Despina Papadopoulos: Named one of New York City’s “Six most interesting women in tech” by the New York Observer, an innovator, teacher and entrepreneur combining systems thinking and introducing innovation at the intersection of social structure, technological possibility and being human

Jason Siegel: An accomplished entrepreneur, creative director and digital strategist. His work is diverse and spans working with General Electric strategic branding efforts to leading the redesign of the WashingtonPost. Jason’s success and recognition started with being named by Yahoo as the nation’s best college web designer, and since has won countless national awards, was selected twice to the 40 Under 40 by the Direct Marketing Association.

David Garrity: Technology Analyst on CNBC and Bloomberg. Mobile Money and ICT expert consultant for The World Bank Group. Former CFO of two publicly traded companies.

Ryan Rzepecki: Founder and CEO of Brooklyn-based Social Bicycles (SoBi), a technology company focused on developing innovative solutions for urban transportation. Rzepecki founded the company in 2010 after identifying a need for smarter ways to publicly share bicycles. Social Bicycles is the fastest growing bike share company in the U.S., and pioneered the use of smartbike technology for bike sharing.

Nazareth Ekmekjian: A trained architect and maker from Los Angeles and recent MIT graduate, Nazareth currently designs and develops lightweight robotic platforms for personal mobility with Piaggio Fast Forward in Boston, MA. Previously, he managed the Robot House at SCI-Arc, where he also received his Bachelors of Architecture.

Karen Marquez: MIT young innovator, Singularity University alumni, and global entrepreneur in residence in University of Massachusetts. Co-founder of Robbie.ai, a deep learning company assessing and predicting human emotion and behavior with computer vision, focused on analyzing wild data in real environments in real time.

Mary Alice Stephenson: Renowned fashion and beauty expert, style commentator, humanitarian and the founder and force behind GLAM4GOOD. Her resume includes the world’s most prestigious fashion magazines as well as Hollywood’s elite. In addition, she is consultant and spokesperson for a number of pop culture’s influential brands. GLAM4GOOD is an empowerment platform and non-profit dedicated to igniting positive social change and impact through beauty and style.

Chris Wolf: CTO for Global Field & Industry, representing VMware’s technical vision to customers, partners and analysts. Previously advised CIOs, architects and directors on private and hybrid cloud computing, server virtualization, and desktop transformation strategies. Earlier in his career, a nationally recognized independent virtualization consultant. Started his IT and technology career in the US Marines.

Peter Y. Lee: CEO of RapidMiner, the #1-ranked Data Science Platform, and Executive Chairman of the Board of Attivio, undisputed leader in Cognitive Search & Insights. Obsessed with transformational entrepreneurs.  Board advisor to pioneers capitalizing on AI. Deploying $250M+ of growth capital in Africa through the Advanced Finance & Investment Group.

Ron Gutman: Health and Technology Visionary. Serial Entrepreneur and Innovator. The inspirational Founder and CEO of HealthTap with the mission to help billions live healthier, happier, longer lives. Builder of the world’s first Global Health Practice.

Robbee Minicola: Demonstrated experience across media & technology delivering Big Data solutions impacting EBITDA performance. As President of Wunderman Seattle and Global Lead of Wunderman AI Services, Robbee and her team convert traditional communications in a typing and reading world to conversational technologies in a speaking and listening world.

Jonathan Marvel: An architect with over 30 years of experience providing architectural, planning, community economic development and sustainable development of public spaces, educational institutions, single and multi-family housing, libraries, museums and large-scale mixed-use developments. With offices in New York City and Puerto Rico, Jonathan Marvel, founding Principal at Marvel Architects, teaches, writes, lectures and leads discussion on urban design and architecture in both academic and civic contexts. Jonathan is the recipient of numerous awards and he sits on several boards of local and national organizations committed to equitable and sustainable planning and development efforts.

Colin Langan: Director in the General Industrials group at UBS covering the US Automotive sector. He joined UBS in 2005 as an Associate Analyst in this sector. Earlier in his career, Colin was a Senior Associate at Deloitte & Touche. He holds an MBA in Finance from Columbia Business School and a BS in Accounting from the University of Notre Dame. Colin is a CFA charterholder and a certified public accountant.

Gabrielle Haddad: Visionary entrepreneur, lawyer and fellow at MIT. Committed to making the world more transparent by using cutting edge technology to highlight and incentivize good and ethical corporate behavior.

