Doug Stephens

Future of Retail

Doug Stephens is one of the world's foremost retail industry futurists. His intellectual work and thinking have influenced many of the world's best-known retailers, agencies and brands including Walmart, Google, Home Depot, Disney, BMW, Citibank, and Intel. Doug is also listed as one of retail's top global influencers by Vend.com. Before founding Retail Prophet, Doug spent over 20 years in the retail industry, holding senior international roles including the leadership of one of New York City's most historic retail chains.

Doug is the author of the groundbreaking book, The Retail Revival: Reimagining Business for the New Age of Consumerism, and the nationally syndicated retail columnist for CBC Radio. Doug also co-hosts the popular web series, The Future In-Store and sits on the advisory boards of the Dx3 Digital Conference and the David Sobey Centre for Innovation in Retail & Services at St. Mary’s University.

His unique perspectives on retailing, business and consumer behavior have been featured in many of the world’s leading publications and media outlets including The New York Times, The BBC, Bloomberg Business News, TechCrunch, The Financial Times, The Wall Street Journal and Fast Company. Doug speaks regularly to major brands and organizations across North and South America, Europe, Asia, The Middle East, and Australia.

Parneet Pal

Mental Health

Parneet Pal, M.B.B.S., M.S. is a Harvard- and Columbia-trained physician working at the intersection of lifestyle medicine, technology and behavior change. An educator and science communicator, she curates and teaches content to optimize human health and its impact on planetary wellbeing. She strongly believes we can create a compassionate society where health is the default. As Chief Science Officer, Wisdom Labs, she focuses on solving for stress, burnout and loneliness in the workplace. Wisdom Labs aspires to build wiser workplaces using the science of mindfulness and scaling the skills of mental resilience, emotional intelligence and compassionate leadership across organizations. Parneet is an international speaker and podcaster, has written for the Harvard Business Review, is a TEDMED scholar and has been featured on the cover of Mindful magazine.

Jamie Metzl

Genetic Engineering

Technology Futurist, Geopolitics Expert, Sci-Fi Novelist, Keynote Speaker. 

Jamie Metzl is a technology futurist and geopolitical expert, novelist, entrepreneur, media commentator, and Senior Fellow of the Atlantic Council. In February 2019, he was appointed to the World Health Organization expert advisory committee on developing global standards for the governance and oversight of human genome editing. 

Jamie previously served in the U.S. National Security Council, State Department, Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as a Human Rights Officer for the United Nations in Cambodia. He is a former Partner of a New York-based global investment firm, serves on the Advisory Council to Walmart's Future of Retail Policy Lab, is a faculty member for Singularity University's Exponential Medicine conference, was Chief Strategy Officer for a biotechnology company, and ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. House of Representatives from Missouri's Fifth Congressional District in Kansas City in 2004. Jamie has served as an election monitor in Afghanistan and the Philippines, advised the government of North Korea on the establishment of Special Economic Zones and is the Honorary Ambassador to North America of the Korean Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy. 

Jamie appears regularly on national and international media discussing Asian economic and political issues and his syndicated columns and other writing on Asian affairs, genetics, virtual reality, and other topics are featured regularly in publications around the world. He is the author of a history of the Cambodian genocide, the historical novel The Depths of the Sea, and the genetics thrillers Genesis Code, Eternal Sonata, Hacking Darwin: Genetic Revolution, and the Future of Humanity. 

A founder and Co-Chair of the national security organization Partnership for a Secure America, Jamie is a board member of the International Center for Transitional Justice, the American University in Mongolia, and Parsons Dance, and a member of the Advisory Board of the Brandeis International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life. He is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations is a former White House Fellow and Aspen Institute Crown Fellow. Jamie holds a Ph.D. in Asian history from Oxford, a JD from Harvard Law School, and is a magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Brown University.

Alix Rübsaam

Researcher in philosophy of technology, cultural analysis, and post humanism

She is a PhD candidate at the University of Amsterdam and the Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis (ASCA). There, she researches the collaboration between human and nonhuman (technological) agents at the intersection of humans and computational systems. As a Faculty Fellow at Singularity University she investigates the societal and cultural impact of exponential technologies. Her focus is on changing ideas about humanity in technological contexts such as Artificial Intelligence, (autonomous) robotics, information technologies, and digital environments. Additionally, Alix has written about cyberpunk and science fiction literature, autonomous weapons, and embodied robotics.

