communities and nature based climate solutions, Allison cofounded Vibrant Planet PBC in November 2020 to accelerate wildfire and climate resilience. Allison and her team of top scientists, and artificial intelligence (AI) engineers, and product developers have built a platform that combines applied AI to map nature and wildfire and climate risks at high resolution plus applied science and powerful analytics to “game out” where risk mitigation and ecological treatments can maximize wildfire and climate resilience, adaptively in rapidly changing conditions. Vibrant Planet’s platform is applicable in the half of land on earth that evolved with low intensity wildfire and where catastrophic wildfire is now rapidly increasing. The company serves the USDA Forest Service, CALFIRE, NGOs working on conservation and wildfire resilience building, utilities, counties, fire districts, and indigenous peoples. Vibrant Planet is backed by impact focused investors, including Ecosystem Integrity Fund, Microsoft Climate Innovation Fund, Citi Impact Fund, Earthshot, Elemental Excelerator, SIG Climate, Meta CPO Chris Cox, among others.
Tamar Yehoshua
President of Product and Technology, GleanTamar Yehoshua oversees product strategy and development, design, and research at Slack.
Previously, Tamar was a Vice President at Google holding product and engineering leadership roles on Google’s most important products, including Search, Identity and Privacy. Prior to that, Tamar was the Vice President of Advertising Technologies at Amazon’s A9.
Tamar has a BA in Mathematics from the University of Pennsylvania and an MSc in Computer Science from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
Elizabeth Yin is a founder and general partner of Hustle Fund, a pre-seed venture capital fund that invests in hilariously early software startups across the U.S., Canada and Southeast Asia.
Jingna Zhang is the founder and CEO of Cara, a social and portfolio sharing app for artists and fans with more than one million users in its MVP.
Prior to Cara, Jingna was a fashion and fine art photographer for magazines like Vogue, Elle, and Harper’s Bazaar, the founder of an esports team, and a Singapore Olympic team candidate in air rifle. She is a strong advocate for copyright protection for all creatives, and believes that the future of our internet will be built upon a strong desire for authentic content, connections, and communities. In her free time, Jingna is directing an indie anime short film.
Ben Zhao is Neubauer Professor of Computer Science at University of Chicago. He completed his Ph.D. at U.C. Berkeley (2004), and B.S. from Yale (1997). He is a Fellow of the ACM, and a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, MIT Technology Review’s TR-35 Award (Young Innovators Under 35), USENIX Internet Defense Prize, ComputerWorld Magazine’s Top 40 Technology Innovators award, IEEE ITC Early Career Award, and Faculty awards from Google, Amazon, and Facebook. His work has been covered by many media outlets including New York Times, CNN, NBC, ABC, BBC, MIT Tech Review, Wall Street Journal, Forbes, and New Scientist. His current research focuses on mitigating the harms of misused AI through development of tools like Glaze and Nightshade. He has published over 190 articles in areas of security and privacy, machine learning, networking, and HCI. He served as TPC (co-)chair for the World Wide Web conference (WWW 2016) and ACM Internet Measurement Conference (IMC 2018), and on the Steering Committee of IEEE Conference on Secure and Trustworthy Machine Learning (SaTML).