Bill Ogle: Extraordinary and dynamic leader. CEO of industry leading mobile offer platform and redemption network. Former Global CMO of Motorola Mobility, CMO of Samsung Telecommunications America and CMO of Pizza Hut. Compelling Brand builder and team builder in multiple categories and countries.

Eric Vezzoli: The youngest entrepreneur at 28 awarded by the European Commission for outstanding research applied to entrepreneurship in at the MSCA 2017 prizes. Co-Funder and CEO of Go Touch VR. He is one of the most cited young Haptic Scientist in the world, and he published 23 scientific papers and deposed 5 patents.

Fady Saad: Fady Saad is the co-founder and partnerships director of MassRobotics, the largest robotics/automation innovation hub. He is a technology strategist, MIT Fellow and a passionate entrepreneur.

 

Hong Z Tan: A haptics educator, researcher and evangelist. One of the world’s top haptics experts. Best known for perception-based engineering approach. Solving real problems in the haptics space for Fortune 500 and other companies. Passionate about a future where interfaces touch us back.

Nicole Eagan: CEO of AI cyber defense company Darktrace. Applies human immune system principles to create digital antibodies that autonomously respond to cyber-attacks. Skilled at introducing disruptive technology into the global market. Studies how people adapt to AI technology. “Woman of the Year” at the Cyber Security Awards.”

Dr. David Albert: Saving lives through invention, secured his first patent while a medical student at Duke University, now holds 36 patents and counting. Founder, Chief Medical Officer and Chief Science Officer of AliveCor. World-class med-tech developer. Over thirty years of experience changing medicine.

Mark Michalski: Executive Director of the MGH & BWH Center for Clinical Data Science, which is focused on the application and translation of novel machine learning techniques into clinical practice.

Ganesh Bell: GE’s first-ever Chief Digital Officer and current CDO of GE Power. One of Fast Company’s 100 Most Creative People in Business in 2017 for “redefining the grid.” Leading the global energy industry through its transition to digital, working with 60+ utilities. Key architect of GE’s own Digital Transformation.

Colleen Costello: Co-founder & CEO of healthcare company Vital Vio, this innovative entrepreneur introduced WhiteLightDisinfection™ technology to combat the pervasive and costly challenge of germs. Reinventing disinfection, along with previous clinical research at Mount Sinai and Weill Cornell, has put this biomedical engineer on elite lists including Forbes 30Under30, and Inc’s 50 Emerging Global Entrepreneurs.

Francisco J. Sánchez: Francisco served as Under Secretary for International Trade at the U.S. Department of Commerce until 2013, a post President Barack Obama nominated him to in 2009. Sánchez is currently the Chairman of CNS Global Advisors, providing strategic advice to companies and governments looking to expand in or resolve issues in foreign markets, including the United States. Sánchez also serves in senior positions for two private equity funds: Pt Capital, a firm concentrating on investment opportunities in the Arctic; and, Go Scale Capital, a technology fund based in Hong Kong.Sánchez serves on the board of directors for Archer Daniels Midland (ADM), the H. Lee Moffitt Cancer Center and Research Institute, and Suniva, Inc.

Jason Yuan: Maker behind viral Apple Music redesign. Current RISD graphic design student, former Northwestern thespian. Witnessing stories and designing for better endings

Suchit Jain: Strategist and an engineer with a passion to help entrepreneurs turn ideas into products. Vice President of Strategy at Dassault Systemes SolidWorks leading the expansion of SOLIDWORKS design software into the hardware startups, makerspaces and Fab Labs. Evaluating emerging technologies, including IOT, 3D Printing, and AI to integrate within design software to help customers design better product, faster.

Matt Preschern: One of the most sought after tech marketers of 21st century. Steadfast in his promise of creating a digitally designed innovative marketing organization. Ranked no. 20 in the Forbes list of The World’s Most Influential CMOs. Realizing the collaborative nature of the 21st Century brand. Leading the inevitable cultural change in futuristic marketing era.

Florian Michahelles: Brings IoT to industrial practice, develops semantic descriptions of machines to enabling more meaningful interaction betweenmachin-machine-humans, passionate about leveraging best skills from both machines and people. >100 publications, ~3500 citations, continuous challenger of defaults, human, citizen, father

Satya Nitta: Innovator and technologist. AI and Nanotechnology. 150 patents, IEEE ACE Innovator of Year, IEEE Spectrum Technology of the year winner. Top 50 Makers and Shakers of Education Technology Worldwide.