She has an MA in Cultural Analysis and has graduated from Singularity University’s Graduate Studies Program in 2015. Her most recent publication is a chapter in Augmented Intelligence: The Future of Work and Learning (2018).

Anthony Atala

Medicine / 3D Printing

Dr. Anthony Atala is the Director of the Wake Forest Institute for Regenerative Medicine. He is a practicing surgeon and a researcher in the area of regenerative medicine.  His work focuses on growing human cells, tissues and organs.

Dr. Atala works with several journals and serves in various roles, including Editor-in-Chief of: Stem Cells- Translational Medicine; Therapeutic Advances in Urology; and BioPrinting.

Dr. Atala was elected to the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences in 2011, to the National Academy of Inventors as a Charter Fellow in 2013, and to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering in 2016. Dr. Atala is a recipient of various awards, including the US Congress funded Christopher Columbus Foundation Award, bestowed on a living American who is currently working on a discovery that will significantly affect society,  the World Technology Award in Health and Medicine, presented to individuals achieving significant and lasting progress, the Edison Science/Medical Award, the 2016 Smithsonian Ingenuity Award, the R&D 2016 Innovator of the Year Award, and the Fast Company 2017 World Changing Ideas Award for Bioprinting Tissue and Organs.

David Roberts

Innovation/ Disruption

David Roberts is regarded as one of the world top experts on disruptive innovation and exponentially advancing technology. His passion is to help transform the lives of a billion suffering people in the world through disruptive innovation.

David served as Vice President of Singularity University and two-time Director of the Graduate Studies Program. He is an award winning CEO and serial entrepreneur, and has started ventures backed with over $100 million of investment from Kleiner Perkins, Vinod Khosla, Cisco, Oracle, Accenture, In-Q-Tel, and others.

He is the recipient of numerous awards and medals and has led the development of some of the most complex, state-of-the art systems ever built, to include satellites, drones, and fusion centers. He also worked as an Investment Banker in the Mergers & Acquisitions Group at Goldman Sachs Headquarters. He received his B.S. in Computer Science & Engineering from M.I.T. was a Distinguished Graduate, and majored in Artificial Intelligence and Bio-Computer Engineering. He holds an M.B.A. from Harvard Business School.

David is Chairman at HaloDrop, a revolutionary global drone services company, Chairman at 1QBit the world first software company for quantum computers, and is a formal adviser to Made-In Space, responsible for manufacturing the first object in Space with a 3D printer on the Space Station.

Harvard, Stanford, and Berkeley Business schools have all written and taught case studies on David leadership, management, and decision making. He has been featured on the cover of the Wall Street Journal, and in USA Today, Fortune Magazine, The New York Times, Business Week, CNN, and dozens of others. His startups have received many awards to include Internet World Net Rising Stars,Red Herring Catch, top 50 Private Companies in the World, Red Herring Top100 Private Companies in the World, USA Today Tech Reviews Best Picks, Internet Outlook Investors Choice Award, Enterprise Outlook Investors Choice, Best of the Web from PC World, and Apple Computer Premier Systems Integrator Award.

His fascination with technology began In fourth grade after building a hovering electric drone, to carry his younger sister to the bus stop, powered by what was formerly his mothervacuum cleaner, and fortunately limited by the length of an electric power cord.

Charlene Li

Author of The Disruption Mindset, Founder & Senior Fellow of Altimeter a company of the consulting firm Prophet

For the past two decades, Charlene Li has been helping people see the future. She’s an expert on digital transformation, leadership, customer experience, and the future of work. She’s the author of six books, including the New York Times bestseller, Open Leadership and co-author of the critically acclaimed book, Groundswell. Her latest book is the bestseller The Disruption Mindset. She is the Founder and Senior Fellow at Altimeter, a disruptive analyst firm acquired in 2015 by Prophet. Named one of the most creative people in business by Fast Company, Charlene is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Business School.

Maurice Conti

CEO at Applied Intelligence

Futurist, deep tech authority, innovation executive, advisor, and international keynote speaker, Maurice has helped NIKE, Tesla, Disney, Google, Airbus, the Navy SEALS, the Government of Japan, and many others, to understand what’s coming in the future, why it matters for them, and how to prepare for–and thrive in–our rapidly changing landscape. He is a rare blend of hands–on practitioner and big thinker. 

Maurice's work focuses on disruptive innovation, applied machine learning, advanced robotics, augmented and virtual realities, and the future of work, cities, mobility, and climate.