Rosario Casas Ballesteros: Co-Founder of VR Americas LLC, a virtual and augmented reality company expanding the frontier of immersive technologies in commercial applications and former CEO of Grupo Senseta, Inc., a Silicon Valley company unlocking the potential of information for organizations, by solving highly complex issues in data capture and analytics, opening the door to Actionable Intelligence and analytics through state-of-the-art Big Data, Artificial Intelligence, and Machine Learning technologies.

Hassan Ahmed: Hassan is Founder, Chairman and CEO of Affirmed Networks. Affirmed drives software transformation in global mobile networks. Previously, Hassan built Sonus Networks into a public company that pioneered VoIP networks. Beyond entrepreneurship, Hassan’s career spans industry, venture capital and academia. He was Associate Professor, ECS at Boston University. Hassan holds a PhD from Stanford University.

Jonathan Levine: Dr. Levine is a celebrated oral health expert, aesthetic dentist specializing in prosthodontics, GLO Science founder, NYU professor, noted author, and visionary inventor holding 18 patents and 8 patents pending. He has applied his 30+ years of clinical practice expertise to developing groundbreaking innovations in the field of dentistry and oral health care. Dr. Levine, alongside wife and business partner Stacey Levine, started the GLO Good Foundation to bring oral health care to those in need around the globe. ​

Kevin Bolen: Architect of disruption – able to see the dots others miss, connect them in creative ways, and invent new ones to complete the vision. Has a passion for teaching these skills to others. Operating as a strategic advisor and executive leader in a variety of Fortune 500 organizations, Kevin has helped these firms generate over $3B in growth through innovation.

Amy baxter: As a practicing pediatric emergency physician, Dr. Amy Baxter invented the neuromodulation pain relief platform behind Buzzy for shots and VibraCool vibrational cryotherapy. Now full time, she advocates for needle phobia awareness and seeks to uncouple fear from pain. She has spoken at TEDMED and Exponential Medicine, and is a Wall Street Journal “Idea Person” and “Top Women in Tech to Watch”, and 2017 “Top 40 Healthcare Transformer”.

Gary Davis: Chief Consumer Security Evangelist at McAfee, and a foremost authority on digital security trends including the evolving threat landscape, privacy and securing the Internet of Things. A sought-after speaker and frequent broadcast commentator, Gary provides security education to businesses and consumers by distilling complex security topics into actionable advice.

Apurva Mehta: CTO @ UBS Wealth Management – Americas. 20 years in financial services. Passionate about technology, transformation and innovation.

Francisco Melo: As a leader of global RFID, Francisco directs and guides in-store, supply chain, and manufacturing information solutions using radio frequency identification (RFID) to help retailers and brand owners across the globe to accelerate performance and improve efficiencies.

Bernard Luthi: CEO of Monoprice, Bernard Luthi brings over 20 years of experience to the company with a proven track record of transforming ecommerce and multi–channel organizations. Luthi is an effective leader, innovator and contributor who drives revenue by leveraging technology, sales, marketing, branding and exemplary customer experience talent.

Alex Jaimes: Scientist (AI, Machine Learning), innovator, speaker, engineering executive, and startup advisor (Columbia Ph.D., 100+ publications, patents, 4k+ citations), worked in 8 cities in 6 continents (DigitalOcean, Yahoo, Telefónica, IDIAP-EPFL, FujiXerox, IBM TJ Watson, Siemens, and AT&T Bell Labs), avid traveler (80+ countries), artist (photo, performance, new media).

Roland Weiss: Group Research Portfolio Manager at ABB, driving innovation in all core technologies, ranging from materials research to IoT systems, from sensing to artificial intelligence, control, and protection. Kick-started ABB’s digital unit, brought industrial software solutions to various markets, e.g. power generation and robot automation.

Lorraine Hariton: Lorraine has 25 years in senior level positions in Silicon Valley including CEO of two start-ups before being appointed by President Obama as Special Representative for Commercial and Business Affairs at the US Department of State. Currently she is SVP of Global Partnerships for the New York Academy of Sciences working on STEM education and sustainability.

Julian Reyes: Julian is currently the project lead on Mars 2030, a collaboration between NASA, MIT, and Fusion to develop a scientifically accurate VR simulation of a future human mission to Mars. Julian is also Director of Technology at III Points Music and Technology Festival in Miami. His focus is on developing educational and informative virtual, augmented, and mixed reality experiences that utilize physical and digital means to push the medium forward.

Terry Moore: Terry is the Founder and Director of the Radius Foundation, which seeks new ways of exploring and understanding dissimilar conceptual systems or paradigms. He is retired from his own consulting firm, which focused on corporate strategy, marketing strategy, and new product development. He now serves on several university and medical research boards.

Maja Vujinovic: Maja is the Chief Innovation Officer of Emerging Tech & Future of Work at General Electric. She designs strategic direction for GE’s emerging tech group including AI, Machine Learning & Natural Language Processing & spearheads Blockchain development. Starting in mobile tech in Africa, Maja has driven economic impact through infrastructure development across 5 continents. She is a thought leader on agile business processes and rise of digital identity.

Gilles Bergeron: Gilles (PhD, Cornell) spent 27 years in international development covering food security, undernutrition and agriculture/nutrition linkages. A former Director at the Food and Nutrition Technical Assistance project and researcher at the International Food Policy Research Institute, his work was published in The Lancet, Advances in Nutrition and the Journal of Development Studies.

Jeffrey Schweitzer: Former Army Communications Expert. Created Software Defined Perimeter (SDP) at Internet Scale. Often referred to as the ‘Jack Bauer’ of the organization for his uncanny ability to solve impossible missions. Originator of the phrase “Re-Defining the Art of the Possible”.

Rodrigo Nino: As CEO and Founder of Prodigy Network, Rodrigo is revolutionizing both the commercial real estate and crowdfunding industries by being the first to meld the two worlds in the United States.With this model, Nino has raised more than $410 million from 6,500 investors (from 29 countries and 26 US states) and is currently developing commercial real estate projects in Bogota and Manhattan with a projected value of more than $750 million.Nino believes that crowd funding will democratize commercial real estate by providing a new asset class for individuals, revolutionizing the industry.

Andrea Jones-Rooy:  Social scientist, standup comedian, circus performer (trapeze, fire, contortion).  Currently Quantitative Researcher for FiveThirtyEight, as well as Founder and President of the Moss Institute for Social Science and Complexity, an organization for social science research and communication.  Formerly professor of political science at NYU Shanghai and Carnegie Mellon University.

Paul Pangaro: Entrepreneur, Interaction Designer, Educator. Chair of MFA Interaction Design at College for Creative Studies, Detroit. He has founded software startups (General Cybernetics, Idealab’s Snap.com), future-casted (Nokia, Samsung, Intellectual Ventures), designed innovation processes (DuPont, Ogilvy), and lectured worldwide on cybernetics, design, and conversation.

Richard Boly: Boated down the Amazon. Solo cycled 12,000 miles through America’s back roads. Former career diplomat.  Built and ran a shrimp hatchery in costal Ecuador. Helped launch the original Apple Macintosh computer.  Conceived and launched the Global Entrepreneurship Program. Degrees from Stanford and UCSD. Now runs the boutique ideas agency, Beaurichly.

Ting Shih: Founder of ClickMedix, award-winning mHealth platform conceived at MIT to enable health organizations to help more patients. Spearheaded mHealth deployments in 18 countries (US included), and serves 350,000+ patients by empowering health workers, nurses, pharmacists, and physicians to use mHealth technologies. Ting was named Toyota Mother of Invention in 2015.

David Helfenbein: Strategic communication and public affairs expert focused on branding, crisis communication and government relations. Under President Obama, David was appointed Social Media Coordinator for Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Special Assistant to the Secretary in the Office of White House Liaison, both at the U.S. Department of State.

Amy Blankson: Bestselling author of The Future of Happiness, is a speaker on the intersection of happiness and technology. After graduating from Harvard and Yale, she co-founded GoodThink, a positive psychology research and consulting firm. She is a member of the IEEE Ethics Committee for Artificial Intelligence and the UN Global Happiness Council.

Antonio Parham: VP of Innovation & Strategy for Fidelity Labs (at Fidelity Investments), where he deploys promising new tools and techniques for innovation — while instilling “innovation DNA” in Fidelity associates. Tony has  30+ years’ experience of business, innovation and technology leadership across a wide range of business sizes, from startups to large enterprises; spanning the private, not-for-profit, and public sectors.  More information at TonyParham.com

Stowe Boyd: Futurist. My focus is the tectonic shift into an unclear and accelerating postnormal era. Coined ‘hashtag’, ‘social tools’, ‘publicy’. Managing Director, Another Voice; Editor-in-Chief, Work Futures; Contributing Editor, Traction Technology Partners. Formerly Head of Research, Gigaom. Microsoft future of work advisory board, Pew Research advisory board on robotics and automation.