Stacey Ferreira

Future of Work

A native of the state of Arizona, Stacey co-founded her first company, an online solution for password storage and management, called MySocialCloud, when she graduated from high school. Through Twitter, she attracted investors like Richard Branson, Jerry Murdock and Alex Welch. She raised $1.2 million for her business when she was just 18 years old.

In 2013, Stacey sold MySocialCloud to Reputation.com and went on to publish her first best-selling book, 2 Billion Under 20: How Millennials Are Breaking Down Age Barriers & Changing the World.

Stacey is currently the CEO of Forge, an enterprise workforce management application that empowers hourly employees to work on-demand while providing retailers the tools needed to source, hire, manage and retain their workforce. 

In 2016, Ferreira was named to Forbes “30 under 30” entrepreneurs. She has also been featured in several other media outlets, including The Huffington Post, Women 2.0, Business Insider, CNBC, TechCrunch, and the cover of Seventeen Magazine. She has spoken at popular technology conferences, including TEDxYouthSanDiego, TEDxNYU, and GRAMMY Media Week and has been a guest contributor to Women 2.0 and Forbes.

Amin Toufani

Exponential Organizations

Amin is the CEO of T Labs. Previously he was a strategy director and vice president of strategic relations at Singularity University. Provided a unique set of technological, business and political perspectives to the innovation dialogue on campus. Before Singularity, Amin founded profit and social impact organizations in a variety of domains including: artificial intelligence, loans between individuals, bitcoin, human rights, international development, carbon emissions and solar energy compensation.

Google Search ranks him as the world’s best guitar player – a title he readily rejects. In addition to his work at Singularity, he is building the World’s first hedge fund for the poor, as well as Reversopedia – a reverse encyclopedia composed of things we know we don’t know. Amin has a degree in artificial intelligence from the University of British Columbia, an MBA from Stanford, and an MPA in economic policy from Harvard. He attended Harvard and Stanford concurrently and graduated an Arjay Miller Scholar.

Pascal Finette

Leadership / Adaptability

Pascal is Co-Founder (and enfant terrible) at be radical, EY’s wavespace Advisory Board Chair, Singularity University’s Chair for Entrepreneurship & Open Innovation, and Venture Partner at BOLD Capital Partners, Peter Diamandis' $250M VC fund investing in exponential transformation His work focuses on the intersection of technology, global impact, and culture; inspiring, educating and empowering entrepreneurs, corporate irritants and change makers to create a positive future. 

He has spent his career pushing the boundaries of technology and passionately believes it can profoundly impact the betterment of humankind. He got started on the net before there was a web browser, founded a series of technology startups, led eBay’s Platform Solutions Group in Europe, launched a consulting firm helping entrepreneurs with their strategy & operations, and invested into early-stage tech startups. Pascal led Mozilla’s Open Innovation Lab, created Mozilla’s accelerator program WebFWD, and headed up Mozilla’s Office of the Chair. 

As Principal at Google.org, he invested into social impact organizations around the globe. Recently he built Singularity University’s startup programs including the SU Accelerator and Venture Fund.

Elizabeth Parrish

CEO of BioViva

Elizabeth Parrish is the Founder and CEO of BioViva, a company committed to extending healthy lifespans using cell technologies. Liz is a humanitarian, entrepreneur, innovator, podcaster, and a leading voice for genetic cures. As a strong proponent of progress and education for the advancement of regenerative medicine modalities, she serves as a motivational speaker to the public at large for the life sciences. She is actively involved in international educational media outreach.

Mark Post

Future of Food

Mark Post has a medical degree and a PhD in Pulmonary Pharmacology. He has been an Assistant Professor in Medicine at Harvard Medical School, Professor of Vascular Physiology at Maastricht University and Professor of Angiogenesis in Tissue Engineering at the TU/e. He soon became involved in a Dutch government-funded program investigating “in vitro meat”, which resulted in the world's first lab-grown burger in 2013. In October 2015, Post and food technologist Peter Verstrate announced the launch of their company Mosa Meat, which seeks to bring cultured meat to the market.

Samantha Radocchia

Future of Logistics

Samantha Radocchia, or “Sam Rad” for short, is an entrepreneur, keynote speaker, author, and emerging tech advocate who combines the mindsets of an anthropologist and a technologist.

Sam has delivered keynotes globally and led corporate trainings at Fortune 500 corporations, trade associations, conferences, national governments, NGOs, investment firms, and the United Nations, educating leaders on the technologies and cultural shifts that will shape their organizations—and daily lives—in the years to come.

A reformed gamer, she started studying virtual currencies in 2009 while writing her anthropology thesis on currency exchanges in the virtual world “Second Life.” Since then, she has founded three companies, holds several patents, and was an early outspoken voice in blockchain as the co-founder of Chronicled, an enterprise blockchain company focused on supply chain. Samantha now consults executives, trade associations, governments, and investors on emerging technology trends and delivers keynotes at events worldwide.

In addition to emerging technology, Samantha is deeply passionate about Future of Work, Future of Production, Future of Community/Governance, Future of Cities, Future of Finance, Future of Wellness as well as sustainability, not just in respect to the environment, but in business. She has built experimental cities, leveraging blockchain, IoT, robotics, and AI; assisted in the creation of large scale RPG game design and virtual world architecture; deployed mesh sensor networks across small and medium-sized cities; worked with governments to track temperatures of volatile substances and medicines across hostile environments; created globally distributed and decentralized organizations of 1000+ members and helped companies shift to embrace remote work; assisted in the creation of a decentralized voting and governance system; rolled out identity and cryptocurrency to disaster zones and refugee camps; architected a decentralized manufacturing network with connected 3D printers and 3D knitters; deployed a drone delivery and authentication service on blockchain; assisted in the creation of a smart charging station for autonomous vehicles; and more.

She also is trained in and speaks on organizational culture and theory, particularly as we shift to globally distributed and remote workforces. Her lectures on risk, emotionally intelligence, and intuition have been featured by globally recognized universities such as MIT, Columbia, and UCL.

She writes in her blog on “Radical Next Ideas,” and believes that the idea of Radical Evolution is paramount to the, now outdated, Digital Transformation mindset. She seeks to utilize technology to empower, not entrench.

She was named to the 2017 Forbes 30 Under 30 List for Enterprise Technology and has accumulated over 700 jumps as a competitive skydiver.

Neil Harbisson

Transhumanism

Neil Harbisson is a Catalan-raised, British-born contemporary artist and cyborg activist best known for having an antenna implanted in his skull and for being officially recognised as a cyborg by a government. The antenna allows him to perceive visible and invisible colours via audible vibrations in his skull including infrareds and ultraviolets as well as receive colours from space, images, videos, music or phone calls directly into his head via internet connection. 

Harbisson identifies himself both as a cyborg; he feels he is technology, and as a transpecies; he no longer feels 100% human. His artwork explores identity, human perception, the connection between sight and sound and the use of artistic expression via new sensory inputs. 

In 2010 he co-founded the Cyborg Foundation with Moon Ribas, an international organisation that aims to help humans become cyborgs, defend cyborg rights and promote cyborg art. In 2017 he co-founded the Transpecies Society, an association that gives voice to people with non-human identities, defends the freedom of self-design and offers the creation of new senses and new organs in community.

Daniel Vogel

Innovation / Crypto

Co-founder and CEO of Bitso, Daniel is among the youngest entrepreneurs and leaders of technological innovation in Mexico. Motivated by a sense of social responsibility, Bitso is committed to the development of efficient, competitive, accessible and inclusive financial services in Mexico and Latin America. 

Daniel holds two degrees from Stanford University (BA in Economics, BS in Computer Systems Engineering) and a Master's degree in Business Administration (MBA) from Harvard Business School.

During his academic career, he presided various student societies such as the Society for Entrepreneurship in Latin America, the Bitcoin Club, the LatAm Club, the Aviation and Aerospace Club, among others. 

At Stanford he was elected by his colleagues to be a member of the Class Cabinet. 

Daniel has not only demonstrated his entrepreneurial side, but he has also shown his innovative skills. During his time residing in Silicon Valley he worked for Quantcast, where he developed a real-time bidding system, a product that would later go on to become the company's main source of income. 

On November 2016, he was included in "Innovators under 35 Mexico 2016", an award from MIT Technology Review. His work at Bitso has been recognized by Endeavor (Global Endeavor Entrepreneur), MassChallenge (2016 Gold Winner), the President of Mexico (Digital Leader Mexico), among others.