Elif M. Gokcigdem: Founder of Empathy-building Through Museums Initiative. Author of Fostering Empathy Through Museums. Cross-industries connector, creative problem-solver, art historian and museums thought leader. Committed to creating fertile grounds of empathy to inspire positive behavior change and compassionate worldviews that value all of humanity and the planet.

Joshua Klein: Hacker who started breaking into university networks when he was nine and ended up consulting to folks at the FBI and CIA, Microsoft and Google. Along the way he’s written three books, hosted a TV Series on Nat Geo and one for Discovery, and written and participated in innumerable articles and interviews. From TED to Davos, IBM to Nike, VC funds to that startup down the street, Josh has addressed audiences of thousands and dozens. He currently lives in NYC where he advises startups and multinationals alike on how to use the cutting edge of technology to maximize innovation.

Brent Bushnell: CEO of Two Bit Circus, an LA-based experiential entertainment company building a network of micro-amusement parks. The company regularly serves as immersive entertainment partners for brands and has created VR attractions for the NFL, NBA, Dave & Buster’s and the Olympics. Brent was the on-camera inventor for the ABC show Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. He’s chairman of the non-profit Two Bit Circus Foundation which deploys STEAM-based programs to inspire students about invention.

Laura Guido-Clark: Expert in the skin of consumer products – their color, materials and finishes.  She was honored as the IIDA Northern California Chapter recipient of the 2014 Leadership Award of Excellence. Laura speaks both nationally and internationally on design and the creative process. In 2011, Laura founded Project Color Corps™, a nonprofit organization dedicated to painting urban neighborhoods with color and pattern that impart positive messages of optimism and hope.

Muhammad Zaman: Howard Hughes Medical Institute Professor of Biomedical Engineering at Boston University. Prof. Zaman’s current research is focused on developing robust technologies to improve the quality of medicines, and tackle anti-microbial resistance, in developing countries. PharmaChk, a technology developed by Prof. Zaman and his team, is one such solution that has been named by Scientific American  among the top 10 technologies that will change the world.

Qing Cao: Pioneer in nanomaterials and their integration into nanoscale electronic devices.  50 patents as IBM Master Inventor.  One of the top thirty-five global innovators under the age of thirty-five in 2016.  One of the most awarded young scientists in IBM Research.

Jamira Burley: White House as a Champion of Change and a Forbes 30 Under 30 Honoree She has over 10 years of experience working as a community impact consultant, developing and implementing community engagement strategies on a range of issues. Currently, Jamira is the Head of Youth Engagement and Skills for the Global Business Coalition for Education.

Rod Furlan: An artificial intelligence researcher and a serial entrepreneur. Always in search of the next big challenge, his work has pushed the boundaries of several fields including deep learning, quantitative finance and virtual reality. At Lucidscape Inc. he is building a massively distributed real-time computational fabric to power a vast network of interconnected VR worlds populated by autonomous inhabitants.

Anurag Maunder: VP of JCI Innovation Garage. Currently he is busy building teams in Silicon Valley and Tel Aviv, Israel in the areas of IoT, AI and Blockchains for Smart Buildings and Robotics Based Services. He is a serial entrepreneur and an accomplished engineering executive. He started his career with prestigious AT&T Labs (Bell Labs). He was the Founder, CTO of Kazeon Systems that was acquired by EMC and the Founder CEO of dLoop that was acquired by Box.

Penelope Jagessar Chaffer: Multi award winning filmmaker, environmentalist and activist and is the first female director of color to be nominated for a British Academy Award. Her TED Talk “The Toxic Baby” has been viewed almost 500,000 times. She lives in New York City.

Dinesh Bharadia: Leader in wireless communication and imaging, Professor at UCSD; inventor of full duplex wireless radios and consequently built a startup Kumu Networks which commercializes it, more than 2000 citation in last 3 years, 14+ patents, International Awardee MIT 35 under 35 2016, Marconi Young Scholar Award, Michael Dukakis Leadership fellow

Mark Chung: Electrical Engineer pioneering AI for energy, innovating because technology can make a difference in the future of humanity and secure a sustainable climate. Serial entrepreneur whose products power ~40% of global 4G/LTE mobile infrastructure. Co-founder of Verdigris, accelerating IoT to create energy efficient buildings that enable smart cities.