Lisa Kay Solomon

Transformative Practices

sa Kay Solomon is a well-known thought leader in design innovation with a focus on helping leaders learn how to be more creative, flexible and resilient in the face of constant change. Lisa is the Chair of Transformational Practices and Leadership at Singularity University a global community of smart, passionate, action-oriented leaders who want to use exponential technologies to positively impact the world. She co-authored the Wall Street Journal bestseller, Moments of Impact: How to Design Strategic Conversations that Accelerate Change, and more recently, Design a Better Business: New Tools, Skills, and Mindset for Strategy and Innovation.

Lisa is a frequent keynote speaker on innovation, design thinking, and leadership at global conferences and business schools. A passionate educator, Lisa has taught at the revolutionary Design MBA program at California College of the Arts and has developed and led popular classes for Stanford d. School such as Networking By Design and Design With the Brain in Mind. She is also the Executive Producer of the annual Inspired4Schools conference, a design leadership program for educators, and is on the leadership committee for The Nueva School’s Innovative Learning Conference, a biennial gathering for trends related to the future of education.

Michel Rojkind

Architecture / Smart Cities

As a Mexico City native, Rojkind founded his firm, Rojkind Arquitectos, there in 2002, focusing on design, tactical, and experiential innovation. His vision has always been to go beyond functionality to create integral experiences, connecting the intricacies of each project at a deeper level to positively impact society and the environment, which aligns seamlessly with WeWork’s design ethos. Rojkind’s first project with The We Company is a 200,000 sq. ft. building in Bentonville, Arkansas, which is one of the company’s first ground-up projects; groundbreaking scheduled for early 2020.

Michel Rojkind’s design for the Nestlé Chocolate Museum, Toluca, Mexico was awarded the International Architecture Award (2008) as one of the best realized designs around the world in 2007, and was nominated for the British Museum Award (2008) for the ten best buildings of 2007. He has contributed to Contemporary Corporate Architecture (2009), Phaidon Atlas of 21st Century Architecture (2009) and Open House: Architecture and Technology for Intelligent Living.

Projects: Falcón I Headquarters Nestlé Chocolate Museum near Toluca Nestlé Application Group in Querétaro Department Store Liverpool Interlomas The New Tamayo Museum, in collaboration with BIG (design phase) Portal of Awareness, Nescafe Tori Tori restaurant in Polanco, Mexico City Reforma 232 apartment building Falcón II Headquarters Cineteca Nacional del Siglo XXI, Mexico City Chedraui Supermarket, Santa Fe Liverpool Department Store, Insurgentes.

Tiffany Vora

Longevity / Biotechnology

Tiffany Vora is an educator, writer, research scientist, and entrepreneur who is excited to bring her diversity of experience to Singularity University as Principal Faculty in Medicine and Digital Biology. After earning undergraduate degrees in Biology and Chemistry at New York University, Tiffany worked on cutting-edge drug-discovery technologies at Bristol-Myers Squibb. Her PhD research in the Department of Molecular Biology at Princeton University, which was funded through NASA, brought her into the emerging fields of genomics, systems biology, and computational biology. 

It was during this time that Tiffany developed an interest in the cultural shifts that accompany new technologies and new ways of thinking. She translated this interest into a global perspective by joining the American University of Cairo as a Visiting Assistant Professor, where she spearheaded curriculum development for core classes in scientific thinking as well as computational biology classes for non-programmers. Upon her return to the United States, Tiffany founded Bayana Science, an editing, writing, and consulting company dedicated to excellence in science communication. Tiffany also served as an instructor for the Department of Bioengineering at Stanford University. 

She has contributed to literally thousands of grant proposals, research articles, presentations, textbooks, and other works spanning medicine, computer science, applied physics, chemistry, nanotechnology, and the life sciences; her biology expertise encompasses fields as diverse as the microbiome, ancient molecules, biophysics, environmental monitoring, tissue engineering, biohacking, and the quantitative analysis of large biological datasets. Tiffany loves encountering the natural world through hiking and scuba diving. She travels extensively with her family, seeking out new experiences and cultures. She enjoys sharing her passions through teaching, writing, and public speaking.

Dr. Hod Lipson

Robotics / Artificial Intelligence

Hod Lipson is a professor of Engineering and Data Science at Columbia University in New York, and a co-author of the award winning book “Fabricated: The New World of 3D printing”, and “Driverless: Intelligent cars and the road ahead”, by MIT Press (translated into 7 languages). Before joining Columbia University in 2015, Hod spent 14 years as a professor at Cornell University. He received his PhD in 1999 from the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, followed by a postdoc at Brandeis University and MIT.

Hod Lipson’s work on self-aware and self-replicating robots challenges conventional views of robotics, and has enjoyed widespread media coverage. He has also pioneered open-source 3D printing, as well as electronics 3D printing, bio-printing and food printing. Lipson has co-authored over 300 publications that received over 14,000 citations to date. He has co-founded four companies, and is frequent keynoter both in industry and academic events. His TED Talk on self-aware machines is one of the most viewed presentations on AI and robotics. Hod directs the Creative Machines Lab, which pioneers new ways to make machines that create, and machines that are creative.

Ramsez Naam

Energía / Sustentabilidad

Ramez Naam es un científico informático, futurista y autor galardonado. Ramez pasó 13 años en Microsoft, donde dirigió equipos desarrollando las primeras versiones de Microsoft Outlook, Internet Explorer y el motor de búsqueda Bing. Su carrera se ha centrado en brindar capacidades avanzadas de colaboración, comunicación y recuperación de información a aproximadamente un billón de personas en todo el mundo, y lo llevó a desempeñar el papel de Socio y Director de Gestión de Programas de Microsoft, con gran experiencia liderando equipos que trabajan en tecnologías de vanguardia tales como machine learning, búsqueda, servicios a gran escala e inteligencia artificial.

Entre las temporadas en Microsoft, Ramez fundó y dirigió Apex NanoTechnologies, la primera compañía del mundo dedicada únicamente a softwares para acelerar el diseño molecular. Tiene 19 patentes relacionadas con los motores de búsqueda, recuperación de información, navegación web, inteligencia artificial y aprendizaje automático.

Ramez es también el autor galardonado de HG Wells por sus cuatro libros: The Infinite Resource: The Power of Ideas on a Finite Planet (no es ficción), que analiza los desafíos ambientales y de recursos naturales del cambio climático, la energía, el agua y los alimentos y traza un camino para enfrentar esos desafíos invirtiendo en innovaciones científicas y tecnológicas necesarias para superarlos y cambiando nuestras políticas públicas para fomentar tanto la conservación como la innovación. 

Ramez se graduó de la Universidad de Illinois en Urbana Champaign y la Academia de Matemáticas y Ciencias de Illinois en Aurora, Illinois. En su tiempo libre, Ramez ha escalado montañas, descendido en grietas heladas, perseguido a tiburones a través de su dominio nativo, caminado por las esquinas remotas de China y montado su bicicleta a cientos de kilómetros de la costa de Vietnam. Vive en Seattle, donde escribe y da pláticas de tiempo completo.

Shuo Chen

General Partner at IOVC, faculty at UC Berkeley and SingularityU, Board Director of DECODE and commissioner at Mental Health Services Oversight and Accountability Commission (MHSOAC)

Shuo Chen is a General Partner at IOVC, where she focuses on early stage venture investments in Silicon Valley with a focus on future of work and enterprise/SaaS. She is also Faculty at UC Berkeley and Singularity University. Shuo is appointed by California Governor Gavin Newson to serve as 1 of 13 voting members on California's Mental Health Commission (as the first Asian American Commissioner), which includes overseeing ~$2.6 billion annually in state budget and advising the Governor or the Legislature on mental health policy.

In her venture role, Shuo has invested in companies now acquired by Goldman Sachs, Ford, Caterpillar, Binance and Dialpad, as well as now unicorns including Boom, Checkr, Grubmarket, Instacart and Rescale. She has helped portfolio companies close deals with Amazon, Apple, Google, Mercedes-Benz and NASA among others, as well as scaled portfolio companies into Europe and Asia.

Prior, Shuo worked at Goldman Sachs in investment banking, where she worked with clients including Alibaba and Tencent, as well as represented the firm on the Board of Women in Finance. Before that, Shuo was at PwC, where she worked on Google’s $12.5 billion acquisition of Motorola and LinkedIn’s $119 million acquisition of SlideShare. Shuo has also co-authored one of the leading books on financial regulations published by Cambridge University Press in 2019, and sits on the Advisory Board of Forbes China, where she advises on content and awards for Asian Americans in North America.

Bismarck Lepe

Technology / Innovation

Bismarck Lepe, founder and CEO of Wizeline, is a seasoned Silicon Valley entrepreneur and executive. Bismarck founded Wizeline with the goal of helping enterprise organizations use true intelligence to make data-driven decisions. Prior to Wizeline, Bismarck was a co-founder and founding CEO of Ooyala, a video technology platform company, which Telstra acquired for over $400 million (USD) in 2014. Previously, he was an early employee at Google, responsible for Ads Quality and video product lines. 

He is an active investor in startups and has made several dozen investments and serves on the board of both Reservamos and StartupGDL. He has been recognized as one of the best entrepreneurs in the U.S. by Businessweek. Bismarck received the Serial Entrepreneur Award from the Mexican Association of Private Equity and Venture Capital Funds (AMEXCAP) and also received the Ohtli Award for his contributions to the empowerment of Mexicans and Mexican Americans. Bismarck graduated from Stanford University with a BA in Economics.

Ja-Naé Duan

Co-Founder and Managing Partner at The Revolution Factory, Bestselling Author of The Startup Equation, Faculty member of SingularityU and Collaborator and Advisor at several companies.

For over 20 years, behavioral scientist Ja-Naé Duane dedicated herself to one mission: Make life better for one billion people. This award-winning innovator and expert on global systems focuses by helping corporations, governments, and universities understand and develop systems of the future using emerging technology such as VR/AR, AI, and blockchain. Ja-Nae guides companies forward, helping them get out of their own way to create exponential innovation and future forecasting. She has had the pleasure of working with companies such as PWC, Samsonite, Constant Contact, Natixis, John Hancock, and AIG. A top-rated speaker within the Singularity University community and the author of the bestseller, “The Startup Equation,” Ja-Nae at helping both startups and multinational firms identify new business models and pathways for global scale.

Over the years, her work has caught the attention of The Associated Press, NPR, The Boston Globe, and BusinessWeek. Ja-Nae holds degrees from Brown University, I.E. Business School, Northeastern University, Carnegie University, and Boston University. Currently, Ja-Nae is a Ph.D. candidate focusing her research on the future of information systems.

Drew Dudley

Founder & Chief Catalyst of Day One Leadership

Somewhere around the middle of his undergraduate education, Drew realized engaging with the world was a lot more fun than writing papers about it.

While still a student he became heavily involved in Canada’s largest post-secondary charitable initiative in support of Cystic Fibrosis Canada, eventually serving as the National Chair of the organization. As he moved into his career, he took on the challenge of creating and building the Leadership Development Program at the University of Toronto, which became the largest and most dynamic in the country.

It was those leadership students who changed the course of Drew’s professional life: they secretly organized a campaign to put him onstage at TEDxToronto 2010, where he delivered a talk that would go on to generate more than 5 million views around the web. A high-achieving lifestyle took its toll however: undiagnosed bipolar disorder set the foundation for binge eating and drinking, and Drew grew to over 300 pounds while struggling with the emotional challenges of a career that kept him on the road 250 days a year.

Drew credits the Day One process with saving his life— he began applying the process to improving his mental and physical health. Recognizing how many people were struggling silently with similar battles, Drew began infusing these experiences into his keynotes, hoping to remind people that their scars in no way stand in the way of their leadership.

In 2018, Drew shared both his story and the Day One process in his first book This is Day One: A Practical Guide to Leadership That Matters. Today, Drew continues to travel the world sharing the Day One process with organizations of all kinds—aiming to redefine leadership for as many people as possible.

Tricia Wang

Fellow at Atlantic Council Geo-Tech Center and at Harvard University's Berkman Klein Center for Internet & Society. Co-founder of Sudden Compass and of Last Mile - COVID Straight Talk.

Tricia Wang is a tech ethnographer obsessed with designing equity into systems. Part data geek, part designer, and part community organizer, her belief that technology must serve humanity is the thread across her work from the public to the private sector. She is the co-founder of Sudden Compass, a consulting firm working with Fortune 500 companies and tech startups from Spotify to P&G and Google. She is a frequent conference keynoter, a pioneer in operationalizing data science with what she calls Thick Data, which she describes in her TED talk. Her tech career started with selling some of the first texting and mobile phones services to researching the rise of social networks in Web 2.0 and to now advocating for Web 3.0 to deliver social impact through more human-centered applications of crypto and blockchain-enabled technologies. Her focus on tech has always been in adoption amongst marginalized communities from the US to China to South America. She advises start-ups and nonprofits. She is an advisor to Decentral Labs at the University of Lisbon. She is a fellow at Geo Tech Atlantic Council, an affiliate at Data & Society, and has served as a member of the World Economic Forum Global Futures Data Council. She was also a fellow at Harvard University’s Berkman Center for Internet & Society, a Fulbright Fellow and National Science Foundation Fellow. She optimizes her life to be spent dancing, eating, hanging with her dog Elle, and her grandma.

Raymond McCauley

Principal at Exponential Biosciences Advisor and Board Member of many companies focused in Biotechnology

Raymond McCauley is a scientist, engineer, inventor, investor, and entrepreneur working at the forefront of biotechnology. Raymond explores how applying technology to life -- biology, genetics, medicine, longevity, agriculture -- is affecting every one of us. He uses storytelling and down-to-earth examples to show how quickly these changes are happening, right now, and where it may head tomorrow. His work and profile have been featured in Wired, Forbes, Time, CNBC, Science, and Nature.

Raymond is: Principal of Exponential Biosciences, a private consultancy; a theme advisor to ARK Invest, home of good thinking about investing in disruptive innovation; Chair of Digital Biology at Singularity University, a Silicon Valley think tank devoted to training leaders about exponential technologies; Co-founder and Chief Architect for BioCurious, the hackerspace for biotech, a not-for-profit where professional scientists, DIYbio hobbyists, and entrepreneurs come together to design the next big thing to come out of a Silicon Valley garage; Part of the team that developed next generation DNA sequencing at Illumina, where he worked in bioinformatics, cancer sequencing, and personal genomics.

Raymond's postgraduate work includes studies at Texas A&M University, Stanford, and UC Berkeley in electrical engineering, computer science, biophysics, biochemistry, bioinformatics, and nanotechnology. He previously worked with Genomera, Illumina, Ingenuity Systems, TANSTAAFL Media, QIAGEN, Viatel, NASA, and other state and federal agencies. Raymond develops and advises a variety of companies and organizations. Raymond's favorite project is raising his twin boys to be superheroes.

Pola Zen

Retail

Pola Zen is the Sr. Director of Corporate Marketing at Quotient, a digital media and promotions technology company powered by first-party verified location intelligence, purchase intent and consumer spending data that delivers valuable outcomes for consumers, brands and retailers. 

An award-winning storyteller, Pola explores how the combination of ideas, technology and distribution have the power to connect people and create meaningful experiences. Her career began in film and television, where she worked as a director and script supervisor for a decade before transitioning into technology. Since then she has led marketing strategies for digital analytics and eCommerce solutions, and was VP of Marketing at Ubimo leading up to the acquisition by Quotient in 2019.

Fascinated by digital behavior and Gen Z, she has studied and shares consumer trends, and the impact new technologies have on people, products and brands. 

MJ Petroni

Digital Fluency

As Chief Exponential Officer of Causeit, Inc., MJ builds the business and technology platforms to help companies harness the power of platforms for exponential growth as a speaker, strategist and facilitator. His academic background is in a field of study called Cyborg Anthropology, which studies the relationship between humans and technology. MJ specializes in helping others understand the mental models necessary to navigate new technologies. Since 2006, Causeit has helped transform how hundreds of clients think about and work towards the future, including Volkswagen, Swift, Google and the Omidyar Foundation. MJ was the Cyborg Anthropologist in Residence for NTT, served as a founding advisor of the Gates Foundation's digital financial platform for poverty alleviation, and is a repeat invitee to the Accenture TechVision Advisory Board. He is an alumnus of Lewis & Clark College and is currently authoring “Cybiomes: Biology, Technology and Hope.” MJ is a translator of trends, provocateur of new ways of thinking and guardian of values. He draws from his experience with startups and digital businesses, global travel and research to create compelling narratives of possible futures, catalyzing innovation for top teams in global companies, organizations and governments.

Laila Pawlak

Leadership

Moderator and speaker on Exponential Technologies, Impact Leadership and Customer Experiences Laila is Co-founder & CEO of SingularityU Nordic, co-author of the book “The Fundamental 4s: How to design extraordinary customer experiences in an exponential world”, and has received numerous awards, among others the Experience Management Achievement Award, top 50 people in tech in the Nordics, Inspiring50 women in the Nordics, and Distinguished Women Entrepreneurship Fellow at the UN in New York. Laila has been nominated twice as Female Entrepreneur of the Year, Investor of the Year, and is on the list of the top 100 female role models. She is an active angel investor, board member and advisor to both private and public sector around the world.